Short: New iPhone 16 wallpapers available for download +++ Euroconsumers sues Apple for excessive music streaming prices | News

With the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, Apple has not only presented new hardware, but also a set of new wallpapers. These are coordinated with the colors of the devices. iPhone 16 users can choose between five colors for the new background, including ultramarine blue, green, pink, white and black. The Pro models offer a particularly elegant wallpaper design with dark, shimmering balls in blue, yellow, orange and green. If you want to get the wallpapers but want to buy an iPhone 16, you can now download them for free from “9to5Mac”.

EU consumer group sues Apple
In a new lawsuit, the consumer group Euroconsumers accuses Apple of distorting the market for music streaming services by charging excessive fees in the App Store. Apple imposed higher costs on third-party providers such as Spotify and Deezer through the 30 percent fee, which were ultimately passed on to customers. As a result, millions of Europeans paid excessive fees every month, it is alleged. Euroconsumers is now demanding refunds from the affected consumers and is once again bringing Apple’s often criticized business practices into focus.

According to Euroconsumers, providers such as Spotify, YouTube Music and Deezer have raised their subscription prices on iOS to compensate for the costs incurred by Apple’s 30% fee. The lawsuit claims that these price increases have resulted in affected customers paying an average of three euros more per month. These “unjustified profits” amount to 259 million euros in Europe, according to Euroconsumers.

With its lawsuit, the consumer group is demanding compensation for around 500,000 affected users. Although Apple has since adjusted its fee system and only charges 15 percent for subscriptions from the second year onwards, the group is suing against the original practices, which it considers anti-competitive. Apple denies that these fees necessarily drove up prices and argues that the decision to adjust prices was up to the providers themselves. Incidentally, Euroconsumers filed a lawsuit in 2020 for the deliberate throttling of older iPhones and was able to obtain a fine of 25 million euros against Apple in France, among other places.