Apple begrudgingly adopts USB-C for iPhones, Apple Watch is as good as medical instruments for detecting blood oxygen level, and Google’s profit plummets in its earnings report.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, October 27, and I’m your host, Samira Balsara.
The writing has been on the wall for some time now. As a part of the European Union’s new mandate to cut down on electronic waste, Apple will have to put USB-C ports on iPhones, which currently uses a proprietary lightning cable. This direction has been further enforced through an interview by the company’s VP of marketing to Vice, in which Joanna Stern confirmed that Apple will be complying with the new regulation. While the new European Mandate requires all smartphone makers to use USB-C ports, Apple is the only one that’s still clinging onto a proprietary port for its phones. According to the Vice article, Stern made it “abundantly clear” that the company was not happy with the change.
Here’s another piece of Apple news. A new study found the Apple Watch to be on par with medical instruments in its reliability to detect blood oxygen levels. The validation study, published in the National Library of Medicine archive, compared the Apple Watch to a medical grade oximeter. In its conclusion, the study concluded that the watch can be reliably used to detect blood oxygen saturation below 90 per cent outside of the clinic. That’s high praise for a consumer grade device.
Google’s financial earnings report dropped with jaw dropping news: the company’s quarterly profit dropped by 27 per cent compared to the same quarter last year. Although Google’s revenue increased by six per cent, reaching $69.1 billion, it’s still slower than the 41 per cent growth it saw in Q3 2021. Its profit dropped from $18.9 billion to $13.9 billion year over year. The company cited a slowdown in its ad business, which is Google’s bread and butter. It seems like the leadership team saw this coming. In previous months, Google CEO Sundar Pichai called for a productivity reform, asking the company’s employees to be more “mission focused” and more efficient.”
A collaborative research project between scientists from universities in Denmark, Sweden and Japan has created a chip that can transfer almost two petabit of data per second. That’s essentially the traffic of today’s internet, the whole internet, according to a PC Gamer article. While it doesn’t break any records, the notable factor here is the throughput on a single system, which is more compact. Through this achievement, the scientists say it demonstrates the potential still yet to be discovered when it comes to optimizing network performance.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.