iPad Air with 12.9 Inch Display rumored in 2024; Threads Users Can Keep Posts Off Instagram and Facebook Now; Tesla Threatens to Sue Cybertruck Resellers; WhatsApp Unveils New Discord-esque Voice Chat Feature

We have been seeing reports about new iPads in 2024…some are saying the entire line will be refreshed. Now, appleinsider.com has picked up a report from noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that says there will be a new 12.9 inch iPad Air. Up to now, most of the reports have been about the Mini and the Pro. The 10.9 inch Air and 12.9 inch new model won’t have the mini-LED tech of the Pro iPads, but will get the better Oxide backplane the the Pros will sport. The two Air models should go into mass production first quarter of next year. The 10.9 inch one is supposed to stay at the same price level as before, but the larger 12.9 inch new tablet will come in at a higher price….of course.

Threads users are getting the ability to opt out of having their posts shown in Instagram and Facebook. According to the verge.com, you can tap the two lines at the upper right of the Threads app and choose Privacy, then Suggesting posts on other apps. There, you will find a couple of toggle switches that let you turn off suggestions on Instagram or Facebook. The feature is being rolled out slowly, so you may not see it for a week or two. 

In a really unusual move, Tesla is including a ‘Cybertruck Only’ clause in their purchase agreements that stipulates that buyers can’t sell their new vehicle within a year without explicit permission from Tesla…or the car maker can sue them for $50 grand! Engadget.com says that the Tesla contract indicates that the EV maker “may seek injunctive relief to prevent the transfer of title of the Vehicle” if buyers breach its resale provision, or it may “demand liquidated damages from you in the amount of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer, whichever is greater.” The terms also warn that offending resellers could be barred from buying vehicles from Tesla in the future. This type of unusual and threatening behavior by a seller of a product will no doubt bring a lawsuit or two as buyers decide to test out the validity of such a clause. 

WhatsApp has unveiled a new Discord-esque voice chat for large groups. The feature is intended to be less disruptive than a group call, which rings every member in a group. TechCrunch.com reports that the voice chats start quietly without any ringing involved with an in-chat bubble you can tap on to join. WhatsApp has been testing the feature since summer, and it will roll out globally to large groups of 33 or more in the coming weeks. 

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

Disney+ & Hulu Apps to Merge; Sony Passes Big PS5 Milestone; OpenAI Hit with DDoS Attack Affecting ChatGPT; New Open Standard for Smart Locks

As reported here and elsewhere, Disney has bought out Comcast’s share of Hulu to become the sole owner of the platform. Now, bgr.com reports that the two platforms will be available in a single app starting next month…provided you subscribe to both, of course! Be advised that the new app will be in beta, however…the wider rollout for it is planned for the first quarter of 2024. 

The last quarter was a biggie for Sony…particularly for sales of the PS5. The company has announced that they sold 4.9 million PlayStation 5’s third quarter (which is Sony’s 2nd financial quarter), bringing the total number of PS5’s out in the world to 46.6 million! According to engadget.com, that number didn’t match last year’s holiday figure, but it was still 1.6 million more than in the same quarter of 2022. Sony is shooting for shipping 25 million units this financial year…that will be a tall order, even with the holiday season, because they will need to sell 16.8 million more gaming systems by the end of the year. 

There have been ‘periodic outages’ affecting ChatGPT and its developer tools. Now, OpenAI has confirmed that DDoS attacks…denial of service…are behind the problem. TechCrunch.com says the outages have been happening on and off the last 24 hours. Users have seen a message saying “ChatGPT is at capacity right now,” and have been unable to log into the service. OpenAI says the problem was fixed at about 1 PM yesterday afternoon. Hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan took credit for the alleged attack.

Theverge.com reports that Apple, Google, and Samsung have teamed up with lock makers and chip makers, including the makers of Schlage and Yale locks…as well as Qualcomm and NXP, to build an open standard for smart locks and digital keys, using devices like your smartphone or smartwatch. the standard is called Aliro, and it is out today. Obviously, it will take a while for everything to come to market, but look for this to work a lot like the smart home standard Matter…it will just make various smart locking systems work nicely with your digital devices without having to download a proprietary app or carrying around some kind of tag or card reader. From what they have released, it sounds a lot like Apple’s Home Key…a digital key stored in your phone’s digital wallet and accessible on your watch that doesn’t require a proprietary app and works with any door lock that supports the standard. Access to the key could be controlled and managed by the owner of the lock through an app. If you are the type of person who misplaces keys, this will be a boon…just don’t also lose track of your phone or watch!

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

Google Wants EU to Force Apple’s iMessage to Play Nicer With Android; Meta Will Mark Altered Political & Social Ads in 2024; Rivian Vans No Longer Amazon-Exclusive; Chamberlain Dumbs Down Smart Garage Door Openers

Google and European cell carriers have written to the European Commission, pressing them to make Apple provide better messaging interoperability between platforms. In other words, they want iMessage to play nicer with Android. Androidpolice.com notes that Apple was able to have iMessage excluded from the EU’s Digital Markets Act. iMessage is, however under investigation. Google argues that iMessage’s popularity and revenue make it eligible for regulation, while Apple downplays its importance in the EU. Google has demanded for years to have governments force Apple to adapt RCS support for iMessage. Let’s just say what this is really about…younger users favor iMessage to iMessage chats over iPhones which display the ‘blue bubble.’ Messages from Android have a green bubble, and they don’t have the cool factor that Google desperately wants for their platform to entice and keep younger users. 

Meta says it will require advertisers to disclose whether the ads submitted to its websites have been digitally altered, included via the use of AI tools, if the ads are political or social in nature. According to engadget.com, ads that have been digitally altered will be marked as such on Meta’s platforms, in the same way some advertisements come with a “Paid for” disclaimer. The company will start implementing the rule in the new year, just as the campaign period for what’s expected to be a brutal and divisive 2024 US presidential elections heats up. This seems like a way to keep the revenue coming in, but cover Meta’s butt to an extent. A really consumer friendly policy would be to refuse AI altered ads in those categories all together. Note that advertisers don’t have to notify Meta if pics are only size adjusted, cropped, color corrected or sharpened. The platform owner did say that repeated violations of their rule ‘may result in penalties.’ 

Amazon poured a billion dollars into Rivian back in 2019, and has some 100,000 electric vans on order. Now, techcrunch.com says Rivian has modified their deal so they can sell the vans to others before delivering the entire 100,000. They will still sell Amazon the 100,000 units by the end of the decade. Last month, Amazon said they have 10,000 of the E-vans on the road. Amazon retains a 17% stake in the EV maker. 

Here’s a story that has saved me money. Chamberlain Group…which has the MyQ smart garage door tech…is blocking ‘unauthorized access’ to its APIs. This will stop integration of MyQ doors with Homebridge and Home Assistant. Theverge.com reports that Chamberlain had hardy cut Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant integration. This really sucks because Chamberlain has their own brand, plus Liftmaster, and Sears Craftsman garage door openers. They control about 70% of the US garage door market. There are already some companies making work arounds, but they are pretty convoluted. Chamberlain only wants you to use their ‘authorized’ security partners. Those require a paid subscription, and are cloud based. Sure seems like restraint of trade to me. I won’t be upgrading to one.

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

OpenAI Bows GPT-4 Turbo; Instagram Paid Subscribers Trail Patreon; Facebook Bans Political Campaigns from Some Ad Tools; Waze Warns of Crash-Prone Freeway Spots

OpenAI has rolled out GPT-4 Turbo. The latest, greatest chatbot is touted as having larger memory, lower cost, and new knowledge. The debut happened yesterday during the OpenAI DevDay event. Arstechnica.com reports that OpenAI also introduced an API for DALL-E 3, and custom, sharable, user-defined GPTs. Up to now, the knowledge base for ChatGPT-4 ran through 2021…now, the latest version has knowledge of events through April of 2023. Running GPT-4 Turbo as an API will cost a third less than GPT-4 for input tokens, too…a penny per thousand tokens, down from 3 cents per 1000. 

Instagram has hit a milestone…a million paid subscribers to creators that use the platform. That is a relative drop in the bucket when compared to the some 2 billion monthly Instagram users, but it’s a start. According to theverge.com, the platform has a long haul to catch up to other platforms in this regard…Patreon has some 30 million paid subscriptions. It should be noted that Patreon has about a 10 year head start, though. Meta has announced that now creators will be able to offer 30-day free trials, and another new feature will let creators bulk direct message new subscribers to chat with them. Instagram is also expanding its ‘Instagram Gifts’…its euphemism for tips…to more countries. 

Meta has announced that political campaigns advertising on Facebook will not have access to the site’s generative AI ad tools. This policy update comes just a month after Facebook announced an expansion of its AI-powered ad tools that can make changes to images, create backgrounds, write copy, and more — all on the fly. The tool is expected to be available to all advertisers by 2024. Meta has also blocked its AI virtual assistant from creating images of public figures and committed to watermarking content generated by AI to ensure it doesn’t spread false information.

Almost any traffic reporter will tell you that repeated crashes tend to happen at certain places on the freeway system. Caltrans studies have verified this. Now, engadget.com says Waze will let you know if you are taking such a route. Waze will send you a prompt that says ‘history of crashes.’ The prompt is designed to give you time to slow down or make extra effort to keep alert. Waze has been accumulating crash data for several years, and the feature will work on both freeways and local roads. 

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

Apple-Updating Whole iPad Lineup in 2024; More X Antics from Elon; College Students Ditch Dating Apps; Google Drops Android COVID Exposure Notice 

Word is out via Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that Apple will update the entire iPad line next year. There had already been rumors of some of the tablets being refreshed, but Gurman says they will all get at least a metaphorical fresh coat of paint…if not faster, more powerful processors. Gurman had already reported that the low-end and mid-range iPads will be updated in March, but now apparently the iPad Pro models will be freshened as well. Expect the next iPad Air to get the M2 Apple silicon, and the Mini will get upgraded to an A16 Bionic chip. It’s likely that the Pro line will jump up to the just released Apple M3 chips. 

To the weekend in Elon Musk…the new AI venture he calls xAI soft-launched over the weekend. According to Engadget.com, it has been released to ‘a select group,’ although Musk hasn’t identified who they might be. In typical Elon hype, he says “in some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.” It’ll be competing with big-time offerings by OpenAI, Google, Meta and numerous others, so we’ll see what “important respects” make it the best that currently exists. 

In other X news, the platform is fishing for users who are willing to pony up $50,000 for recycled handles from inactive accounts. Musk had already warned that X was going to start purging accounts that have gone dormant. There is apparently an @Handle Team. They probably won’t let us know if there are any takers for this princely fee to get an X handle, but it would be interesting. Who would be willing to drop that kind of cash, when Musk could later take it away from you and sell it to someone else?

A new survey shows that college students are steering clear of dating apps. Perhaps they are turning back to in-person meetings…as the old joke goes…. back to the alcohol and bad judgment method. Axios and Generation Lab surveyed college students nationwide, and found 79% of college and grad students don’t use any dating apps…even once a month. Of the apps that are still being used, Tinder is the most popular…12% said they used it monthly or more often. 

Back in 2020, both Google and Apple developed COVID-19 notifications for Android and iOS to help people track COVID exposures. Last year, the Association of Public Health Labs, which managed the servers for the feature, ended support. Now, android central.com reports that Google has shut down the feature. They note that with the number of cases declining and vaccines widely available, it makes sense to retire this feature. The World Health Organization has declared the pandemic over, but COVID is still endemic…and continues to sicken people. It is still a good idea to keep up on your vaccination just as you should do yearly for the flu.

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

White House Issues Draft AI Rules; Disney About to Own 100% of Hulu; Upcoming Apple Watch to Monitor Blood Pressure; Ford Picks Up EV Power Startup

Shortly after an Executive Order moving the government to start putting up guardrails to protect the public from artificial intelligence abuses, the Biden administration has issued draft rules that would require federal agencies to evaluate and constantly monitor algorithms used in health care, law enforcement, and housing for potential discrimination or other harmful effects on human rights. Wired.com reports that the rules could force changes in US government activity dependent on AI, such as the FBI’s use of face recognition technology, which has been criticized for not taking steps called for by Congress to protect civil liberties. The new rules would require government agencies to assess existing algorithms by August 2024 and stop using any that don’t comply. The proposed OMB rules would add testing and independent evaluation of algorithms bought from private companies as a requirement of federal contracts, which the office can do in its role of coordinating departments with presidential priorities. 

Disney is buying out Comcast’s stake in Hulu. The House of Mouse has announced that it “expects it will pay” $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33 percent stake, giving Disney full ownership of Hulu. According to theverge.com, Disney expects the deal to close sometime next year. With Hulu barely seeing a shift in subscribers last quarter, Disney announced a price hike across all of its streaming services and hinted at a password-sharing crackdown. Password sharing crackdowns have threatened to cause big drops in subscribers, but after Netflix found that not to be the case, actually increasing subscribers after an initial dip, it looks like Disney and others are on board with whacking all of us with higher fees. 

It still looks like the holy grail feature of smart watches…blood sugar monitoring…is a ways off yet, but Apple is apparently planning to build blood pressure monitoring and a sleep apnea tracker into the next Apple Watch. CNBC says they also will introduce a paid health service. Apple is keen on getting more people on monthly services. Last quarter, Cupertino’s services business raked in $9.6 billion, a 12% increase year over year. Apple’s blood pressure sensor will reportedly detect when a user’s blood pressure is elevated, though it won’t show their exact measurements. Apple is working on introducing specific diastolic and systolic metrics in a future watch. Samsung already offers blood pressure monitoring in some markets. Next year’s Apple Watch will also reportedly monitor breathing and sleeping habits to predict if a person has sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops and starts during the night.

Ford is picking up a startup charging tech company. Techcrunch.com reports that the Blue Oval company is getting Auto Motive Power…or AMP, and will fold the company, and roll up its tech and talent into Ford. They will keep the Santa Fe Springs, CA facility. AMP has designed power management  for everything from autonomous rideshare vehicles to drones and hyperloop-style transport. Top employees previously worked at Virgin Hyperloop and on Tesla’s engineering team. Ford says they are “focused on accelerating EV adoption and improving charging experiences,” and this particular deal is about “accelerating that effort.” Faster and easier charging is one of the key factors as car makers move on from early adaptors and try to woo more mainstream car buyers who aren’t as savvy about electric vehicles. 

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

Apple’s New M3 MacBook Pros & iMac; Microsoft Begins Blocking ‘Unauthorized’ Xbox Controllers & Accessories; X Now Officially Worth Half What Elon Paid for It; Boston Dynamics Robot Dog Gets a Voice

Apple streamed their ‘Scary Fast’ event last night, and it at least lived up to the latter part of its name…the event was over in about 30 minutes! New M3 chips powering new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros were revealed, including a new cheaper 14 inch MacBook Pro powered by the base (but still very powerful) M3 chip. The cheapie model starts at just $1599, BUT it only has 8 gigs of memory, and just two USB-C ports. Apple mercifully dropped the 13 inch MacBook Pro with the maligned Touch Bar. Actually, I have one as a backup yet…and never had an issue with the Touch Bar…the terrible ‘Butterfly Keyboard’ is a different story. Try typing fast with a deadline on that awful thing! Whew! Back to the new stuff…9to5mac.com reports that it’s 20% faster for the base chip than prior models, and the M3 Max will support 128 Gigs of RAM. Battery life 22 hours…wow! Apple claims same performance plugged in or on battery. Did we mention the new black color? Yeah, it looks really cool. The Pros will be available next week. 

Apple also showed off a new 24 inch iMac…well, with a new M3 chip anyway. The computer is basically the same, except about 30% faster. You can order today, and it ships November 7th. The entry level model is $1299. 

Microsoft has started blocking ‘unauthorized’ Xbox controllers and accessories. According to theverge.com, a warning was spotted last week…and now some users are seeing a ‘connected accessory is not authorized’ message pop up. The Verge points out that it’s unclear if Microsoft is trying to target cheat devices, or whether the Xbox maker is trying to push its official partner program. Apparently from the time you get the message, you have 2 weeks to use the so-called unauthorized accessory, then the Xbox will block its use. 

It was widely known at the time Elon Musk bought Twitter that it was worth a lot less than he paid. Now, the official word is X is worth less than half what he paid for it…down from $44 billion to $19 billion. On Monday, employees at X were awarded equity in the company at a valuation of $19 billion, or $45 per share, according to internal documents. The pricing was first seen and reported by Fortune. The $19 billion may be optimistic, too…one of his big investors, Fidelity, thinks X is worth 65 percent less than when he bought it. 

Boston Dynamics has done some amazing things with its robot dog, Spot…not to be confused with the critters West Coast car dealer Cal Worthington used to pass off as HIS dog spot! Now, the robotics company has been training Spot to talk using an AI model that incorporates ChatGPT and other AI models. Bgr.com says they are using a Spot robot as a talking tour guide to show off the Boston Dynamics campus. I wonder if they will license the voice of actor John Leeson, who gave voice to Doctor Who’s robot dog K-9. It would be fun to hear it say ‘Affirmative, Master!” If you ever watched Doctor Who, you may have heard that in Leeson’s voice instead of mine!

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

Meta-Ad Free Facebook & Instagram Subscriptions in Europe; Biden Signs Exec Order With Rules for Generative AI; ChatGPT for Accounting-Fuzzy Math; Fall COVID Vax Rate ‘Abysmal’

Under pressure from the European Union over ad tracking and targeting, Meta has rolled out an ad-free subscription version of Facebook and Instagram in the EU. TechCrunch.com reports that the new subscription will be available next month. the fee it plans to charge users to escape its tracking and targeting (i.e. the ad-free subscription) is €9.99/month on web or €12.99/month on iOS or Android per linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. After March 1, 2024 it also says an additional fee — of €6/month on web and €8/month on iOS or Android — will apply for each additional account listed in a user’s Account Center. That means folks there with both a personal and public page will pay some hefty fees to continue using the platforms. Even for a user with just one account (on either Facebook or Instagram) the cost for protecting their privacy from Meta’s tracking and profiling would be almost €120 per year (for web use) or just over €155 (on mobile). 

President Joe Biden signed an executive order providing rules around generative AI, ahead of any legislation coming from lawmakers. According to the verge.com, the EO has 8 main goals:  to create new standards for AI safety and security, protect privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for consumers, patients, and students, support workers, promote innovation and competition, advance US leadership in AI technologies, and ensure the responsible and effective government use of the technology. Also in the last couple days, the United Nations has come out with guidelines designed to get the most for humankind out of AI with the least danger…but of course, the UN ones are voluntary, so don’t expect much from them. An executive order isn’t permanent though…and only lasts as long as Biden is in office should the next president decide to reverse it. The administration notes that there are members of Congress working on permanent legislation right now. Industry observers said the executive order is at least a step forward in providing standards around generative AI.

The latest greatest tech thing ever is generative AI. Virtually every tech company is working on theirs or using one that is already out like ChatGPT. A word to the wise: it may be ok for language, but for accounting…not so much. While the latest iteration of the chatbot has passed all three notoriously difficult exams for medical school, got through the law school bar exam, and passed an MBA exam from the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania….there is one area where if falls short. Math…specifically, accounting. Zdnet.com says a professor from BYU assembled some 327 co-authors from 1856 educational institutions in 14 countries to come up with questions for the chatbot. Typical of a comprehensive accounting examination, questions ranged across all major topics. such as financial accounting, auditing, managerial accounting, tax, and others, and were of different types (multiple choice, short answers, true/false) and difficulty levels. The results were unequivocal: ChatGPT clocked a 47.4% result which, in and of itself, was not that bad. Students, however, scored an overall average of 76.7% and easily bested the machine. The areas where the large language model stubbed its toe the worst were financial problems, and managerial assessment problems. Good to keep in mind that the LLM relies on probability to determine the next word or character. Accounting relies on accuracy, not probability. You don’t want to use it on your bank account…especially if your income varies a bit…or you may come up overdrawn!

An immunization advisor at the CDC has called the current rate of COVID-19 vaccination ‘abysmal.’ The numbers are in, and they support that. Arstechnica.com notes that the rate of US COVID vaccinations is 7.1% for adults and a negligible 2.1% for kids. These figures run way short of a survey from last month that found over half of Americans said they planned to get the jab. According to the National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module that ran from October 8 to 14 that polled 14,715 adults, 24.6 percent said they “definitely will” get vaccinated, and an additional 30.6 percent said they “probably will.” That’s on top of the 7.1 percent who reported they were already vaccinated. The remaining 37 percent said they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated. Let’s not go through the full-blown COVID mess again…get the shot!

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

Google Updates Maps With AI Features; Ways Robotaxis Available in Phoenix via Uber; Zuckerberg Says Threads Has Almost 100 Million Users; ‘X’ is Still ‘Sticky,’ Despite All the Chaos Since Musk’s Acquisition 

It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere…kind of like Chickenman in the old radio serial. Unlike the ‘Wonderful White-Winged Warrior’ though, AI is real and now some AI capabilities have dropped in a Google Maps update. One new feature is an ‘Immersive View’ for route planning. Another is deep Lens integration for local navigation and more accurate real-time information. With the Immersive View, if you are on foot, bike, or public transit…or of course, driving, you can now scrub back and forth through street level, seeing turn-by-turn visuals of the path you’r taking. The feature initially is available in 15 international cities…including  Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle in the US. the app will now determine your precise location, and can direct you to nearby locations like ATMs, transit stations, restaurants, coffee shops, and stores. 

The state of California may have banned GM-owned Cruise self-driving vehicles from San Francisco streets for now due to accidents, Alphabet-owned Waymo is now seeing their self-driving cars coming online as robot taxis though Uber in Phoenix. 9to5google.com notes that Waymo has been running self-driving cars in Phoenix since late 2020 with its own Waymo One ride-hailing service. Waymo’s driverless cars, which are all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, will be amiable to Uber customers in Metro Phoenix, including Sky Harbor international Airport’s 24th and 44th Street SkyTrain locations. Making the cars available through Uber opens up a much bigger customer base. Waymo One is also available in San Francisco, with public testing ongoing in Los Angeles. 

While Threads, the Meta owned Instagram Twitter clone app made a big initial splash, it looked for a while like it might be flash in the pan. Now, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the app is showing staying power…Zuck says it has “just under” 100 million monthly users since it was released in early July. Zuckerberg made the announcement during a quarterly earnings call. He commented “We’re three months in now, and I’m very happy with the trajectory.” Theverge.com reports that the Meta CEO thinks there is room for a billion person public conversations app, and he said he believes it could be Threads in a few more years. X is reported to have some 666 million users at this point….so Threads has a ways to go to catch and pass the former Twitter that has become something of a train wreck…people are all whining about it but continue to use it. 

The catastrophic drop in use at X hasn’t happened, despite all the prognostication since Elon Musk acquired it last year, and in spite of the disruptive changes to the platform. Techcrunch.com reports that X lost 16% of active users in September, citing info from Sensor Tower. Average time spent per daily user also dipped 2% year over year in the third quarter. Similarweb found that power users have been sticking with the site even as daily users have fallen off. Apparently only about 10% of X users have tried out Threads, and at present only about 5% of X users are still active on Threads. The X power users account for some 72.4% of total time spent on the platform…almost the same level from before Musk bought Twitter and renamed it. Some analysts note that while other competitors may fail at cutting into X, Threads has the resources of Meta behind it, and it may succeed in the long haul. Other X rivals like Spill, Spoutible, Bluesky, Mastodon, and others may find it hard to convince X users to fully disengage to join their app instead.

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

TikTok Tests 15 Minute Videos; Apple Plans ‘Scary Fast’ October 30th Event; Alphabet-Earnings Growth; Microsoft Beats Expectations

Think TikTok is a real time suck? Brace yourself…they are testing 15 minute videos! According to mashable.com, the platform has confirmed this to several media outlets. TikTok has been slowly creeping up its video upload length for a while now. Originally home to 15 second videos, the app eventually increased this to a minute, then three minutes, and most recently 10 minutes in Feb. 2022. So far, there is no word if or when the 15 minute videos will be rolled out to all users. 

The rumors are true…Apple is planning another event, which they are calling ’Scary Fast’. The online event will be Monday night, October 30th…a changeup from the usual 10 AM product announcements. The verge.com reports that this one will start at 5 PM Pacific. It is widely expected to be about new Macs. Possible reveals include a freshened 24 inch iMac, and a new MacBookPro. Many analysts think the new hardware will rock Apple’s new, faster M3 chips. 

Alphabet, parent company of Google, released earnings for the third quarter, hoovering up some $76.7 billion in revenue..that was up 11% year over year. Androidcentral.com says that Search generated $44 billion, YouTube ads picked up $7.95 billion, but Google Cloud disappointed expectations at just $8.4 billion. As with all tech companies right now, Alphabet didn’t miss any opportunity to tout their AI features either already available or coming. Remember when the cloud was the big buzz? There’s always a Next Big Thing, and right now it’s AI.

Microsoft ‘beat the Street,’ third quarter, exceeding Wall Street’s expectations by bringing in revenue of $56.5 billion…an increase of 13% year over year. Geekwire.com reports that Productivity and Business Processes was up 13%, led by Office 365…hauling in $18.6 billion. Intelligent Cloud (mostly Azure) had a 19% gain, with a $24.3 billion take, Personal Computing was just up 3% at $13.7 billion. Devices revenue…including Surface, HoloLens, and PC accessories, dropped 22%.

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