Month: February 2023

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Grandfathered-in "Legacy G Suite" users got a scare recently when another new "transition" message started popping up in the Google Admin console. "The transition to Google Workspace has started," said the new message that suddenly appeared in people's accounts. This was after Legacy G Suite users went through a contentious transition last year, where Google's opening position involved shutting down their accounts if people didn't start paying, but eventually, it was talked into not doing that. A Google spokesperson tells us the Workspace transition message was "a bug that surfaced an old banner from earlier in the process last year, and our team is working on removing it. More changes are not happening at this time, and those who previously opted-in for personal use are not expected to take any further action."

We've received a few questions about this message, and this Reddit post has people wondering what the deal is, but it's just a bug. That's great because Legacy G Suite users have gone through enough already. To recap, Google currently offers businesses the option to pay a monthly fee for a Google/Gmail account that ends in a custom domain name instead of @gmail.com. Today this is called "Google Workspace," but due to Google's constant rebrands, it was first called "Google Apps for your Domain," then "Google Apps," and then "G Suite." Google's custom domain service was not always paywalled and not always exclusively aimed at businesses—it was free from 2006 to 2012. Google even pitched these accounts to families as a way to let everyone have similar email addresses. Some people did so, which means today they are getting a paid service for free.

Don't believe a word of this message. (credit: nativecode_)

Last year, the Google accounting department turned its Eye of Sauron on these long-term users and threatened to take away their nearly 16-year-old accounts if they didn't start paying a business rate for these formerly free and not necessarily business accounts. After a public outcry, Google eventually left these "Legacy G Suite accounts" alone after making users confirm that they were using their accounts for "non-business" purposes. After that, everything was settled.

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

Apple reported its earnings for Q1 2023 today, and it was one of the company's poorest-performing quarters in recent years. It was the company's biggest decline since 2016 and the first since 2019. Overall revenue was down more than 5 percent year-over-year as the company failed to match sales from the same quarter last year across most of its hardware categories.

iPhone revenue was $65.78 billion for the quarter, down 8.17 percent year over year. Similarly, "Other Products"—which includes the Watch, AirPods, and some other outliers—was down 8.3 percent year over year at $13.48 billion. The real underperformer was the Mac, which was down almost 30 percent at $7.74 billion.

The two parts of the business that did grow were services— which include things like Apple Music and TV+, iCloud, and AppleCare—and the iPad. Services were up 6.4 percent at $20.77 billion, while the iPad grew 29.66 percent to $9.4 billion.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | UniversalImagesGroup)

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

An extensively drug-resistant bacterial strain is spreading in the US for the first time and causing an alarming outbreak linked to artificial tears eye drops, according to an alert released Wednesday evening from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, the germ has caused various infections in 55 people in 12 states, killing one and leaving others hospitalized and with permanent vision loss.

Infected patients reported using more than 10 brands of artificial tears collectively, with some patients using multiple brands. But the most common brand used among the patients was EzriCare Artificial Tears, a preservative-free product sold by Walmart, Amazon, and other retailers.