NEWS
Apple are still the richest company on earth, making money hand over fist Apple sold US$51.5b worth of stuff last quarter (1st July to 30 Sep), making a profit of US$11.1b off that revenue. They sold 48 million iPhones (521,739 per day - 6 iPhones per second!) but had a drop in iPad sales (9.9m down from 12.3m) and sold slightly more Macs (5.7m now, 5.5m last quarter). Apple has a cash and marketable securities (i.e: random investments) stockpile of $205.6b. This is goddamn insane, but want more crazy figure? In the past year (1st Oct 2014 - 30 Sep 2015), Apple generated $233.7b in sales, their most ever and made a yearly net profit of $53.4b. To compare, Google (2014 - $14.4b), Microsoft (2015 - $12.19b), Intel (2014 - $11.704b) and IBM (2014 - $12.02b) combined, only made $50.31b. Add Facebook to the mix (2014 - $2.94b) and you've got the same profit as Apple. ExxonMobile is the only company that gets close to Apple with $32b in profits in 2014. Mind-boggling. This Christmas quarter is going to be bonkers now that they've got the watch (how many people are gonna get a watch for Christmas? Heaps.) and the Apple TV (perfect Christmas gift), as well as the iPad Pro. So it's likely 2016 will make even more money for Apple than 2015. All the headline details and a transcription of the conference call is available from MacRumors.
Apple Pay coming to Australia soon if you have an AMEX card Tim Cook mentioned ever so briefly during Apple's conference call that "select" American Express card holders in Australia (and Canada) will be able to use Apple Pay by the end of 2015. That's all we know at this stage, as Apple Australia hasn't announced anything and neither has AMEX. I'm going to guess that by "select" customers, it'll only be for American Express issued AMEX cards, not bank issued AMEX, as they'd have support for the tokenisation system required for Apple Pay thanks to their rollout in the USA. Probably explains why the Apple Pay logo has been appearing on some shops in Apple Maps listings. The amount of places which accepet AMEX is growing, but those which accept it via contactless is pretty slim - only joints I know of are big department stores like Big W or Target and the big supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths. Who's gonna be the first dork to pay for their groceries with an Apple Watch and confuse the poor cashier?
Sony's Paris keynote shindig had some interesting stuff if you're into games Sony talked up a bunch of stuff at their Paris Gaming Week keynote, which was pretty bland and a lot of "coming soon" sort of stuff. Like the PlayStation VR headset, which was revealed back in March, still has no release date, but Sony let us know that there's 200 people working on it. There's some trailers for upcoming games that look cool and fun and wow amazing, but also have no release date. I'm also going to assume that watching a video of a VR game doesn't do it justice. In amongst the other announcements, my highlight is the news of a new Quantic Dream game, who made two of my wife's favourite PS3 games - Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Detroit is Quantic Dream's first PS4 title, which is about an android who wants to be more than just a slave to humans. Adorable in a robot uprising sort of way. No date for this one either unfortunately.
SXSW controversy rolls on - Buzzfeed and Vox media refuse to attend because SXSW have no courage Yesterday I mentioned how SXSW cancelled some panels that were targeted by some whinging man babies who don't want girls playing video games. Now one of the panelists have given their side of the story, saying how SXSW totally dropped the ball when it came to even attempting to delete some of the horrible shit these wankers spout. Not only that, but SXSW allowed these GamerGate pricks to make their own panel and couldn't be bothered removing it because they wanted "both sides of the debate". Vox Media (who are the parent company of The Verge and Recode) and Buzzfeed - arguably two of the biggest online news sites around, have said they're not participating in any SXSW events.
Facebook is making employees use 2G as to empathise with the poors Facebook has started "2G Tuesdays" an optional day a week where Facebook staff can set their phones to 2G only and pretend they're in a third world country. Did nobody actually use their products like this as part of regular testing? Did nobody think "oh hey what happens to our billion dollar app if the Internet is slow?". Are there that many people under the age of 25 at Facebook who don't remember dial-up Internet? I also think it's symbolic of Silicon Valley that Facebook have to force empathy onto their staff. It's not like Facebook doesn't know this exists, with the whole Internet.org thing they're doing. Alex Feyerke gave a great talk about this very topic at Web Directions Code 2014 if you're interested a bit more in this concept.
COOL SHIT
Thunderbolt 2 docking station showdown In the market for a Thunderbolt 2 dock for your Mac? 9to5 Mac have taken a look at all the units on the market right now and found them all pretty good. Personally I'd want one with, at the very least, Ethernet and a constantly on (even if the Mac is gone or off) 2A USB port. None of the docks have a 2A port on it. What gives? They're self powered so its not like there's a shortage of electricity going through the unit. I kinda wish Apple woudl do a Dell/HP and put a port on the bottom or side of the MacBook Pro so you can use a docking station with it. Maybe one day in the near future, I'll be able to slide my iPhone or iPad into a slot on a big monitor and use my iPhone as my Mac. That'd be cool.
Do you have golden ears? Philips set up a site for you to check Philips has set up a website where you can test how your ears can pick up fine details in music. You may have golden ears, which is an audiophile term for someone who can hear stuff most people can't. Imagine having golden ears - it must be tough going through life thinking everything sounds awful. Having to spend thousands on audio equipment, unable to enjoy albums because they're not engineered properly. Maybe having aluminium or bronze ears isn't so bad.
If you're mildly interested in radio stuff you will like this Radio, I reckon, is the closest thing to magic we have in the world. It's invisible and almost impossible for most people to understand. Balint Seeber is one of those people who understands radio so well that it makes me want to know more too. Check out this video I recorded at Ruxcon 2012 of Balint talking about his adventures with software defined radios, making the handy (but now superseded) RFmap, figuring out how hospital pager systems work and tinkering with ADS-B to watch air traffic. Not long after recording this talk, I purchased an RTL2832U receiver to play around with. I should use it more often and see what's floating around in the airwaves of Bacchus Marsh.
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