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// HAPPENING TODAY
- Foxconn reports earnings.
New iPads May Lose Makeup Mirror Functionality
With fall fast approaching, Apple is ramping up for its annual iPad refresh. Supply chain sources tell Bloomberg that the company’s manufacturing partners are already mass producing a new iPad and will soon begin building a new iPad mini as well. Hardly a surprise, as Apple has followed a similar schedule since it first moved its iPad launches to fall from spring. What is noteworthy, though, is the publication’s claim that these new tablets will feature an anti-reflective coating intended to improve their readability — something Apple rivals like Amazon have slagged as lousy in the past.
Then Travis Kalanick Could Finally Hold That Pink Mustache Bonfire He Secretly Dreams Of
Given Uber’s $18.2 billion valuation, why doesn’t it just buy Lyft? Seems easier than doing damage control on reports that its employees have a bad habit of booking and canceling rides from the rival service.
Enough With the Surge Tank Pricing Idea, Emil!
The Pentagon this week named eight new members to its Defense Business Board, among them Uber Senior Vice President of Business Emil Michael.
Entrepreneurship 101: Do Not Disrupt the Hand That Feeds You
So much for Square’s big plan to own both sides of the counter. The payments company has reportedly scrapped plans for a Square credit card. Evidently, Square has determined that disintermediating the financial institutions on which it has built its business is unwise — at this point, anyway. As one banking source told Fast Company, “If there were no credit cards and debit cards, there would be no Square.”
Daleks Delivering Room Service in Silicon Valley Hotel
John Markoff, the New York Times: “In a hotel lobby across the street from Apple’s corporate campus, a desk clerk places a razor in the bin of a three-foot-high robot and taps in a room number on a display. The robot, “Botlr,” chirps an R2-D2-style acknowledgment and rolls off to an elevator and its final destination.”
Richard Simmons Still Waiting for Phone Call From Apple HealthKit Team
When Apple debuted HealthKit at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this past June, it announced the Mayo Clinic as an early partner and said it was in talks with a number of other medical institutions about using the health and fitness data platform. Today, thanks to a report in Reuters, we know the names of a few of them: Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and electronic health records outfit Allscripts. High-profile and highly respected institutions, all of them, and ones that suggest just how broad Apple’s ambitions in health and fitness data really are.
Oh Shut Up, Microsoft
Microsoft: “The world doesn’t need another operating system. It needs a deeply personal, universally human way of operating. … The world needs Windows.”
Analyst Advises Chinese Phone Makers to Watch “Bambi Meets Godzilla”
Bernstein Research analyst Mark Newman: “Samsung has got so much firepower, and such a cost and scale advantage against the Chinese companies — who are tiny in comparison — that if they become aggressive again, they can cause a lot of problems for them. A lot of them won’t be able to survive if Samsung wants to turn the screws.”
It Works, but the Salmon Keep Coming Back and Lining Up for Another Ride
Josh Dzieza, The Verge: “Whooshh Innovations first designed its pneumatic tubes to transport fruit, but as Washington state debated what do about hydroelectric dams and the salmon whose migrations they blocked, the company saw its technology might have another purpose. … ‘So we put a tilapia in the fruit tube,’ says Todd Deligan, Whooshh’s vice president. ‘It went flying, and we were like, “Huh, check that out.”‘”
Off Topic
Dogs react to a levitating wiener and Robin Williams. It’s time for a convoluted stream of consciousness. Ask Me Anything!
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
