Apple reports Q1 revenue of $123.9B, up 11% YoY, net income of $34.6B, up from $28.8B YoY, Services sales of $19.5B, up from $15.8B YoY, iPhone sales of $71.6B
Revenue up 11 percent to new all-time record — iPhone, Mac, Wearables, and Services revenue reach new all-time highs
iOS 15.4 beta adds Face ID use with a mask for iPhone 12 and newer, without needing Apple Watch authentication, by recognizing “unique features around the eye”
The iOS 15.4 beta that was introduced today added a new feature designed to allow Face ID to be used with a mask and without an Apple Watch for authentication.
iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas add the long-delayed Universal Control, which lets users control nearby Macs and iPads with a single mouse or keyboard
Juli Clover / MacRumors :
Apple reports Q1 Mac revenue of $10.85B, up 25% YoY, iPad revenue of $7.25B, down 14% YoY, and other products revenue, including Watch, of $14.70B, up 13% YoY
Kif Leswing / CNBC :
An investigation into the rise of NSO's Pegasus shows its widespread use by the CIA, UAE, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and others; the FBI bought but didn't use it
A Times investigation reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO's Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban.
Microsoft and 35 US states led by Utah support Epic Games against Apple through amicus curiae briefs filed with the Ninth Circuit appeals court
[Update] The Biden Administration is also supporting Epic. [/Update] — Apple just reported record numbers.
FTC: US consumers lost $770M to social media scams in 2021, about 25% of all fraud losses for the year and up 18x from the $42M in losses reported in 2017
A growing number of U.S. consumers are getting scammed on social media according to a new report by the Federal Trade Commission … Source: Federal Trade Commission .
Mike Lynch, founder of Autonomy, loses $5B court battle with HP over false accounting; UK government will now decide whether to extradite him to the US
Mike Lynch, the Autonomy Corp. founder lost his acrimonious court battle with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. over false accounting.
Apple had 785M paying subs globally across all services in Q1, up 27% YoY; Cook says Apple doesn't make “purely financial decisions” about Apple TV+ content
Todd Spangler / Variety :
Apple removes Python 2.7 from macOS 12.3, asks developers to use alternative languages like Python 3; Python 2 has not been supported since January 1, 2020
they were using it for something. Now they're not. Goodbye. A portent.
The UK's CMA says Microsoft has agreed to changes for auto-renewing Xbox subscriptions, including pro-rata refunds, canceling inactive memberships, and more
Inactive Xbox subscriptions won't continue to be billed — Microsoft is making its Xbox subscriptions a little more flexible after a UK regulator raised concerns.
Apple's Q1 sales in Greater China rose 21% to $25.8B, Americas grew 11% to $51.5B, Europe grew 9% to $29.7B, while Japan fell 14% to $7.1B
Patrick McGee / Financial Times :
Apple says it now has over 1.8B active devices worldwide, up from 1.65B in January 2021 and 1.5B in January 2020
Juli Clover / MacRumors : Tweets: @asymco , @asymco , @benedictevans , @asymco , and @asymco Tweets: Horace Dediu / @asymco : See the new Apple active devices number in context: [chart comparing Appl...
Google to invest $700M in Bharti Airtel, India's second largest telecom operator, for a 1.28% stake; an additional $300M will go to multiyear agreements
Google will invest as much as $1 billion in India's second-largest mobile phone operator, as firms race to offer inexpensive data …
Will Cathcart says WhatsApp has no plans for RCS support, as Meta launches its first marketing push for WhatsApp in the US, touting its privacy compared to SMS
The Meta-owned messaging app wants to be as popular in the US as it is everywhere else — will a big marketing push work?
After customer backlash, Google says users of legacy free G Suite accounts will be able to migrate data to free, consumer accounts
Last week, Google essentially told free G Suite users “pay up or lose your account.” — There is hope for users of Google's “legacy” free G Suite accounts.
Qubit Finance, a DeFi service that lets users lend and borrow cryptocurrencies, says hackers stole around $80M in cryptocurrency on January 27
A threat actor has used an exploit to steal approximately $80 million from Qubit Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that allows users …
Source: White House is readying an executive action to task federal agencies with regulating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a matter of national security
The Biden administration is preparing to release an executive action that will task federal agencies with regulating digital assets …
SoftBank confirms COO Marcelo Claure is leaving the company after nine years and names Michel Combes as CEO of SoftBank Group International
Saheli Roy Choudhury / CNBC :
Center for Countering Digital Hate: Substack makes at least $2.5M/year via anti-vaccine posts; Substack defends hosting “writers with whom we strongly disagree”
Newsletter company Substack is making millions off anti-vaccine content, according to estimates Tweets: @lulumeservey , @neontaster , @alexhern , @chelseaclinton , @ggreenwald , @philthatremains , @ge...
Indian industrial B2B marketplace Moglix raises a $250M Series F at a $2.6B valuation, bringing its total funding to ~$470M
Moglix has more than doubled its valuation to about $2.6 billion from $1 billion just eight months ago as the Indian industrial business-to-business marketplace aggressively scales …
Alphabet's Google Cloud division has formed a group to build business around blockchain applications and plans to hire a slew of blockchain experts
- Alphabet's Google Cloud division is forming a team to win blockchain business after making a concerted effort in retail and other industries.
Spotify is removing Neil Young's music after he gave the company an ultimatum between his music and Joe Rogan's podcast with COVID-19 vaccine misinformation
Three things Web3 should fix in 2022: make crypto transactions safe and reliable, make blockchains efficient, develop tech for mitigating harassment and abuse
A viral video highlights some very real shortcomings in the next-generation internet — Last weekend, it felt like everyone I knew was sending me the same link. Tweets: @caseynewton , @laurengoode , ...
Robinhood Q4: revenue of $363M, up 14% YoY, 2021 revenue of $1.82B, up 89% YoY, net loss of $423M, MAUs up 48% YoY to 17.3M; stock down 10%+ on weak Q1 guidance
Maggie Fitzgerald / CNBC :
The US FCC approves “nutrition labels” forcing ISPs to show prices, speed, and more, plus network management practices like throttling, starting on November 15
so we can compare price, speed & data. No more fees in fine print. That's why the FCC is kicking off an effort to develop #broadbandnutritionlabels. Makena Kelly / @kellymakena : Nutrition-like labels...
Vesta, which provides mortgage loan origination software to automate and simplify the lending process, raises a $30M Series A led by a16z
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch :
Microsoft mitigated a 3.47 Tbps DDoS attack on an Azure customer in Asia in Nov. 2021; DDoS attacks in India rose from 2% of all attacks in H1 2021 to 23% in H2
Microsoft Azure Blog :
OpenAI says InstructGPT, its new GPT-3 version, is better at following instructions, producing less offensive language, less misinformation, and fewer mistakes
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review :
CB Insights: tech startups raised a record $621B in VC funding globally in 2021, more than double than in 2020, and the number of unicorns rose 69% to 959
- Tech start-ups raised a record $621 billion in venture capital funding globally in 2021, according to CB Insights. Tweets: @davemcclure and @ryan_browne_ . Thanks: @ryan_browne_ Tweets: Dave McClure...
CausaLens, which is developing a no-code tool for data scientists to introduce causal inference into AI models, raises $45M, sources say at a ~$250M valuation
One of the most popular applications of artificial intelligence to date has been to use it to predict things …
The FCC revokes China Unicom's authorization to operate in the US, granted ~20 years ago, citing national security; Unicom can still offer data center services
Reuters : Source: Federal Communications … .
London-based instant grocery delivery startup Zapp raises a $200M Series B, bringing its total funding to $300M
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
Meta says Messenger's e2ee chats and calls are now available to all users, and adds screenshot notifications, media saving, GIFs, and more to encrypted chats
Richard Lawler / The Verge :
Life360 will stop selling users' precise location data and sell aggregate data to two clients down from a dozen, after a report found it's a broker top source
The Markup :
A for-profit spinoff of Crisis Text Line uses anonymized data collected by the AI-driven suicide chat service to create and market customer service software
a non-profit named Crisis Text Line that offers outreach to people worried about suicide, self-harm etc, has been harvesting conversations to use as training data for an AI customer service startup ht...
Ascend, which automates insurance payments and offers a buy now, pay later service, raises a $30M Series A led by Index Ventures and $250M in debt
Christine Hall / TechCrunch : Tweets: @rsanghvi and @southpkcommons Tweets: Ruchi Sanghvi / @rsanghvi : We were proud to support the remarkable @wynnandrewj & @pchekuri in their first founding journe...
Meta rebrands Oculus Quest as Meta Quest, leading to criticism on social media; the rebrand was originally announced in October
wouldn't have to be Perpetuo; he could always fire me if he didn't like the results. David Bocek / @amusedapricot : It will never cease to be hilarious to me when massive billion dollar companies some...
Censys, an IoT search engine aimed at helping organizations find poorly protected assets, raises a $35M Series B, hires former OneLogin CEO to be its new CEO
https://techcrunch.com/...
The EU approves Meta's acquisition of Kustomer, announced in November 2020, after Meta pledged API access and access-parity for rival CRM software providers
Austin-based Portnox, which provides companies with a cloud-native Network Access Control service, raises a $22M Series A led by Elsewhere Partners
Tim Keary / VentureBeat :
Cheetah, which offers a wholesale food marketplace, raises a $60M Series C, after shifting focus back to restaurants from a pivot to consumers in 2020
Alex Barreira / Silicon Valley Business Journal :
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.