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Trump’s election denialism saw him retaliate in a way that isn’t just putting the remainder of his presidency in jeopardy, it’s already putting the next administration in harm’s way.
In a stunning display of retaliation, Trump fired CISA director Chris Krebs last week after declaring that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” a direct contradiction to the conspiracy-fueled fever dreams of the president who repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the election had been hijacked by the Democrats. CISA is left distracted by disarray, with multiple senior leaders leaving their posts — some walked, some were pushed — only for the next likely chief to stumble before he even starts because of concerns with his security clearance.
Until yesterday, Biden’s presidential transition team was stuck in cybersecurity purgatory because the incumbent administration refused to trigger the law that grants the incoming team access to government resources, including cybersecurity protections. That’s left the incoming president exposed to ongoing cyber threats, all while being shut out from classified briefings that describe those threats in detail.
As Biden builds his team, Silicon Valley is also gearing up for a change in government — and temperament. But don’t expect too much of the backlash to change. Much of the antitrust allegations, privacy violations and net neutrality remain hot button issues, and the tech titans resorting to cheap “charm offenses” are likely to face the music under the Biden administration — whether they like it or not.
Here’s more from the week.
THE BIG PICTURE
Apple and Facebook spar over privacy — again
Apple and Facebook are back in the ring, fighting over which company is a bigger existential threat to privacy. In a letter to a privacy rights group, Apple said its new anti-tracking feature will launch next year, which will give users the choice of blocking in-app tracking, a move that’s largely expected to cause havoc to the online advertising industry and data brokers.
Given an explicit option between being tracked and not, as the feature will do, most are expected to decline.
Apple’s letter specifically called out Facebook for showing a “disregard for user privacy.” Facebook, which made more than 98% of its global revenue last year from advertising, took its own potshot back at Apple, claiming the iPhone maker was “using their dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection, while making it nearly impossible for their competitors to use the same data.”
Greg Leung had worked at Apple for years and was coming off a stint at the smart lock company Otto when he got the call to interview with Connect Homes.
The pitch — building a starter home for a much lower cost than other prefabricated houses on the market, and one that could be dropped in to locations in the urban core of most cities — was too good to pass up.
“Basically, it’s a beautiful product, but done in a way that disrupts and transforms the way homes are built,” said Leung.
The homes come in 15 standardized configurations and can scale from 460 square foot up to 3,200 square feet. What differentiates the company from its competitors, says Leung, is the speed with which Connect Homes can build a house, putting up a full house in six days.
Not only that, but the homes are able to use standard shipping networks and rail transit to bring their homes anywhere in the country. “We build modules the size of a shipping container, so we can connect to the regular intermodal shipping network,” Leung said.
Interior view of a Connect Homes pre-fabricated home. Image Credit: Connect Homes
The company’s smaller homes run around $174,000 all-in, while a 3,200-square-foot home costs around $825,000. That’s about half of the cost for a custom home today, Leung said.
“What we’re doing is providing a beautiful, modern, product for half the price of a traditional custom homebuilder,” he said.
Currently, Leung said, there are three types of new construction getting built — new tract homes, multi-family housing units and high rises. But, there’s an opportunity to infill housing. “Seventy percent of the Bay Area and LA were built in the 70s. That means there are millions of homes that are too small and out of date and energy inefficient,” Leung said. “It costs $1 million to $1.5 million to build a home… No one is addressing the urban infill market except for us.”
And Leung’s interest extended beyond the 88 projects that the company has completed for new homeowners. From its Los Angeles headquarters with a factory in San Bernardino, California, the company is also looking to change how municipalities and governments think about temporary shelters and living spaces for the unhoused.
Founded by Jared Levy and Gordon Stoddard, two architects who worked in the pre-fabricated building division of the firm Marmol Radziner, Connect Homes had raised $27 million to build out a vision of pre-fab future.
That capital includes a recent $5 million round that served to reboot the company and refocus it around its manufacturing technology that can create deployable shelters alongside its housing work. That was another draw for Leung, whose experience in Northern California made him acutely aware of the housing problem the nation faces.
The single module shelter that the company has developed can be transported and put on site in one day. Adding a generator to the 40 foot by eight foot module the company is building means that the shelter has the flexibility of a trailer, but can be ready for habitation in 24 hours.
“We designed this to sell to municipalities and third-party service providers to house people,” Leung said.
Customers for the new product include the Thatcher School in Ojai and a project in Mountain View, California done in partnership with Life Moves.
Prices for the shelters range between $20,000 and $30,000 per-bed, or $80,000 per module. Those prices compare incredibly favorably to the $500,000 to $1 million communities pay for a bed in permanent supportive housing, said Leung.
Still, the company’s fancy replacements for tent cities don’t do anything to address the underlying housing crisis that plagues cities across the country.
“We’re trying to be the opposite of bespoke housing that we see as part of the problem. The shelters was a reaction to an urgent need. We had the ability to do something innovative to solve the problem,” said Leung. “I don’t see the amazing talent and innovation being applied to this problem. And it’s affecting the well-being and health of millions and millions of people… This is something that will last for possibly lifetimes.”
View of a Connect Homes house being installed. Image Credit: Connect Homes
The attempt to create a new fable for the reconstruction of the building industry is what drew Brick & Mortar Ventures back to the table to recapitalize the company with the new $5 million in cash the company recently secured, according to Darren Bechtel, the founder and managing director of the firm.
A scion of the Bechtel engineering and construction family, Bechtel has a deep knowledge of the industry and sees Connect Homes as one of the best bets to disrupt traditional construction.
“You cannot construct today cheaper than existing assets,” Bechtel said. But, the opportunity to rethink construction as manufacturing is creating an environment that can drive down costs more effectively, he said.
“It’s been a primitive form of manufacturing for some time,” Bechtel said of the housing industry. “The difference from traditional manufacturing and even automobiles, is that when you get to the scale of a house, you exceed the ability to transport that product efficiently from the manufacturing site to the end delivery site.”
That’s the key problem that Bechtel saw Connect Homes solving. “You have to standardize around intermodal shipping or you have to get permits. You are limited on which roads you use,” he said. “If you’re doing a true kit of parts, you’re requiring craft workers to do the finished work on site.”
Connect Homes, said Bechtel, is taking a different approach from the homebuilders that are looking to be mostly vertically integrated. He said Connect Homes was taking a more Apple-like approach where they oversee the product lifecycle and the customer experience. “That’s how you reach global scale and create the VW and Audi of housing,” he said. “A house is the most expensive purchase. The fact that this is still a bespoke product in the vast majority of scenarios doesn’t make sense.”
Bechtel also drew a distinction between the companies that are primarily targeting the accessory dwelling unit market in California and Connect Homes, which has broader aspirations.
“A lot of people who are buying and selling ADUs are getting an extra guest house. They want more space for themselves,” he said. “At a much larger scale if you can take existing housing stocks that are in medium or high density areas that are old properties with larger footprints and you can create two or three housing units in the same spot with new inventory, you’re drastically improving both the quality and the quantity of housing stock.”
That’s the ultimate goal for Connect Homes, Bechtel said. And it’s going to be returning to market just as that market could be poised to rebound, said Bechtel.
“We believe you’re going to see a massive rebound in the need for housing,” said Bechtel. “The single family housing market will return.” And when it does, Connect Homes will be working on scaling up to meet the new demand.
Its long fruitful relationship with Apple may be sunsetting soon, but Intel’s still got a fairly massive footprint in the PC market. There’s never a good time to get complacent, though (a lesson the company learned the hard way on the mobile front).
This week the chip giant is debuting its own laptop, the NUC M15. More properly, the NUC M15 Laptop Kit; the device is actually a white-label system. It’s essentially a reference design so smaller device makers don’t have to commit to the long and expensive process of building a system from scratch.
It is, as The Verge notes, not the first time the company has created this sort of reference design. It recently created a gaming system to similar ends. But much like the recent MacBooks, the system is designed to offer high performance in a package designed more for productivity.
There are two configurations for the system, featuring either a Core i7 chip coupled with 16GB of RAM or a Core i5 with 8GB of RAM. That will, obviously, be complemented by Windows 10, which will take advantage of the 15.6-inch touchscreen.
Pricing and timing and all of that good stuff will likely depend on which vendors take the system across the finish line.
When the music’s over, turn out the lights. Back in the day, The Doors were one of a number of 60s rock groups to surface around the intersection of blues, R&B, and a cultural shift that challenged our notions of who was in charge. The Doors were a four-piece that sounded like something bigger. The keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, created that sleight of hand by collapsing bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and vocal to drums, guitar, vocal, and bass on his left hand and melody on his right.
In the studio, they often augmented the sound with a traditional bass sideman, but the overall feel of the left hand driving the feel and the right the upper notes produced a unique sound and hybrid of musical styles. They were not my favorite, but the night I caught them at a New York club called Electric Circus, I lurked stunned behind Manzarek as he performed this magic trick cum laude into the night. Years later, I remember every note. It feels like I cheated the bounds of the universe.
Since the election, I’ve been hoping for a sense of completion, of triumph over the bounds of the terror of these times. Surely, a big part of it is the pandemic, which doesn’t care how close it was in Georgia or when or if Trump flies off to Florida for the holidays. But news of a second robust vaccine trial suggests the tough times, though not over by any means, may be in sight of an end or at least some version of a plan to get there.
Not so much for Trump and his fearful enablers. There’s much to look forward to: Inauguration Day, or as I like to call it, Eviction Day. A bailout of the 20 million unemployed that keeps them in their homes and on a pathway to economic recovery. A rational approach to the science of the virus and how to slow it while we figure out how to distribute the vaccines. A majority government for a change.
Instead, every last step will be fought tooth and nail. The early breath of fresh air is still lingering, but there’s no doubt this will be for every inch of the way. Come to think of it, did we really expect anything different? No, we expected the worst, and we got it. But this is not about the politics for me. It’s about finding a place to breathe, to invest in a future we can accept, to relearn how to be kind to ourselves in setting our expectations.
I’ve always held a fascination for technology for just that reason — to experience the combined shouts of innovation and inspiration that lead to breakthroughs in what’s possible. Even in the darkest depths of this crisis, the vaccine trials offer a glimpse at the leading edge of new approaches that will span not just the current virus but advances in efforts to battle cancer and other more traditional enemies. In politics, some of the citizen-based fundraising efforts of Bernie Sanders and media innovations like the Lincoln Project suggest ways of countering the negative effects of social networks and misinformation attacks.
In the more conventional reaches of tech, Apple’s M1 transition from Intel to Apple Silicon chips is unmistakably thrilling. Seeing the wave of computing acceleration spurred by the iPhone and iPad merging with the Mac on the desktop is so inspiring. For the first time, I’m delaying the new iPhone because I lust for the new Silicon version of the MacBook Air. Why? Because of what it doesn’t have, a fan. It’s like the taxi scene in Star Wars, you know the one where they’re not the droids you’re looking for. Then: no wheels.
Now: it’s not about the fact that you can run iOS apps on the Mac. It’s that you can write apps that take advantage of the whole platform, not just mobile but not Mac, or Web but not etc. The trade offs between the two platforms are evaporating. Notifications may be useless still on the desktop; that will rapidly change as app makers get used to the system-wide features spread across the merged platform. Video editing can move seamlessly to and from iPad (LumaTouch) and back to the Mac (X86 emulation mode), creating a production ecosystem and rendering farm for the new streaming renaissance. Work from home goes portable, plug and play as you travel and collaborate.
This will happen because Apple Silicon is such a game changer that it will be impossible to disrupt. Instant on, silent computing, virtual memory so invisible that you can swap huge loads in and out of memory, all kinds of attention to how people really use computers in this mobile era. The iPhone and iPad changed the way we thought about things. Now the Mac thinks that way too.
The only way I can justify the upgrade to the latest iPhone is by reupping to the Apple monthly payment contract at the end of the first of two years. So, Apple, how about you put the M1 MacBook Air on that plan, That way, as the ecosystem expands across the new modular software/hardware economy of speed, silence, and computing that just works, I can upgrade every release to the latest and greatest. The Apple Tax never had it so good.
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
Top Stories
Apple reduces App Store commissions to 15% for ‘vast majority’ of developers
The changes apply to developers with less than $1 million in revenue.
The changes arrive at a time when Apple has been under increased regulatoryscrutiny over how its App Store operates, which includes antitrust investigations in the U.S. and E.U. It has also waged war with developers throughout the year over in-app purchases, leading the company to revise its already complex rules even further, and spell out how and when it gets to charge its so-called “Apple tax.” And it’s in the middle of a nasty legal battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games, which doesn’t want to be forced to use Apple payments or even, necessarily, the App Store.
The commission changes may help silence some disgruntled voices from the wider app development community, while giving Apple a way to show regulators that it’s enabling fair competition.
However, several of Apple’s largest and harshest critics reacted negatively to the news.
The advocacy group, the Coalition for App Fairness, which includes Epic, Basecamp, Deezer, Match Group, Spotify and many others, said: “developers want a level playing field from Apple, not a symbolic gesture.” They argued that Apple still owns the customer relationship, the threshold of $1M is arbitrary, and they said the majority of developers who “generate livable revenue,” won’t benefit.
Match, Spotify and Epic separately echoed these sentiments in statements of their own.
Apple, though, had claimed the change would benefit the “vast majority” of the App Store development community. Today its App Store hosts 1.8 million apps that reach more than 1.5 billion Apple devices.
Individual developers we spoke to, including those who would qualify for the program, weren’t complaining. And many were fairly surprised by Apple’s move.
“I think it’s fair to say that this change wouldn’t have happened without either the impending antitrust investigations, or the Epic lawsuit. But something can be both a very clever piece of political manoeuvring, and still genuinely welcome and beneficial to the vast majority of developers out there,” said indie developer James Thomson, maker of the PCalc app and others.
“We fall significantly under the million dollar threshold, so we’re looking at roughly a 20% increase in our income under the new system. We’re in a much better position than most businesses under the pandemic, in that our sales are purely digital and people always need calculators (or dice), but we’ve certainly seen a decrease in sales over the last eight months. I can see the current situation taking a good while to resolve, so that extra revenue is appreciated,” he added. “These changes will particularly help the small developers who have traditionally been the heart of the developer community, and I as happy about this, as I am surprised,” Thomson said.
Others also said they were generally happy with the changes. But some expressed reservations about the details of how the program works.
“Overall, I’m very pleased with this new program,” said developer David Smith, maker of Widgetsmith, Watchsmith, Sleep++ and a range of other iOS apps. “It will help countless small developers who can really benefit from that extra margin. I’m excited for all the indie developers who will now be able to focus full time on their apps just that little bit sooner.”
But Smith noted that it was odd that the program isn’t applied in a way that’s similar to a graduated tax rate, where, he explained, “your first $1M is at 15% and the rest at the higher rate.”
“The proposed system creates an awkward differentiation between developers, and one of the things I’ve always appreciated most about the App Store was that it treats developers equally,” Smith continued. “It also creates a strange disincentive for growth for mid-sized businesses who are approaching the threshold.”
We turned to third-party analytics firms to try to better understand the market.
According to App Annie data, around 98% of all iOS developers in 2019 (meaning, unique publisher accounts) fell under the $1 million annual consumer spend threshold. This supports Apple’s claims that the “vast majority” of developers would benefit. This group of developers accounts for 567,000 unique apps, or 93% of all apps generating revenue through in-app purchases.
Combined, their revenues represented just under 8% of the overall App Store revenue share — in other words, it’s money Apple could stand to lose.
Image Credits: App Annie
App Annie also found that the group of mid-range developers who are “nearing” that $1 million threshold is really small. The data indicates roughly 0.5% of developers are making between $800,000 and $1 million. And just over 1% are in the $500,000-$800,000 range.
Most developers have much smaller revenue streams, with 87.7% making less than $100,000 in 2019.
Image Credits: App Annie
Some expressed concern that Apple’s system would unfairly penalize developers who made just $1 over the $1 million threshold, and then trap them at the higher rate (30%).
If you sell $1 over $1M on the @AppStore, you won’t match the income again the next year unless you make *$430K* more. That means making $1 over $1M may lead to having to fire an employee the following year since you’ll now be penalized $150K on the same revenue the next year.
But others suspected that the percentage of developers who were growing “slowly” at over $800,000 in ARR was actually pretty small.
This "dollar over, double the commission" scenario I would imagine dampens the enthusiasm of the cadre that hovers at that number. But I think it's a strong possibility that the percentage of developers "growing ARR slowly at $800,000+" is actually pretty small. https://t.co/2eOXFLSBOD
From the data we’ve collected, it seems that subscription-based apps tend to keep growing fairly quickly once they pass that $1 million threshold. According to data from subscription platform RevenueCat, the apps on its platform grow, on average, at 1.5x year-over-year. So once an app crossed the $1 million threshold, the most likely scenario is that it would make $1.5 million the next year. Plus, the apps that are “nearing” the threshold tend to be growing even faster than the average rate, we understand. And they rarely backslide.
“Apple has made a lot of changes to the App Store over the years, and this is one of the first I’ve seen where there’s really not much to complain about,” said RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting. “It’s impactful to the App Store economy broadly and meaningful to individual indie developers. Sure it may have been for PR and they might not have a lot of downside in doing this, but it’s genuinely a great thing for so many developers,” he said.
We’ll have more data on this subject in the weeks ahead.
Parler’s funders revealed…it’s the Mercers; parents warned about the app
The “Free speech” app Parler rising in the charts after Facebook and Twitter increased fact-checks, turns out to be funded by prominent conservative donor and Trump supporter Rebekah Mercer, The WSJ revealed.
Rebekah is the daughter of Robert Mercer, the hedge fund manager and principal investor in Cambridge Analytica — the data analytics firm behind the largest data leak in Facebook history, where 87 million users had their data harvested for the purposes of political advertising. The Mercers have alsobacked Breitbart News, the Heritage Foundation think tank, the Federalist Society, a super PAC that initially backed Ted Cruz’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination (before switching to Trump) and Citizens United (which distributed a 2007 anti-Clinton movie and succeeded in a Supreme Court ruling that reversed campaign finance restrictions), among other things.
This week, the nonprofit ParentsTogether issued a warning to parents about Parler, saying that the app’s weak moderation policies and extremist user base put kids at risk of exploitation, abuse and recruitment for racist violence. The organization described Parler as hosting dangerous content, including hate speech, incitements of violence and widespread disinformation.
In addition, the group was concerned that while Apple’s App Store rates the app at 17+, Google Play has it listed as suitable for kids ages 13+.
“All parents of children under age 18 to immediately check their kids’ phones and tablets to ensure that their children have not installed Parler,” the group warned parents, in a statement. “If your child has installed Parler, we strongly recommend that you delete their account and the app.”
Twitter launches Fleets
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin
Twitter this week launched its own version of Stories — aka “Fleets” — to its global user base. The product, which allows users to post ephemeral content that disappears in 24 hours, had already rolled out to select markets, including Brazil, India, Italy, South Korea and, most recently, Japan. The rollout almost immediately ran into some snags, with Fleets suffering performance and stability issues. Twitter said it would pause things while it worked this out. On Thursday, the company announced the feature was globally available.
Reactions to Fleets has been mixed. Some users hate the feature, which is designed to encourage more users to post to Twitter, when they’ve otherwise been too shy to participate — largely because of Twitter’s “cancel culture” vibe where mistakes, bad takes and unpopular opinions are harshly criticized, even when they’re more minor offenses. It’s not clear how a Stories feature resolves this, however, as Fleets are still being published to Twitter’s public social network.
These changes follow the activities by activist investor Elliott Management Group, which took a sizable stake in Twitter earlier this year, along with Silver Lake. The firms did so with a plan to push the company for more innovation and new executive leadership. The companies later struck a deal to spare Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s ousting, gain board seats, and put someone on the board with expertise in technology and artificial intelligence. Dorsey disagreed with the characterization that their involvement had any impact on product development.
Weekly News
Platforms
Apple’s IDFA is targeted by EU privacy complaints. Apple had already told advertisers they’ll soon have to allow users the option to opt-out of ad tracking, but the new complaints are more about the fact that IDFA was ever created and stored in the first place, and that Apple’s planned changes don’t go far enough as they restrict its use for third parties, but not Apple itself.
Apple’s Developer Transition Kits (DTKs) help developers get their apps ready for Apple’s silicon. But it turns out they won’t be able to install iOS or iPadOS apps like M1 Macs can.
Google reminds Android developers they only have until January 18, 2021 to get approval to continue using background location data if they want to stay on Google Play.
Apple releases a new version of iOS 14.2 for iPhone 12. The update appears to fix the iPhone 12 mini lock screen issue that caused some users’ lock screens to not respond to touches. The update also fixes issues with MMS messages, Made for iPhone hearing devices and more.
Google also reminds Android developers that, starting Augut 2021, Google Play will require all apps to use the Android App Bundle publishing format and make other changes.
Apple now allows developers to market and distribute their subscriptions with offer codes. These one-time, alphanumeric codes can be redeemed either on the App Store or within the app itself, allowing developers to acquire and retain customers or win back lapsed subscribers with special deals. Here are some tips on putting them to work.
Apple’s iOS 14.3, beta 2 indicates that Apple will do away with the intermediate step of opening the Shortcuts app when app shortcuts are launched. This was one of the major pet peeves from the iOS 14 home screen customization trend, where users designed iOS themes using custom icons and widgets.
Dating app Bumble’s vulnerabilities puts Facebook Likes, locations and pictures of 95 million online daters at risk. Bumble took six months to fix the flaws and says no user data had been compromised.
TikTok expands parental controls to include search, commenting and account privacy. The company launched Family Pairing in April, allowing parents to link their account to their teen’s in order to manage screen time, direct messaging and whether or not the teen’s account would be in “Restricted” mode — a special mode which limits TikTok’s feed to a safer set of more moderated content. This week, it also gave parents the ability to control whether the teen’s Liked Videos are visible to others, control who can comment on the teen’s videos and decide whether the teen is allowed to use TikTok search.
Messaging app Go SMS Pro exposed millions of users’ private photos and files. The app, popular on Android, didn’t respond to security researchers about the problem. Typically, companies are given a 90-day deadline before vulnerabilities are made public.
Epic Games added video chat to Fortnite, via a Houseparty integration. The company bought the video chat app last year. Players use their phone or tablet as the webcam while they play on PCs, PS4 or PS5.
Epic Games sues Apple in Australia too. The Fortnite maker is currently in a legal battle in the U.S. over Apple’s requirement to use Apple Pay and pay commissions on in-app purchases. In an interview this week, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney likened the fight with Apple to a fight for civil rights. (That’s a bit much, we’d say.)
Snap acquired Voisey, a U.K.-based app that lets users create music tracks and videos by overlaying their own vocals. The app had raise $1.88 million to date, but deal terms weren’t immediately available.
Google Maps is updated with more COVID info and adds its Assistant driving mode. The COVID layer in Google Maps on Android and iOS can now show the number of all-time detected cases in an area, links to COVID resources from local governments and how busy transit lines are. The driving mode can read texts and lets you control your music from Maps.
Facebook’s Messenger Kids redesigned to look more like Messenger. The updated app puts chats in a more traditional vertical list, with message and media previews, and bold text and blue dots to indicate their unread status. It also added a new tabbed navigation, which better highlights the separation between apps and games.
YouTube launches 15-second audio ads aimed at users who listen to music or podcasts while the app plays in the background.
Apple’s Shazam passes 200 million monthly active users.
Instagram expands its Guides features and upgrades Search. Guides now allow creators to share tips, resources and other long-form content in a dedicated tab on their profiles. Now, everyone can make guides for Products, Places and Posts. Users can also now search by keywords, instead of just by names, usernames, hashtags and locations.
Instagram also updates its Threads mobile messaging app. The app now adds a tab for easier navigation between stories and statuses. All users should also now have the tabbed inbox where they can see everyone’s stories, not just close friends, and have the option to publish to stories, not just close friends’ stories.
Facebook sued an operator of Instagram clone websites. The operator had scraped Instagram data of some 100,000 accounts using its own 30,000 fake accounts that pretended to be humans to avoid detection.
Google launches iOS 14 widgets for Gmail, Drive and Fit. Says Calendar and Chrome widgets will come soon.
State and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook over its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, The Washington Post reports.
Twitter and Facebook sat for another congressional tech hearing that again largely served to give lawmakers a chance to just talk about whatever they wanted, instead of the topic at hand: social media’s role during the election. The CEOs were asked about their apps’ addictiveness, their algorithms, their approaches to misinformation and more.
U.S. mobile strategy game spending surges 22% to $2.8 billion in the first 10 months of 2020,Sensor Tower reports. The top game by player spending during this time was Clash of Clans, which generated close to $262 million in the U.S.
Top home screen widget apps have reached 1 in 7 U.S. iPhones, another Sensor Tower report claims. The five most popular apps — Widgetsmith, Color Widgets, Photo Widget: Simple, WidgetBox and Photo Widget — have collectively seen 13 million iPhone installs since the launch of iOS 14. Globally, they’ve reached 45 million installs to date.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
Funding and M&A (and IPOs)
Image Credits: Duolingo
Language learning app Duolingo confirms its raise of $35 million on a $2.4 billion valuation. The news was reported last week, but the numbers are now official. The app was valued at $1.65 billion earlier this year.
Baidu to acquire Joyy’s Chinese live-streaming service YY for $3.6 billion. The search giant has been struggling to fight newcomers, like ByteDance, and video giant Kuaishou. Last year, Joyy’s YY took a $1.45 billion majority stake in Bigo, which operates streaming app Bigo Live and TikTok rival Likee.
OpenPhone raises $14 million to replace outdated corporate phone systems with an app. Yammer founder David Sacks’ Craft Ventures led the round.
Flipkart acquires AR startup Scapic to build an immersive shopping experience. Deal terms were undisclosed.
Athlete social platform Strava raises $110 million in Series F financing from TCV and Sequoia Capital, with by Dragoneer Investment Group and existing investors including Madrone Capital Partners, Jackson Square Ventures and Go4it Capital.
Yubo raises $47.5 million for its social app offering live-streaming rooms, now used by 40 million users. Existing investors Idinvest Partners, Iris Capital, Alven and Sweet Capital returned, and new investor Gaia Capital Partners joined.
English learning app AllRight raises $5 millionfrom Genesis Investments. The Ukraine startup combines real teachers with AI-powered tutors.
ContextLogic, the maker of the mobile e-commerce app Wish, filed to go public. Wish saw revenues slow in 2019, but has grown more quickly in 2020. In the first nine months of 2019, Wish generated $1.33 billion in revenue compared with $1.75 billion during the same period in 2020, or up 32%.
Roblox files for its IPO, noting it has lost $206 million on $589 million in revenue, has 31.1 million daily active users who now spend up to 22.2 billion hours in app, a figure up 122% year-over-year.
Amazon this week launched GameOn for Android, an app that lets users record 30-second to five-minute long gameplay clips — including through a “Recall” feature that saves the clip after it happens. Clips are then shared the GameOn social network or elsewhere on social media. The app supports more than 1,000 games at launch, including PUBG Mobile, Crossy Road, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Angry Birds 2. A selfie camera lets gamers add their own commentary to the clips. Winners of weekly challenges get special profile badges. The launch follows Amazon’s release of its cloud gaming platform Luna.
Google Pay
Image Credits: Google
Google Pay launched a major redesign of its app on Android and iOS this week with a ton of new features, including a mobile bank account. The company partnered with 11 banks, including Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union, to launch Plex, a mobile banking service where accounts are held at partner banks but Google Pay operates as the front end. Plex users will have no monthly fees, overdraft charges or minimum balances and can pay both businesses and friends from their account. They can also explore offers and rewards to save money while shopping and get spending insights, including from their connected bank accounts outside the app. Another new feature makes it easier to split bills with friends, like restaurant checks, rent or utilities.
RTRO, launched earlier this year, offers a way to record and share vintage-looking photos and video. This week, the app was updated with “Instant Film,” which lets you emulate instant film photos powered by the app’s “analog effects engine.” The resulting photos will give you the feel of a instant camera pic.
Big news for RTRO…now with Instant Film for iPhone. It’s like an instant camera, but on your phone.
We’ve created the first real-time instant film emulation so every photo is unique. No scanning required!
Let’s just get this out of the way: for the past several years, I’ve contributed the “Best Gifts for Frequent Travelers” segment to TechCrunch’s annual gift guide. I love it. It was easily my favorite gift guide to write, and it was an audience favorite, as well. But I am no longer a frequent traveler. I’ve left New York City exactly once since March. Odds are that special person in your life isn’t traveling much, either.
So, in honor of this new sedentary life to which we’ve all grown accustom over the past eight or nine months, I’m bringing you the polar opposite. This, friends, is the gift guide for those who have come to carve out office space in their homes. For everyone who’s come to blur the important lines between work and personal life.
The transition hasn’t been an easy one for everyone, but here are a handful of gifts that can help ease the transition and make someone’s home office a…well, a home, I guess. They’re not necessary the most fun gifts, but odds are someone in your life can really use them.
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Hyken Mesh Task Chair
Image Credits: Staples
I never truly appreciated the value of a good office chair until this pandemic. I’ve been lucky to work for a corporation that considers Herman Millers a necessary expense. I honestly can’t remember which manner of ratty Amazon bargain bin chair I had held onto for the last several years, but a month or two into this, I rolled it into the donation pile.
There’s truth in the conventional wisdom that you get what you pay for when it comes to office chairs. And, indeed, it’s an investment. But there are deals to be had. I didn’t spend an arm or leg, so I’m not going to encourage you to. After a good about of research, I landed on this beast from Staples. It’s big, and comfortable and offers great full body support that won’t leave you sore after eight hours in front of the computer (I mean, do get up and move around at least once an hour for your health and sanity).
Remember how I told you I wasn’t going to encourage you to spend an arm and a leg on the chair? Well, consider this a gift for the person in your life who was really good this year. If a good office chair is an investment, a computer is lifeline. I wouldn’t recommend an iMac for, say, a 3D designer, but for many or most, you can’t really argue with ease of use for Apple’s all-in-one.
Apple refreshed the system earlier this year, with some improved features, including, notably, an improved webcam — that’s obviously an important upgrade these days. There are no external monitors to deal with and minimal futzing required out of the box. There is, of course, a big Apple Silicon redesign coming in the next year or two, but that won’t do you a whole lot of good in the meantime.
Much like the office chair, Webcams were one of those those things I really didn’t pay much mind to before the pandemic. But the truth is this: Built-in webcams, as a category, suck. There are exceptions to this, of course, but unlike with smartphone makers, cameras have nearly universally been an afterthought with PC manufactures. I do suspect there’s a good chance this will finally shift in the next year or so, but for now, you really want to avoid using your computer’s built-in camera for those important Zoom meetings, if you can.
There are a ton of options out there, and you can get a decent webcam at a decent price — Logitech is usually a pretty solid choice. This time out, however, I’m giving the prize to Razer. The gaming company has delivered a clever and versatile camera. It’s got an adjustable clip/stand, can capture video at 1080p @ 30FPS / 720p @ 60FPS and best of all, there’s a built-in light ring. It’s not going to replace a pro-level camera set up, obviously, if they do a lot of conference appearances or frequently appear on CNN. But if they’re looking to liven up a Zoom call or two, this is a solid choice.
Okay, so, as a long-time podcaster this is something I’ve been thinking about well before the pandemic started. The truth is a decent set of headphones should double as an okay meeting mic. But if conference calls are central to work days, a good mic is a great way to up that game. And hey, everyone’s starting a podcast these days, right?
RØDE has some great USB mic options. The NT-USB Mini wouldn’t be by first (or probably even 10th) choice for podcasting. But its price and size make it a nice option for augmenting meetings and other calls. It also has the advantage of size and a removable stand that will make it a good travel companion if we’re able able to travel again.
Living in Queens at the height of the pandemic in New York — and dealing with my own personal health issues — I basically didn’t leave my apartment in April or May. Cubii’s sit down elliptical isn’t a replacement for full body exercise, but it’s a nice supplement, if you’re housebound for any reason.
I might have to put it under my desk again as the weather starts getting cold. There’s a mobile component, as well, that tracks progress and integrates it into third-party trackers like Apple Health.
Headphones are necessary for working from home, but I’d also recommend getting a semi-decent speaker for your desk. A smart speaker is likely the path of least resistance for listening to streaming services like Spotify, and Nest Audio is probably the most well-rounded of the bunch. Google Assistant is great for all of the smart stuff and the new hardware sounds really solid.
Did I need to spend $200 on a seltzer maker? No, of course not. Do I regret spending $200 on a seltzer maker? Also no. Aarke’s system looks great, has a solid build and the pulling down that hand crank is decidedly satisfying. Hydration is important, friends. Honorable mention to the LARQ UV disinfecting bottle. You’ll need something to drink that carbonated water out of, after all.
Really good, customizable lighting for the entire office
Image Credits: Philips
Bonus entry, this one from TechCrunch Editor Greg Kumparak:
I’ve been working from home for a few years now, and honestly the most important change I’ve made this year is vastly improving my home office’s lighting situation. Lighting — both natural and artificial — is hugely important to how we feel throughout the day, and being able to customize the lights to your exact likings is one of the huge plusses of working from home. No more awful flickering fluorescent lights! Want to make the lights purple and blue? You do you.
Smart lighting lets you do fancy things like shifting the colors to those that make you feel alert/productive, or dim them as evening approaches. During the California wildfires, when smoke and haze dyed the sky a terrifying orange, I shifted all of my lighting to be way more blue than it otherwise would be to help my brain realize it was the afternoon and not, as it seemed, an impossibly long sunrise.
Philips Hue bulbs are a solid pick, generally. They offer a ton of flexibility and options, the downside being that they’re generally on the more expensive end. I also don’t expect Philips to drop support for the Hue line or go out of business any time soon. New competition has been entering the market at lower price points, but my hesitation there is always how well they’ll be supported in the years to come.
If they’ve already got other smart lights around their house though, try to stick within the same brand. It makes things considerably easier to not have to deal with new hubs, apps, etc.
