Happy St. Patrick's Day (one day early)! Today's Apple World Today News Update Podcast includes a pot of gold with leprechauns dancing around it, as well as some important and informative news bits:

• Apple World Today has launched the new Team AWT Community Forum, an online discussion group for Team AWT members
• Are you a developer in Paris? If so, look in your email inbox for an invitation to an Apple event next Friday
• That Steve Jobs job application from 1973? It sold at auction for $174,000
• Apple's R&D expenditures this year are going to be HUGE

Steve's finally back from his Spring Training trip, and has several timely news items for today's podcast:

• Are you a Team AWT member? Keep an eye on your email inbox for something new...
• Apple's App Store has been blocked in Iran today, although nobody is owning up to who's doing the blocking
• Media giant iHeartMedia has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, struggling with streaming competitors like Apple and Spotify, ad revenues flowing to Facebook and Google, and a lack of radio listeners
• Google's changing its wearables brand from Android Wear to Wear OS in hopes of being more competitive with the Apple Watch line

On today's News Update podcast, we give you three stories that deal with Apple competitors Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. Please note that the podcast will be on spring break until March 14.

• Facebook is testing a new feature that could make it easier to post your status to your News Feed: something called Voice Clips. It lets users record short audio clips that friends and family can then listen to.
• Amazon's Alexa digital assistant went mute for a while today after a data center issue caused a regional outage of Amazon Web Services
• Apple's wonderful accessibility features for the vision impaired and blind received a boost today from Microsoft with the Redmond, Washington company's new Soundscape app for iPhone

Welcome to March! As the daffodils begin to peek out, we have a few stories from the world of Apple for you:

• The Apple Watch Series 3 propelled Apple into the leader spot of the wearables market in the 4th calendar quarter of 2017
• Going to the movies this weekend? Use Apple Pay with Fandango and you can get $5 off of two or more tickets
• Asymco analyst Horace Dediu calculates that two out of three Apple devices ever sold are still in use
• The big four US mobile carriers have joined forces to create a new secure authentication method that will eventually replace those SMS texts of two-factor authentication codes

Finally, the last day of February... Today's podcast gives us stories about competition in the tech biz, as well as an upcoming IPO and a new use for the Apple Watch Series 3:

• Google is taking on Slack with its new Hangouts Chat for G Suite
• Move over, Google Pixel 2 - although you claim you're the best smartphone camera, Consumer Reports puts the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus atop the smartphone camera heap
• Spotify is planning on a $1 billion IPO soon
• Your Apple Watch Series 3 can now track your skiing or snowboarding activities

There are a lot of little news items today dealing with video content, 5G, and Apple's sky-high share price:

• Hit-or-miss director M. Night Shyamalan is the latest to get a green light from Apple for an original series. Thank God he's only directing one episode...
• There's a big sale on 4K HDR movies and more in the iTunes Store right now
• Mobile providers T-Mobile and Sprint throw their hats into the 5G ring
• AAPL reached a new record high of $180.48 before retreating today, buoyed by nice words from Warren Buffett

Better late than never is our motto for this Monday evening. Today's late Apple World Today News Update podcast was postponed a bit, but now we're here with three short news stories to keep you informed and entertained:

• The HomePod smart speaker apparently saw higher day one pre-orders than any other premium smart speaker
• Apple's newest iPhone video ads are targeted squarely at users of Android devices, touting the ease of use, security, environmental friendliness and outstanding support versus Android
• Apple's share price is near record territory again, and a NYU professor thinks that the company is "the best value play" of the top four large tech firms

TGIF! We hope you're going to have a safe and fun weekend, wherever you may be. We have three stories to close out your week with a short News Update podcast:

• Cloud storage company Dropbox files for a $500 million IPO
• Apple and other companies testing self-driving car platforms may get to test their technology on California roads without having a "safety driver" behind the wheel
• Director Steven Soderbergh's new psycho-thriller "Unsane" premiered at the Berlin film festival this week. The movie was shot on an iPhone and opens in theaters on March 23

Today's news brings us word about more screenshots in the iOS App Store, an auction of items signed by Steve Jobs, and a quasi-scientific test of car navigation apps by an Adobe manager:

• Apple now allows developers put submit up to 10 screenshots per device type for their App Store listings
• Want a piece of history? Three items signed by Steve Jobs are going up for auction soon, including an employment application from 1973
• Bored by your commute? Gather data for an unofficial test of car navigation apps like this Adobe senior manager did

It's a shorter than usual AWT News Update today, with three posts that focus on companies that work with -- or compete with -- Apple rather than the fruit company itself...

• Dish Network's Sling TV, which provides Apple TV, iPhone and iPad users with streaming TV, announced it had 2.21 million subscribers at the end of 2017
• Facebook's new updated Facebook Messenger app now provides the ability to do group video or audio calls, something that FaceTime still can't do
• AT&T announces that a "dozen cities" will have 5G service by year's end, but don't let that get you dreaming of "multi-gigabit" mobile connections just yet