Though it’s still early days, the numbers podcasters are seeing are highly encouraging. Forget those worries that the podcast bubble would burst the minute anyone actually got a closer look: It seems like podcast listeners really are the hyper-engaged, super-supportive audiences that everyone hoped.
[...]
Still, Apple’s new tool comes with caveats. For starters, it currently only counts users listening with devices that have been upgraded to iOS 11, so it’s best viewed as a representative sample of listeners, rather than hard data on how a show’s listenership is growing over time. And tracking ad-skipping is still a squishy business: Thanks to new technology that supports dynamic ad insertion, the length of a given ad break can vary depending on when a listener downloads a new episode, which can make it difficult to get an exact read on how many people might be skipping past the branded bits. But for a digital medium that’s had comically little data available to date, even slightly imprecise numbers will go a long way.
This tax-free transfer [of intellectual properties] generates a huge amount of future profits based on the revenue stream the patent will generate. A look at the hundreds of billions exfiltrated by companies such as Apple and Google (and thousands of others across the world) shows the magnitude of the problem. We could attempt to tax the intra-company transfer of a patent, but on what basis? How does the tax person assess the present value of future royalty payments? Short of prohibiting such transfers, there seems to be no realistic possibility to avoid the legal exfiltration of profits.
That such transfers kept happening right under the noses of so many vigilant tax entities for so many decades should give us a hint of the basic impossibility.
Apple's statutory 30 percent tax bill of $76.6 million was compounded by a number of additional tax expenses, adding up to a total income tax expense of $183 million for 2017. This included a tax adjustment of $90.3 million related to prior years and a deferred tax income expense of $12.6 million.
The company's overall revenue shot up from $744 million in 2016 to $811 million in 2017. Despite this increase in revenue, the local tax authority has not received a bump in payment from the consumer electronics company.
With its latest update, WhatsApp users are finding a new icon app appear when they connect to CarPlay. A WhatsApp icon and basic on-screen app interface are now part of the CarPlay experience, beyond what was already offered by WhatsApp’s SiriKit integration.
Overall, Belkin's WeMo Bridge works as expected out of the box, with minimal effort to set up.
The map, released in November 2017, shows every single activity ever uploaded to Strava – more than 3 trillion individual GPS data points, according to the company. The app can be used on various devices including smartphones and fitness trackers like Fitbit to see popular running routes in major cities, or spot individuals in more remote areas who have unusual exercise patterns.
However, over the weekend military analysts noticed that the map is also detailed enough that it potentially gives away extremely sensitive information about a subset of Strava users: military personnel on active service.
When Apple moves macOS to ARM, will I be able to dual-boot my iPad Pro into both iOS and macOS?
~
I hope there is a March event this year, with new Macintosh computers for the non-pros.
1) MacBook - Mr Jony Ive is listening, and a new laptop with a better keyboard will be available real soon now, right?
2) iMac - With the iMac Pro, Apple has demonstrated it can make a truly quiet desktop.
3) Mac mini.
~
Thanks for reading.