Tag Archives: Blog

News: Intuit’s $12B Mailchimp acquisition is about expanding its small business focus

• September 14, 2021
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At first blush, the $12 billion Intuit-Mailchimp deal might not make a heck of a lot of sense. But people tend to pigeonhole companies, and in this case they might see Intuit as purely a financial software company and Mailchimp as an email marketing firm and nothing more. If that’s as far as your perspective

At first blush, the $12 billion Intuit-Mailchimp deal might not make a heck of a lot of sense. But people tend to pigeonhole companies, and in this case they might see Intuit as purely a financial software company and Mailchimp as an email marketing firm and nothing more. If that’s as far as your perspective goes, the deal is confusing. From a wider lens, however, there’s more to both companies than you might think.

Let’s start with Intuit. If you go to the company website and scan the product set, it’s clearly all about managing finances for consumer and small businesses alike. The latter category appears to be what the company wants to exploit and expand upon with this deal.

Prior to yesterday’s news, Intuit’s biggest acquisition had been on the consumer side buying Credit Karma for $7.1 billion last year. That deal gave the company’s customers a way to access their credit scores outside of the big three reporting companies: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Apparently not content with only that transaction, it set its sights on Mailchimp to throw some money at the business side of the house.

News: Xbox and Special Olympics hold first ‘Gaming for Inclusion’ esports event

• September 14, 2021
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Gaming in general is moving towards accessibility, but that’s not as much the case in esports, which like other sports are competitive and by nature somewhat exclusive. Xbox and the Special Olympics are working together on a new event that combines competition with inclusion, and it’s going on right now. This week, Special Olympics athletes

Gaming in general is moving towards accessibility, but that’s not as much the case in esports, which like other sports are competitive and by nature somewhat exclusive. Xbox and the Special Olympics are working together on a new event that combines competition with inclusion, and it’s going on right now.

This week, Special Olympics athletes will be competing against each other in tournaments of Rocket League, Madden NFL 22, and Forza Motorsports 7. The prize, other than prestige and pride, is playing with one of the Special Olympics’ celebrity supporters: “NBA superstar Jayson Tatum, NFL legend Jamaal Charles, and WWE Superstars.”

“This tournament is a meaningful and important step in making esports more accessible and it empowers Special Olympics athletes with a new way to compete,” said Jenn Panattoni, Head of Xbox Social Impact. “Xbox has invested in numerous accessibility features and products, like the Xbox Adaptive Controller and features like copilot or speech to text. The purpose of all this continued work is to ensure that players feel welcome and that they belong on the Xbox platform.”

The tournaments are being recorded right now, and will be broadcast over the rest of the week, along with the “celebrity showcase” coming Saturday with recaps. You can check out a schedule at the bottom of this post, but generally just keep an eye on the Xbox Twitch channel and Special Olympics YouTube channel.

I like to highlight these events because accessibility has been on the back burner for so long in the gaming world, and now we’re seeing big moves by developers, publishers, and partners to make things better. Microsoft’s XAC is a great example, as is the panoply of visual, audio, and difficulty options in the latest Ratchet & Clank game. Esports is definitely one of the areas that needs more diversity, though, and the participating players were glad to take part. I asked Special Olympics Jose Moreno and Colton Rice for their thoughts on the matter.

Do you think competitive gaming is getting more accessible?

Rice: Competitive gaming is definitely getting more accessible. Not only are the games becoming more accessible, accessibility allows people with disabilities to become more competitive players. People with intellectual disabilities are always trying to compete at their best. We want to do what everyone else is doing, and sometimes just need a little help to make that happen.

Moreno: I do think that competitive gaming is getting more accessible because Microsoft has started bringing out video game controllers that are accessible for people with intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities – accessible to everybody. I’m a lifelong gamer, and accessibility in esports has been game-changing. Accessible gaming wasn’t available when I was growing up. Today, it’s so much more fun to play when you can play with friends of all abilities and everybody can participate.

How are you experiencing that change?

Moreno: In my opinion, the more the video games industry include people with intellectual disabilities, the better the video game community is going to get to know how we love playing video games just like everybody else. And through events like Gaming for Inclusion, I’m not just able to compete – I’m included as a part of a community of gamers where I am welcomed and included.

Rice: People with intellectual disabilities have skills and pay attention to details; when we set our minds to do something, we practice until we are the best we can be especially when we enjoy doing it – and that includes gaming. People with disabilities just need more time to learn, but when you’re dedicated to something that you’re passionate about, you won’t stop until you succeed.

What’s something you’d like to see more of, from developers, publishers etc?

Moreno: I would like to see more from developers or makers or publishers of video games in general or computer games to include more people with intellectual disabilities in the video game workforce. People with intellectual disabilities can play a variety of roles and provide unique perspectives on how to improve the gaming experience. Publishers and developers can get a different perspective from people with disabilities; whether that’s featuring people with intellectual disabilities represented in their storylines or seeing them in the games themselves. We’re eager to be a part of this process, and there are lots of passionate gamers with intellectual disabilities who would like to participate in focus groups or in actual jobs as creators within the industry.

Rice: The companies who make these games are trying to make high quality games that are enjoyable for everybody. There is still a lot that can be done to make games more accessible. For example, it can be frustrating when gamers with intellectual disabilities are learning a new game with instructions that are hard to read. It can take hours to learn how to play the new version of a game you’ve played for years. That doesn’t mean people with intellectual disabilities aren’t capable of playing or competing – it just means we need better accessibility tools to help us learn.

If gaming companies want to create accessible, inclusive games, they could benefit from including gamers with intellectual disabilities in the creative process to help make or test “easy read” or beginner’s instructions, or find ways to simplify navigation between different levels of a game. Gaming can build a community and reach people who feel left out. Accessibility allows everybody to have fun.

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This competition and other events in online gaming have been essential to keeping the Special Olympics community connected and active over a difficult couple years.

“Special Olympics has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft that has been incredibly valuable for the athletes and families of the Special Olympics movement,” said the organization’s Chief Information and Technology Officer, Prianka Nandy. “With the COVID-19 pandemic, our main concern has been the safety and health of our athletes, who are amongst the most vulnerable population to have an adverse or catastrophic outcome from the virus. This led to the cancellation and postponement of thousands of annual in-person events and competitions – which meant our athletes have missed out on the connections and opportunities to experience the joy of being with their teammates, coaches, and friends. At this time, our goals remain to raise awareness of the Special Olympics movement and the accomplishments, hopes, and dreams of our incredible athletes, and to change attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities within the gaming community, all while remembering that gaming can be fun and inclusive for all.”

News: Apple brings macro, low light and cinema-focused updates to the iPhone 13 Pro camera

• September 14, 2021
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Apple continues its tradition of improving the photography capabilities of consumer devices with today’s announcement of the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, available on September 24. Last year’s iPhone 12 had two rear camera lenses, while the iPhone 12 Pro had three; the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro follow suit. The iPhone 13 features

Apple continues its tradition of improving the photography capabilities of consumer devices with today’s announcement of the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, available on September 24.

Last year’s iPhone 12 had two rear camera lenses, while the iPhone 12 Pro had three; the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro follow suit. The iPhone 13 features a wide (f/1.6 aperture) and an ultra wide (f/2.4 aperture) lens, which are the same specs as the iPhone 12. But the iPhone 13 Pro unveils an entirely new camera system.

Compared to the iPhone 12 Pro, the iPhone 13 Pro improves low-light performance by allowing for apertures as wide as f/1.5 on the main lens, compared to f/1.6 on the previous model. The ultra wide lens follows the same trend, boasting f/1.8, improved from f/2.4 on the iPhone 12 Pro. These wide apertures should collect more light in darker settings like bars and concerts, hopefully leading to improved image quality. Apple claims that the ultra wide lens will have “up to 92% improvement in low light,” but… we’ll just have to test that ourselves.

Perhaps the most notable lens upgrade is the improvement to the telephoto lens. Though this lens has a smaller aperture than its predecessor (f/2.8 compared to f/2.0), the new telephoto lens is 77mm-equivalent, while the iPhone 12 Pro’s telephoto was 52mm. This allows users to zoom closer in on far-away scenes without sacrificing image quality. The telephoto lens also now supports night mode, which it didn’t previously.

Apple also announced Macro mode, which will be available on the iPhone 13 Pro. The ultra wide lens and autofocus system work together to magnify subjects as close as 2 centimeters away. These shots are challenging to pull off even on professional, non-phone cameras. Users can also record video and even slow-mo at this scale, which should open up some interesting options.

Apple also announced Photographic Styles and Cinematic Mode, new features available on both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro.

Photographic Styles applies local edits to an image in real time as the photo is rendered, so photographers can compose their shots using one of four presets and see what their end product will look like before they click the shutter button. Of course even point-and-shoots have had real-time filters for a decade, but Apple claims these Photographic Styles are more technologically sophisticated than those, using machine learning to understand how to intelligently apply edits without compromising a subject’s skin tone.

Cinematic Mode allows users to shoot video, but then change the background blur and virtual focus of the clip later. This feature seems more catered toward professional filmmakers — Apple brought in Kathryn Bigelow and Greig Fraizer to demonstrate the functionality. Still, Canon and Nikon need not worry — there will always be advantages of a camera that’s a camera, as opposed to a camera that’s a phone — but hey, it’s not as though smartphone films have never made a splash in the Academy.

The iPhone 13 will start at $799 (which, for the record, is more expensive than an entry-level DSLR camera and a decent lens). The iPhone 13 Pro — telephoto lens, macro photography and all — starts at $999.

News: Spaceflight will be ferrying payloads from Orbit Fab, GeoJump to lunar orbit next year

• September 14, 2021
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Space rideshare service provider Spaceflight Inc. is going to be shuttling customers on a lunar flyby mission next year, part of its long-term vision of giving companies easy access to lunar orbits and beyond. The Seattle-based company will be delivering payload using its propulsive transfer vehicle, Sherpa EScape, or Sherpa-ES, the latest iteration of Sherpa

Space rideshare service provider Spaceflight Inc. is going to be shuttling customers on a lunar flyby mission next year, part of its long-term vision of giving companies easy access to lunar orbits and beyond.

The Seattle-based company will be delivering payload using its propulsive transfer vehicle, Sherpa EScape, or Sherpa-ES, the latest iteration of Sherpa vehicles that the company has been testing for the past few years. The Sherpa essentially acts as last-mile space transportation, deploying payload to customers’ desired orbits after reaching outer space.

Spaceflight’s electric propulsive Sherpa-LTE flew on the SpaceX Transporter-2 mission in June, while Sherpa-LTC with chemical propulsion will launch later this year on Transporter-3. The company’s successfully deployed 50 customer spacecraft to date.

The Sherpa-ES will be delivering payloads for in-orbit refueling company Orbit Fab, which just closed $10 million in funding from two major aerospace primes, and new company GeoJump. It looks like GeoJump is also looking to get into the ridesharing business; its website bills it as offering “a new route to [geostationary orbit]” for small satellites. The mission will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The rideshare is part of a robotic lunar landing mission being undertaken by Intuitive Machines, one of a handful of companies selected by NASA to be part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. Intuitive Machines will be sending its nearly 2,000-kilogram Nova-C lander to the lunar surface for a 14-day mission. The IM-1 lander will ferry around 130 kilograms of cargo.

Intuitive Machines also tapped SpaceX for its second lander mission, also for 2022. The company says this will be the first object to land at the moon’s south pole, and the first object to drill on lunar ice.

News: Canva raises $200 million at a $40 billion valuation

• September 14, 2021
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Canva is now valued at $40 billion following a fresh capital injection of $200 million (USD) in a round led by T. Rowe Price. New and existing investors participated in the round, including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis and AirTree Ventures. This round solidifies Canva

Canva is now valued at $40 billion following a fresh capital injection of $200 million (USD) in a round led by T. Rowe Price. New and existing investors participated in the round, including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis and AirTree Ventures.

This round solidifies Canva as one of the most valuable private software companies out there, and it also propels the Australian tech scene forward.

Cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins and her team started working on Canva in 2012, and launched the product in 2013. The premise behind it was relatively simple, but the technology itself… not so much.

Canva allows anyone to design. Presentations, t-shirts, brochures, flyers… you name it. The first step in this is creating a truly simple user interface, where folks can simply drag and drop components into their designs, complete with hundreds of thousands of templates, without doing a lot of fine tuning. The second step is creating a massive library of content, from fonts to templates to imagery, gifs and videos. The third step is to make that product accessible to everyone, whether it’s a platform or device or language or price.

Going after everyone, instead of just designers, has proved incredibly fruitful for the company. To be clear, designers still use Canva to layout components they’ve designed in other products, such as Figma and Sketch, and Canva actually plays nicely with a variety of design software products. But Canva has no intention of going head to head with Figma, Adobe or Sketch.

Perkins described it with the example of a business card. Designers will create the components of a business card in their design platform of choice, and then layout the template for business cards in Canva, sharing that template with the entire organization. That way, when someone gets a title change or a new employee comes on, they can actually edit the card themselves without the help of a designer and send it to print.

TechCrunch asked Perkins why Canva hasn’t extended the platform more aggressively into the workflow of professional designers.

“We would like to replace PDF,” said Perkins. “Rather than people sending PDFs backwards and forwards between the designer and the client, designers can just create a template for organization use. It’s less important for us to absolutely excel at things like vector design because there are amazing programs on the market that may be there. We really want to focus on that collaboration piece.”

Though a bottoms-up enterprise strategy is relatively popular these days, Canva was an early master of the model. Canva launched as a free product, and over time the company introduced enterprise layers into the mix.

As of now, Canva has more than 60 million monthly active users across 190 countries, with big name companies on the enterprise plan. This includes Salesforce, Marriott International, PayPal and American Airlines. Canva expects to exceed $1 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2021. More than 500,000 teams are paying for the product in some capacity.

With a 2,000-person team, Canva will use the fresh funding to double its workforce in the next year.

Canva also shared its DEI numbers, with females representing 42 percent of the workforce. The company did not share any stats around people of color on the team.

Perkins explained to TechCrunch that a huge part of the company’s growth has to do with an obsession over creating a highly valuable free product.

“We intentionally make our free product extremely generous for a number of reasons,” said Perkins. “It’s critical both for our marketing and towards our mission of empowering people to design. But, as part of our marketing, it means that people are able to love the product, share it with their friends and family, and promote it on social media. And then that virality really rapidly fuels our growth.”

Alongside growing the team, Canva also has plans to further build out the product in the next year, launching website design soon. This will allow users to turn existing and new presentations and designs into a website, and even search for and buy a domain for that site.

Canva is also working on a new video editor and an offline mode.

Perkins says that Canva has two goals, and that each fuels the other. The first is to become one of the world’s most valuable companies, and the other is to do the most good that it can do.

The company has already joined the 1 percent pledge and has several efforts around being a force for good, including giving the premium product to more than 130,000 non-profits, allocating more than 45,000 volunteering hours each year, and launching Print One, Plant One, which is a project that plants a tree for every single print order placed through Canva.

With today’s funding announcement, cofounders Perkins and Cliff Obrecht are committing the vast majority of their own equity in the company (around 30 percent) to doing good in the world, with plans to do this through the Canva Foundation.

Perkins will be joining us at Disrupt to talk about the new funding, valuation, what’s in store for Canva, and share her broader thoughts on design as a category.

News: Apple sheds value during iPhone event

• September 14, 2021
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The TechCrunch crew is hard at work writing up the latest from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch event. They have good notes on the megacorp’s hardware updates. But what are the markets saying about the same array of products? For those of us more concerned with effective S&P dividend yields than screen nit levels,

The TechCrunch crew is hard at work writing up the latest from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch event. They have good notes on the megacorp’s hardware updates. But what are the markets saying about the same array of products?

For those of us more concerned with effective S&P dividend yields than screen nit levels, events like Apple’s confab are more interesting for what they might mean for the value of the hosting company than how many GPUs a particular smartphone model has. And, for once, Apple’s stock may have done something a little interesting during the event!

Observe the following chart:

This is a one-day chart, mind, so we’re looking at intraday changes. We’re zoomed in. And Apple kinda took a bit of a dive during its event that kicked off at 1 p.m. in the above chart.

Normally nothing of import happens to Apple’s shares during its presentations. Which feels weird, frankly, as Apple events detail the product mix that will generate hundreds of billions in revenue. You’d think that they would have more impact than their usual zero.

But today, we had real share price movement when the event wrapped around 2 p.m. ET. Perhaps investors were hoping for more pricey devices? Or were hoping Apple had more up its sleeve? How you rate that holiday Apple product lineup is a matter of personal preference, but investors appear to have weighed in slightly to the negative.

Worth around $2.5 trillion, each 1% that Apple’s stock moves is worth $10 billion. Apple’s loss of 1.5% today — more or less; trading continues as I write this — is worth more than Mailchimp. It’s a lot of money.

You can read the rest of our coverage from the Apple event here. Enjoy!

News: Biden’s new FTC nominee is a digital privacy advocate critical of Big Tech

• September 14, 2021
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President Biden made his latest nomination to the Federal Trade Commission this week, tapping digital privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya to join the agency as it takes a hard look at the tech industry. Bedoya is the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown’s law school and previously served as chief counsel

President Biden made his latest nomination to the Federal Trade Commission this week, tapping digital privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya to join the agency as it takes a hard look at the tech industry.

Bedoya is the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown’s law school and previously served as chief counsel for former Senator Al Franken and the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. Bedoya has worked on legislation addressing some of the most pressing privacy issues in tech, including stalkerware and facial recognition systems.

In 2016, Bedoya co-authored a report titled “The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America,” a year-long investigation that dove deeply into the police use of facial recognition systems in the U.S. The 2016 report examined law enforcement’s reliance on facial recognition systems and biometric databases on a state level. It argued that regulations are desperately needed to curtail potential abuses and algorithmic failures before the technology inevitably becomes even more commonplace.

Bedoya also isn’t shy about calling out Big Tech. In a New York Times op-ed a few years ago, he took aim at Silicon Valley companies giving user privacy lip service in public while quietly funneling millions toward lobbyists to undermine consumer privacy. The new FTC nominee singled out Facebook specifically, pointing to the company’s efforts to undermine the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a state law that serves as one of the only meaningful checks on invasive privacy practices in the U.S.

Bedoya argued that the tech industry would have an easier time shaping a single, sweeping piece of privacy regulations with its lobbying efforts rather than a flurry of targeted, smaller bills. Antitrust advocates in Congress taking aim at tech today seem to have learned that same lesson as well.

“We cannot underestimate the tech sector’s power in Congress and in state legislatures,” Bedoya wrote. “If the United States tries to pass broad rules for personal data, that effort may well be co-opted by Silicon Valley, and we’ll miss our best shot at meaningful privacy protections.”

If confirmed, Bedoya would join big tech critic Lina Khan, a recent Biden FTC nominee who now chairs the agency. Khan’s focus on antitrust and Amazon in particular would dovetail with Bedoya’s focus on adjacent privacy concerns, making the pair a formidable regulatory presence as the Biden administration seeks to rein in some of the tech industry’s most damaging excesses.

News: Here’s everything Apple announced at its event this morning

• September 14, 2021
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It’s that time again! It’s September, which generally means two things: we’re blasting Earth, Wind, and Fire on repeat, and Apple will announce a new iPhone (or four.) Right on schedule, Apple held a remote event this morning, streaming kinda-sorta-live from its Cupertino campus. Whether you didn’t have time to watch the entire hour long

It’s that time again!

It’s September, which generally means two things: we’re blasting Earth, Wind, and Fire on repeat, and Apple will announce a new iPhone (or four.)

Right on schedule, Apple held a remote event this morning, streaming kinda-sorta-live from its Cupertino campus. Whether you didn’t have time to watch the entire hour long stream or just want the highlights, we’ve got you — as usual, we’ve boiled the whole thing down to the bullet points.

New iPads

Both the standard iPad and the iPad mini have gotten the update treatment — here’s whats new for each:

New iPad:

• Runs the A13 Bionic chip, which Apple first introduced in 2019 with the iPhone 11. Apple says it’s 20% faster across the board compared to the last gen.
• The front facing camera has been bumped from 8 megapixels up to a 12 megapixel ultra-wide
• It’s getting Center Stage, the feature that debuted on the iPad Pro and automatically reframes front-facing video to keep your face centered as you move around a room.
• Starts at $329 (or $299 for schools). Orders start today, shipping next week.
  

  Image Credits: Apple

New iPad mini:

• Redesigned with slimmer borders and rounder edges
• The display has been bumped up to 8.3″ (from 7.9″) while keeping the overall device size the same
• The CPU is 40% faster, while the GPU is 80% faster
• USB-C!
• There will be a 5G model
• The back camera has a much-improved 12 MP camera with True Tone flash, and, as with the standard iPad, the front camera is getting 12 MP ultra wide and Center Stage support.
• It’ll support the second-gen Apple Pencil
• Starts at $499. Orders start today, shipping next week.

Apple Watch

Apple kicked off the Watch segment with a few new features coming to iOS 8 (like fall detection for cyclists, and better algorithms for detecting calories burned when you’re on an eBike) before announcing a new Watch — Series 7, they’re calling it.

Apple Watch Series 7:

• By reducing the screen’s borders, they were able to squeeze in a display that is 20% bigger.
• To take advantage of that bigger screen, buttons are bigger across the UI
• It’s got a swipe-style prediction keyboard, for easier text input on the go.
• Apple says it’s got the strongest (most crack resistant) display to date, and is the first Apple Watch to be IP6X certified against dust.
• An “updated charging architecture” and a new USB-C charger allow it to charge 33% faster
• Series 7 will start at $399, and start shipping “later this fall”

New iPhones

Not one, not two, but four new iPhones — iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro max. Faster chips, better cameras, better battery life.

iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini:

• Both run Apple’s new A15 Bionic chip. It’s got a 6 core CPU (two high performance cores, four high efficiency), a four-core GPU, and big improvements to the neural engine that Apple taps for on-device machine learning.
• A “ceramic shield front”, which Apple says is tougher than any other smartphone’s glass.
• IP68 water resistance
• 28% brighter display
• iPhone 13 comes in at 6.1″, while iPhone 13 mini will be 5.4″.
• A wild new “Cinematic” mode that uses machine learning for tricks like auto-shifting the camera’s focus when one on-screen speaker looks at someone behind them
• The 64GB model has finally been retired, with the base models coming with 128GB of storage.
• Apple says the iPhone 13 mini’s battery life has been improved by an hour and a half, while most iPhone 13 users will get two and half more hours per charge.
• iPhone 13 will start at $799, while iPhone 13 mini starts at $699.

 

iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max:

• It’s getting that new “ceramic shield front”, along with an upgrade to A15, here with a five-core GPU.
• As rumored, it’ll get a display that can adjust its refresh rate up to 120hz for super smooth movement/scrolling.
• It’s got three cameras on the back: a telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, an ultrawide, and a wide angle. Night Mode will now play friendly with all three cameras (including the telephoto lens, which previously didn’t support it.)
• It’ll come in two sizes: 6.1″ (Pro), and 6.7″ (Pro Max).
• For those who just can’t seem to get enough storage space, they’re introducing 1TB models!
• Pro starts at $999, Pro Max starts at $1099. Pre-orders start September 17th, shipping September 24th.

Other stuff

• iOS 15 will ship Monday, September 20th
• Apple’s Fitness Plus service is rolling out in 15 new countries, including Austria, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, and Russia. Workouts will be in English, and subtitled in six languages. They’re also launching group workouts, which can be launched from iMessage or FaceTime and will let you multitask your hangouts and your workouts.
• Apple’s MagSafe wallet will now be able to display its last known location via the Find My app if the wallet gets separated from the phone

News: iPhone users will receive iOS 15 update on September 20

• September 14, 2021
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Shortly after today’s virtual conference, Apple announced that the next major version of iOS will be ready for prime time very soon. iPhone users will be able to update to iOS 15 on September 20. The company first unveiled iOS 15 earlier this year at its Worldwide Developer Conference. The biggest change of iOS 15

Shortly after today’s virtual conference, Apple announced that the next major version of iOS will be ready for prime time very soon. iPhone users will be able to update to iOS 15 on September 20. The company first unveiled iOS 15 earlier this year at its Worldwide Developer Conference.

The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to “Do not disturb,” you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.

There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime, and more. Safari also has a brand-new look. At first, it was a bit controversial. Since then, Apple has listened to feedback and improved its new take on Safari.

The new version of iOS also scans your photos for text. Called Live Text, this feature lets you highlight, copy and paste text in photos. It could be a nice accessibility feature as well. iOS is going to leverage that info for Spotlight. You can search for text in your photos directly in Spotlight and it’ll pull out relevant photos. These features are handled on-device directly.

You’ll be able to update to iOS 15 if you have an iPhone 6s and later, any model of iPhone SE or the most recent iPod touch model. It’ll be available as a free download.

For users running the iOS 15 beta, the release candidate is rolling out now, ahead of Monday’s public launch.

If you like your iPhone the way it is, Apple has also said that you don’t have to update to iOS 15. For the foreseeable future, the company will still update iOS 14 with security patches.

News: The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max feature 120Hz display, better cameras

• September 14, 2021
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Apple has announced its new lineup of phones at its virtual conference. In addition to the regular iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, the company has two Pro models with some premium features that you won’t find in the regular iPhone 13. Of course, the Pro models are also more expensive. For reference, the iPhone

Apple has announced its new lineup of phones at its virtual conference. In addition to the regular iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, the company has two Pro models with some premium features that you won’t find in the regular iPhone 13.

Of course, the Pro models are also more expensive. For reference, the iPhone 13 Mini starts at $699 and the iPhone 13 starts at $799. As for the Pro models, the iPhone 13 Pro starts at $999 and the iPhone 13 Pro Max starts at $1,099. The iPhone 13 Pro has a 6.1-inch display while the iPhone 13 Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display.

“Our Pro lineup pushes the limits with our most advanced technologies for users who want the very best iPhone,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

Here’s what you’ll get if you decide to buy the iPhone 13 Pro instead of the iPhone 13. The design is slightly different as the Pro models get shiny stainless steel bands around the case of the phone. There are also three stainless steel rings around the three camera sensors. The back of the device is made of matte glass.

There are three different camera sensors at the back of the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max instead of two. In addition to the ultra wide and wide camera, you get a 3x camera. It seems like the wide and ultra wide cameras aren’t identical in the Pro models vs. the regular models either.

Last year, only the iPhone 12 Pro Max featured sensor shift optical image stabilization. This time, the entire iPhone 13 lineup gets sensor shift optical image stabilization. Basically, the regular iPhone 13 is getting many of the advanced camera features that was restricted to Pro models.

In particular, there’s a new cinematic mode with rack focus. You can track a subject and lock focus on that subject in real time. Cinematic mode shoots in Dolby Vision HDR. Later this year, you’ll be able to shoot ProRes videos with the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max.

So here’s what you get in the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro Max:

• A 77mm telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom.
• An ultra wide camera with ƒ/1.8 aperture and “up to 92% improvement in low-light performance,” according to Apple.
• A wide camera with ƒ/1.5 aperture and “up to 2.2x improvement in low-light performance,” according to Apple.

For the first time, you can use Night mode with all three cameras. This way, you don’t have to remember which camera will give you the best result.

The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max comes with a Pro Motion display with P3 color range. Like on high-end iPad models, these iPhone models have an adaptative framerate. If you need it, your iPhone display can run at 120Hz. If you’re watching a movie, the iPhone can use a lower framerate to save battery life.

As the iPhone 13 Max is the largest smartphone in the lineup, you get more battery life. Apple promises a battery that lasts 2.5 hours longer for the iPhone 13 Pro Max compared to the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Like the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini, the Pro models come with Apple’s A15 Bionic chip. It’s a 5-mm design with 15 billion transistors. There are two high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores. You should get nearly the same performances across the lineup, but there’s a new 5-core GPU in the Pro lineup.

Pre-orders start on Friday and they will be available on September 24. There are four different models with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.