Tesla Inc on Wednesday posted its worst ever quarterly loss and said its Model 3 production target remains on track, expecting about 5,000 per week in about two months.

Tesla is an interesting case in the tech/auto industry, but surely they can’t continue these losses for much longer.

Hulu now has over 20 million U.S. subscribers – that’s up from the 17 million-plus it claimed in January. The news of its subscriber growth is being delivered alongside a series of pitches to advertisers at the company’s Upfronts presentation in New York this morning, where it’s also touting its upcoming original series and detailing its new ad products. One of those will be of particular interest to Hulu’s users, too – the company will at last allow subscribers to download shows to watch offline.

I love offline viewing with my Netflix account, so I’m sure this will be a big hit with Hulu subscribers. I tried Hulu a while ago, but I wasn’t all that impressed. I may give it another go.

Shares of Snap Inc sank as much as 22 percent to the lowest since its 2017 flotation on Wednesday, after first quarter numbers showed it losing confidence among users and advertisers due to a widely-panned redesign of Snapchat.

I’ve never been a big Snap user, but it seems to me that users of companies like this are very fickle—They could be very loyal one day and turn on you the next. This isn’t just about Snap, but every social media platform available today.

Amazon is pausing the unprecedented spree of headquarters construction that transformed the city of Seattle over the last decade, suspending plans to add 7,000 to 8,000 jobs in 1 million square feet of new office space.

Whether it’s a political maneuver to influence City Hall or an actual change in direction remains to be seen. But it could spook developers of housing and offices planning on Amazon’s continued growth.

Amazon has drawn a line in the sand and is sending a clear message to Seattle City Hall—approve this tax and we’re out.

From this terrific Kottke post, a link to a Wired article from June, 1997, just before Apple CEO Gil Amelio was ousted and Steve Jobs became de facto CEO. Dark days, about to emerge into brilliance.

The list of 101 ways to save Apple is brilliant, funny, and sometimes strangely prescient. And absolutely worth the read. So, so good.

Mike Wuerthele, Apple Insider:

Following anecdotal reports of a keyboard more prone to failure than in previous years, AppleInsider has collected service data for the first year of release of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 MacBook Pros, with an additional slightly shorter data set for the 2017 model year given that it hasn’t been available for a year yet.

Not including any Touch Bar failures, the 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard is failing twice as often in the first year of use as the 2014 or 2015 MacBook Pro models, and the 2017 is better, but not by a lot.

First things first, this is some nice, boots-on-the-ground reporting. The numbers are relatively small, but seems a good, if not precise, indicator of the problem.

Apple has a second-generation MacBook Pro keyboard. It is in the 2017 MacBook Pro, and repaired 2016 models. The repair percentages on those are up from the 2014 and 2015 keyboards as well, but not nearly as much as the 2016.

Note that all Apple Store MacBook Pro stock has the new second-generation butterfly keyboard. You can’t walk into an Apple Store and walk out with the old MacBook Pro keyboard. So the data that matters going forward is the repair data on machines with that new keyboard.

I’d like to see a bigger survey of machines with that new keyboard, to get a surer sense of the success Apple has had in solving the problem. The sense I get in talking with people at my local Apple Store is that the new keyboard design made a world of difference in terms of reliability. This just words? Is the dust problem still there?

One thing that I know is true: There’s no way for an average buyer to take their machine apart and swap out the keyboard if they do encounter this problem. As Mike says, it’s not an easy repair, requiring complete disassembly of the machine.

Kosuke Takahashi:

Currently, we rarely see braille implemented in the public space since it takes additional space and sighted people consider it not important. Braille Neue addresses this issue by making braille easy to use for sighted people. By spreading this typeset I believe more people will get acquainted with braille.

I love the concept and the execution. Follow the link, check out the font images. Not the first time this idea has surfaced, but if this becomes part of the Summer Olympic Games official signage, it will get a lot of exposure.

Marco Arment, on reducing the collection of personal data in the latest release of Overcast:

Your personal data isn’t my business — it’s a liability. I want as little as possible. I don’t even log IP addresses anymore.

If I don’t need your email address, I really don’t want it.

Well that’s refreshing.

[Via Pixel Envy]

Jeff Richardson, iPhone J.D.:

Yesterday, T-Mobile and Sprint announced that they will merge. If the government approves, then we will have only three major wireless companies in the United States. In the communications that I have seen from the two companies, including a joint website that went live yesterday, one of the main themes was that this merger would promote 5G, the next generation of wireless technology. This makes me wonder, what will 5G bring us, and when can we start to use it on the iPhone?

And:

The CTIA, a trade organization for the wireless industry, says that 5G can be 100 times faster than 4G, and a chart on its website predicts a transition from 100 Mbps download speeds to 10 Gbps. 5G will also feature low latency that can make the internet five times more responsive when you initiate each request.

All very interesting, but the most interesting nugget in the piece?

To date, wireless cell technology has been based on huge towers with antennas 125 feet in the air which would provide service for several miles. But it turns out that 5G will be different. 5G is much faster, but the signal doesn’t go nearly as far. So instead of a smaller number of tall towers, 5G will work with a large number of microcells placed around 500 feet apart, often on streetlights or utility poles.

But it won’t just be that microcell on a utility pole. As reported by Allan Homes earlier this year in the New York Times, “[m]uch of the equipment will be on streetlights or utility poles,” but it will often be “accompanied by containers the size of refrigerators on the ground.”

That’s a pretty significant infrastructure requirement. Which, to me, means we’ll only see 5G in the most urban settings.

The whole article is fascinating, suggests we’ll first see 5G iPhone/iPad support in 2020.

Peter Cohen:

Last week Apple made official news we’d suspected for a very long time: It’s discontinued the AirPort line of network routers. Apple says once its current stock of supplies is depleted, that’s it. Apple hasn’t needed its own line of networking gear for many years…In light of that, it’s little wonder why Apple’s decided to deprecate the AirPort line. Apple’s kept them pretty moribund for the past few years, too, with no significant changes to them for years.

I will still maintain that Apple had a great opportunity here it wasted by neglect, not unlike many other technologies Apple championed but ultimately ignored over the years.

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The news that Apple is discontinuing the AirPort line, although expected, is a bitter pill to swallow for many Mac enthusiasts that love the no-nonsense, easy to administer backup and recovery features on the Time Capsule series. Even though the Time Capsule will be no more, you can still use Time Machine for your backup and recovery purposes in your post-AirPort world.

I imagine this is a question a lot of people have since Apple announced it would discontinue the AirPort product line. The good news is, the Time Machine technology will work, without a Time Capsule.

Speaking of Gibson:

The company, which filed for chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, said it will continue to operate during the proceedings as it focuses on reorganizing around its core businesses. Gibson plans to wind down its Gibson’s Innovations business, which is largely outside of the U.S.

This is mismanagement at its worst. The Les Paul is my favorite guitar and I’m hopeful that someone will be able to save that instrument.

Last week, we reported that Tronical—the German company most well-known for its “robo-tuning” devices—had sued Gibson for $50 million. Now, Gibson has responded to Tronical’s lawsuit with a lawsuit of its own.

It’s true that most guitar players didn’t like the robot tuners that Tronical made, but I didn’t mind them. I have them on one of my more recent Les Pauls and they work fine, but I get why people don’t like them. Still, all of this Gibson mismanagement, financial problems, and lawsuits make me sad.

I joined John Gruber on his latest podcast and it was a great time, as always. We talked about MacBook keyboards, AirPower, and Google.

First, if you haven’t already, take a look at this Mark Gurman article which started it all, titled Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience.

At the core of the article:

Apple is developing the strategy as part of the next major iOS and macOS updates, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Codenamed “Marzipan,” the secret project is planned as a multiyear effort that will start rolling out as early as next year and may be announced at the company’s annual developers conference in the summer. The plans are still fluid, the people said, so the implementation could change or the project could still be canceled.

True? Not true? It’s a rumor (from last December), but one that got a lot of traction.

Yesterday, John Gruber posted the piece linked in the headline, Scuttlebutt regarding Apple’s cross-platform UI project, which brings some new, well, scuttlebutt to bear:

This “Marzipan” rumor got a lot of people excited. But Gurman’s report is so light on technical details that the excitement is based mostly on what developers hope it could mean, not what’s actually been reported. The less specific the rumor, the easier it is to project your own wishes upon it. And, oddly perhaps, we haven’t seen any additional rumors or details about this project in the four months since Gurman’s original report.

I’ve heard a few things, from first- and second-hand sources. Mostly second-hand, to be honest, but they’re all consistent with each other.

Click over to Daring Fireball to read said scuttlebutt. Interesting and, because it’s John Gruber, there’s a level of credibility that takes it beyond typical rumormongering.

34 days until WWDC.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

There are a lot of little tweaks in macOS that I rely on to make a Mac feel like my own. Placing frequently accessed folders on the right side of the Dock, turning off auto-correct, and turning up mouse and trackpad tracking speed are all in this category for me.

A rather hidden but critical example is Hot Corners. My Mac just feels broken with Hot Corners disabled, and my workflow is severely slowed. Here’s how it works.

First thing first, I couldn’t agree more. Hot Corners, part of Mission Control, is an incredibly valuable part of the Mac interface. I expect most of the folks reading this are aware of this longstanding Mac feature. But if you have never taken the time to set this up, or if you are critical support for other, less knowledgable or just plain newer Mac folks, jump on over to Zac’s article and pass the knowledge along.

One thing that really appeals to me about Hot Corners is a bit of science, wrapped up under the title Fitts’ Law. From the Fitts’ Law Wikipedia page:

This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. Fitts’s law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device.

If you have to wheel your mouse all the way across the screen to home in on a link, button, or menu title, Fitt’s law kicks in. But wheeling over to a corner is super easy, requires almost no steering. And that’s why Hot Corners is so powerful. You have four easy to get to places on your screen, each of which can be assigned some specific function.

Read Zac’s piece, set up Hot Corners if you haven’t already. It’s worth it.

Apple will hold their quarterly earnings call with investors and analysts today at 2p PT, 5p ET. A few links worth noting:

• To listen to the 2Q 2018 conference call live, tune in to Apple’s official earnings call stream.

• This article from Quartz does a nice job stepping through a variety of earnings issues, each with its own trend chart. Very easy to read, with charts that are simple enough to grasp at a glance. One chart I’d search for is a bit less than half-way down, called “Apple’s non-iPhone revenue, by quarter”. Take a look at the Services line. It’s been trending up for a long time. Services has become an important buffer for Apple growth. If that line continues to trend up, that should help take the heat off any issues with iPhone sales numbers.

• This Bloomberg article walks through some key Apple financial specifics, folding in some links/rumors as well. But what I found most appealing was the Services bar chart as well as these six things to look for from the end of the article:

• Analysts are looking for revenue of $61 billion in the fiscal second quarter, or 15 percent year-over-year growth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Earlier this year, Apple forecast sales between $60 billion and $62 billion for the period.

• Fiscal second-quarter iPhone unit sales are expected to be 51.9 million, up from 50.8 million a year earlier, according to average analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.

• For the fiscal third quarter, analysts see 39 million iPhones sold, on average, down from 41 million in the same period of 2017.

• The average selling price for iPhones will be $740 in the fiscal second quarter and $691 in the third, according to average analyst projections.

• Fiscal second quarter services revenue will hit around the $8.5 billion level reported in the holiday quarter. Munster sees 18 percent to 20 percent growth.

• Analysts are also looking for growth in Apple’s Other Products unit, which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePod.

Check your news feed at about 3p PT today. I expect it’ll be full of Apple earnings news.

Source: https://bitalphaai.app/

M.G. Siegler:

It’s a pretty standard pattern. If Apple neglects a product line for five-plus years, it’s dead, Jim. And this one, we actually already knew about in 2016. Still, it’s shockingly dumbfounding that Apple has officially killed off the AirPort product line.

I’ve written in the past about what the Apple TV product should have been. To quickly recap: the entertainment box many of us know and like (but don’t love) mixed with gaming (true gaming, with dedicated controls, not the middling iOS ports with that awful remote) mixed with full Siri integration. In other words, they should have made the first “smart speaker” for the home, but actually better. Instead, we got a dumb Apple TV and a dumb HomePod. Two wrongs to make a wrong.

What Apple should have done with the AirPort line is even more obvious. Clearly, this should have been baked into the Apple TV years ago.

I’d love to hear from Apple why this move, a move that was “obvious” to many of us for many years, was never attempted by the company.

Apple’s deal to buy NeXT was finalized in February 1997, Apple CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997, and Steve was named interim CEO in September 1997. This interview was recorded on October 2nd, 1997.

Good to have a sense of the sequence as you watch the video below.

Kirk McElhearn:

Back in the day, with .Mac and MobileMe, it was dead simple to make photo galleries to show off your pictures on the web. In 2012, Apple added photo sharing features to iCloud, which are essentially what we have today as shared albums. I had wondered why you couldn’t create a public album, and I mentioned it on Twitter a few days ago. One person pointed out that it was possible, and showed me where the feature was; it’s not easy to find.

Good tip. Kirk walks through the steps of building and linking to an iCloud-based public photo album.

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac, lays out his take on the best router and mesh alternatives, now that Apple has end-of-life’d their AirPort line.

Before you dig into Chance’s list, take a moment to read through the list of “features to look for” in Apple’s Choosing a Wi-Fi router to use with Apple devices support note.

My biggest concern about a third party solution is trust. If I buy an Apple branded product, I trust that there’s no malware embedded in the firmware/software. I trust that if a vulnerability is found, it will be patched quickly and that patch will make its way onto my device pretty quickly. I trust that if I do run into a problem with that device, I can turn to Apple, an Apple Store, or to the thriving and friendly on-line community to help solve it.

Apple selling a product does not bring the trust of an Apple-branded product. One case in point, the LG UltraFine 5K Display and the Wi-Fi interference problem. The problem was fixed, but the product was sold by Apple as it exited the display business.

My home network is the weakest point in my on-line security and the router the focal point for attempts to break in. Choosing a router I can trust is a critical decision. I hate that Apple has left this market. And no matter how recommended a router may be, I just won’t trust that my interests will come first with that company.

FastCompany:

A lot has changed since the early days when iTunes was mostly populated with The Ricky Gervais Show and an assortment of news podcasts repackaged from radio shows. These days, according to Apple, it is home to over 525,000 active shows, with more than 18.5 million episodes available, including content in over 100 languages. Its podcasts span the globe, covering 155 countries and, per Apple, “29 groupings of localized editorial.” In short, if you feel overwhelmed with podcast content–you’re not alone.

Mind-boggling numbers. The back end of the advertising-dollar gold-rush curve.

Amazon:

Starting May 11, 2018, new members will be charged $119/year for an annual Prime membership and $59/year for an annual Prime Student membership.

Starting June 16, 2018, existing Prime members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $119/year. Prime Student members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $59/year.

Monthly Prime members continue to pay $12.99 per month. Monthly Prime Student members continue to pay $6.49 per month.

This is the first price increase in four years but, like all price increases, it undoubtedly won’t sit well with some Prime members.

There’s another wave of complaints about specks of dust causing MacBook butterfly-switch keyboard to stop working. Rene Ritchie walks through some high profile cases, while balancing that with his own (and others) positive experiences.

A good read, and a problem for Apple.

How so? Even if the number of keyboards that do fail are within the to-be-expected failure rates, the butterfly-switch has developed a negative reputation. I suspect that reputation has cost Apple sales as people turn to alternatives, or just don’t pull the trigger on replacing their aging MacBook Pros. But more importantly, this is tarnishing Apple’s priceless brand.

So far, all we’ve got is deafening silence on the issue.