Apple’s bet on Uber’s Chinese rival makes plenty of sense
Early this morning, Apple announced it’s spending $1 billion for a stake in the Chinese Uber-like ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, purportedly for “strategic reasons.” But what is Didi, and why is Apple investing so heavily to get a piece of it?
To call Didi Chuxing an Uber competitor would be selling it short. While it offers broadly the same service, Didi is far more successful than the American startup is in China. It currently has an 87 percent share of the market, while Uber has struggled to make a big impact. Didi has also made some small investments in Lyft, a US-based Uber rival. As Didi is valued at over $25 billion, this new investment isn’t necessarily a game-changer for either company, but its secondary effects might be far stronger.
China is Apple’s second-biggest market
Apple’s focus on China is clear. After a few years building its presence in the country, it’s now Apple’s second-biggest market. In its last quarterly report, Apple revealed that China accounts for 25 percent of its revenue, up from 19 percent just three years ago. With over 1.7 billion people calling the country home, Apple obviously thinks the figure has more room to grow, and this deal can help spur that expansion. Announcing the deal, CEO Tim Cook told Reuters it offered “a chance to learn more about certain segments” of the Chinese market.” It won’t cost the company much, either. Since it’s got plenty of cash stored overseas that’s too expensive (in tax) to bring back, spending a billion dollars on a reasonably safe investment is a sound use of funds.
Analysts speculate this investment might help quell some of Apple’s regulatory issues in the country. China recently pulled the plug on the iBooks and iTunes movie stores — which only launched last September — prompting suggestions that authorities were protecting local businesses from foreign elements. By investing in a local giant (that’s going to be fighting Uber for years to come) Apple ingratiates itself to government officials, important local business people and the population as a whole.
Of course, Apple’s also interested in another area right now: cars. Barely a week goes by between rumors of the company’s progress in the field, with more recent articles asserting that it will build its car in Germany. When that’ll be ready is all speculation right now, but The Wall Street Journal claims Apple is targeting a launch in 2019. It’s widely reported that any vehicle the company produces will have self-driving capabilities, and today’s Didi investment adds a twist to the autonomous Apple car story.
Uber’s end-game is self-driving taxis
Closer to home, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has made no secret of the fact that the endgame for his company is self-driving taxis. Of course, we’re likely decades away from that happening on a global scale, but we could see small autonomous fleets operating in some areas far sooner. Google, a leader in publicly-visible self-driving tech, is also chasing the same goal. While the two are obviously competing right now, Google owns a sizeable — maybe two or three percent — stake in Uber after investing very early and has a place on the company’s board. The prospect of the two working together isn’t unthinkable, especially if one of the world’s largest companies is focused on the same market.
And Uber is looking for collaborators. According to a report from The Information, Kalanick had planned a meeting at Apple headquarters this week to discuss “future partnership opportunities.” Whether that meeting is still on the cards after Apple sided with its biggest competitor in China is unclear.
Regardless of what it’s planning with cars, Apple is definitely in the navigation business. It offers mapping services for iOS and OS X devices, and is very keen on you using CarPlay in your vehicle. And just as important as the algorithms that power navigation systems is the information they have access to. By partnering with Didi, Apple could potentially tap into billions of miles of Chinese driving data each year, which would allow it to offer improved navigation or other services in the future.
LeEco envisions its LeSEE self-driving car as a taxi.
The same algorithm/data principle also applies to self-driving cars. Google logs millions of autonomous miles not just to fine-tune its code, but also to gather data on road layouts, traffic flow and pedestrian or vehicular behavior. Obviously Didi’s taxis aren’t autonomous yet — although tech giant LeEco thinks it’s getting close — but they could nonetheless gather valuable data for Apple.
To be frank, a lot about this Didi deal is uncertain. But we know a few things for sure. We know that Apple wants to learn more about the Chinese market. We know that it’s spent $1 billion to do so. We know that that $1 billion went to a company that is currently beating Uber in China and has aspirations to do the same elsewhere, whether alone or through investing in companies like Lyft. Everything else is guesswork. Regardless, for speculators, and even those of us without a horse in the race, the next few years are certainly shaping up to be a fun ride.
E-book sales in the UK decline for the first time
There’s something to be said about a printed book. It’s easy to read outdoors, you can lend it to a friend and, unlike a top-end Kindle, it doesn’t spell disaster if you lose it. E-readers have their place, but today The Publishers Association (PA) has confirmed that Brits still love holding paper between their fingers. In the UK, printed book sales rose from £2.75 trillion in 2014 to £2.76 trillion in 2015 — the first increase in four years. Digital book sales, meanwhile, dropped from £563 million to £554 million over the same period. It’s the first drop in e-book sales the PA has ever recorded.
Was it a one-year blip? Maybe, maybe not. Clearly, printed books have a huge lead over e-books — but up until 2014, that gap was slowly shrinking in the UK. It’s not surprising given the popularity of e-readers and the convenience of downloading a novel over the internet. Still, these new numbers show that many Brits still prefer a book made from paper and ink. I guess I’m one of them — reading is one of the few hobbies I have that doesn’t involve a screen, and for the time being I’d like to keep it that way.
Source: The Publishers Association
Sprint’s Better Choice XXL plan includes a year of Amazon Prime
An Amazon Prime membership will cost you $99 a year, but Sprint is tacking on the two-day shipping subscription for free. Starting today, the carrier is giving new and existing customers who choose its Better Choice XXL plan 12-month access to Prime. The XXL option is $100 a month on its own, giving users 40GB of data and unlimited talk and text. Sprint was already offering customers Prime access for $11 a month, but now it’s offering folks who burn through data the chance to nab it at no additional cost.
If you’ll recall, Sprint’s Better Choice option provides unlimited 2G data once you hit your monthly cap, or you can choose to have the 4G allotment automatically extended a GB at a time for $15 each. As carriers continue to offer new incentives to try and entice customers, we’re sure to see the competition respond in the coming weeks.
Source: Sprint
iCloud Mail and Notes Down for Less Than 1% of Users
Apple has updated its System Status page to reflect that iCloud Mail and Notes may currently be unavailable for approximately 0.86% of users.
Apple says “users may be unable to send or receive mail and may also be unable to use Notes” until the services are restored.
The outage began shortly after 5:00 a.m. Pacific. This article will be updated when new information becomes available.
Tags: Mail, Notes
Discuss this article in our forums
Doom weapons, demons and environments explored: Everything you need to know
Doom is out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC today, Friday 13 May. And while we don’t have a review ready yet, thanks to servers only just going live, we do have a tonne of info that should help you when you spark up the game for the first time.
Firmly based on the game that started the whole ball rolling back in 1993, the latest Doom brings the demonic first-person shooter bang up to date. It does feature many of the same denizens and weaponry though.
That’s why we’ve put together a guide on the weapons, demons and locations you’ll encounter in this very modern retelling of the classic Doom story and how they were created. Bethesda has kindly provided us with each designer’s brief explanation of their inspirations and the thinking behind them.
READ: Doom is back: How has it changed over 23 years?
So have a flick through our gallery above and check out everything you need to know about the latest Doom.
It’s available now in game stores, online and as digital downloads.
Enjoy.
READ: Doom Collector’s Edition in pictures: See what you get for £100
NASA spacecraft record magnetic explosions above Earth
Space might look like a sprawling, inky abyss, but invisible to the human eye is a wealth of magnetic activity. Earth has a magnetic field called the magnetosphere, which is frequently buffeted by solar winds exuded by the Sun. These winds carry their own magnetic field and produce what scientists call a “magnetic reconnection” high above the Earth’s surface. In March 2015, NASA launched four spacecraft, known as MMS, so they could travel through the magnetosphere and record these reactions. Now, scientists have published their initial observations in the journal Science.
Recordings from a flyby in October 2015 show that when two magnetic fields collide, electrons shoot out from the point of impact in straight lines, speeding through the magnetic boundaries that would normally contain them. Once free, they slowly begin to curve and ultimately perform a U-turn in response to the new magnetic fields they encounter.
The quality of the data collected by MMS is unprecedented. Scientists have used satellites before to observe this phenomena, but as NASA explains, it was “like seeing debris flung out from a tornado, but never seeing the storm itself.” With MMS, researchers can sail into the heart of the storm.
“The decades-old mystery is what do the electrons do, and how do the two magnetic fields interconnect,” Jim Burch, lead author of the Science paper and principal investigator for MMS at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said. “Satellite measurements of electrons have been too slow by a factor of 100 to sample the magnetic reconnection region. The precision and speed of the MMS measurements, however, opened up a new window on the universe, a new ‘microscope’ to see reconnection.”
Magnetic reconnection converts magnetic energy into kinetic or thermal energy. It’s important to understand this phenomenon because it influences the “space weather” found in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Here, humanity operates a range of satellites which are occasionally disrupted by these intense reactions. MMS observations will allow NASA to improve its predictions for magnetic reconnection and, as a result, better control its equipment in space. Magnetic fields are present in other parts of the universe too, so dissecting these reactions — a prime driver of space radiation — could also protect our astronauts on risky missions.
Via: The Verge
Source: NASA
Chemicals in our breath can reveal how we feel about movies
The air inside movie theaters apparently reek of popcorn and suspense, though our noses can’t exactly smell the latter. According to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, audiences exhale chemicals that can indicate whether movies are funny or exciting. The team attached a mass spectrometer to a movie theater’s air duct, which measured chemicals in the air every 30 seconds. Think of it as a big breathalyzer. Thanks to that instrument, they were able to collect data from 108 screenings (and 95,000 people) of 16 movies, including The Hunger Games 2, Carrie, The Hobbit and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
The team matched spikes in carbon dioxide and isoprene — a chemical we also exhale — levels with the most exciting parts of the movies. Further, they were able to determine the difference in the concentration of chemicals between funny and suspenseful scenes. They still haven’t figured out why our bodies produce those two chemicals in bigger amounts during the most thrilling parts of a film. But a possible explanation is that we tend to breathe more quickly and become restless when we’re tense or excited.
Filmmakers could use the same technique to monitor test audiences’ breaths and gauge whether their movies would do well, or if they’re boring enough to warrant going back to editing. The team also believes that their study could provide data for future research on the human respiration and metabolism. For now, they’re still busy assessing even more data collected from viewers during Star Wars screenings.
Source: Nature, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
Brits can get Amazon Prime for £59 this weekend
If you’ve been weighing up an Amazon Prime subscription, now might be a good time to take the plunge. The Jeff Bezos empire has slashed the price of a one-year plan to £59, down from the usual £79. That’s a sizeable saving and puts the subscription just under £5 per month in the UK. Amazon has dropped the price in order to draw attention to The Grand Tour, a new motoring show that debuts on Prime Video this autumn with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond at the helm. You’ll need to be quick though – the Prime discount ends at midnight on May 16th.
Source: Amazon
ICYMI: Smart surfboard, robot hand that can learn and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: A University of Washington robot hand has an algorithm in it that knows what works and what doesn’t when handling things, and can improve itself over time. Samsung Brasil made a smart surfboard for a professional surfer that shows water conditions and incoming texts, and researchers hacked movies to include the visual style of art masters.
Mass transit fiends will want to know how the hyperloop test in Nevada went. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Hyundai is working on a real-life ‘Aliens’ exoskeleton
Lots of companies are working on exoskeleton suits, but most are designed to slightly increase your lifting capacity, prevent injuries or help you empathize. Not Hyundai, though — the South Korean automaker is aiming for something more extreme with a “wearable robot” that it likens to an Iron Man suit. Workers piloting the device can lift objects weighing “hundreds of kilograms,” according to the company. Soldiers can also use it to pack up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) over long distances.
The suit is a juiced up version of the H-LEX “wearable walking assistant” that Hyundai introduced last year. Unlike that lightweight version, which is worn like a suit, the fully mechanized exoskeleton “wears” you. However, Hyundai also has another version (below) that’s much more lightweight with just a mechanical spine and legs strapped to the user. That model is designed to help “paraplegics, the handicapped and the elderly,” according to the company.
Hyundai says the project is part of its “Next Mobility” system “that will lead to the free movement of people and things.” In other words, the car manufacturer is angling the suits as transportation, where other companies, like Panasonic and Daewoo, see them strictly them strictly as worker aids. Like Hyundai, DARPA is building an exosuit for soldiers for its “Warrior Web” program. As companies like Ekso Bionics have shown, however, such robotic suits may have the highest potential as rehabilitation aids.
Via: The Verge
Source: Hyundai
AIVAnet 