Apple May Add Higher End iPhone for ’24; Twitter Looks at Charging Businesses $1000 for Gold Verification; Lithium-Air Batteries-3X Energy Density; Tesla Raises Prices Back on Model Y

The top iPhone this September may remain the Pro Max, and not be dubbed Ultra after all. It’s still up in the air, but apparently Apple is thinking about bringing out and even higher end iPhone in 2024 and dubbing that model the Ultra. Bloomberg.com reports that a remark by Apple CEO Tim Cook supports this rumor. On an earnings call, Cook said “I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category,” noting that the iPhone has become “integral” to people’s lives. Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data, he said. How much is Apple talking about? Well, a fully ‘Maxed out’ iPhone 14 Pro Max with a terabyte of memory can run $1600, so that gives us an idea. Right now, Apple’s Pro phones are doing better for them than the lesser priced iPhone models. 

In yet another scheme to bring in more money for cash-strapped Twitter, Elon Musk is considering charging businesses $1000 a month to keep gold verification checkmarks on the platform. According to mashable.com, which saw an internal document, there would also be an additional $50 charge for every affiliated account, too. So if a media company had 10 affiliated reporters, they would be whacked for $18,000 a year! A number of companies and reporters over the weekend have said they would lose the checkmarks rather than pay that kind of money.

Some researchers at Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois-Chicago, teamed up with Argonne National Labs, have put on a practical demonstration of a lithium-air battery that have three times the energy density of the current lithium-ion batteries presently used in everything from cell phones to cars. Dailykos.com says that Lithium-ion batteries can store up to 200 watt-hours per kilogram…which is fine, but the lithium-air ones can hold as much as 685 watt-hours per kilogram! There have been some real technical issues to making these batteries practical, but the researchers have developed a lightweight polymer-ceramic composite that conducts lithium ions about 15x better at room temperature than other solid materials that have been tried up to now. the next few years could see these massively more efficient and safer batteries in our phones, cars, and other items that depend on electricity storage. 

After price cuts on Models 3 and Y…in one case $13,000 on a Model Y configuration, Tesla is not raising Model Y prices back up $2000. They had cut to get under a federal price cap to qualify for the $7500 tax credit. Now, arstechnica.com reports that the government has decided the Model Y counts as an SUV, so it has the higher price cap. The sedan cap is $55,000, but its $80,000 for SUVs. The Performance model of the Model Y was $69,990 and had been dropped to $52,990. Now, it’s back up to $56,990…still cheaper than previously…just not quite as much. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.