💻 A lot of Apple news
Apple's WWDC ended and there was a ton of news and new products.
👋 Welcome to FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest.
In this edition
Apple WWDC 2022
A common charger (USB-C) in the EU by 2026 for all new smartphones, tablets and laptops
Spotify’s Investors Day news
Note: 🎤 This week I gave an interview to Mediar.cz in Czechia, so if someone is interested, you can find the interview here. Here is the English version translated by Google. I talked about my work @ SME.sk - podcasts, newsletters and digital subscriptions.
A week of Apple news
OK, by now you’ve heard about the new redesigned MacBook Air with an M2 processor and probably many of the changes coming to the iOS 16 lock screen. And those who develop apps I’m sure are still watching various sessions from Apple’s developer conference.
The Verge has put together the 16 biggest announcements, so that’s helpful, but there were other interesting stories that came out during the week and I want to focus on those.
One of the long-awaited functionalities Apple announced was Pay Later, a now typical "buy now, pay later" service we are used to from Affirm or Klarna. Although, the interesting part came out later - Apple will be offering lending services itself through Apple Financing LLC, a wholly-owned Apple subsidiary, instead of relying on banking partners (such as Goldman Sachs Apple hired for its Apple Card credit card for lending and credit).
And not only that, but the company is also working on its own payment-processing service, which more and more makes Apple compete with a variety of fintech and financial companies.
Wired looked more closely at the new WatchOS 9 and said its new running-focused features might make the Apple Watch the most comprehensive fitness tracker you can buy. And even more so with the coming autumn update.
For all that, if you look at the recent European Journal of Sport Science study that compared Apple Watch 6, Polar Vantage V and Fitbit Sense concluded all three showed poor accuracy for energy expenditure and warned that:
Healthcare care professionals, athletes/coaches and the general population may want to proceed with caution on the clinical utility of energy expenditure of these devices during the implementation of an exercise training or nutritional programme.
Some look at the released iOS 16 beta code and found it includes multiple references to an always-on display which is not surprising as the opening WWDC keynote showed all those new lock screen features.
For me, one of the most interesting new things Apple teased was the Freeform app for collaborative work on a whiteboard.
After WWDC, I taped a tech podcast (in Slovak) I always do after Apple events and mentioned Freeform seems to go after Figma, but then a listener reached out pointing out it’s much closer to Miro (he literally said Apple de facto copied the app).
TECH
🥳 The E.U. is requiring all new smartphones and many other digital devices to offer the same type of charging port by 2026: USB-C. [NYT]
😳 New in Elon-Twitter-verse: Musk is still threatening to pull out of the deal. But with the latest move where he asked for a dump of Tweets and Twitter gave them to him to examine it might just be he buried himself deeper into the deal (at least, that’s what Bloomberg’s Matt Levine thinks). [NYT]
🤔 Meta halts development of Apple Watch rival, also won’t make AR glasses available to buy any time soon. And Portal will no longer be available for consumers, will be aimed at business customers working from their home offices. Like others, Meta is also looking where to cut costs and has been sunsetting various projects over the past months. [Bloomberg]
💻 Dell unveils a slimmer XPS 13 and a detachable 2-in-1. [Engadget]
😮 Chinese hackers exploited years-old software flaws to break into telecom giants. Their campaign lasted for at least two years. [MIT Tech Review]
🪟 Smart windows with specialized glass that keeps heat in during winter and lets it out during summer could make buildings much more efficient. To work on a scale they would need to get a lot cheaper. [Knowable Magazine]
😅 OK, this is fun: An American Saxophonist tricked the KGB by encrypting secrets in music using a custom encryption scheme based on musical notation. US musicians smuggled information into and out of the USSR. (Tested it with a musician friend, whether he sees any words, but he couldn’t figure it out easily) [Wired]
🛸 DJI Mini 3 Pro review. DJI Mini 2 has been a kind of default budget pick drone for a long time. The update has a better camera and many new features. But also many issues.
👀 Ethereum’s Merge upgrade went live on Ropsten testnet. [Decrypt]
🙋♂️ Linktree launches a new Marketplace directory for users to browse its platform partners and integrations. For creators, Marketplace provides them with more views, streams, donations, bookings, purchases and more. [TechCrunch]
😶 Zuckerberg lost his no. 2 and now has 4 top lieutenants: Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer; Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs; Chris Cox, the chief product officer; and javier Olivan, who replaced Sandberg as COO. [NYT]
📲 A new book discovery app, Tertulia, is distilling online chatter about books to point readers to those that are driving discussions. [NYT]
⌚️ Review: Garmin Vivosmart 5. Pros: Affordable (€150), easy to use, better touchscreen, sync with Strava and detects abnormal heart rate. [Wired]
MEDIA
🧑🎤 What happens after TikTok songs go viral?
👩💻 Kara Swisher leaves the New York Times to return to Vox Media and will launch a companion series for 'Pivot' at Vox. [HR]
🇭🇺 My friend András Pethő shares lessons he learned while working under Orbán’s crackdown on Hungary’s free press. He advises against making yourself the center of the story. [Nieman Reports]
🎓 The Economist’s online courses for executives are generating six-figure sums. The publication’s move into education shows other publishers there is a market for this and lays out the template for how to combine education and journalism. One course costs more than €1700 and usually has between 100 - 300 attendees. [DCN]
🤓 International Press Institute announced Media Innovation Europe, a new two-year programme. From business consultancies and incubators to hackathons and accelerators, independent media outlets across Europe can apply and get training and grants for up to €20,000. [IPI]
🤦♂️ If you have been hearing stories about ‘The Washington Post’s social media meltdown’ and are interested, but have no clue, start here and then read this piece. Note to self: Public fighting among journalists is not a good look and damages the news brand. Also, journalists are only people, of course, some of them are going to hate each other. [The Guardian]
📉 BuzzFeed shares are trading around $2.20. A sad story if you ask me.
FROM THE FIX
1️⃣ How is an editorial board different from a newsroom? Few readers understand the distinction
2️⃣ How to improve your Engagement Funnel and increase ARPU
3️⃣ Community building platforms: Facebook Groups vs. Twitter Communities vs. Discord. Which to choose?
4️⃣ Italy’s Il Post hits 50,000 subscribers
5️⃣ Investigations into Finnish police, corporate landlords across Europe win 2022 European Press Prize
[ 📬 Get The Fix newsletter delivered to your inbox every week with the latest insights, news, and analysis about the European media market. Sign up here > ]
AUDIO
👋 Clubhouse is losing talent and steam, and with it also the whole live social audio ecosystem. Clubhouse’s downloads fell 80% year-over-year from the first half of 2021 to the first half of 2022. [Protocol, Bloomberg]
🤩 The ultimate podcast growth playbook. [Chartable]
📊 Data from the U.S. suggests more and more listeners up to 34 years old are paying for audio without ads (not just podcasts, but it’s a good trend for paid podcasting). [Edison Research]
🧐 Spotify’s Investors Day news
The company targets 1 billion listeners by 2030. At the end of Q1 2022, it had 422 million users. [WSJ]
Spotify CEO teased a major push into audiobooks. [Axios]
Spotify said its podcasting business will soon become profitable. [HR]
Spotify brought in €200 million in podcast revenue in 2021. The company said it is still in “investment mode” but expects podcasts to be a “$20 billion opportunity.” [HR]
Spotify monetizes only 14% of the listening time currently in podcasts. About 30% of Spotify’s user base, or more than 125 million monthly users, listened to podcasts in the first quarter of 2022, representing 7% of total listening hours on the platform in the period. [Variety]
GAMING
🕹 Meta launched Crayta, a social game development platform similar to Roblox, on Facebook Gaming’s cloud service. [Protocol]
🎮 Netflix showed off an impressive lineup of indie games for smartphones, as part of its growth strategy in gaming. [The Verge]
❓ Poll: What are you the most excited about that was announced at this year’s WWDC?
🙌 Thanks. I used HandyPolls to create this poll (instructions).
Last poll results: Where do you watch the most online videos (YouTube, Netflix, HBO Max…)? 29% smart TV; 27% notebook/computer; 22% phone; 9% tablet; 22% elsewhere (don’t ask me where, a smartwatch? 😅)