Snapchat now creates QR codes for web links

Remember the days when you were supposed to share websites between phones using QR codes? They’re back, but with a modern twist. Snapchat is updating its mobile apps (iOS at first, with Android still in beta) with the ability to create Snapcodes for websites, not just your profile. If you want to share an article or plug your favorite page, your friends only have to capture it to start browsing from within the app.

It’s hard to know if this will be rabidly popular among everyday users. If you just want to quickly show friends a site, why not just send the raw link through text chat? However, it might be particularly helpful for businesses. If an extra-trendy brand uses Snapcodes, it can now point you to the web (where it can make ad money) instead of hoping that you’ll eventually do more than check out its Snaps. Given that Snapchat is reportedly on the cusp of becoming a publicly-traded company, it has a strong incentive to make site sharing easy.

Via: TechCrunch, Sam Sheffer (Twitter)

Source: App Store

Tesla’s Powerpacks are now lighting up California’s grid

“Batteries are boring when they are successful.” That’s Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, speaking on Monday to an audience of reporters, employees and government officials sitting in the middle of the new 20-megawatt Mira Loma energy storage station in Ontario, California. Behind him, row upon row of Tesla Powerpacks and industrial inverters filled the fenced-in 1.5-acre lot. Those gleaming white battery boxes, though boring looking, are capable of powering up to 15,000 homes for four hours during peak times, or roughly 2,500 homes for an entire day. This is an important development indeed, because it means utilities won’t have to fire up fossil fuel-powered stations to fill the energy gaps.

Electric utility company Southern California Edison (SCE) teamed up with Tesla to bring one of the world’s largest electron-storing solutions to life in less than six months. In fact, it only took three months to go from groundbreaking to running. The urgency came down to a gap in the grid created by the loss of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility.

While getting both a large company like SCE and the local government to move quickly on a project is difficult, Tesla had no problem delivering its large batteries to the site; the Powerpack containers and companion inverters are pretty much plug and play. Once the concrete was poured, the companies installed the system and connected it to the grid.

When the energy-storage station went online, the large batteries began pulling power from the grid when there was an surplus. Before battery systems like this were available, any extra electricity created by power stations or from renewable sources was wasted. The utility can then dole out the energy from the Powerpacks during an outage or when the grid is maxed out (read: in the summer when everyone has their AC blasting).

This is a huge step toward reducing the grid’s reliance on fossil fuel-generated electricity. Currently, one major issue with renewable sources such as wind and solar is that if they’re generating more power than the system needs at that moment, it’s wasted. But with battery stations like Mira Loma, those electrons can be stored for later use.

SCE CEO Kevin Payne told the audience during yesterday’s station tour that this isn’t a pilot program or test. “This project is part of our vision at Southern California Edison,” he explained.

And you can expect to see more of these energy-storage stations in the next few years. So when it’s 100 degrees and you’re blasting your AC, remember that some boring boxes in the middle of a field are making it possible while reducing the amount of pollution being pumped into the sky.

iPhone 7 turns around slowing sales for Apple

iPhone sales were bound to start dropping sooner or later, but today’s earnings news from Apple sees a turnaround: iPhone sales are back up after a year. In the first full quarter with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus on the market, Apple sold 78.3 million smartphones. That’s up about five percent from a year ago, when the company moved 74.8 million iPhones. Historically, a new iPhone model has guaranteed that sales would be up as well — and even though the iPhone 7 is a rather iterative model, it was enough to do the trick.

As the iPhone goes, so goes Apple’s overall financial health. This quarter, revenue of $78.4 billion and profits of $18.4 billion are massive numbers and both increases on a year ago.

The Mac was another winner this quarter — but just barely. The company sold 5.37 million Macs, up a small 1.4 percent over the year-ago quarter. It’s not surprising that the first MacBook Pro refresh helped out the overall line, although it’s a pretty small bump over last year. The iPad wasn’t so lucky, with sales of 13.1 million representing yet another down quarter. That’s 19 percent less iPads than Apple sold a year ago, and we’re now looking at three full years of declining iPad sales. While Tim Cook has continued to say the product is how Apple defines the future of computing, the numbers don’t lie, and it’ll be interesting to see if he addresses the continued drop today.

Apple is continuing to decline to say how many Apple Watches it sells, so all we have to go on there is Tim Cook’s word — the CEO said that it was a record quarter for Apple Watch revenue. However, revenue in the “other products” category (which covers things like Beats, the iPod, Apple TV and accessories in addition to the Apple Watch) declined year over year, so the Watch wasn’t quite enough to make up for losses in other product categories.

The last big part of Apple’s business is is services business, which covers things like Apple Music, iCloud, the App Store and so on. It was a big winner this quarter, continuing the trend we saw in 2016. Apple says that the $7.17 billion in revenue from services is a record, though in terms of overall revenue it’s now just slightly behind the Mac ($7.24 billion) in terms of how much overall cash it pulls in.

As usual, Apple will be holding a call with CEO Tim Cook and we’ll be updating this post with anything else we learn. Elephants in the room include the iPad, when the company might get more AirPods to consumers, and what the response has been to the new MacBook Pro. We’re guessing he’s going to say that customers just love it.

Source: Apple

Trump to announce his SCOTUS pick tonight via Facebook Live

Donald Trump will announce his nominee for the vacant Supreme Court Justice seat tonight via Facebook Live. The stream begins at 8pm Eastern via the POTUS Facebook channel. As CNN reports, both candidates (Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman) have apparently been told they’re Trump’s favorite for the lifetime seat. Apparently, there will be Apprentice-style staging for the announcement: one prospect will walk away without the job while the world watches. Political theater like this is nothing new for Trump, but turning the presidency into a reality show is sure to ruffle some feathers.

Source: POTUS (Facebook)

Google Makes Chrome Browser for iOS Open Source

Google today announced that the code for Chrome for iOS is being added to its Chromium project and will be available through the company’s open-source repository going forward.

According to Google, Chrome for iOS was previously kept separate from the rest of the Chromium project because of the “additional complexity” required for the platform, such as the need for the browser to be built using the WebKit rendering engine.

Google says the company’s engineers have spent “a lot of time” over the last few years tweaking the Chrome for iOS code needed to upstream into Chromium, a process that was recently completed.

Today, that upstreaming is complete, and developers can compile the iOS version of Chromium like they can for other versions of Chromium. Development speed is also faster now that all of the tests for Chrome for iOS are available to the entire Chromium community and automatically run any time that code is checked in.

Designed as an alternative to Safari, Chrome for iOS is available for free to all users from the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]

Chrome users won’t notice any obvious changes to the browser, but the shift to open source will make it easier for Google to release new versions of Chrome for iOS.

Tags: Google, Chrome
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Apple Reports Record Results for 1Q 2017: $17.9B Profit on $78.4B Revenue, 78.3M iPhones

Apple today announced financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2017, which corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2016. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $78.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $17.9 billion, or $3.36 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $75.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $18.4 billion, or $3.28 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Both revenue and earnings per share were company records in what is traditionally Apple’s strongest quarter due to the launch of new iPhone models.

Gross margin for the quarter was 38.5 percent compared to 40.1 percent in the year-ago quarter, with international sales accounting for 64 percent of revenue. Apple also declared an upcoming dividend payment of $0.57 per share, payable on February 16 to shareholders of record as of February 13.

Apple sold a record 78.3 million iPhones during the quarter, up slightly from 74.8 million a year earlier, while Mac sales rose slightly to 5.4 million units from 5.3 million units in the year-ago quarter. iPad sales continued their recent declines, falling to 13.1 million from 16.1 million.

“We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way. We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Revenue from Services grew strongly over last year, led by record customer activity on the App Store, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

Apple’s guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2017 includes expected revenue of $51.5–53.5 billion and gross margin between 38 and 39 percent. Revenue guidance is slightly below analyst expectations.

Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q1 2017 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference call starts at 2:00 PM Pacific – No need to refresh

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Tag: earnings
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