Apple is changing how consumers charge their iPhones following the recent passing of a European Union law.

Beginning with its new devices, Apple announced Tuesday it would switch over to USB-C chargers sometime by 2024, CNBC and Forbes reported.

“Obviously, we’ll have to comply,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, at The Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference, per CNBC and Forbes.

The news of the change was first announced earlier this month in a European Parliament press release.

Devices also affected by the new law include headphones, digital cameras, e-readers, mice, keyboards, and portable game consoles and speakers, the news release said.

For laptops, they'll have time to implement the change since the law doesn't go into effect for them until spring 2026, according to the news release.

Although they have to switch to abide by the new law, CNBC and Forbes pointed out that Apple hasn't been excited about the change.

According to the news outlets, Joswiak pointed out that over a billion people have devices that use Apple’s Lightning chargers.

“We think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be that prescriptive,” Joswiak said per CNBC.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-6 on Thursday to advance a bill limiting the way big companies like Amazon, Apple and Google do business.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act targets a practice known as self-preferencing.

"Self-preferencing is mainly intended to describe situations where, if you're a merchant selling a product through an e-commerce platform, and that e-commerce platform is a competitor of yours who offers the same product, the platform somehow induces the consumer to have a preference for its own product," said Tad Lipsky, the director of the Competition Advocacy Program at the Global Antitrust Institute.

"It's really easy to find examples of that tension," Lipsky continued. "For Amazon, it could be any of a whole range of products that they offer themselves. Google, same thing. There are a lot of e-commerce searches on Google sites that can relate to products that Google offers."

The bill does not identify any major companies by name. It says any new rules will apply to companies with at least a billion monthly users, a list which would include companies like Amazon, Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

In 2021, Amazon and Meta were two of the top three companies in terms of spending money to lobby Congress, according to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who spoke at Thursday's hearing.

"They are never going to like this bill," said Sen. Klobuchar. "When companies take them on, they have, for decades, formed an impenetrable shield. They're making a lot of money. They want to maintain and profit and keep their positions as monopoly gatekeepers."

The major tech companies did not comment on Thursday's hearing, but most have raised objections to the legislation moving through Congress.

Amazon has warned third-party sellers that they might be kicked off the marketplaces if the legislation passes.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said during the hearing that Apple CEO Tim Cook called him personally to talk about the bill for more than 40 minutes.

Cruz, and several other senators, said they were advancing the bill for a full Senate vote with the knowledge that more amendments will be made.

"This bill may become law without there ever having been a public hearing about how these particular provisions are supposed to operate," said Lipsky. "They're very extensive, complex provisions. It could lead to a tremendous amount of disruption and intervention in these companies' business, and nobody has established by the usual legislative procedures that there's a need for that to happen."

It's not clear when, or if, the bill will make it onto a crowded Senate calendar for a vote.

If it passes in the Senate, it would still have to clear some hurdles in the House before becoming law. But it has enjoyed some measure of bipartisan support throughout the process, a rarity in an often-divided Congress.

"It's nice and refreshing to see something resembling real debate on substance," said Sen. Cruz. "It's something we as a committee, and we as a Senate, ought to do more often."

This week, Apple released a new software update that includes a digital legacy feature.

Apple's update is similar to legacy features that have already been introduced by social media platforms, including Facebook.

The new program allows users to assign someone responsible for their account when they die. Until now, family members or loved ones had to get a court order to access a person's Apple account after they died.

Liz Weston, a personal finance columnist at NerdWallet, says setting up legacy accounts is as important as estate planning.

"All of us have email accounts. We have photos stored on the web. We have social media accounts," Weston said. "We have all kinds of ways that we have digital assets, and if we don't make a plan for those, those can disappear."

Just like estate planning, Weston says Apple users should have a conversation with the people they choose as a legacy contact. Users may also want to plan on having more than one person hold on to that responsibility.

"You should never do anything in estate planning without talking to the people that you plan to dump this on," Weston said. "If you were getting a power of attorney, for example, so somebody else could make decisions for healthcare and finances, you totally want to talk to them first."

Legacy account planning does differ a bit from estate planning. For instance, Apple's program sends a code to access a deceased person's account. That code should not be included in a will because it could become public.

However, Weston says users may want to store the legacy passcode with estate planning documents or with an attorney.

The newest Apple iPhone has arrived.

On Tuesday, Apple revealed its iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, among other device announcements at its virtual event.

The company announced that iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max would come in four finishes, including graphite, gold, silver, and the all-new sierra blue.

Fans can begin to preorder the new phone beginning Friday.

“iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max make up our most pro-iPhone lineup ever with the biggest advancement for our camera system, the best battery life ever in an iPhone, and the fastest performance of any smartphone, setting a new standard for iPhone and enabling incredible experiences never before possible,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a press release.

The iPhone 13 Pro starts at $999, and the iPhone 13 Pro Max starts at $1,099.

The camera features on the new phones will feature Night mode, Ultra Wide, and wide lenses.

The company also unveiled the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, and the new Apple Watch Series 7.

Related video above: US hiring surges in July, unemployment rate drops

Apple, Google and other big companies around the world are continuing to add to their massive piles of cash, a sign that corporations are increasingly nervous about how the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19 could damage the global economy.

The world's largest nonfinancial companies had a record $6.85 trillion in cash on their balance sheets as of the end of the second quarter, according to data from S&P Global Ratings. (Banks and other financial firms are usually excluded from corporate cash lists because they are required to hold a lot of money in cash due to the nature of their daily business operations.)

The second-quarter totals are up slightly from the end of 2020. Gareth Williams, global head of corporate research for S&P Global Ratings, estimates the cash level could hit $7.1 trillion by year's end.

Tech giants in particular are hoarding cash. Apple, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet have a combined $460 billion in cash on their balance sheets. Amazon has nearly $90 billion. Facebook has more than $64 billion, too.

It's not just the tech titans who are stockpiling cash.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has a giant mountain of cash that is growing even bigger as the company struggles to find more investing opportunities. Berkshire Hathaway had $144.1 billion on its balance sheet as of the end of June, up from $138.3 billion in December.

Companies have also been taking advantage of low-interest rates to borrow more money, which has helped boost both cash — and debt levels — for blue-chip firms.

The fact that many of these companies are building their cash reserves is partly because of jitters about the state of the markets and economy.

Time for businesses to start spending again?

But many firms are also looking to use their cash to invest for the future.

"We'd thought earlier this year that by this time, companies would be starting to draw down cash," said Christopher Harvey, head of equity strategy at Wells Fargo.

"But companies are spending on buybacks, dividends and mergers. The capital markets are wide open," Harvey added. "The cost of funding is incredibly cheap so companies are issuing debt and cash is still accumulating."

According to another report by S&P, companies outside of the struggling energy and materials sectors will spend $2.8 trillion on capital expenditures this year. That would be an increase of 15% to an all-time high, with tech firms and utilities leading the way.

But now that the Federal Reserve is widely expected to begin cutting back its bond purchase program later this year and potentially raise short-term interest rates in 2022, there is a sense that companies may stop using cash to borrow even more money.

Debt would become more expensive in a higher rate environment. That means companies may start putting their cash to work in other ways, such as increased investments and potentially more pay raises for employees. That's despite growing concerns about the delta variant.

Companies had built up an "unusual buttress" of cash, said Richard Lane, senior vice president at Moody's. That was due to concerns about liquidity during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. But it might finally be time to unwind some of the cash instead of just parking it on the balance sheet.

"What happened during the pandemic is that large investment-grade companies were aggressive in refinancing debt or raising new money," Lane said. "As we go through this year, I would expect that cash levels will come down a little bit."