TikTok, Apple and Google Antitrust - DTNS September in Review

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2:11Jenn Cutter: this is the daily tech news month in review for september 2025 we're going to look back on what the big stories of the month were and try to help each other understand this month it is tiktok apple and google antitrust playing the hits i'm tom merit i'm jen cunner let's take a look back on the biggest stories of September 2025. Now, first, we thought it would be fun to be lazy and just ask ChetGPT, hey, what are the biggest stories of September 2025? So let's take a look at what ChetGPT thought. The Apple event. Okay, that's a good one. We have that one too. We are in accord. MetaConnect. That's a bonus for the patrons.

2:56Jenn Cutter: I agree. I agree on this count.

2:58Tom Merritt: What?

2:59Jenn Cutter: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launching inquiries into chatbot safety for miners, pushing the regulatory spotlight on AI companies.

3:07Tom Merritt: That was interesting. Yeah. I like it. I don't think it's a big enough story right now.

3:12Jenn Cutter: Exactly. We covered it. It certainly was a story. It didn't seem to dominate the month for me, though. But yeah, that's interesting.

3:18Tom Merritt: That did happen this month.

3:19Jenn Cutter: You know what? I bet you that GPT is not just looking at tech news. It's looking at all news when it does this. That would make sense. especially with UN global AI governance momentum definitely wasn't on my list. Yeah.

3:32Tom Merritt: And definitely not phrased like that.

3:34Jenn Cutter: No. Apparently, the UN adopted a resolution to create an independent scientific AI panel and a global dialogue, which to me was like, the UN talks about AI more. When that actually has an effect on things, I'll pay a little more attention. Cyber incidents, infrastructure of vulnerability. I mean, yes, but that would be every month if you get that general, right?

3:57Tom Merritt: Sadly.

3:58Jenn Cutter: Yeah. They have the Collins Aerospace thing, which disrupted airports in Europe, the DDoS attacks, but not any particular one of these rose high enough for me.

4:08Tom Merritt: Like the Jaguar one, I think is pretty big, but until we know more about how they eventually resolve it, only so much you can say.

4:16Jenn Cutter: Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, all the stuff at IFA. I had IFA on my list too, actually, but we didn't end up doing it. Android feature drops. We did cover those quite a bit. And then regulatory and antitrust pressure. We're not going to cover all of it as broadly as that, but we are going to talk about the Google antitrust decision. So that one works too.

4:36Tom Merritt: Definitely.

4:38Jenn Cutter: They did not include the OpenAI Microsoft, or they, Chad GDT, did not include the OpenAI Microsoft agreement in there. I thought that was kind of a big deal.

4:47Tom Merritt: It is, but it is an agreement. So it is one of those things. We got to see it play out. True, true.

4:53Jenn Cutter: There were a lot of things that came out of that where OpenAI started to strike deals with other companies, but that isn't done yet. So I feel like that's kind of -

5:02Tom Merritt: It started a snowball, but it hasn't hit the base.

5:04Jenn Cutter: But the snow hasn't finished rolling. Made on YouTube announcement, I was thinking maybe, but maybe that wasn't big enough.

5:12Tom Merritt: I'm pretty biased to being covering YouTube news. But yeah, I don't think it's big enough to overshadow, say, Apple.

5:20Jenn Cutter: Yeah. And then right at the end of the month, we had the Snapdragon event from Qualcomm. But that's still playing out as well. Devices are just starting to come out. All right. So let's start with TikTok. We're not going to redo the entire month's coverage of TikTok if you're like, oh, great, if you listen all the time. But just to recap people up real fast, we now have the US saying there's a deal. uh china is not saying there's a deal as of this recording uh but the deal has until january 23rd to be completed according to an executive order from the u.s if the reporting is to be believed this will end up with byte dance having a 19.9 percent stake in the u.s version of tiktok and byte dance will operate e-commerce marketing and liaise with the international version of tiktok to make sure it's all working smoothly, the US company would not be majority owned by any one investor, but would handle the data, which Oracle already does, so that's no change there, as well as get a lease to the ByteDance algorithm, retrain it on US user data, and handle the weighting of moderation.

6:28Jenn Cutter: So if somebody's going to put a thumb on the scale to push a particular point of view, it'll be the US company that does it, not ByteDance. Um, yeah, that, that slowly trickled out all month long. Uh, we heard things that didn't end up being true, but honestly, most of the stuff we heard seems to be playing out, but we still don't have China confirming the deal. So we don't really have a deal yet.

6:53Tom Merritt: Well, the way I've been feeling about this is like, you know, roller coasters, when you're going slowly click it up that hill and you're just waiting for it to gain speed and roll downhill. And so now it's like, OK, so January, January, we're going to see something. We hope.

7:07Jenn Cutter: Yeah. This is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act for those who like to have the bill properly. It's very subtle. As I keep reminding people, in January, I think it was the 19th, that law required ByteDance to either divest TikTok in the U.S. or it would be illegal for anyone to distribute it. But what the president has done is issued an executive order saying, Apple, Google, you can distribute it. I won't come after you. It basically instructs the attorney general, don't enforce this law. But it's actually technically illegal. So this new executive order is interesting in that it's saying we're going to cover the entire time from January 19th to now to say that nothing that happened then was illegal because we got this deal and you have until January 23rd to finish this deal and this deal is going to happen.

8:03Jenn Cutter: I still wonder if that deal is going to fall through. That would be big.

8:07Tom Merritt: If you're counting the pushbacks, yeah. Well, if you're running a betting pool, let us know how it goes. Yeah.

8:14Jenn Cutter: Yeah. Then we had that story of Australia, a senator in Australia, James Patterson, Senator Patterson saying maybe Australia should use the U.S. version of TikTok. Still too early. Still too early.

8:26Tom Merritt: It's still too early. And I don't know which way Canada is going to go because we kicked out TikTok Canada, the business, but not the app. The app is the total normal app. And no one has made noises past that national security review about taking the app or running the US thing. But mentioning US news in Canada right now is a little touchy. So I don't blame them for being quiet about it. And January is interesting in tech in general, but I think it's going to be extra interesting in 2026.

8:54Jenn Cutter: And then in the middle of the month, we had China cracking down on NVIDIA, but now NVIDIA says, oh, they're going to let us back in. Feels like there's another shoe to drop with that. Maybe that's what China's waiting to resolve before they come out and say, yes, we're on board. All right. When we come back in a minute, we are going to talk about the big Apple news.

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12:02Tom Merritt: Do security and compliance right. Get started today at vanta.com slash TED Audio. Apple had a very big month announcing and releasing a metric ton of goodies. For the wristwear side of things, we've got the Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE3, and Apple Watch Ultra 3. The AirPods Pro 3 with the live translation feature. And for phones, we have the iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. And the iPhone Air, the thinnest iPhone ever at 5.6mm, which is just scary thin. All of these were announced at Apple's event on September 9th and launched starting September 19th. On September 15th, there was also iOS 26, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, and macOS 26 becoming available.

12:59Tom Merritt: So we've got Tom here. We've also got Amos here, who've had hands-on with the product. And I'm kind of excited to see how they feel about it now that they've had a little time with that. It's a very mini live with it.

13:11Jenn Cutter: Yeah, yeah. we've we've had a few weeks now a couple of weeks here amos which phone did you get i got the 17 pro max in uh oh in the orange caution cone orange um i will have any scratches i do not because there's the whole that's our launch controversy is that the pro max is the one that gets the

13:34Tom Merritt: scratches you put it in a case and it notifies it completely so yeah um i will say that my my quick review i've noticed better reception i'm a verizon customer i've noticed better reception in some places that were kind of deadish zones um and the camera the differences in the camera are noticeable but maybe only because i'm a photographer so yeah that's positive noticeable

14:00Jenn Cutter: that's the reason to get the pro or the pro max is if you want the improved camera so it sounds

14:06Tom Merritt: like you were the right market to get it yeah and uh of course battery life is is better but i'm coming from a from a 15 okay yeah so you made a nice job there yeah but even my 15 still had 95 battery left because i keep it on the don't charge past 80 percent um and but yeah it's it's it's been

14:26Jenn Cutter: it's been fine it's wait how did it have 95 if you told it not to charge past 95 battery life left

14:32Tom Merritt: when I told it not to charge past 80%. Oh, okay. So on your battery health screen.

14:37Jenn Cutter: How can I get to 95? The battery. It lies. There's the answer I was looking for. So you never run out of battery is the. No.

14:49Tom Merritt: No, I mean, even only charging to 80%, I was rarely running out of battery on my 15. You know, I was like, oh, I need to charge it. Maybe once or twice a month I'd have that problem. And now with the even bigger battery, It's still like I haven't even been I don't think I've been below 40 % yet on this phone. Yeah, that's good. So. All right.

15:08Jenn Cutter: That's my big advantage of the Apple Watch Series 11, which is upside down. That's because I wear it on my right hand. It is got better battery life. I went from the Series 6 to the Series 11 and the Series 6 couldn't make it through the day. I had to turn off everything. I had to turn off the always on screen. I had to turn off notifications and haptics and I had to lock that thing down to even get it through the day. So I've been slowly going through the process of turning everything back on like, oh, right. How can I have haptics back on? I can leave it on always on. That is my big advantage is I can turn all that stuff back on and still make it through the day on battery.

15:52Jenn Cutter: Honestly, have not noticed a whole lot else. there's not like a feature that came with it that made me go, ooh, now I can do this. But it doesn't mean I'm disappointed. It's just a few people told me like, oh my gosh, going from the five to 11, your mind's going to be blown. And maybe it still will, but I haven't yet. My mind is still intact.

16:14Tom Merritt: Oh, see, I've got an eight and I really, really like it. And I play hockey in it and I have to charge it once every three days, unless I'm on the ice for like, you know three hours within two days you gotta charge it faster but you're also the only person i know who uses the always on function just you just have it on your wrist ready to go at any

16:36Jenn Cutter: time okay just as like a watch a watch that's how it's supposed to work like a watch and i'm like you know what if it's a feature i'm going to use it so that i don't have to have it wake when i had to turn that off i was annoyed like oh right i'm back to living in the stone age where i have to So wait for it to wake up every time.

16:52Tom Merritt: I also use the always on, but I have an ultra two. Now I know two people. Yeah. I never used it before this because I didn't have a watch that was capable of it. But now, I mean, my ultra two, I will end up with this at 50 % battery life. And again, I don't let it charge past 80%. But it'll still have 50 % of battery left at the end of normal day. I should try the sleep tracking.

17:16Jenn Cutter: I don't like sleeping with a thing on my wrist. I use the sleep tracking. I should try that.

17:19Tom Merritt: And I love it. And I'm shocked at how it doesn't. The watch will yell at me if it's getting to bedtime and it's at 20 % saying, yeah, we're not going to track your sleep unless you charge it right now. And it's like, all right, fine. I use an older watch, a Series 3 that I still have. And I wear it on my other wrist at night. Oh, okay. So the way I don't get the wrist fatigue and everything else kind of goes on the other side. So basically, I'll wear this in the shower and then put it to dry slash charge. And I'll put the other one on from that point until I get up in the morning and brush my teeth and I swap them back over.

17:48Jenn Cutter: See, I was too hungry for that$55 trade-in for my Series 6, which I got, by the way, came today. So there you go. If you order immediately, get it on launch day. That's how long it takes. It takes until September 26th for you to get your refund. At least it did for me. A couple of things over the course of the month I thought were interesting. AirPods 3 being so well-reviewed. We had Nate Langston on DTNS Live at the end of the month just raving about it. And he's like an audiophile. He's very into sound quality. And he had the AirPods 2 Pro 2. And he said, yes, I really think the noise canceling is amazing.

18:33Jenn Cutter: I think the sound quality is better. And all the reviewers just raving about the AirPods Pro 3. I was surprised by that.

18:41Tom Merritt: Yeah, it caught my attention. I don't like earbuds. Just as a general thing, like on TV when you're trying to use the IEM and I'm like, do I have to? But people have said that the changes made for the comfort and the weight and then for people who are really using the live translation feature and other accessibility options. I'm like, do I go try to find a way to try these?

19:05Jenn Cutter: See, Nate isn't even allowed to use the live translation because he lives in the UK and it hasn't launched there. So he's still raving about him even without that. That's just going to make him rave even more once he gets it.

19:16Tom Merritt: still in here. I just, that that's a me problem. That's not an Apple problem.

19:20Jenn Cutter: Sales were better out of the gate than for the 16, which I thought was very telling. We did talk about this on the show, but I thought it was very telling that when Apple focused on engineering and emphasizing the improvements to the, to the, to the camera, when they brought pretty much all the pro features, except for the camera stuff to the base model, they sold more. They sold more phones than when they focused on AI last time, which is interesting that they're going to launch a Siri app, according to Mark Gurman, in March, and it's out of cycle, right? They're basically not using it to sell the phones.

19:58Jenn Cutter: They're going to launch it as its own thing. And the iPhone Air battery, everybody was concerned about that. It's still not as good as the other two models, but because it's smaller, but it's better than people expected.

20:09Tom Merritt: Yeah, it's a different use case. Because I got a 16 base because there was nothing in Pro or Pro Max that I wanted and also could not wait long enough to get a 17. So when I saw those 17 sales, I was like, wow, a lot of people were hanging on just to jump on this in a hurry. Yeah. They didn't even wait for reviews. They just went and bought it immediately.

20:27Jenn Cutter: Well, folks, this is a new thing for us to kind of recap the month. So we kind of went round and round about how we should do it. Please, please tell us your feedback. If you're like, you know what? I love the idea of the month recap, but here's what I want from it. Or now that I listen to it, I get the idea. Here's what would make it even better. We really want you to tell us what you like or what you would like to hear from it.

20:52Tom Merritt: We'd love hearing from you in general, frankly.

20:55Jenn Cutter: Indeed.

20:55Tom Merritt: Always take your feedback.

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22:14Jenn Cutter: All right, last story to recap, unless you're a patron, which in case you're going to get two. Right at the beginning of the month, Google got the sentencing over its domination of search advertising. This is separate, as I always say, from a second U.S. antitrust case over ad exchanges. We were supposed to get a final order on that by the end of September. And September's still got a few more days as we're recording this. So maybe it'll squeak in and we'll talk about it in the October wrap up, but it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, we did get the sentencing for search advertising. And here's what it is to recap for you.

22:53Jenn Cutter: Google may not make exclusive deals to distribute Google Search, the Chrome browser, or Gemini in a way that would prevent the distribution of rival products. It also can't require the use of those products. If a company wants to carry the Google Play Store, it has to share some search index data and user interaction data, though not ads data with rivals to help them compete better. Qualified competitors can buy a one-time snapshot of data at marginal cost so that they can, and I quote, identify and crawl more web pages with valuable content and do so more efficiently. And Google will have to syndicate search, but gets to set its price above marginal cost.

23:36Jenn Cutter: And they only have to do that for five years. DOJ wanted them to do it for 10. Here's the other thing that surprises me, Jen. We were expecting Google to appeal this by now, and they haven't.

23:48Tom Merritt: Yeah. With all the things that happened, I thought that being told, oh, separate Chrome was a long shot. With all the data that is going to be available to qualified competitors, I don't think they'll be able to jump on improvements immediately. But as this shakes out, especially over the next five years as the mandatory thing, again, unless there's appeals, I would love to see better search and better data and more useful things come out of search as a result of this.

24:21Jenn Cutter: Yeah, it's probably not gonna. I could hope though. Here's the thing. Perplexity just opened up its API to everybody. And it's probably going to be cheaper because Google gets to set the price of that API. And that syndication was only going to last five years anyway. So you weren't going to want to build a long-term business on it unless you had an exit plan for when they stopped offering it to you in five years. So I just don't think that many people are going to take that much advantage of it. and search is the dying part of the business, right? It's the AI overviews. It's the summarization and stuff that is the future.

25:00Jenn Cutter: And there's no order for them to share that kind of thing.

25:03Tom Merritt: Is it the future? Granted, I'm becoming not quite a Luddite, but I have friends who are very set on like, man, I'm going to go back to the links browser and just use text links and go back to RSS. And why doesn't anyone make a really good RSS reader?

25:17Jenn Cutter: No, there's always a group like us who say that and do that, right? I was the guy in the 90s that was using the Lynx browser as long as I could, who just decried the graphical browser and thought ads were ruining the web. But when you look at the stats, when you look at the scoreboard, the future and the usage case is with the summaries. And they are getting better and they are getting more useful. And the legal requirements are thorny, but they're not unsolvable. and there are decisions being made that are allowing people to go, okay, so that's the rules now. That's how we'll do it. And I think Google knows that and is like, great.

25:59Jenn Cutter: Yeah. You know, have our search data, you know, it's, it's the declining part of our business. In fact, Google is worried about what they're going to do to replace that search revenue as well. That's a huge reason that they have been pouring so much effort into Gemini.

26:13Tom Merritt: okay here's my free idea for the world i am waiting for someone to buy say like the ip rights to altavista or ask james and just like launch a new one see how far you can get on the retro nostalgia of it to to bring back search in a in a big way they'll get tons of press for it

26:32Jenn Cutter: who owns altavista.com yahoo yahoo owns altavistas so there you go that kind of makes sense i i really should have seen that one coming or yahoo bring it back there's your free idea yahoo

26:44Tom Merritt: come on push it bring back the uh the manual directory i mean it'll only take them 800 million

26:50Jenn Cutter: years to crawl the web right they got they probably have one left over from 2006 still sitting around somewhere so yeah all right so that is it for our wrap-up of september unless

27:03Tom Merritt: you are a patron what did you think were the biggest stories of the month do you agree with us do you agree with chat GPT do you have some insight into a story please share it with us at

27:14Jenn Cutter: feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com yes thanks to you for being along for daily tech news show you can keep us in business by becoming a patron patreon.com slash dtns in fact patrons stick around. We've got one more story for you.

27:33Tom Merritt: The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

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