This week, Apple held an event in San Francisco, rival transportation apps in Asia battled for more funding, and Periscope added Facebook sharing. This is everything you need to know about tech this week.
1. We recapped everything you need to know about the massive 9/9 Apple event that took place in San Francisco. As always, we brought you hands-on videos and first-look coverage at everything Apple introduced. Major announcements included:
- The iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus with new rose gold finish and 3D Touch.
- The new, more powerful Apple TVÂ and its Siri-powered touch surface remote.
- The anticipated, 12.9″ iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil.
- The almost-forgotten iPad mini 4.
- The new cases and bands for the Apple Watch, as well as the company’s high-fashion partnership with Hermès.
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2. Josh Constine wrote that the major takeaway from Apple’s event is that the company is getting serious about making its mainstream products powerful enough for professionals.
3. It was a big week for transportation apps in Asia, as Uber raised $1.2 billion more in China, Didi Kuaidi raised $3 billion, and in India, homegrown taxi-hailing firm Ola launched a shuttle service.
4. Alex Wilhelm and Sarah Buhr wrote about how the Hillary Clinton campaign is quickly building out its technology wing, and recruiting from Silicon Valley in the process.
5. Microsoft announced that Office 2016 will arrive on September 22. The updated version of Office includes a number of new features for desktop customers, including the ability to co-edit documents at the same time and sync files to OneDrive in the cloud.
6. Ron Miller took a closer look at the progress of IBM’s Watson Health, explaining how IBM is throwing a lot of resources at Watson Health and it hopes to use its tech to drive change across the healthcare industry. Ron also wrote about how Internet companies need to start thinking about how to simplify security for users, while making it harder for the bad guys to steal credentials in “Kill The Password.”Â
7. Google’s new payments platform Android Pay, a rival to both Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, began rolling out across the U.S. in 1 million locations.
8. Guest contributor Dan Kaplan wrote about Facebook’s Messenger and the challenge to Google’s Search dominance. Because deep down, Google knows that keyword search is not the future.
9. We went hands-on with Google’s OnHub router, and concluded that if you’re having Wi-Fi issues at home, then OnHub is definitely worth a try.
10. We learned that Periscope has secretly been building an Apple TV app. Twitter’s live-streaming app then announced it added Facebook sharing as well as support for landscape broadcasts. This could help Periscope better stake its ground in the live-streaming race. Meanwhile, journalists and other Verified Profiles on Facebook are getting access to the Periscope-like Mentions app previously reserved for Verified Pages.
11. We attended London-based Entrepreneur First‘s fourth Demo Day, and got to know a few startups tackling projects like 3D modeling to help with cancer surgery, and AR-powered books for children, and a few that are focusing on cybersecurity and video content monetization. These were our top picks.
12. We reported that CrunchBase is spinning out to become a standalone company, backed by Emergence Capital. AOL, we’re told, will remain a “significant investor.”
13. Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins, the case that captivated Silicon Valley for years, finally came to an end. Ellen Pao released a statement saying she will not appeal her case against Kleiner Perkins and will pay the required legal costs to the firm.