Spotify Complains To EU About Apple App Store; Verizon 5G Launches in April, Chrome Extension to Filter Toxic Comments; LG Unicorn Ice Cream Maker

Spotify has filed a complaint against Apple with the EU over ‘Unfair’ App Store practices. According to macrumors.com, Spotify claims the store’s rules ‘purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience, and slams Apple’s ‘acting as both a player and a referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers.’ They particularly hit Apple for the 30% commission…which Spotify frames as a tax…on App Store purchase. Spotify says this forces them to charge $12.99 a month, while Apple Music can be priced at $9.99 a month. Considering that there are over a billion iOS devices, the revenue gap is substantial. Spotify has launched a ‘Time to Play Fair’ website and video to educate consumers about its complaint.

Verizon has announced that they will roll out 5G in two cities April 11th. Theverge.com reports that the first two cities to get the service will be Chicago and Minneapolis. It will run an extra $10 a month on top of Verizon’s 3 existing unlimited plans. That means if you had the lowest price $85 plan, it will be $95 with 5G. Verizon says they will not be doing any throttling…which is reasonable to believe, since very few phones can actually use 5G right now. T-Mobile has claimed they won’t be raising prices for 5G when they roll theirs out later this year. Initial concentration in the cities will be in the Loop, Gold Coast, River North, and Old Town areas of Chicago. Minneapolis will also focus 5G…starting with Downtown East, Downtown West, and Elliot Park.

A Chrome extension has been announced by Alphabet’s Jigsaw that helps you control what comments you see on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and Disqus. According to cnet.com, Tune is described as a sort of volume control for toxic comments. Human moderators just become overwhelmed, and the tool was originally built as ‘Perspective’ to help them keep comments under control…now, it will be available to users. You can toggle how many comments you want to see…from zero in ’Zen Mode’, to viewing everything online with no filter. It also allows you to adjust by site. You could see all on Facebook, but screen by terms on Reddit…maybe to screen out threats, sexually explicit attacks, and insults. ‘Filter Mix’ is still very experimental, according to Google, and still produces a lot of false positives. Google hopes the Chrome tool will help tamp down trolls and harassment campaigns. Note that it only blocks your seeing the comments…so the nastiness does continue for the rest of the net that doesn’t have Tune installed and set up!

LG showed off a total unicorn at SXSW, but you will want one anyway. Engadget.com reports it’s called SnowWhite, and it’s like a Keurig for ice cream! The Snow has a pod-based system that lets you choose the base and flavor for various frozen desserts. Besides ice cream, it could make gelato, granita, sorbet, yogurt, and more…all in 2 to 5 minutes! WANT!