Everything Apple

Thursday, 2 November 2017

Apple taps $900B after a blowout fourth quarter

 Apple is continuing its run toward $1 trillion today, as a huge fiscal fourth quarter sent the stock to new highs and helped its market cap briefly hit $900 billion — though it’s since leveled off just a bit and is now resting just a hair below that. Apple’s was able to beat across the board what Wall Street expected from it for the fourth quarter, as well as its own… Read More

Pandora made $80M in U.S. app store revenue in Q3, booting Netflix from the top grossing spot

 In the face of fierce competition from Spotify and Apple Music, Pandora has been growing its in-app subscription revenues, according to new data from Sensor Tower. The streaming music service earned the number one spot on the chart of top grossing apps in Q3 2017, excluding games. It’s the first time Pandora has held that position since the third quarter of 2015. Fueling the music… Read More

HTC intros a $349 version of the U11

 I honestly thought HTC had sent the wrong phone in the mail when the U11 Life arrived. The new phone looks almost identical to its namesake at first glance — and that’s by design. Of course, on closer inspection, the differences are pretty clear, particularly when you’ve got the standard U11 on-hand. The Life is essentially the budget version of HTC’s latest flagship… Read More

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status hit 300M users, nearly 2X Snapchat

 Instagram and WhatsApp’s Snapchat clones aren’t slowing down. Today Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status both now have 300 million daily active users. That’s up from 250 million for Instagram in June, and WhatsApp in July. That makes the copies almost twice the size of the original, as Snapchat’s entire app only has 173 million… Read More

Tesla says it has plenty of cash to hit its targets as its Wall Street hype train hits a snag

 Tesla’s march toward its goal of being able to produce 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week is a very expensive prospect — but the company, which says it will have $1 billion in capital expenditures for the fourth quarter this year, says it basically has enough money to hit that target. All of this isn’t necessarily going directly toward the Model 3, as Tesla’s expenses can… Read More

Facebook beats in Q3 with $4.7B profit and 2.07B users despite Russia’s shadow

 Facebook is still in the middle of its House Intelligence Committee hearing about Russian election interference, but the looming concerns over misuse haven’t dampened its business. Facebook announced Q3 2017 earnings today, continuing its streak of beating estimates. Facebook earned $10.3 billion in revenue and $1.59 GAAP actual EPS, compared to estimates of $9.84 billion in revenue… Read More

CTrip Group snaps up travel search startup Trip.com

 Trip.com, a travel discovery app formerly known as Gogobot, is getting acquired amid a flurry of activity surrounding trip discovery tools and companies — and the emerging presence of Airbnb’s foray into finding experiences. The acquisition comes amid the specter of Airbnb, which has been explicit about looking to become an “experience” engine. If you go to Airbnb… Read More

Periscope ups payouts to broadcasters on sales of Super Hearts, adds holiday bonuses

 Twitter’s Periscope is going after live broadcasters in a big way, as it’s now promising to give back more of their earnings from the sales of Super Hearts in their live video streams. Introduced in June, Super Hearts are in-app virtual goods that offer a form of virtual tipping. The idea is similar to Twitch’s or YouTube’s emotes, but instead of custom emoji… Read More

Samsung now offers an Enterprise Edition of the Note 8 for business

 The push to let employees bring their own devices to work has been underway for some time now — in fact, it’s a big part of what ultimately doomed enterprise-focused hardware companies like BlackBerry. Samsung’s been walking the line for a while as well, rolling out enterprise features like Knox security for its consumer handsets, along with accessories like DeX, designed… Read More

120K Instagrams by Russian election attackers hit 20M Americans

 Facebook detailed the extent of Russia’s election interference campaign on Instagram today during its congressional hearing. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said that 120,000 posts by Russian election attackers reached 16 million Americans from October through the election, and the posts reached an additional 4 million Americans prior to October. That’s on top of the 126… Read More

Expense report analysis startup AppZen raises $13M to build a smarter back office

 Expense reports aren’t the most exciting thing in the universe. But when you reach the scale of say, Amazon, and have tens of thousands of employees, making sure everything comes through smoothly and the right things are being billed to the company could mean the difference in millions of dollars to your bottom line. And when Anant Kale walks into the office of a big company and asks for… Read More

Essential Phone is the best deal in smartphones thanks to camera updates

 The Essential Phone has come a long way since launch in one key area: Photography. When it first hit the market a few months ago, the camera had a nasty tendency to crash and was a bit slow to load and process photos. But Essential has stayed true to its promise of delivering frequent and effective Camera app updates, and the result is a smartphone total package that is easily the best value… Read More