Two of the biggest Silicon Valley tech giants are locked in a “blockbuster lawsuit”, said the Financial Times, as Apple accuses OpenAI of “stealing secret hardware plans” to launch its own AI devices. Apple is seeking damages and a court order that would block the AI start-up from possessing or using its trade secrets.

What is the background?
Apple and OpenAI launched a partnership in 2024 to integrate OpenAI technology into Apple’s voice assistant, Siri. Apple also built ChatGPT into operating systems for iPhones, iPads and Macs.

But tensions began to surface last year over OpenAI’s $6.4 billion purchase of io Products – co-founded by Jony Ive (pictured above), the designer behind the original iPhone – signalling that it was “foraying into hardware”, said The Guardian. Ive is now working on AI devices “intended to compete with the iPhone and other Apple products”, said Bloomberg. He is one of more than 400 former Apple employees who now work at OpenAI, an “exodus” that has “fuelled resentment” at their old company.

What does the lawsuit claim?
Apple’s suit claims OpenAI “poached Apple employees”, said The Guardian, “coaxing them to hand over confidential material, product designs and other tightly held information”. It specifically names Tang Yew Tan, a former vice-president at Apple who left to join io Products and is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer.

The lawsuit claims Tan took information about Apple suppliers with him, and that he asked Apple employees attending job interviews at OpenAI to bring hardware components and unreleased product samples for “show and tell sessions”, said The Verge. Apple also claims another former employee breached the company’s internal network and downloaded “dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files” after moving to OpenAI.

What is OpenAI’s response?
OpenAI says it is not aware of “any evidence that the complaint has merit”. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” said a spokesperson.

Essentially, OpenAI is “a huge threat” to Apple, said Business Insider. The company wants to either “directly challenge the iPhone” or replace it. That’s “too ambitious to swat away or subsume easily”, and may explain “the intensity (or desperation?)” of Apple’s lawsuit.

Film fans are embarking on “epic journeys of their own” to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” in one of the “few surviving” Imax 70mm cinemas, said The Guardian. The new release is the first feature film to be shot entirely on Imax 70mm film, “the highest-resolution film format in existence”.

‘Very exclusive’
Imax 70mm is the only format that lets viewers watch “The Odyssey” with the “fullest image possible”, said Mashable. Those who opt for other cinemas will have a “sizeable chunk” of the frame cut off. The industry has overwhelmingly switched to shooting and projecting using digital formats, and just 41 cinemas remain worldwide that are able to show Imax 70mm, including two in London and one in Manchester. No theatres in Asia, Africa or South America can screen Nolan’s film in his intended format, making it a “very exclusive – and very Western – affair”.

To “get a true sense of the story Nolan is telling”, you really do need to watch it in an Imax cinema, said Charles Pulliam-Moore on The Verge. But the higher ticket price, and the fact that the “vast majority” of people will be unable to watch his film in the way he intended, has prompted accusations that the director is “contributing to the culture of obsessive format purism”.

‘Fiddly and expensive’
Imax cameras are “notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading” while shooting, said The Guardian. Projecting finished films is also “far more fiddly and expensive”, and a highly trained projectionist needs to be present for the entire screening. But the likes of Nolan and Denis Villeneuve – who shot “Dune: Part Three” on Imax cameras – are sparking a “mini comeback” of the format.

“There’s certainly more demand,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety. But adding more 70mm screens isn’t that simple, as new Imax film projectors haven’t been made in “about 50 years”, said the magazine. According to sources at Imax, many of the parts “simply no longer exist”. And even if Imax does “magically” figure out a way to manufacture more 70mm projectors, there aren’t many cinemas “capable of housing its towering 1.43:1 screens”.

Players lunge for the ball during the FIVB Volleyball Nations League quarter-final between Turkey and Canada at the East Asian Games Dome in Macau, China. The Turkish team won the match and will now face the host nation in the semi-finals.

Dilara Irem Sancar / Anadolu / Getty Images

The “world’s biggest classical music festival” features a jam-packed schedule of 86 concerts this year, said The Telegraph. Most are in London, but Proms events are also taking place in locations nationwide including Gateshead, Bristol and Sunderland. Running until 12 September, the line-up of concerts is “truly spectacular”.

Amériques
“Someone at the Proms deserves a pat on the back for including Edgard Varèse’s bracingly vivid ‘Amériques’”, in a season that marks the 250th birthday of the US, said The Times. The French-born composer wrote this “homage to urban chaos” shortly after he “decamped to New York”. It’s performed at the Royal Albert Hall together with Dvořák’s “Cello Concerto”.

Kafka Fragments
Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and her husband Sakari Oramo perform this hauntingly beautiful recital at the Bristol Beacon as part of celebrations to mark György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. It’s a “very different, vanishingly delicate side” to the Hungarian composer’s music, filled with “faint echoes” of Bach, Schumann and Bartók, said The Telegraph.

Martha Argerich
At 84, Argerich’s “astoundingly athletic artistry” is “undimmed”, said The Telegraph. The Argentinian pianist (pictured above) will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall with the Munich Philharmonic for Beethoven’s “2nd Piano Concerto”. The concert also contains an overture by “feisty” Parisian composer Louise Farranc.

I’m a diehard Liverpool fan – here’s why I’d welcome Bezos’ billions
Mark Jones in The Independent
Liverpool FC would be a “sizable purchase” for Jeff Bezos but would “hardly break the bank”, writes Mark Jones. For fans like me, it’s a “big deal” – some don’t want any “anti-red billionaire monster anywhere near Anfield”, but others point to the economic “realities” of the Premier League. I’m a “pragmatist”. We “need the dosh” and it “could be worse” – it’s not long since Elon Musk was said to be “eyeing up the club”.

Why can’t a No 10 wife wear what she wants?
Janice Turner in The Times
Every new PM’s wife has been expected to present herself outside No.  10 in a “fetching frock” since Samantha Cameron, a “slender fashion plate” who could have “rocked a Hoover bag”, writes Janice Turner. Choosing “The Dress” is “almost impossible to get right”, and Andy Burnham’s wife, Marie-France van Heel, “must be dismayed by foul remarks about her fitted, ice-blue Victoria Beckham number”. But if she “felt good in it, who the hell cares”?

Prince Harry has one final trick up his sleeve – and William will be furious
Emily Wright in the Daily Express
“The Hollywood dream hasn’t quite panned out the way Prince Harry and Meghan Markle envisioned,” writes Emily Wright. As “deals evaporate”, they “find themselves at a crucial crossroads”. Next year’s Invictus Games represent a “trump card” – if Harry could convince his father to “stand beside him on the Invictus stage in Birmingham”, it would be the “ultimate PR victory”. But the King must “balance fatherly reconciliation against the fierce opposition of his heir”, William, to any move to reintegrate Harry into the family.