This week, Tesla launched pre-orders for its solar roof tiles, Snap Inc. stumbled through its first earnings report and Apple bought up a small sleep tracking startup. These are a few of the top stories from this week, plus some longer weekend reads.
1. Tesla’s highly anticipated solar roof tiles went up for pre-order.
The question everyone seems to be asking though, is how much will they cost? Turns out pricing is going to be different for every home. Tesla has also built a cost calculator that crunches the numbers for your specific house.
2. Snap Inc. had its first earnings report, and things didn’t go so well.
After Snap’s successful IPO, investors are watching for daily active user growth, the company’s reaction to Facebook’s swift attacks on its core product and how it is monetizing its mobile platform in general. Investors were disappointed this week as Snap’s stock got absolutely crushed after falling short of Wall Street’s expectations in its first earnings report. Snap’s year-over-year growth rate continued to slip, falling to 36 percent year-over-year, down from 48 percent in Q4.
3. Microsoft held its annual Build developer conference.
The main takeaway from the two-day keynote was that Microsoft wants to meet developers where they, no matter whether they are building for iOS, Android or Windows. Microsoft announced that it is massively expanding the reach of what the Microsoft Graph can do and where developers and users can interact with it. Graph is the company’s way for connecting all of those devices together for consumer experiences, even if they are on Android and iOS, too. The company made a plethora of other announcements around HoloLens, mixed reality, databases, Windows 10 and Office, too.
4. Emmanuel Macros’s campaign hacked ahead of French election triumph.
Private emails from the campaign of the winning candidate in France’s presidential election, Emmanuel Macron, were posted online by an unknown source. The politician confirmed the leak in a statement, warning that this was, like other recent hacks, an attempt to interfere with the election and that fabricated content was mixed in with genuine emails. One thing we know for sure is that political campaigns will never be the same.
5. Apple acquires a sleep tracking company called Beddit.
Apple has acquired a sleep tracking hardware and software company. The Finland-based company was founded in 2007 and had received about $3.5 million in funding. Beddit posted that user information “will be collected, used and disclosed in accordance with the Apple Privacy Policy.” Its site will stay live for the time being.
6. Amazon unveils the $230 Echo Show, shipping June 28.
Amazon unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen that is the newest addition to its Alexa-powered Echo range of home hubs that plays media and responds to voice commands.
7. Instagram launches mobile web sharing
Instagram wants to be the photo app for the whole world, even if you can’t download it. In pursuit of international growth where networks are slow and data is expensive, Instagram gave its mobile website a huge upgrade that adds core features of the main app, like photo sharing and a lightweight version of the Explore tab.
Weekend reads
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talks artificial intelligence, neural interfaces and holodecks. Read more in AI Everywhere.
U.S. millennials and Gen Zs aren’t entirely replacing their Snapchat addiction with Instagram Stories, according to a dozen studies and surveys commissioned or collected by TechCrunch. Snapchat users have stayed loyal, but Instagram could severely block its growth.