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Apple Makes Guidelines for the App Developers to Offer Discounts to Entice Past Subscribers

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Apple has posted an article regarding how the iOS, macOS, and tvOS app developers will be able to offer discounts on the subscription plans to their app users. Due to the increase in the subscribers for many apps in the past time, the company was working on its guidelines and tools in order to manage those subscription apps. The company released the news through a blog post on Monday.

Previously, the company had produced more strict guidelines on how the subscription plans should work. But the new guidelines will help the app developers to offer new discounts to its existing subscribers and to lure the new ones. The offers will also help the developers to regain their former users.

According to the ‘current’ guidelines, the discounts are only available on the limited time subscription plans (at the beginning), which are the part of introductory promotions, and as soon it ends, the subscribers have to pay the full amount of the subscription fee. Also withdrawing from the subscription plan is quite a tedious job. Even the developers are not allowed to make changes to those subscription plans.

But the new guidelines will make it easy for the subscribers to cancel their subscriptio. And, the developers will also be able to produce new offers to attract their former and new subscribers. This will provide the developers more control over their apps, as now they will be able to drop or raise the price of their subscription according to the demand, like offering discounts on the subscription plans during the festive or holiday season, etc.

The new guidelines from Apple will allow the developers to offer ten types of different deals to promote their apps’ subscription plans. And, if any user decides to withdraw from the subscription, the developers can suggest more tempting offers to them to make them stay. According to the previous guidelines, the developers were also unable to see the users with disabled auto-renewal of the plan, but now they will not only be able to see those users but also offer them discounts to draw them to opt for the auto-renewal.

Microsoft Unveils its New $3,500 Second-gen Holographic Headset HoloLens 2 at MWC 2019

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Starting on Sunday, a few tech giants have already showcased their upcoming technologies, in the Mobile World Congress ( MWC) 2019 happening in Barcelona, Spain, including LG that introduced its forthcoming foldable phone in the same event.

HOLOLENS-2
Image Source: wired.com

On the same league, Microsoft also revealed its new second generation mixed reality headset, HoloLens 2, the successor to 2016’s groundbreaking holographic headset. The device is an AI-backed pair of goggles, integrated with the company’s Azure cloud services. The new HoloLens 2 is more efficient, more advanced and more improved version of its predecessor.

The HploLens 2 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Compute Platform and also has its own custom-built processing unit. The device comes with an iris authentication technology, such that it is ready to use as soon as the user puts it on. It offers a double field view, approximating 2,000 pixels per eye, maintaining the holographic density of 47 pixels per degree of sight. The headset projects across a 100-degree swath, which is almost double as of its predecessor, projecting to a wider viewing area. It is built with the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) display technology, providing the 2K display for each eye.

The device boasts a 5-channel microphone array, and spatial built-in hardware is employed to the device, which controls the audio I/O of the device. The device is embedded with an advanced ToF sensor, through which the headset allows the users to interact with a hologram with their hands. Now the user does not need to use the virtual reality icons, rather they can simply move their hands to control the HoloLens. It also includes a 12-megapixel RGB camera, to facilitate video conferencing.

The device uses the USB-C for charging and includes a pretty generic 2×2 802.11ac wireless radio. It also offers Remote Rendering which processes the holograms of up to 100 million polygons, through the Azure-powered service, serving as the external GPU for the HoloLens 2.

The new HoloLens 2 is more immersive and more comfortable than its predecessor. The cost of the headset is set to be $3,500 (around Rs. 2,49,000), and currently, is only available on the Microsoft e-shop, for the citizens of United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia, and New Zealand. According to Kipman, Microsoft’s technical fellow for AI and mixed reality, the device is not for the gamers or the knowledge workers but is specially designed for the enterprise customers, workers who fix gear shifts and work on oil rigs, and the military personnel.

Pinterest May Go Public Coming June; Files Confidentially for U.S. IPO

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According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the social media website, Pinterest has confidentially filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The news came out on Thursday, according to which the company is seeking a valuation of at least $12 billion over its IPO.

pinterest
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Pinterest plans to go for the IPO in the month of June this year, for that it has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co, as the lead underwriters, although the company has denied commenting over this matter.

Pinterest is one of the largest, still-private, companies and the Unicorns of Silicon Valley, that had also raised $150 million in a private funding round in 2017. A few months ago the CEO of the company Ben Silbermann had also announced in a statement that the company was planning to go public in April 2019. But due to the economic slowdown, like few other companies, the IPO has delayed to June.

In the last September, it was estimated that the San Francisco based company caters to over 250 million through the company’s website and mobile app. The users use Pinterest as a bulletin board where they pin the things of their interest. The app is also used as an e-commerce platform to sell products and services. The company itself earns profits from marketing and advertisements. In 2018, the recorded revenue of the company was more than $700 million.

The news of the company going public can be an after effect of the other tech giants like Slack, Uber and Lyft filing for their IPO, even though the company has still maintained confidentiality over this topic. Under the JOBS Act of 2012, a few companies with annual revenue less than $1 billion can file for IPO confidentially, such that they could raise capital before the before releasing detailed financial information.

WhatsApp Confirms the Bug in the New Authentication Feature on its iOS App

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The data security has become the prime concern today and to maintain proper privacy, WhatsApp had rolled out a new biometric security feature for its iPhone app users, earlier this month. The security features made use of the Face Id and Touch Id to unlock WhatsApp, such that in the case of the unlocked phone screen, the users had to use the Face Id or the Touch Id to unlock WhatsApp.

But, a bug has been discovered in this new biometric feature that allows anyone to access WhatsApp, even the Face Id or the Touch Id is enabled for the app. This new feature was made available to the iOS users having WhatsApp version 2.19.20, and the bug was first reported on Reddit by a user named de_X_ter. Even WhatsApp has accepted that it is aware of the bug and is taking proper measures to fix it asap.

According to the Reddit post, the user can bypass the FaceId or the Touch Id security if the user selects any option other than “Immediately” for the Screen Lock under the WhatsApp Account’s Privacy Settings. The Screen Lock options other than “Immediately” are “After 1 minute”, “After 15 minutes”, and “After 1 hour”, which lets the users bypass the security using the WhatsApp share option on any other third-party application.

In reality, when the Screen Lock is enabled for the WhatsApp account, and the user tries to use the WhatsApp share option using other apps, a Face ID or Touch Id authentication must appear on the screen every single time. But due to the bug, the Screen Lock is not working the way it should. If we use the same share feature when the “Immediately” option for the Screen Lock is enabled, the Face Id and the Touch Id is working perfectly fine.

WhatsApp has acknowledged the issue and said in a statement, “We are aware of the issue and a fix will be available shortly. In the meantime, we recommend that people set the screen lock option to immediately.”

Samsung Finally Released its Next Generation Galaxy 10 Series Smartphones

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Samsung has just added three new models to its Galaxy smartphone flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+, and S10e. The company launched the phone in its Samsung Galaxy Event on 19 February, held in San Francisco, along with another Galaxy smartphone, i.e. Galaxy fold and other devices including the Samsung wearable, earbuds, etc.

All the four phones are redesigned with the new smart screen, providing the cinematic view to its users. The screen is baseless, and even the front camera is placed within the display, to provide the HD photo quality. By default, the screen resolution is full HD+ and can be changed to Quad HD+ from the Settings.

samsung-galaxy-10
Image Source: cnet.com

The three Galaxy S10 phones are in different screen sizes. The S10 is having a 6.1” screen, the S10+ has got the 6.4” screen, and the S10e has been provided with a 5.8” display. All the three smartphones are having a Quad HD+ and dynamic AMOLED Infinity-O Display. The display is HDR10+ certified, providing the most real display to its users. The AMOLED display is specially built to comfort the eyes, as it reduces harmful blue light by 42 per cent.

The most innovative feature that the company has embedded to its latest flagship Galaxy S10 and S10+ phones is the fingerprint scanner, which has been moved from behind to the front screen of the phone. The scanner uses the ultrasonic pulses to detect the fingerprints. For the S10e smartphone, the fingerprint scanner has been moved to the power button of the phone.

Coming to the camera of the new Galaxy smartphones, the S10 and S10+ are having similar back camera frame including three cameras, i.e. wide-angle (12MP), ultra wide (16MP), and telephoto (12MP) camera. For the S10 plus, there are two front cameras embedded to it, a selfie camera (10MP) and an RGB Depth Camera (8MP). Galaxy S10 has one front camera, whereas the Galaxy S10e has two rear cameras and one front camera.

All three phones are designed with the AI features that adapt to the users’ behaviour and learn their daily routine patterns. The Galaxy S10+ has a 4100mAh, Galaxy S10 has 3400mAh battery capacity, and Galaxy S10e has 3100mAh battery capacity. The next generation smartphones are capable of charging the other Qi-certified devices as well, only by placing the devices on the top of the phone. The device that can be charged using those smartphones includes the Samsung wearable, earbuds and wireless chargers etc.

The RAM size of the smartphones has been increased up to 12GB, the S10e having a 6GB RAM size for the basic model, and the S10 as well as S10+ having a RAM size of 8GB for the basic models. The internal storage for the Galaxy S10e, S10, and S10+ has also been enlarged to up to 1TB, which is expandable up to 1.5TB via microSD card.

The Wi-Fi speed has also been increased to maximum 1.2Gbps for both Download and Upload, along with the increased LTE speed 2.0Gbps for the Download and 150Mbps for Upload. All the three Galaxy S10, S10+ and S10e phones are both water and dust resistant.

There are four to six colours available for the three models, including the Prism White, Prism Black, Prism Green, and Prism Blue, which are common for all the three Galaxy phones. The Samsung Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10e will be available for preorders from February 21, while the devices will become available in stores and online beginning March 8, 2019. The price range for Galaxy S10 starts at $899.99, for Galaxy S10+ starts from $999.99 and for Galaxy S10e starts from $749.99.

SoundCloud will now Assist Creators to Self-distribute Music Through its New Distribution Tool

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SoundCloud, the online audio distribution platform and music sharing website, has announced that it is going to add a distribution tool to its self-monetization Premier program. That means, now the eligible users will be able to upload, monetize and publish their songs over all the major streaming services and web stores, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Beatport, Instagram and more, through SoundCloud.

soundcloud
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Although other distribution platforms keep a slice from the profits earned through the uploaded content by the artists, SoundCloud has promised that the artists will be able to keep 100 per cent of the royalties, and also, all the rights over their content will be reserved by them only. Also, all the payouts earned through the various platforms will be sent to the artists directly through the app.

“Creators using the SoundCloud Premier distribution feature keep 100% of their rights, keep 100% of their distribution royalties from third-party services, and pay no distribution fees,” said SoundCloud in the announcement.

According to the announcement, all the ‘eligible’ SoundCloud Premier users will be able to access the new feature to upload their original content on the platform. According to the eligibility criteria, the creators must be 18 or above. Also, they must have at least 1,000 monetizable track plays, and all the tracks from the creator must be original, having no copyright strike on any of the content in the past.

The feature is still in beta, and soon, will be available to the SoundCloud Pro and SoundCloud Pro Unlimited users. Currently, the subscription fee for Pro users is $6, and for Pro Unlimited it is $12. With the addition of the distribution feature, the fee may be increased to an extent, as with no claim over the royalty and the copyrights, SoundCloud still have to make some money. According to the announcement, the ones with the eligible account will be informed through an email in the coming few weeks.

According to the CEO of SoundCloud, Kerry Trainor, the addition of the new feature will help the SoundCloud become more user-friendly and will be a great step in the evolution of the music industry. SoundCloud has already supported many of the artists in their success, and those artists, including Juice WRLD, are often heard giving the credits of their success to the app.