Month: October 2018

Aura, an app for emotional well-being, has raised a $2.7 million seed round co-led by Cowboy Ventures and Reach Capital, with participation from others.

When Aura first launched a couple of years ago, it’s bread and butter was short, three-to-seven-minute meditations based on your current mood — be that stressed, anxious, happy or sad. Since then, co-founders Steve and Daniel Lee say the company has grown to a few million users.

“We’ve since grown to become everyone’s emotional wellness assistant,” Steve told me. “We ask how people are feeling right now and then offer content to help them feel better.”

Aura works with therapists, coaches and meditation teachers to offer a variety of content to help people get the type of help they’re looking for. In addition to meditation, Aura offers life coaching, music and inspirational stories.

Premium users, who pay $60 per year, have unlimited access to content while free users are limited to three minutes of wellness content once every two hours. Aura is not currently sharing how many paid customers it has.

“At Reach, we often ask how we can empower people to achieve at their fullest potential,” said Reach Capital Partner Wayee Chu said in a statement. “We are thrilled to be supporting two founders who are not only deeply driven by their own personal narrative in living with a family member with a mental illness, but who have committed themselves in building a world-class technology and tool to empower others in building a regular mental health and wellness practice.”

With the funding in tow, Aura has plans to expand its base of content creators and grow its team — which currently consists just of the Lee brothers. Down the road, Aura envisions integrating the app with wearable devices and their respective sensors to detect mood automatically. That way, Aura would be able to serve up what you need before you know you need it. The company also plans to become more than just a content platform by building additional tools on top of the core service.

Apple’s newest MacBooks include a new feature that makes it virtually impossible for hackers or spies to eavesdrop on your microphone.

Buried in Apple’s latest range of MacBooks — including the MacBook Pro out earlier this year and the just-announced MacBook Air — is the new T2 security chip, which helps protect the device’s encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data and secure boot features.

Little was known about the chip until today. According to its newest published security guide, the chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature that physically cuts the device’s microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed.

“This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed,” said the support guide.

The camera isn’t disconnected, however, because its “field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.”

Apple said the new feature adds a “never before seen” level of security for its Macs, without being quite so blunt as to say: Macs get malware too.

The emerging threat of hackers tapping into webcams became a reality years ago when remote administration tools (“RATs”) were used by snoopers to remotely spy on their targets using their in-built laptop camera. That in part led to the emergence of users putting sticky-notes over their webcam lens. It was thought that because Apple’s webcams have a hardware-connected light, making it near-impossible to activate the webcam without a user’s knowledge, Macs were largely immune from webcam snooping attacks. But last year, security researcher Patrick Wardle uncovered the Fruitfly malware that busted this myth wide open.

The paranoia is real. British intelligence agency GCHQ spent years tapping into webcams as part of its “Optic Nerve” program. Even Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg reportedly tapes over his webcam — and his MacBook’s microphone — even though experts say that tape wouldn’t do much to prevent an audio eavesdropper.

Although there are tools like Oversight, an app that Wardle built, that alert a user when their webcam or microphone are activated, there’s little to prevent a sophisticated malware from silently using a MacBook’s microphone to listen to its surroundings.

But cutting off the microphone from a MacBook’s hardware when the lid is shut will make it far more difficult for dormant devices to spy on their owners.

The new Pro marks what is arguably the single largest design change to the iPad line in its eight and a half year existence. In fact, the new slate is almost unrecognizable as an iPad from the front, on.

That’s probably a good thing, of course. The tablet-defining line was long overdue do for a rethink. After nearly a decade in existence, it’s time to shake off the cobwebs. And naturally, most of the design upgrades on the new product will ultimately filter down to the rest of the line.

As a starting point, however, Apple took a good, long look at the iPhone for a few insights into to how remove some of that unsightly bezel. Not altogether, of course — after all, the user needs somewhere to put their hands.

Anyone who’s ever held the iPhone X in their hands can tell you that your fingers and the edges of your hands still have the tendency to accidentally come into contact with the screen, which is a perfectly fine way to mess yourself up, mid-game. As such, there’s still the remnants of black bezel around the edges here.

The loss of the home button feels like a big deal, from a legacy standpoint, at least. The iPad marks the last stand for the familiar design flourish. As someone who’s been carrying around an iPhone XS for some weeks, however, I can attest to the fact that you won’t ultimately miss it.

The key is getting used to the new interactions in iOS, swiping down from the bottom to close an app, for example. The iPad, however, marks the intersection between the iPhone and Mac experience, so there are a lot more options here for interaction, including, notably, the menu bar borrow from MacOS. The much larger screen real estate, meanwhile (11 and 12.9 inches), means gestures don’t have to do nearly as much heavy lifting as with the iPhone.

The device is certainly thing, as advertised, leaving the edges — while rounded — feeling a bit sharper than on their predecessor. The rear of the device, with its brushed, space gray aluminum, meanwhile, brings nothing to mind more than the latest MacBooks, marking an interesting sort of aesthetic consistency that we really haven’t seen at this level between iOS and MacOS devices.

You’ll find the camera at the top of the device — the thinner design does mean it juts out a bit here, so as ever, you’ll probably want to nab a case to keep that bit safe. Along the bottom are a trio of magnetic connectors for the optional keyboard case, which will also help orient the device when it’s time to put it back.

Along the bottom edge, you’ll find the USB-C port. Far and away the most surprising change here, as Apple abandons its long standing proprietary connector in favor of something far more universe — and, as it happens, something that sends power both ways, making it possible to charge your phone and smaller devices with the iPad itself.

Something Apple didn’t mention during its keynote, however, is the sad, inevitable end of the headphone jack. RIP, little buddy.

On the top edge is a small gray patch. That’s where the new Apple Pencil connects magnetically on its single flat edge (which has the added bonus of making sure it doesn’t roll away when it’s on a table). Apple’s added a nice touch to iOS here, which pops up a charging status for the pencil when it’s connected to the top of the device.

This is a public service announcement. The latest and greatest iPad, namely the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, will cost you $2,227 to buy in its best configuration and with the basic accessories that make it worth having in the first place. Plus tax, of course. I’m not making a value judgment here, just stating the facts. Tablets are getting pretty damn expensive.

To be clear, here’s what you’d be getting for that price.

• iPad Pro base cost $999
• Upgrade from 64GB to 1TB storage: $750 (!)
• Cellular chip: $150
• New Apple Pencil: $129
• Smart Keyboard Folio: $199

Tax varies. Shipping’s free, at least.

To me the cost of the base device is actually not bad, though I wouldn’t buy it. It really does look like a fine device, if you can get over the curved screen edges and minuscule bezels that will probably make you drop it. I can really see how the 12.9-inch iPad Pro could be a great tool for some artists, assuming they’re already successful enough to afford it. Good stylus surfaces are expensive and the iPad has proven itself to be at the very least competitive.

The storage is, as always, the eye-wateringly expensive upgrade that doesn’t really jive with the cost of the actual components. Good flash storage isn’t super cheap, but it isn’t $750 a terabyte. A good M.2 drive of that capacity and speed is perhaps $150, and that’s including the interface and so on. Apple charging an arm and a leg for upgraded storage is nothing new, but they somehow manage to make it just as shocking every time.

The cellular is another upsell that probably isn’t worth it, considering it also incurs a monthly cost. If it was a low-speed Amazon-style free service, I’d do it in a heartbeat to keep my notes and saved articles up to date. But it’s going to run you $150 up front and probably almost that every year as an added device to your plan. (Could be a nice option to have if you travel a lot, though.)

The accessories are expensive but that new stylus and its snap-on charging (hardly an Apple innovation but nice to have) sure do look nice. You’ll need a keyboard if you’re going to do anything but sketch and read comics on this thing.

Tablet computer or computer tablet?

And adding the keyboard is really where you start to blur the line between tablet and “real” computer. Of course the Microsoft Surface, bless its heart and its tiny sales numbers (unflatteringly called out by Apple on stage), is the one that has made strides here over the last few years and Apple is merely drafting it. That’s fine — it’s been the other way around plenty of times.

But the difference when you start looking at the apps and features is pretty serious. The iPad Pro is certainly the most productive and professional tablet out there, but as soon as you add a keyboard and sit it down on your lap, it starts competing with laptops. And the Surface lineup, while it may lack some of the polish of the iPad, is arguably more powerful both in specs (hard to compare Intel’s chips to Apple’s directly in this case) and certainly in software capability.

I suppose that last point is arguable as well but let’s try to be honest with ourselves. A Windows computer can do more than an iPad.

Microsoft’s device, after all, is a full-blown computer that acts like a tablet when you want it to, not vice versa. That’s important. If I was going to spend $2,000 on a daily driver (though honestly, there’s no need to), I sure as hell wouldn’t pick the one with all kinds of weird, half-formed multitasking gestures, semi-functional cross-app compatibility, and app features and selection highly curated and restricted by the people who own the store. And this is coming from someone who likes Macs and iPads!

For the same price as the iPad Pro discussed above, you could get a Surface Pro 6 with 16 gigs of RAM (Apple doesn’t specify how much the iPad Pro has, and if it doesn’t crow about it, that usually means it’s nothing to crow about), a better processor (Intel Core i7, same generation), and… well, if you want that terabyte of storage you’re still going to pay through the nose. Maxing it out (including accessories) costs you a couple hundred more than the best iPad you can get, but I think you’d be getting much more value for your dollar.

Plus the Surface has a headphone jack.

That said, there’s no reason to go all-out on either of these things. That’s the real trap that both companies want you to fall into. Save money and buy last year’s model or the year before, save yourself a thousand bucks, and take a vacation instead. You deserve it.

Cockroach Lab’s open source SQL database, CockroachDB, has been making inroads since it launched last year, but as any open source technology matures, in order to move deeper into markets it has to move beyond technical early adopters to a more generalized audience. To help achieve that, the company announced a new CockroachDB managed service today.

The service has been designed to be cloud-agnostic, and for starters it’s going to be available on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. Cockroach, which launched in 2015, has always positioned itself as modern cloud alternative to the likes of Oracle or even Amazon’s Aurora database.

As company co-founder and CEO Spencer Kimball told me in an interview in May, those companies involve too much vendor lock-in for his taste. His company launched as open alternative to all of that. “You can migrate a Cockroach cluster from one cloud to another with no down time,” Kimball told TechCrunch in May.

He believes having that kind of flexibility is a huge advantage over what other vendors are offering, and today’s announcement carries that a step further. Instead of doing all the heavy lifting of setting up and managing a database and the related infrastructure, Cockroach is now offering CockroachDB as a service to handle all of that for you.

Kimball certainly recognizes that by offering his company’s product in this format, it will help grow his market. “We’ve been seeing significant migration activity away from Oracle, AWS Aurora, and Cassandra, and we’re now able to get our customers to market faster with Managed CockroachDB,” Kimball said in a statement.

The database itself offers the advantage of being ultra-resilient, meaning it stays up and running under most circumstances and that’s a huge value proposition for any database product. It achieves up time through replication, so if one version of itself goes down, the next can take over.

As an open source tool, it has been making money up until now by offering an enterprise version, which includes backup, support and other premium pieces. With today’s announcement, the company can get a more direct revenue stream from customers subscribing to the database service.

A year ago, the company announced version 1.0 of CockroachDB and $27 million in Series B financing, which was led by Redpoint with participation from Benchmark, GV, Index Ventures and FirstMark. They’ve obviously been putting that money to good use developing this new managed service.

Apple drove the final nails in the home button’s coffin on Tuesday, removing the once ubiquitous feature from its new line of iPad devices.

The new iPad Pro devices, revealed at Tuesday’s Apple event in New York, no longer have a home button. The design move, which is meant to make room for a bigger, more compelling display, follows the home button’s removal on the iPhone. Apple also dropped the Lightning port with the new iPad Pro and moved to the USB-C.

The new iPad Pro, which comes in two sizes, is now unlocked with face ID. It’s been redesigned to work in any direction too, so there’s no “wrong way” to unlock it.

Once the device is unlocked, users will be able to perform actions using on-screen gesture controls to access the feature they need. For instance, users can swipe down from the upper right hand corner to get to the control center, or swipe up from the bottom to access to the dock.  In short, it’s going to be the same kind of gestures used for the new iPhone 10.

Apple started phasing out the home button in 2017, beginning with its premium iPhone X handset. It kept the physical home buttons on cheaper iPhones. But we all knew their time would come.

That hammer dropped in 2018 and Apple cleared the home button from its new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max or iPhone XR.

The headphone jack is missing from the latest versions of the iPad Pro. It’s gone. Dead. Worse yet, the headphones that come with the iPhone will not work either. Apple ditched Lightning for USB-C. Instead, Apple is selling a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for $9.

The latest iPad Pro models follows the trend lines set by the iPhone. Just like on the iPhone, the Home Button is missing, and the headphone jack is gone. It’s a concession some users might find surprising. On the iPhone, there’s obviously less real estate to integrate a large port but that’s, in theory, less of an issue in a large device like a tablet. But it makes sense. Apple tends to maximize margins by ensuring different products use a similar set of hardware. And since the iPhone hasn’t had a headphone port since 2016, it’s about time the trend hits Apple’s other mobile device.

Headphone users are not the only users left in the dark. The iPad has long been a great device for a stationary audio controller. Now, instead of simply connecting the tablet to a stereo with a 3.5mm cable, a $9 dongle is required. Want to use headphones? Apple would obviously prefer if owners use $159 AirPods though there are a handful of USB-C headphones including these from Google.

There are few things more irritating than a canceled flight, whether it’s on your way to a friend’s wedding, a conference or to celebrate a holiday back home. Wouldn’t it be nifty if technology could put an end to our travel woes? Freebird, a travel rebooking service, has raised an $8 million Series A to do just that.

The startup charges a minimum of $19 per flight — more depending on distance, time of year, location and more — to independent travelers and companies that partner with the service to help travelers rebook flights after cancellations or other “disruption events.” Most of the time, flights are on-time and without issue, which means that most of the time, Freebird pockets all of its customer’s cash. But if there is a disruption event, Freebird guarantees it will rebook you with just three taps of your phone and without any additional charge.

American Express Ventures has led the round, with support from Citi Ventures, PAR Capital Ventures, General Catalyst and Accomplice. Freebird is currently in discussions with Amex and Citi, as well as other banks, to roll its travel benefits into their corporate card services. To date, the startup works with 100 corporate clients and 10 corporate travel agency partners, including BCD Travel. Freebird says it expects to support 250,000 travelers this year.

Founded in 2015 by Ethan Bernstein, Cambridge, Mass.-based Freebird aggregates data on flight patterns to predict the probability of a flight disruption. If the probability is high, Freebird chargers more for access to its mobile rebooking tool.

“If you’re flying out of Buffalo in the winter, it’s going to be a higher risk flight,” Freebird chief executive officer Bernstein told TechCrunch. “If you’re flying out of Phoenix in the summer, you’re at a very low risk of being disrupted. We understand those risks and we are able to price our product differently based on those factors.”

Freebird has raised a total of $16.5 million in funding to date. It’s one of many travel technology startups to bring in venture capital this year. IfOnly, a marketplace for experiences, secured $20 million in April; luggage startup Away brought in a $50 million in June; and travel activities platform Klook raised $200 million in August, to name a few.

Freebird, though focused specifically on flights, says its experiences are at the forefront of its business model.

“There are a million different products that will help you automate your life but one of the things we are focused on is transforming personal experiences,” Bernstein said. “Do they go through these disruption events tearing their hair out or do they go through it knowing that they have control, agency, support and information? It’s funny what happens when people deal with uncertainty; uncertainty is the worst. As soon you give people information, human support and technology to help them solve their problems, they experience the event so much differently.”

We’re 10 short days away from making TechCrunch history, and we couldn’t be more excited. On 8 November, we kick off our first Startup Battlefield Latin America 2018 at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. We can’t wait to add up to 15 of the region’s exceptional early-stage startup founders to our Startup Battlefield alumni community.

The only thing more exciting than competing in the Battlefield is being there up-close and personal to watch and cheer as these startups go head-to-head for cash, serious bragging rights and potentially life-changing investor and media attention. We invite you to apply for a free spectator pass. Tickets are limited, and we’ll select people in the Latin American startup scene on a first-come-first-served basis.

In addition to witnessing an epic pitch competition, you’ll also enjoy presentations and panel discussions from our outstanding roster of speakers. More on that in a moment. First, here’s how Startup Battlefield works.

During three preliminary rounds, up to five startups per round will each have six minutes to pitch and present their demo before a panel of expert tech and VC judges. The judges have six minutes following each pitch to ask teams probing questions. Five of the competing startups will move on to the finals and pitch again to a new set of judges.

The judges confer and will ultimately name one startup to be Latin America’s first Startup Battlefield champion. The winning founders receive a $25,000 non-equity cash prize and a trip for two to the next Disrupt, where they can exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley — and possibly qualify to participate in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt.

Now, about those presentations we mentioned. We’ve invited a range of experts familiar with the region to host a series of discussions between Battlefield rounds. Here’s a small sample of what to expect:

• Keynote: Rodrigo Schmidt (Instagram) will talk about the popular photo-sharing app’s rapid growth and development.
• Venture Investing in Latin America Today: Eric Acher (Monashees), Veronica Allende Serra (Innova Capital), Hernan Kazah (Kaszek) and Fernando Lelo de Larrea (ALLVP) will discuss the accelerating pace and scale of venture investing in Latin America. How will the ecosystem adapt?
• 20 Years Ahead of the Curve: Fabricio Bloisi (Movile) will discuss the company’s journey from SMS and ringtones in 1998 to digital businesses on mobile platforms.

As we said, that’s just a taste of what’s in store. You can read the full agenda right here.

The epic event that is Startup Battlefield Latin America 2018 takes place 8 November in São Paulo, Brazil. Come join the startup community for an exciting, action-packed day of competition, collaboration and connection. Apply for your free spectator ticket today. We can’t wait to see you!

From new iPads to new MacBook Airs, Apple had a bunch of hardware refreshes to debut this morning. Here’s everything they showed off.

New MacBook Air

The MacBook Air is, at last, getting a Retina display. Roughly six years after the MacBook Pro went high-res, Apple’s slim line is following suit.

It has a 13.3″ screen, with a slimmer bezel (now black, rather than aluminum.) There’s a TouchID fingerprint sensor near the upper right corner of the keyboard — a keyboard which, by the way, has been shifted over to Apple’s butterfly mechanism keys. Oh, and it’s got actual function keys. No goofy TouchBar here.

It’s got a 20% larger Force Touch trackpad. The speakers are 25% louder than the previous generation with, the company claims, double the bass. Apple says the bodies of the new MacBook Airs are made of 100% recycled aluminum.

It’s got two Thunderbolt ports, and crams an Intel i5 CPU, up to 16GB of 2133Mhz RAM, and up to 1.5 TB of storage into its 2.75lb body. It’ll start at $1199. Orders start today, and will ship out starting November 7th.

New Mac Mini

Given that it’s been four years since the last Mac Mini refresh, you might’ve assumed Apple was done with the line. Nope!

The new Mac Mini will come in 4-core or 6-core models, up to 2TB of SSD storage, and up to 64GB of memory. It’s got a new thermal system that doubles the airflow to keep things cool. It’s got gigabit ethernet (or 10 gigabit ethernet, as an upgrade), 4 thunderbolt ports, HDMI, and 2 USB-A ports. Like the new MacBook air, it’s made of 100% recycled aluminum.

The base model starts at $799, and will start shipping out on November 7th.

New iPad Pro

Goodbye home button! Like many an iPhone before it, the new iPad Pro ditches the home button in favor of a much slimmer bezel.

By slimming down the bezel, they’re able to cram an 11″ screen into the same body that previously fit a 10.5″ screen. They’ll also continue to offer an even larger model with a massive 12.9″ display.

On the inside, it’s running Apple’s new A12X Bionic chip — a chip packing an 8-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, Apple’s secure enclave, and a storage controller that lets the new iPads handle up to 1TB of storage. Apple claims this new iPad Pro is faster than “92% of portable PCs.”

It’s got FaceID for unlocking your iPad with just your ol’ noggin, with a 7 megapixel camera on the front and a 12 megapixel camera on the back.

Perhaps most notably, the iPad Pro is dropping the Lightning port in favor of USB-C. That USB-C port can drive an external 5K display — or, in a pinch, charge your phone.

The 11-inch iPad Pro will start at $799, while the 12.9 inch model starts at $999. Orders start today, shipping out starting November 7th.

New Apple Pencil

The new Apple Pencil is built to snap magnetically to the edge of the new iPad Pro. Once snapped, it automatically pairs and starts wirelessly charging. No more goofy pencil sticking out of your iPad! Tap the Pencil to the Pro, and the iPad wakes up and launches right into Notes. It’s got support for gestures now, like double tapping the edge of the pencil to zoom way in or out in Photoshop.

iOS 12.1

As expected, the first big update to iOS 12 ships today, its biggest feature being Group Facetime for chatting with up to 32 people at once. It’s also got 70 new emoji, and brings dual SIM support to the iPhone XS, iPhone Xs Max, and iPhone Xr.