It's being reported today that the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets has stated that Apple had sent them "new proposals" today in an effort to resolve a long-running dispute over the company's failure to make it possible for dating app developers to use non-Apple payment methods in the Netherlands.

The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) did not disclose Apple's proposed remedy, and said it had imposed a 5 million euro ($5.5 million) fine on the company, the ninth such weekly penalty Apple has received in the dispute since January.

In another story published late last week, Apple got blasted by Robert Kahn, Deputy Editor Emeritus, Courthouse News, about the company's "disgusting litigious bullying" in context with the Appleton Area [Public] School District in Wisconsin, for daring to try to register a trademark bearing — brace yourself — three apples.

As you can see in Apple’s 323-page filing in Apple v. Appleton School District, the public school district, with about 16,000 students, abandoned its logo (shown below from Trademark filing 88592451) rather than waste tax money meant to educate children.

Kahn further noted that "For the record, Appleton was incorporated as a city in 1857, though it existed before that. It’s the sixth-largest city in Wisconsin, and — brace yourself, they grow apples there — and sell them! — How dare they?

Apple was incorporated as Apple Computer in 1977, 120 years after Appleton. In 2018 Apple became the first publicly traded company valued at more than $1 trillion (then $2 trillion in 2020 and $2.6 trillion this year)."

Mr. Kahn has a lot more to say on this matter and you could read all about it here.

And lastly, it's being reported by Reuters that Apple services including Music and iCloud storage service, Apple TV and Apple Store are down for thousands of U.S. customers.  

The company's system status page showed 11 ongoing outages including podcasts, music and arcade. It said Apple was investigating the issue and services may be slow or unavailable.

More specifically, the outage tracking website Downdetector.com, claims that more than 4,000 users reported issues with accessing Apple Music, while nearly 4,000 reported problems with iCloud.

Users also flagged issues with "find my iPhone", Apple store, maps and support. For more read the full Yahoo! News report from Reuters. I placed this story third knowing it would be resolved fairly quickly.