Daily Crunch: FaceTime gets an eye contact upgrade

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1. Apple’s iOS 13 update will make FaceTime eye contact way easier

Apple has added to the latest iOS 13 Developer beta a feature called “FaceTime Attention Correction.” The feature apparently does a terrific job of making it appear like you’re looking directly into the camera, even when you’re looking at the screen during a FaceTime call.

A couple of catches: Your eyes can end up looking kind of dead in the process. And the feature is only available on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

2. Uber Eats invades restaurants with Dine-In option

A new option in some cities lets you order your food ahead of time, go to the restaurant, then sit down inside to eat.

3. Waymo is now allowed to transport passengers in its self-driving vehicles on California roads

The California Public Utilities Commission granted Waymo a permit on Tuesday to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot.

4. Apple Sans Ive

Matthew Panzarino has some thoughts on what the departure of Jony Ive means for Apple.

5. KKR confirms it has acquired Canadian software company Corel, reportedly for over $1B

Founded in the 1980s as one of the first big software companies to capitalize on the first wave of personal computer ownership, Corel tried to compete against Microsoft in those early days (unsuccessfully), and has seen a lot of ups and downs.

6. Sony announces a new $185M fund to invest in tech startups

While Sony launched a fund in 2016, this new vehicle has been set up in partnership with other organizations, including Daiwa Capital Holdings.

7. When is the right time to pitch VCs for funding?

Aggregate data from 2016 to 2018 points to three major themes you should consider as you’re raising capital. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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App revenue tops $39 billion in first half of 2019, up 15% from first half of last year

App store spending is continuing to grow, although not as quickly as in years past. According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the iOS App Store and Google Play combined brought in $39.7 billion in worldwide app revenue in the first half of 2019 — that’s up 15.4% over the $34.4 billion seen during the first half of last year. However, at that time, the $34.4 billion was a 27.8% increase from 2017’s numbers, then a combined $26.9 billion across both stores.

Apple’s App Store continues to massively outpace Google Play on consumer spending, the report also found.

In the first half of 2019, global consumers spent $25.5 billion on the iOS App Store, up 13.2% year-over-year from the $22.6 billion spent in the first half of 2018. Last year, the growth in consumer spending was 26.8%, for comparison’s sake.

Still, Apple’s estimated $25.5 billion in the first half of 2019 is 80% higher than Google Play’s estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion — the latter, a 19.6% increase from the first half of 2018.

The major factor in the slowing growth is iOS in China, which contributed to the slowdown in total growth. However, Sensor Tower expects to see China returning to positive growth over the next 12 months, we’re told.

To a smaller extent, the downturn could be attributed to changes with one of the top-earning apps across both app stores: Netflix.

Last year, Netflix dropped in-app subscription sign-ups for Android users. Then, at the end of December 2018, it did so for iOS users, too. That doesn’t immediately drop its revenue to zero, of course — it will continue to generate revenue from existing subscribers. But the number will decline, especially as Netflix expands globally without an in-app purchase option, and as lapsed subscribers return to renew online with Netflix directly.

In the first half of 2019, Netflix was the second highest-earning non-game app with consumer spending of $339 million, Sensor Tower estimates. (We should point out the firm bases its estimates on a 70/30 split between Netflix and Apple’s App Store that drops to 85/15 after the first year. To account for the mix of old and new subscribers, Sensor Tower factors in a 25% cut. But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber claims Netflix had a special relationship with Apple where it had an 85/15 cut from year one.)

In any event, Netflix’s contribution to the app stores’ revenue is on the decline.

In the first half of last year, Netflix had been the No. 1 non-game app for revenue. This year, that spot went to Tinder, which pulled in an estimated $497 million across the iOS App Store and Google Play, combined. That’s up 32% over the first half of 2018.

But Tinder’s dominance could be a trend that doesn’t last.

According to recent data from eMarketer, dating app audiences have been growing slower than expected, causing the analyst firm to revise its user estimates downward. It now expects that 25.1 million U.S. adults will use a dating app monthly this year, down from its previous forecast of 25.4 million. It also expects that only 21% of U.S. single adults will use a dating app at all in 2019, and that will only grow to 23% by 2023.

That means Tinder’s time at the top could be overrun by newcomers in later months, especially as new streaming services get off the ground (assuming they offer in-app subscriptions); if TikTok starts taking monetization seriously; or if any other large apps from China find global audiences outside of China’s third-party app stores.

For example, Tencent Video grossed $278 million globally in the first half of 2019, outside of the third-party Chinese Android app stores. That made it the third-largest non-game app by revenue. And Chinese video platform iQIYI and YouTube were the No. 4 and No. 5 top-grossing apps, respectively.

Meanwhile, iOS app installs actually declined in the first half of the year, following the first quarter that saw a decline in downloads, Q1 2019, attributed to the downturn in China.

The App Store in the first half of 2019 accounted for 14.8 billion of the total 56.7 billion app installs.

Google Play installs in the first half of the year grew 16.4% to 41.9 billion, or about 2.8 times greater than the iOS volume.

The most downloaded apps in the first half of 2019 were the same as before: WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook led the top charts. But TikTok inched ahead of Instagram for the No. 4 spot, and it saw its installs grow around 28% to nearly 344 million worldwide.

In terms of mobile gaming specifically, spending was up 11.3% year-over-year in the first half of 2019, reaching $29.6 billion across the iOS App Store and Google Play. Thanks to the fallout of the game licensing freeze in China, App Store revenue growth for games was at $17.6 billion, or 7.8% year-over-year growth. Google Play game spending grew by 16.8% to $12 billion.

The top-grossing games, in order, were Tencent’s Honor of Kings, Fate/Grand Order, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga, and PUBG Mobile.

Meanwhile, the most downloaded games were Color Bump 3D, Garena Free Fire, and PUBG Mobile.

Image credits: Sensor Tower

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Apple’s iOS 13 update will make FaceTime eye contact way easier

Apple has added a feature called ‘FaceTime Attention Correction’ to the latest iOS 13 Developer beta, and it looks like it could make a big difference when it comes to actually making FaceTime calls feel even more like talking to someone in person. The feature, spotted in the third beta of the new software update that went out this week, apparently does a terrific job of making it look like you’re looking directly into the camera even when you’re looking at the screen during a FaceTime call.

That’s actually a huge improvement because when people FaceTime, most of the time they’re looking at the screen rather than the camera, since the whole point is to see the person or people you’re talking to, rather than the small black lens at the top of your device.

Guys – "FaceTime Attention Correction" in iOS 13 beta 3 is wild.

Here are some comparison photos featuring @flyosity: https://t.co/HxHhVONsi1 pic.twitter.com/jKK41L5ucI

— Will Sigmon (@WSig) July 2, 2019

The catch so far seems to be that this FaceTime feature is only available on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, which could mean it only works with the latest camera tech available on Apple hardware. That could be because of the new image signal processor that Apple included in the A12 processor which powers the iPhone XS and XS Max, which also provide improvements over previous generation phones in terms of HDR and portrait lighting effects.

It’s also possible with any updates or features that arrive in iOS beta releases that they could expand to other devices and/or vanish prior to the actual public launch of iOS 13, which is set for this fall. But here’s hoping this one remains in place, because it really seems to make a huge difference in terms of providing a sense of ‘presence’ for FaceTime calls, which is one of the core values of the Apple chat feature overall.

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Apple’s iOS 13 update will make FaceTime eye contact way easier

Apple has added a feature called ‘FaceTime Attention Correction’ to the latest iOS 13 Developer beta, and it looks like it could make a big difference when it comes to actually making FaceTime calls feel even more like talking to someone in person. The feature, spotted in the third beta of the new software update that went out this week, apparently does a terrific job of making it look like you’re looking directly into the camera even when you’re looking at the screen during a FaceTime call.

That’s actually a huge improvement because when people FaceTime, most of the time they’re looking at the screen rather than the camera, since the whole point is to see the person or people you’re talking to, rather than the small black lens at the top of your device.

Guys – "FaceTime Attention Correction" in iOS 13 beta 3 is wild.

Here are some comparison photos featuring @flyosity: https://t.co/HxHhVONsi1 pic.twitter.com/jKK41L5ucI

— Will Sigmon (@WSig) July 2, 2019

The catch so far seems to be that this FaceTime feature is only available on iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, which could mean it only works with the latest camera tech available on Apple hardware. That could be because of the new image signal processor that Apple included in the A12 processor which powers the iPhone XS and XS Max, which also provide improvements over previous generation phones in terms of HDR and portrait lighting effects.

It’s also possible with any updates or features that arrive in iOS beta releases that they could expand to other devices and/or vanish prior to the actual public launch of iOS 13, which is set for this fall. But here’s hoping this one remains in place, because it really seems to make a huge difference in terms of providing a sense of ‘presence’ for FaceTime calls, which is one of the core values of the Apple chat feature overall.

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Superbacklash

Hot startup Superhuman has been getting some ‘backlash’ as happens now and then when someone notices the precise methodology that a startup is using to enable a really freakin’ cool feature set. We’re well into stage 2 now when, inevitably, the backlash itself gets backlash.

The nut of it is that people have been exposed to the idea that Superhuman tracks email you send and receive and gives you tools to help you manage it. They do it on your behalf, but without the permission of the recipient.

You can read a review of the service by Lucas Matney, who spent six months with it, here on TC.

The best thing about all of this defense chatter coming in is that the backlash itself is really not all that serious. People are literally just pointing out what they do, which is track email. And it provides real, genuine value.

This isn’t a new idea. It’s done by every marketing platform worth a darn that uses email. Every single email that comes in from a BRAND has some sort of this stuff happening. As do all websites (including this one). People are just not used to it being applied to a consumer product as intimate as personal email, and that sort of in-your-face use of commerce-grade tracking is perking up ears.

A few years back a startup founder with a suite of productivity apps (not Superhuman) asked me about this cool new feature they were planning on shipping: email tracking for senders, built right in. Read receipts and action items and all kinds of cool sounding stuff to make your life easier. He was asking what I thought of it, and whether Apple would have an issue with it if they shipped it on the store.

I told him it sounded like a great idea, but that I would be very cautions of actually rolling it out because it was impossible to get verification from the other side before you began tracking them. There was no opt-in.

I advised him to look at the way Apple handles it, where email tracking happens outside of the body of the email in a sort of passive radar fashion. Instead of active ‘pings’ using tracking pixels or other image hosting tricks, you’re getting a lighter client-side data set to work from. It’s opt in on your side, and doesn’t extend to them.

I warned on it for the same reason that I opt out of services that route my work email through their own servers, I choose not to employ any tracking apps and set up my emails not to auto display images. It’s not because I don’t want actionable insights, its because I am unable to obtain the permission of the people I send it to to begin tracking them.

Yeah, for sure, they’re already tracked 10 ways to Sunday by every spam email from Groupon to The Gap, but this is coming from me, an individual. It’s different, in my opinion, which is why people are reacting the way they are.

Flash forward and now we’ve got a very well capitalized startup with this at the core of their business. It seems like the founders have thought a lot about this and have decided that this tracking is good and defensible. So it shouldn’t be a shock when it comes time to defend those choices.

If you’re a founder, I think that’s a core lesson: always be willing to die on whatever hill you’re building.

I don’t think that the chatter about the tracking feature of Superhuman is a case of people turning on a startup that has become successful. Superhuman is very new, but very buzzy. And, as I said above, the backlash mostly consists of people highlighting their marquee features in detail. I’d bet a lot of people became even more interested in what it’s doing reading the various and sundry tweets and posts about it, including a Big Profile post in the NYT that kicked off this latest round of discussion.

We’ve been covering Superhuman for a few years now, including detailed explanations of what they want to accomplish and what the origins of the product and team are. That’s pretty much our job — to make sure we see this stuff years before anyone else. (We even covered the last startup to use the name Superhuman for a productivity app.)

The tracking has come up in our stories, but I think that people are just more willing to be skeptical of this stuff given the way that the last couple of years have gone. This is something that we have found happening with a lot of privacy issues recently.

In fact, the most astute criticism of the way Superhuman uses tracking came in a post by designer Mike Davidson, who has spent a lot of time working on large systems that have dangerous, as well as exciting, potential. And that post is anything but a ‘drive by’ on the model. It’s a thoughtful critique that actually offers some possible solutions.

I do think they are trying to solve a real problem. But there are clearly components of the way that they implemented their key feature that have potential for abuse.

It is, and I do find it a bit amusing that I have to say this in twenty nineteen, OK for people to want to discuss this and to examine the trade offs in a product that makes other people’s privacy choices for them. This isn’t backlash, this is discussion, and it’s good.

One of the reasons that we’ve gotten to a place where large platforms have been able to be mis-used to manipulate audiences at scale is that not enough people were listening to the conversations that were had about these possibilities early enough.

In context, it is very hard to argue that a genuine moment of thoughtfulness about any startup that has traction, raises significant capital and is aiming to have the most users possible see the world from its point of view is a bad thing.

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Apple reveals App Store takedown demands by governments

For the first time, Apple has published the number of requests it’s received from governments to take down apps from its app store.

In its latest transparency report published Tuesday, the tech giant said it received 80 requests from 11 countries to remove 634 apps from its localized app stores during July 1 and December 31, 2018.

Apple didn’t list the apps that were removed but noted in most cases why the apps were pulled. China made up the bulk of the requests, seeking to remove 517 apps claiming they violated its gambling and pornography laws. Vietnam and Austria also requested the takedown of several apps which violated its gambling laws, while Kuwait asked Apple to pull some apps that fell foul of its privacy laws.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Lebanon were among the countries that requested the removal of some apps, along with The Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.

The move comes more than a year after the company promised to publish the figures starting with this latest transparency report.

Apple said it will in a future transparency report — slated for mid-2020 — will report on appeals received in response to government demands to remove apps from the company’s localized app stores.

The tech giant also for the first time posted several national security letters it received permission to publish.

National security letters (NSLs) are controversial subpoenas issued by the FBI with no judicial oversight and often with a gag order preventing the company from disclosing their existence. Since the introduction of the Freedom Act in 2015, the FBI was required to periodically review the gag orders and lift them when they were no longer deemed necessary.

Apple first revealed it received an NSL in 2017 but never published the document. In its latest transparency report, the company finally published the letter — along with four others from 2018 which had the gag order lifted in April and May 2019.

As for the rest of the report, most of the government demands went down during the six-month period compared to the previous reporting period.

Apple said it received 29,183 demands from governments — down almost 10 percent on the last reporting period — to access 213,737 devices in the second half of last year.

Germany issued the most legal demands for the six-month period ending December 2018 with 12,343 requests for 19,380 devices. Apple said the large number of requests were primarily due to police investigating stolen devices.

The U.S. was in a distant second place with 4,680 demands for 19,318 devices.

Apple also received 4,875 requests for account data, such as information stored in iCloud — up by 16 percent on the previous reporting period — affecting 22,503 accounts.

The tech giant also saw a rise in the number of government requests to preserve data for up to three months. Apple said it received 1,823 requests, up by 15 percent, affecting 5,553 accounts, during which law enforcement sought to obtain the appropriate orders to access the data.

In revamped transparency report, Apple reveals uptick in demands for user data

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Newly unsealed court documents reveal additional allegations against Andy Rubin

Newly unsealed documents have revealed a spate of bombshell allegations against Android founder, Andy Rubin. BuzzFeed’s Ryan Mac has made the documents available as a PDF, and there’s a lot to unpack.

The nearly 40 pages detail a pre-martial agreement made with Rubin’s now-ex-wife, Rie Hirabaru Rubin, three days before their wedding. The documents refer to the agreement as “unconscionable, capping spousal support and stripping Plaintiff of her community property rights under California law without informed consent.”

The Essential Phone and Playground Global founder has largely operated in the background since The New York Times published an explosive story in late-2018 detailing sexual misconduct and massive severance package from his former employer, Google.

The documents go on to allege that her attorney, Stephen Peters, had previously represented Rubin in a prior divorce without her knowledge. This lawsuit seeks to make that prenuptial agreement invalid.

“Plaintiff was not aware of this pre-existing attorney-client relationship or the extent of Peters’ detailed knowledge regarding Rubin’s property and assets which were not fully disclosed at the time,” according to the document, “his detailed knowledge of Rubin’s extravagant payments to women or sex or that Peters was in reality working for the benefit of Rubin, and to the Plaintiff’s detriment.

Allegations of Rubin’s improprieties echo many of the claims reported in the 2018 Times piece, including, “ownership relationships […] whereby Rubin would pay for their expenses in exchange for offering them to other men.”

Over the last several months, Rubin and his ex-wife have been battling in court regarding whether or not the complaint would remain sealed. In April, a California state judge tentatively concluded that small portions of the complaint could be sealed. In May, the plaintiff argued that much of the material in the complaint had already been reported and that there was a notable public interest in the case. For example, Rubin’s alleged payments to women for sex — in the sum of hundreds of thousands of dollars — has already been reported and is relevant to the plaintiff’s case, she argued.

“Rubin hid these payments from Plaintiff during‘their marriage by using his individual bank account and routing payments through his wholly owned company Cosmofion LLC,” the plaintiff states in a court filing. “These allegations show, and the evidence at trial will prove, that Rubin was highly motivated to coerce and defraud Plaintiff to enter into an unconscionable Premarital Agreement so that ‘he would be able to conceal and continue to engage in these illicit sexual activities and continue to make payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to these women without being detected by Plaintiff.”

Regarding the parts of the document that remain under seal, the judge ruled they either involve post-marital allegations and/or information that is covered by a stipulated protective order.

We’ve reached out to Rubin’s lawyers for comment.

Google paid $105 million to two executives accused of sexual harassment

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