Twitter Worth 1/3 of What Elon Paid; Meta Quest 3-Lighter & Faster; Alexa Loses Celeb Voices; iPhone 16 May Get New Aspect Ratio

It’s been well-known that Elon Musk took quite a haircut when he went through with the Twitter deal…instead of dropping a couple billion to walk away. Now, mashable.com reports that Fidelity is pricing Twitter at 33% less than what Elon paid for it. That’s based on the investment firm’s own valuation for its own stake in Twitter. Despite Musk’s recent claims about Twitter soon breaking even or even becoming profitable, the company’s outlook has not been particularly good. Twitter lost around half of its biggest advertisers when Musk took over. Many still had not returned by earlier this year and those who had continued to advertise on the platform were spending significantly less.

With Apple about to roll out their mixed reality headset next week at WWDC, Meta is gearing up to make the Meta Quest 3 more competitive and desirable. With Apple expected to price their headset at about $3 grand, the Quest 3 will be cheaper anyway…the Quest 2 has been $400. According to bgr.com, Meta is making it lighter and faster. There will be  “three vertical pill-shaped sensor areas across the front. The left and right pills each include one color video pass-through camera…the middle pill includes a depth sensor, a first for a Quest.” Meta appears to be staking out the lower end of mixed reality headsets, ceding the high end to Apple for now. 

The celebrity voices for Amazon’s Alexa are about to be silenced. No more. Shaq, Samuel L. Jackson, or Melissa McCarthy. Cnet.com notes that the voices were originally an extra buck, but lately have been priced at $5 extra. If you were expecting a refund, just imagine Mr. T saying ‘I pity the fool that thinks a refund is coming.’ It is likely that Amazon is ditching the celeb voices as it prepares to use AI in its Alexa responses. You can still choose from a variety of accents for Alexa, including American, Australian, British, Canadian and Indian. 

Next year’s iPhone 16 Pro may not only be bigger, but may have a new aspect ratio. Appleinsider.com reports that the display may slightly change from 19 point 5 to 9 to a 19 point 6 to 9 ratio. If anything, you may just notice a seemingly longer and narrower iPhone. The screens will grow to 6.27 inches and 6.86 inches. The non-pro iPhone 16s will get the pill at the top of the screens instead of a notch, and will have screen sizes of 6.12 inches and 6.69 inches. 

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