By John Moltz
July 17, 2026 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Saving the best for last

Apple sues OpenAI, ships betas for the rest of us, and sells some iPhones.
Late to breaking news
Shortly after this column went to bed last week, Apple rudely made a late Friday afternoon news dump, in which it announced it was suing OpenAI, alleged the company stole its intellectual property, and said they were, generally, just a bunch of real goobers (the latter part is implied).
Apple’s charges against at least one individual are somewhat eye-popping as they detail the kind of brazen behavior usually reserved for raccoons lifting a rotisserie chicken carcass out of your trash can or the sitting president selling access to his social media posts.
You’ve probably heard all about this already so I won’t rehash the details, but the impetus for this case seems to be alleged attempts to misappropriate iPhone hardware manufacturing secrets and just plain appropriate Apple hardware engineers.…