Twitter Announces Super Follows-Can Charge for Tweets; Spotify Rolls Out Genre and Mood Filters; Biden Signs Order Re Chip Shortage; iMacs May Revert to Multi-Color Cases

Twitter has announced a couple of new features. One is called ’Super Follows’, and gives the ability for users to charge their followers for access to additional content, and the other allows the ability to creat and join groups based around particular interests. Twitter used an example where a user charges $4.99 a month for followers to get a series of perks. Twitter positions this as a way to let creators and publishers to get paid directly by their fans. You can expect Twitter to skim off a cut…just like every other platform that allows for payments from fans. The second feature is Communities, which smells a lot like Facebook Groups. People can create and join groups based on shared interests…cats, cars, plants, affiliations like schools, etc. No date has been set for when the features will actually be released as yet. 

Spotify has unveiled a couple of new filters that make it easier to find and locate music you like. They are available to both free users and Premium subscribers. According to 9to5mac.com, the Genre and Mood filters will allow up to 15 personalized options to sort your ‘Liked Songs,’ which will then allow you to play the sort of mix you are wanting at a particular moment. The filters started rolling out today, and should be everywhere in the next few weeks. 

President Biden signed an executive order yesterday that hopes to address the worldwide chip shortage, which is snow causing auto makers to cut production, among other industries who are having to pare back. CNBC.com says the order calls for a 100 day review of key products like semiconductors and advanced batteries used in EVs. The goal is to strengthen supply chains and to make the US less dependent on overseas production of critical items…not only manufactured devices as above, but also the rare earths used in many electronic devices. 

It may be back to the future for Apple’s upcoming iMac refresh. Macrumors.com reports that leaker Jon Prosser claims that there will be 5 color options…echoing the original iMacs. The colors will be Silver, Space Gray, Green, Sky Blue, and Rose gold. The upcoming iMacs are expected to have slimmer bezels and run on Apple’s own new silicon chips. Also, Prosser says a version of the Mac Pro will look like 3 or 4 Mac Minis stacked on top o each other. The Mac Pro will supposedly have the ‘compute unit on the bottom’ and a ‘big heat sink’ on top.