Meta Plans Layoffs; iPhone 14 Pro Shortage; Samsung Galaxy S23 Launch Rumors; Starlink To Throttle Big Data Users

Meta seems to be using the big Twitter layoff as cover…they are now planning major job cuts that could happen as soon as the day after Election Day. The layoff numbers are expected to be in the thousands. According to theverge.com, Meta had some 87,000 employees as the end of September. CEO Mark Zuckerberg put a hiring freeze in place at that time, and was reported as saying in an internal Q&A session that “there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.” Facebook has more active users than ever before, but investors are skittery about the big dollars Zuck is dropping on his Metaverse vision. The company has dropped $9.4 billion on the Metaverse project this year, and burned through a similar amount last year. Meta’s virtual reality division lost $3.7 billion this past quarter. The stock is now at its lowest level since 2016. 

With China locking down a big Foxconn plant for a week due to COVID, Apple is warning that iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models may be in shorter supply than expected. Macrumors.com reports that iPhone production could be down some 30% from normal due to the lockdown. Apple has upped production in India to make up some of the slack, but says they can’t fully replace the capacity.  Expect longer wait times if you are trying to upgrade to a 14 Pro or Pro Max. 

Normally after the first of the year, we start looking for Samsung to roll out its latest and greatest phones. 9to5google.com says we should expect the Galaxy S23 handsets to bow sometime around the 1st week of February…although some Samsung watchers say it could be as late as the 17th. Right now, it looks like at least 75% of Galaxy S23 phones will use Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips. Earlier this year, it appeared Samsung would be using more Exynos chips, but that may not be the case. Apparently, Samsung will hold an in-person event in San Francisco…their first in-person event since 2020. 

After jacking up prices this spring, now Starlink is putting in a data cap on heavy users. According to engadget.com, it’s 1TB a month. If you exceed the cap, you’ll get dropped back from ‘priority access’ to ‘basic access’ the rest of the month. Some may encounter upload speeds as slow as 1 Mbps! The data cap is similar to cable providers, although they normally will just charge you gobs of money for continuing over the limit. Starlink is going to do that, too…but at 25 cents per gig of data for priority, you won’t want to get hit with that kind of fees. Premium/Maritime users will have 1 TB and 5 TB caps, but exceeding those will set them back $2 for every priority Gig after that. One user noted it might be cheaper to buy a complete second system!

I’m Clark Reid and you’ve been ‘technified’ for now.