Year: 2019

Apple announced in a press release that iOS 13 will be available on September 19. Even if you don’t plan on buying a new iPhone, you’ll be able to get a bunch of new features.

But that’s not all. iOS 13.1 will be available on September 30. Apple had to remove some features of iOS 13.0 at the last minute as they weren’t stable enough, such as Shortcuts automations and the ability to share your ETA in Apple Maps. That’s why iOS 13.1 will be released shortly after iOS 13.

As always, iOS 13 will be available as a free download. If you have an iPhone 6s or later, an iPhone SE or a 7th-generation iPod touch, your device supports iOS 13.

watchOS 6 will also be released on September 19. Unfortunately, Apple will release iPadOS 13 on September 30.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in iOS 13. This year, in addition to dark mode, it feels like every single app has been improved with some quality-of-life updates. The Photos app features a brand new gallery view with autoplaying live photos and videos, smart curation and a more immersive design.

This version has a big emphasis on privacy as well thanks to a new signup option called “Sign in with Apple” and a bunch of privacy popups for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi consent, background location tracking. Apple Maps now features an impressive Google Street View-like feature called Look Around. It’s only available in a handful of cities, but I recommend… looking around as everything is in 3D.

Many apps have been updated, such as Reminders with a brand new version, Messages with the ability to set a profile picture shared with your contacts, Mail with better text formatting options, Health with menstrual cycle tracking, Files with desktop-like features, Safari with a new website settings menu, etc. Read more on iOS 13 in my separate preview.

On the iPad front, for the first time Apple is calling iOS for the iPad under a new name — iPadOS. Multitasking has been improved, the Apple Pencil should feel snappier, Safari is now as powerful as Safari on macOS and more.

Like clockwork, Apple has used its annual September event to announce a new generation of iPhones.

But they also crammed a bunch of other stuff in there for good measure. New iPads! New Apple Watches! Launch dates for Apple Arcade, and Apple TV+!

Didn’t have time to watch the event as it happened, but still want to know what went down? We can help. We’ve got all the news, condensed down to just the bullet points.

Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade, the company’s take on an all-you-can-eat, Netflix-for-games type service, will launch on September 19th in 150 countries. It’ll cost $4.99 per month for a family subscription, and offer a 1 month free trial.

Apple TV+

Earlier this year Apple announced that it was working on an on-demand video service, complete with original programming from folks like Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, Jason Momoa, and many others. They didn’t get too specific about the launch date, though.

The company now says that Apple TV+ will start rolling out on November 1st — and, like Apple Arcade, will cost $4.99 per month for a family subscription.

Oh! And a bit of an added surprise: all new iPhones, iPads, Macs, and AppleTVs will come with one year of AppleTV+, free.

The New 10.2″ iPad

As the iPad moves into its seventh generation, the 9.7″ model is being bumped up to 10.2″.

It’ll have a Retina display, a smart connector on its edge to connect it with a full size keyboard accessory, and work with the first-gen Apple Pencil. And for the TouchID fans out there, fret not: they’re keeping the home button.

It’ll cost $329 (or $299 for students); pre-orders start today, shipping on September 30th.

Apple Watch Series 5

Always on display! Whereas previous Apple Watches turned off the display when you lowered your wrist, Series 5’s display will stay on unless you deliberately turn it off.

When you lower your arm, the brightness drops and the screen’s refresh rate dips down to one refresh per second, but your complications and watch faces stay visible. It’s getting a built-in compass, and an “international emergency calling” feature that lets you call emergency services in 150 countries by pressing and holding the side button.

Apple says the battery should last about 18 hours per charge.

Apple Watch Series 5 will start at $399, or $499 for the cell-enabled models. Shipping will start on September 20th. There will be aluminum models (silver, gold, and space grey), stainless steel models (gold, space black, and polished), titanium (brushed metal, brushed space black), and ceramic.

Series 3, meanwhile, is getting a bit of a price drop, with the base price for the two-year old model going from $279 to $199.

The new iPhones

You can’t have an Apple event in September without a new iPhone or three, right?

First up was the iPhone 11. Here’s the breakdown:

• 6.1″ display, with the “toughest glass” ever in an iPhone
• A new dual camera system on the back — one 12MP wide angle camera (26mm f/1.8), and one 12 MP ultra wide camera (13mm f/2.4).
• The flash is 36% brighter
• A new night mode that uses adaptive bracketing for better low light shots
• The front camera — now 12MP, up from 7MP — can do 60 FPS 4k and slow motion video
• Running on Apple’s new A13 chipset, which they proclaim to be the fastest CPU/GPU ever in a smartphone

It’ll come in black, green, yellow, purple, red, and white, and start at $699.

Next up was the iPhone 11 Pro/Pro Max:

• The Pro line has three cameras, rather than two: a 12MP wide angle camera (26mm f/1.8), a 12MP ultra wide (13mm f/2.4), plus a 12MP telephoto camera (52mm f/2.0). All three cameras can shoot 4K at 60FPS.
• Pro has a 5.8″ display, while Pro Max comes in at 6.5″
• Also running on A13
• While they didn’t give a specific battery life estimate, Apple says the Pro will get four more hours of life per charge when compared to the iPhone Xs Max, while the Pro Max will get five more hours
• Both come with 18w fast chargers in the box
• A new “Deep Fusion” feature uses machine learning for dramatically improved low light shots. Before you press the shutter button, the camera is taking a series of short exposure shots. Press the button, and it takes one long exposure shot. Apple then uses neural networks to analyze the photos “pixel by pixel”, combining them into one high detail, low noise photo.

Pro will start at $999, while Pro Max will start at $1099. Both will start shipping on September 20th.

Apple’s triple-camera iPhone is real and it’s the first phone the company has dubbed “Pro.”

The iPhone 11 Pro comes in two flavors with 5.8″ and 6.5″ varieties at $999 and $1,099 respectively.

The bizarre-looking camera is the real star of the release. There are a trio of 12 megapixel lenses with varying fields-of-view — a telephoto, a wide, and an ultra wide lens. The variety of lenses makes for a very strange nodule on the rear of the phone, but the shots Apple detailed in its keynote highlighted the level of detail that the new combination camera can bring when you switch between the lenses.

There wasn’t much said about the front-facing camera system, but Apple did details that FaceID will now detect your face at wider angles. The phones will continue to shoot 4K HDR footage.

Apple has shifted to a three-year redesign cycle and in its third year, not much has changed with the iPhone 11 Pro looks-wise beyond the camera square. In terms of looks, there’s a new “midnight green” textured matte finish which actually looks quite nice among the more classic hues.

The new Pro devices ship with the company’s new A13 bionic chip which has been optimized for high intensity low-power computing. The gains mean more usage between charges, the iPhone 11 Pro gets 4 more hours of usage per charge than the iPhone XS and the iPhone 11 Pro Max (what a mouthful) gets 5 hours more. The new phones ship with a 18-watt charger so that you can replenish your battery quickly, you’re probably going to want to dump those 5W charger blocks.

The new naming scheme doesn’t seem to denote a widening gap between the new phones Apple has release. The differences between the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 seem similar to the iPhone XR/XS relationship, the emphasis seems to be on boosting sales of the cheaper LCD iPhone while not making people feel like they’re buying the bargain iPhone.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 11 Pro go live this Friday and the phones ship on September 20.

As 33 states investigate roughly 450 lung illnesses that may be associated with vaping, the billionaire former New York City mayor and founder of Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg, is committing $160 million to combat vaping.

Bloomberg has long been an advocate for anti-smoking campaigns and has spent millions on getting folks to quit smoking. Now he’s turning his attention to vaping, the new scourge of teens everywhere.

What Bloomberg hopes to accomplish is nothing short than a ban on flavored e-cigarettes and the complete cessation of marketing vaping products to minors.

Companies like Juul, which Bloomberg Philanthropies singles out by name, are already taking steps to curb the use of vaping products among minors, according to their own statements.

However, these recent efforts by Juul to change its marketing tune, may be too little, too late. There roughly 3.6 million middle school and high school students in the U.S. who are vaping, accounting for one-third of all e-cigarette users, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

It’s no secret that Juul used to market heavily to young adults in its early promotional materials and there are still social media accounts dedicated to the company’s product filled with user generated memes and short videos that appeal to kids. Earlier this year, Juul was accused of using the tactics honed by big tobacco companies to hawk its own products to susceptible populations.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative is launching even as federal health and consumer protection agencies take a closer look at the products.

In early September the CDC urged people to stop vaping as it investigated a rash of lung illnesses cropping up among e-cigarette users around the country.

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration put Juul, the leading manufacturer of e-cigarettes and pods, on  notice for making false claims about the safety of its products and a continued effort to target teen users.

“The federal government has the responsibility to protect children from harm, but it has failed – so the rest of us are taking action. I look forward to partnering with advocates in cities and states across the country on legislative actions that protect our kids’ health. The decline in youth smoking is one of the great health victories of this century, and we can’t allow tobacco companies to reverse that progress,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg Philanthropies Founder and WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases, in a statement.

With the $160 million commitment, Bloomberg Philanthropies and its partners will look to achieve five main goals including the removal of flavored e-cigarettes from the market; ensure that e-cigarette products are reviewed by the FDA before they reach the market; stop companies from marketing to kids; halt online sales until a satisfactory method of age verification can be developed; and finally, track underage e-cigarette usage.

“It is important to gain a deeper understanding of the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes on youth, and the CDC Foundation’s focus is on gathering and evaluating data to better inform effective policies,” said Judith Monroe, MD, chief executive officer of the CDC Foundation. “We appreciate the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies and partners in helping tackle this epidemic to protect our youth.”

Uber has laid off 435 employees across its product and engineering teams, the company announced today. Combined, the layoffs represent about 8% of the organizations, with 170 people leaving the product team and 265 people leaving the engineering team.

The layoffs had no effect on Eats, which is one of Uber’s top-performing products, and Freight, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Meanwhile, the company is lifting the hiring freeze on the product and engineering teams that has been in effect since early August, according to the source.

“Our hope with these changes is to reset and improve how we work day to day—ruthlessly prioritizing, and always holding ourselves accountable to a high bar of performance and agility,” an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. “While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization, which going forward will continue to hire some of the very best talent around the world.”

Of those laid off, more than 85% are based in the U.S., 10% in the Asia-Pacific and 5% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to the source.

The layoffs came after Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi asked every member of his executive leadership team if they were to start from scratch, would their respective organizations would look like the way they do today.

“After careful consideration, our Engineering and Product leaders concluded the answer to this question in many respects was no,” the spokesperson said.

Those leaders are Chief Product Officer Manik Gupta and CTO Thuan Pham. They looked at team size, identified duplicate roles and overlapping work, as well as individual performance to determine who would be laid off, the source said. That’s how they landed on focusing more on the design and research teams from the product side.

“Previously, to meet the demands of a hyper-growth startup, we hired rapidly and in a decentralized way,” the spokesperson said. “While this worked for Uber in the past, now that we have over 27,000 full-time employees in cities around the world, we need to shift how we design our organizations: lean, exceptionally high-performing teams, with clear mandates and the ability to execute faster than our competitors.”

These layoffs come shortly after Uber laid off 400 people from its marketing team. In Q2 2019, Uber lost more than $5 billion — its biggest quarterly revenue loss to date — though a chunk of its losses were a result of stock-based compensation expenses for employees following the company’s IPO in May. While it may seem these layoffs are in response to those quarterly losses, Uber says the conversations have been ongoing.

As Uber layoffs its W-2 employees, it’s simultaneously investing in ensuring its 1099 independent contractors remain classified in that way. In light of gig worker protection bill AB-5 advancing through the California legislature, Uber, along with Lyft and DoorDash, put $30 million toward a 2020 ballot initiative that would enable them to keep their drivers as independent contractors. If AB-5 passes, Uber would see a significant uptick in costs.

Uber is currently trading at $33.14 per share, well below its IPO pricing of $45.

Here’s Uber’s full statement:

Our CEO has asked everyone on our management team a simple but important question: if we started from scratch, would we design our organizations as they stand today? After careful consideration, our Engineering and Product leaders concluded the answer to this question in many respects was no. Previously, to meet the demands of a hyper-growth startup, we hired rapidly and in a decentralized way.

While this worked for Uber in the past, now that we have over 27,000 full-time employees in cities around the world, we need to shift how we design our organizations: lean, exceptionally high-performing teams, with clear mandates and the ability to execute faster than our competitors.

Today, we’re making some changes to get us back on track, which include reducing the size of some teams to ensure we are staffed appropriately against our top priorities. These were incredibly difficult calls as it means some of our employees no longer have a role, specifically around 170 people in our Product group and 265 people in Engineering, which is roughly 8 percent of those two orgs.

Our hope with these changes is to reset and improve how we work day to day—ruthlessly prioritizing, and always holding ourselves accountable to a high bar of performance and agility. While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization, which going forward will continue to hire some of the very best talent around the world.

We just closed our $11 million Series A financing, and within 15 minutes of the news hitting the wire, the weirdness began. It turns out that once you announce to the world that you have money, everyone wants a piece. Some want to earn your business, some actually want your business, some want you to move your business, and others just want to straight-up steal your business.

These are the weird things that no one tells you will happen after you close your round that I’m hoping you will find helpful, insightful and maybe spare you a headache or two.

While Apple’s big event today was largely focused on the iPhone 11 and other new devices, the company also offered updates on its soon-to-launch subscription services Apple Arcade and TV+ — and it released the first trailer for the TV+ series “See.”

As you can, uh, see in the trailer above (you try writing this article without accidental puns), the series features “Aquman” star Jason Momoa in a story about a world where humans have lost their sense of sight. It will be written by “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight and directed by Francis Lawrence (who helmed the last three “Hunger Games” movies).

This follows the release of trailers for the TV+ shows “The Morning Show,” “For All Mankind” and “Dickinson.”

“See” will launch on November 1 with Apple TV+, which will cost $4.99 per month. And you can get one year for free with the purchase of select Apple hardware.

Apple is announcing new iPhone models today. The iPhone 11 uses an Apple A13 Bionic system-on-a-chip. It is faster than the A12 Bionic in the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max.

But how much faster exactly? According to Apple, Apple is making the fastest GPU and CPU for a smartphone.

Worse, the company showed two charts with no X-axis. With this chart, CPU performance of the A13 Bionic could be 2% faster or 248% faster than CPU performance of the A12 Bionic. The same thing applies for GPU performance. I guess we’ll have to wait for benchmarks.

It reminds me of another technology company that is well-known for its charts with no numbers…

It’s one of the most anticipated days in the tech world. Today, Apple has unveiled the iPhone 11.

So without any further ado, let’s get into some of the details.

Design

The iPhone 11 sports an anondized aluminum and glass design, which Apple claims is the toughest ever smartphone glass. Surprisingly, it comes in a handful of colors: white, green, yellow, purple, black and red. This next-gen iPhone also has a 6.1-inch liquid Retina display, with the expected tap-to-wake functionality and haptic feedback.

Camera

Apple clearly put a lot of energy into the iPhone 11 camera, which has a dual-camera set up: one 12mp wide lens, 26mm f/1.8 and an ultra wide 12mp f/2.4 sensor. The wide-angle dual-camera set up actually lets users snap a pic and zoom out to see what’s beyond the frame, which should be helpful for those expansive landscape shots.

On the software side, Apple has introduced a new image pipeline that does over a trillion operations for every photo. The company has added ‘semantic rendering’, which adjusts the lighting on photos retroactively based on the subjects. This helps to isolate and enhance facial features so tone mapping can be applied more accurately in portraits. Plus, portrait mode effects can now be applied to subjects other than humans, like pets.

iPhone 11 also features a new Night Mode to compete with the likes of Samsung and Google, which uses image fusion and adaptive bracketing — shorter and longer exposures — melded together to reduce motion and blur make for better low light images.

Developing… Please refresh

Apple is launching a new Research app for Apple Watch owners that will allow people to opt to privately contribute to health research by sharing the data collected from the smartwatch and its many sensors, as well as the Apple Health app. The news of the app was announced today at Apple’s iPhone press event, alongside that of a trio of new health studies and the next-generation Apple Watch Series 5.

As an example of the sort of data users could contribute through the Apple Watch, the company detailed a few new studies with partners like the University of Michigan, the World Health Organization, Harvard School of Public Health, the NIH, the American Heart Association, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The topics to be studied included the long-term effects of sounds on your hearing health; how menstrual cycles can inform the screenings for infertility and osteoporosis; and how activity and movement impacts overall health.

Before, people who wanted to opt into health studies through Apple’s partnerships would have installed a specialized app on their iOS device dedicated to that study alone. The new Research app will instead allow for a single portal for this sort of opt-in activity.

Apple also promised to respect users’ data privacy, saying that “you decide what data you want to share” with the studies, and that Apple cannot access any information that directly identifies you.

The Research app will launch in the U.S. later this year.