Apple October Event; Quest Pro Leak; Zoom Teams; Starbucks Adding NFTs

Apple is planning an October event…wait, didn’t they just reveal new iPhones and Watches last week? Yes, so it’s on to other gear. No date announced yet, but Cupertino plans to announce a new iPad Pro, iPad 10, and M2 chip powered Macs. According to 9to5mac.com, this will be the biggest update in 10 years to the iPad. iPads will get USB-C connectors and better battery life. The 12.9 inch iPad Pro will have a mini-LED screen, and MagSafe connector in addition to USB-C. 

Someone apparently left a prototype “Meta Quest Pro” virtual reality headset in a hotel room, and of course pictures were taken and posted before the employee returned for the headset. Theverge.com reports it looks more like oversized glasses…no strap as on a scuba diving mask. The packaging says “Meta Quest Pro,” but in Meta’s code, the headset is called “Oculus Pro,” so this may be a prototype. Meta is expected to hold their Connect event on October 11th, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed they will show their next VR headset at the event.

When something isn’t quite working out of a company, just rebrand! Zoom, which became so big during the pandemic that its name became synonymous with video meetings, has decided to rebrand its Chat feature a bit. Fastcompany.com says it will now be called Zoom Team Chat. Zoom is trying to remind businesses that its chat feature can be used by companies outside of video meetings. To go along with this, they have introduced a new logo with 6 ‘O’s in Zoom…it’s now ZOOOOOOM. Each of the O’s has an icon in it, and under them are: Team Chat, Phone, Meetings, Rooms, Events, and Contact Center. Zoom wants to get users into a broader selection of their services…acknowledging ‘Zoom Fatigue.’ The hope is that by moving more users to Zoom Team Chat, it will lessen the Zoom Fatigue of everything being a video meeting. 

Besides coffee and foods such as a croissant, Starbucks has offered  lots of other things for years. Coffee cups, music CDs (remember CD players in cars?), so naturally they are diving into using the so-called web3 tech to acquire NFTs. According to techcrunch.com, Starbucks Odyssey is coming later this year. You will be able to earn stars towards collecting NFTs. Also as part of the Odyssey platform, users will have activities called ‘journeys,’ which are like interactive games…and through successes in the journeys, earn…yep…NFTs…those ephemeral allegedly unique strings of 1’s and 0’s that many are trying to make into the latest rage. BTW, the ‘journeys’ to be offered so far test your knowledge of Starbucks…in a bit of brand reinforcement!