iPhones get a price drop in China

Apple this week lowered the price on a number key hardware lines in China, including AirPods, Macs, iPads and, most notably, the iPhone. The move, noted by CNBC, is believed to be the direct results of a three-percent tax cut that took effect in the country yesterday.

In many cases, however, the impacted product have dropped by even more, including a 500 yuan ($74) price cut to the iPhone XS, marking a nearly six-percent drop for the company’s latest flagship.

Along with an adjustment for tax rates, the drop is likely also due, in part, to a lagging demand for products like the iPhone in the world’s largest smartphone market. Early this year, Apple blamed lower than expected earnings on weak demand for the iPhone in China.

The handset’s revenue dropped 15-percent year-over-year in Q1, with China taking center stage. Among the factors are slowed economic growth in the country and flagging global smartphone sales, as users upgrade their devices less frequently.

Apple is also facing increased global competition from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei, which has quickly been rising the sales ranks to be a top competitor alongside the iPhone and Samsung devices.

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Future iPhones could feature two-way wireless charging and bigger batteries

According to a new report from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and shared by MacRumors, the next-generation iPhone should likely feature two-way wireless charging. This feature would let you charge other devices using your iPhone.

Other flagship smartphones already feature two-way wireless charging, such as the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the Huawei P30 Pro.

Samsung released new Bluetooth earbuds to justify such a feature. Thanks to PowerShare, you can place the Galaxy Buds case on the back of your Samsung Galaxy S10 to charge them. But you can also use it with another phone or another accessory — it should work with any Qi-compatible device.

And now that Apple sells AirPods with a wireless charging case, chances are Apple will also showcase the new case sitting on top of the next iPhone.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could include the new feature across the lineup. Updates to the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR should get two-way wireless charging.

Apple could also increase battery sizes to mitigate the impact of this new feature. The next iPhone XS could receive a 20 to 25 percent bump, the next iPhone XS Max could get a 10 to 15 percent bump. The iPhone XR, which already has the longest battery life, should more or less keep the same battery.

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Future iPhones could feature two-way wireless charging and bigger batteries

According to a new report from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and shared by MacRumors, the next-generation iPhone should likely feature two-way wireless charging. This feature would let you charge other devices using your iPhone.

Other flagship smartphones already feature two-way wireless charging, such as the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the Huawei P30 Pro.

Samsung released new Bluetooth earbuds to justify such a feature. Thanks to PowerShare, you can place the Galaxy Buds case on the back of your Samsung Galaxy S10 to charge them. But you can also use it with another phone or another accessory — it should work with any Qi-compatible device.

And now that Apple sells AirPods with a wireless charging case, chances are Apple will also showcase the new case sitting on top of the next iPhone.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could include the new feature across the lineup. Updates to the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR should get two-way wireless charging.

Apple could also increase battery sizes to mitigate the impact of this new feature. The next iPhone XS could receive a 20 to 25 percent bump, the next iPhone XS Max could get a 10 to 15 percent bump. The iPhone XR, which already has the longest battery life, should more or less keep the same battery.

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India’s Mswipe raises $30M to grow its smart point-of-sale terminal business

Mswipe, an Indian fintech company that develops point-of-sale terminals for merchants, has pulled $30 million in new funding as it bids to triple its reach to 1.5 million merchants over the next year.

The company’s previous funding as a Series D in 2017 that ended up at just over $40 million, thanks to a $10 million extension from B Capital — the investment firm set up by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin that’s backed by BCG. This time around, B Capital has provided the funding alongside other returning investors that include Falcon Edge, Epiq Capital and DSG Growth Partners. The deal takes the startup to $95 million raised to date.

We wrote extensively about the company’s strategy back at the time of that 2017 round, and essentially the thesis is that POS devices remain essential despite the proliferation of new fintech like mobile wallets. With that in mind, Mswipe makes its terminals cheaper than the competition while it can also work on more limited internet connections, even 2G, to help merchants and retailers in more remote areas or those on a modest budget.

More critically, Mswipe CEO and founder Manish Patel believes the country is “ripe for disruption” because it has so few terminals. With less than three million terminals in operation across the whole of India, even Turkey, with a significantly smaller population of 80 million, has more.

Right now, Mswipe claims to have reached over 400,000 merchants — up from 290,000 at the end of 2017 — and Patel said today that the aim is to grow that figure to 1.5 million over the next year.

To reach that ambitious target, Mswipe is once again trying to put more than just a terminal inside a terminal.

Beyond offering hardware that simply works and ties into newer types of payment, Mswipe has a vision of additional services for merchants. It is developing a new ‘smart’ POS — Wise POS Plus — that is developed on Android which allows applications like billing, inventory management and logistics to be pulled in, too. Indeed, the second piece to that is its own dedicated app store — MoneyStore — which is in development now and is aimed at housing a suite of productivity apps and related services for smaller retailers.

Mswipe is betting on a new Android-based smart terminal that will give its merchants access to productivity and management apps, too

“WisePOS Plus… powered by a suite of productivity apps, can enable a merchant to save thousands of rupees and hundreds of hours that go into running computer-based billing and inventory solutions with integrated payments. At the same time, we are also creating a huge opportunity for app developers with MoneyStore,” Patel said in a prepated statement.

The second major prong that he believes can bring this growth is the adoption of UPI, the government-backed real-time payments system in India. Mswipe said it is “all set to enable” the system which will allow QR payments at terminals. Mswipe is also working with lending startup Cashe on a co-branded card for consumers following a deal announced in December.

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New book looks inside Apple’s legal fight with the FBI

A new biography of Apple chief executive Tim Cook out this month describes the moment — and the deliberations — after the FBI issued an unprecedented legal order demanding Apple undermines the security of its flagship product.

The new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level by Leander Kahney, offers a first-hand view from former staff about how Apple battled against the order, which Cook said would be “too dangerous” to comply with.

Three years ago following the San Bernardino terrorist attack, which killed 12 people and injured dozens, the FBI demanded Apple create a special version of its mobile software capable of bypassing the encryption and other security features on an iPhone used by one of the shooters. But fearing the backdoored software could one day end in up in the wrong hands, Cook wrote in a public letter that the company would reject the order and fight the FBI in court. “This software would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession,” said Cook. What would ensue was a public battle between the tech giant and the government in a lawsuit lasting several months, until the government paid out for hackers to break into the device.

Apple long contented that the Justice Department’s wanted to fight Apple in the open to win over the public in the aftermath of the attack — painting Apple as helping terrorists — and sought a court order before the company could respond.

Had Apple lost the case, its long-running privacy and security mantra would be shattered. Cook is said to have “bet the company” on the decision to fight the order, according to former Apple general counsel Brian Sewell, who was quoted in the book.

Sewell described the FBI’s order as a tipping point following “a lot of activity” that preceded the decision by former FBI director James Comey to ask a judge to sign the order.

The order was issued an obscure law known as the All Writs Act, which the FBI interpreted as a way to ask a court to order a company to do something not otherwise covered by the law. An order cannot be “unduly burdensome,” a subjective term often determined by the court issuing the order.

Sewell said the FBI has as early as 2014 asked Apple for “getting access to phones on a mass basis” after Apple rolled out iOS 8, which encrypted iPhones and iPads with a passcode. Law enforcement struggled to get into devices they said was necessary to investigate crimes. There was no other feasible way to break into an iPhone — even with a court order. Not even Apple could unlock the devices. The company declined the FBI’s request.

But the book said law enforcement “saw it as an opportunity to force Apple’s hand,” wrote Kahney.

“There was a sense at the FBI that this was the perfect storm,” said Sewell, as quoted. “We now have a tragic situation. We have a phone. We have a dead assailant. This is the time that we’re going to push it. And that’s when the FBI decided to file [the order],” he said.

Apple knew public opinion was divided. But the company didn’t let up.

For the following two months, Apple’s executive floor at its former headquarters at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino “turned into a 24/7 situation room,” with an intensified effort to respond to press queries — which Apple had seldom done before, known historically as a secretive company.

The case eventually resolved without a trial. The day before Apple was meant to go head-to-head with the government in a California court, the government pulled the plug on its legal action. It had paid almost a million dollars to hackers to successfully break into the phone. Cook was said to be “disappointed” the case didn’t come to trial, according to Sewell, because he sought a resolution to the case that he believed would have ruled in Apple’s favor. The legality of the order remains unsettled today, despite efforts by the government to force other companies — like Facebook — to rework their software to allow access to police.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately comment. Apple did not comment.

Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level is on sale April 16.

FBI reportedly overestimated inaccessible encrypted phones by thousands

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Apple sells wireless charging AirPods, cancels charger days later

“Works with AirPower mat”. Apparently not. It looks to me like Apple doesn’t treat customers with the same “high standard” of care it apparently reserves for its hardware quality. Nine days after launching its $199 wireless charging AirPods headphones that touted compatibility with the forthcoming Apple AirPower inductive charger mat, Apple has just scrapped AirPower entirely. It’s an uncharacteristically sloppy move for the “it just works” company. This time it didn’t.

Given how soon after the launch this cancellation came, there is a question about whether Apple  knew AirPower was viable before launching the new AirPods wireless charging case on March 20th. Failing to be transparent about that is an abuse of customer trust. That’s especially damaging for a company constantly asking us to order newly announced products we haven’t touched when there’s always another iteration around the corner. It should really find some way to make it up to people, especially given it has $245 billion in cash on hand.

TechCrunch broke the news of AirPower’s demise. “After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.

That comes as a pretty sour surprise for people who bought the $199 wireless charging AirPods that mention AirPower compatibility or the $79 standalone charging case with a full-on diagram of how to use AirPower drawn on the box.

Apple first announced the AirPower mat in 2017 saying it would arrive the next year along with a wireless charging case for AirPods. 2018 came and went. But when the new AirPods launched March 20th with no mention of AirPower in the press release, suspicions mounted. Now we know that issues with production, reportedly due to overheating, have caused it to be canceled. Apple decided not to ship what could become the next Galaxy Note 7 fire hazard.

The new AirPods with wireless charging case even had a diagram of AirPower on the box. Image via Ryan Jones

There are plenty of other charging mats that work with AirPods, and maybe Apple will release a future iPhone or MacBook that can wirelessly pass power to the pods. But anyone hoping to avoid janky third-party brands and keep it in the Apple family is out of luck for now.

Thankfully, some who bought the new AirPods with wireless charging case are still eligible for a refund. But typically if you get an Apple product personalized with an engraving (I had my phone number laser-etched on my AirPods since I constantly lose them), there are no refunds allowed. And then there are all the people who bought Apple Watches, or iPhone 8 or later models who were anxiously awaiting AirPower. We’ve asked Apple if it will grant any return exceptions.

Combined with an apology for the disastrously fragile keyboards on newer MacBooks, an apology over the Mac Pro, an apology for handling the iPhone slowdown messaging wrong, Apple’s recent vaporware services event where it announced Apple TV+ and Arcade despite them being months from launch, and now an AirPower apology and cancellation, the world’s cash-richest company looks like a mess. Apple risks looking as unreliable as Android if it can’t get its act together.

The greedy ways Apple got to $1 trillion

Apple cancels AirPower product, citing inability to meet its high standards for hardware

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Gmail turns 15, gets smart compose improvements and email scheduling

Exactly fifteen years ago, Google decided to confuse everybody by launching its long-awaited web-based email client on April 1. This definitely wasn’t a joke, though, and Gmail went on to become one of Google’s most successful products. Today, to celebrate its fifteenth birthday (and maybe make you forget about today’s final demise of Inbox and tomorrow’s shutdown of Google+), the Gmail team announced a couple of a new and useful Gmail features, including improvements to Smart Compose and the ability to schedule emails to be sent in the future.

Smart Compose, which tries to autocomplete your emails as you type them, will now be able to adapt to the way you write the greetings in your emails. If you prefer ‘Hey’ over ‘Hi,’ then Smart Compose will learn that. If you often fret over which subject to use for your emails, then there’s some relief here for you, too, because Smart Compose can now suggest a subject line based on the content of your email.

With this update, Smart Compose is now also available on all Android devices. Google says that it was previously only available on Pixel 3 devices, though I’ve been using it on my Pixel 2 for a while already, too. Support for iOS is coming soon.

In addition to this, Smart Compose is also coming to four new languages: Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.

That’s all very useful, but the feature that will likely get the most attention today is email scheduling. The idea here is as simple as the execution. The ‘send’ button now includes a drop-down menu that lets you schedule an email to be sent at a later time. Until now, you needed third-party services to do this, but now it’s directly integrated into Gmail.

Google is positioning the new feature as a digital wellness tool. “We understand that work can often carry over to non-business hours, but it’s important to be considerate of everyone’s downtime,” Jacob Bank, Director of Product Management, G Suite, writes in today’s announcement. “We want to make it easier to respect everyone’s digital well-being, so we’re adding a new feature to Gmail that allows you to choose when an email should be sent.”

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