Month: April 2020

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Despite disruptions to both supply and demand caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, Apple posted $58.3 billion in revenue in its second quarter, eking out 1 percent growth over last year's second quarter.

This beat some recent expectations by investors, but it falls well behind the $63-67 billion guidance for the quarter the company initial gave before the coronavirus' effects were fully felt. Apple's retail stores have been closed around much of the world, and for a period of time earlier this year, its ability to assemble iPhones and other products was hampered as the virus first spread in China.

CEO Tim Cook spoke optimistically about the company's long-term prospects on a call with investors today, but in a break with common practice, Apple did not provide guidance for the next quarter, citing the inability to predict the pandemic's future impact. "We have great confidence in the long-term of our business," Cook said. "In the short-term, it's hard to see out the windshield to know what the next 60 days look like, and so we're not giving guidance because of that lack of visibility and uncertainty."

Enlarge / The TrueDepth sensor array on the iPhone. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple's Face ID method for authenticating on recent iPhones offers a number of security benefits, and it's a neat trick to boot. But in a pandemic-stricken world where many people either opt to or are even required to wear protective masks, users have discovered that Face ID doesn't usually work when they need it to. Those masks interfere with the iPhone's ability to read your face, and at the moment, there's no easy solution.

That might change with the next release of iOS. This week, Apple released the third beta of iOS 13.5, the next major feature release for its mobile operating system. Among other things, the beta introduces new Face ID behavior when users are wearing protective masks. Apple hasn't come up with some magical way to make the phone read your face through the mask, of course. Rather, the update fast-tracks you to passcode entry.

Right now, raising the iPhone to use it results in a quick scan with the front-facing TrueDepth sensor array to allow you to access your files, messages, and apps. If your face is obscured, the lock indicator shakes and the phone vibrates, indicating there's a problem. After Face ID times out, you're then prompted to swipe up to get to the screen where you can enter your passcode instead.

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  The Fairphone 3, now with a new /e/ OS option. [credit: /e/ ]

Fairphone and e Foundation are teaming up and taking the rare step of selling a non-Google Android phone to the public. The Fairphone 3, a midrange smartphone originally released in September 2019, can now come pre-loaded with the /e/ OS, a fork of Android that replaces the usual suite of Google apps and services with open source options and /e/'s cloud services. The goal of the two companies is to produce a "privacy conscious and sustainable phone." (It's "/e/ OS" but, for some reason, only "e Foundation.")

The Fairphone 3 was originally released in August 2019 for €450 ($493). If you buy the pre-loaded /e/ version from /e/'s website, the phone is €480 ($525). The Fairphone 3 build of /e/ is freely available no matter where you buy the phone, but presumably if you buy it from /e/, you're financially supporting your phone's OS development.

Fairphone was founded in 2013 with the goal of building sustainable smartphones that are environmentally friendly and fair to the people that make it. The phone is designed to be repairable by favoring screws instead of glue and having major components broken out into modules that are easily replaceable. The Fairphone 2 and 3 are the only devices with a 10-out-of-10 repairability score from iFixit. Fairphone even sells spare parts directly on its website: a new screen is €90 euros, a new battery is €30, and a replacement USB-C port is €20. The company also advocates for worker's welfare in the smartphone supply chain, with a focus on sourcing non-conflict minerals and a paying workers a living wage. The Fairphone 3 is still made in China, but it's assembled by Arima, which is working with Fairphone to improve workers' conditions.

Enlarge / Amazon's headquarters on a sunny day in 2018. (credit: Andrei Stanescu | Getty Images)

Amazon is reportedly (and suddenly) enforcing rules limiting employees' internal communication as workers, critical of the company's behavior, become increasingly outspoken and organized.

Internal listservs with more than 500 participants are now required to move to a moderated model where a manager must approve any content before its distribution, according to emails obtained by Recode.

Amazon had almost 800,000 total employees worldwide as of the end of 2019, a number that does not include the recent addition of another 175,000 temporary warehouse and delivery workers the company just hired to handle increased demand due to COVID-19. Of those 800,000, more than 500,000 are in the United States, and at least 275,000 of those are full-time employees.