Innehållsförteckning för #643 från AppleMagazine

Trying to keep up with customer demand, Batesville Tool & Die began seeking 70 people to hire last year. It wasn’t easy. Attracting factory workers to a community of 7,300 in the Indiana countryside was a tough sell, especially having to compete with big-name manufacturers nearby like Honda and Cummins Engine. Job seekers were scarce. “You could count on one hand how many people in the town were unemployed,” said Jody Fledderman, the CEO. “It was just crazy.’’ Batesville Tool & Die managed to fill just 40 of its vacancies. Enter the robots. The company invested in machines that could mimic human workers and in vision systems, which helped its robots “see” what they were doing. The Batesville experience and others like it have been replicated countlessly across the United…

Retired Army Col. Farrell Patrick taught computer science at West Point during the 1970s and then at two private universities through the 1990s, so he isn’t surprised by the progress technology has made over the decades. But when the 91-year-old got his first virtual reality experience recently, he was stunned. Sitting in a conference room at John Knox Village, a suburban Fort Lauderdale, Florida, retirement community, Patrick sat up straight as his eyes and ears experienced what it would be like to be in a Navy fighter jet flying off the Florida coast. “Oh my God, that’s beautiful,” he blurted before the VR program brought the jet in for a landing on an aircraft carrier. John Knox Village was one of 17 senior communities around the country that participated in…

It’s not just you. A lot people think Google searches are getting worse. And the rise of generative AI chatbots is giving people new and different ways to look up information. While Google has been the one-stop shop for decades — after all, we commonly call searches “googling” — its longtime dominance has attracted a flood of sponsored or spammy links and junk content fueled by “search engine optimization” techniques. That pushes down genuinely useful results. A recent study by German researchers suggests the quality of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo is indeed declining. Google says its results are of significantly better quality than its rivals, citing measurements by third parties. Now, chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence, including from Google itself, are poised to shake up how search…

Walmart is buying the smart TV maker Vizio for $2.3 billion as it attempts to expand its rapidly growing advertising business to compete with Amazon. If completed, the deal would give Walmart access to Vizio’s SmartCast operating system, allowing the retail behemoth to offer its suppliers the ability to display ads on streaming devices. Walmart has been ramping up its media and ad business with Walmart Connect, giving advertisers access to Walmart’s massive customer base. In its earnings release on Tuesday, Walmart said its global advertising business grew approximately 28% to $3.4 billion last year. The moves come as Amazon announced last month it would start charging its Prime members $2.99 per month to keep their movies and TV shows ad-free, on top of the fee it charges for Prime:…

Streaming service FuboTV has filed an antitrust lawsuit against ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu, which are planning to launch a sports-streaming venture in the fall. The lawsuit has been filed in the Southern District of New York. FuboTV, which focuses primarily on live sports, is seeking a jury trial. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the lawsuit. “Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice,” David Gandler, Co-founder and CEO of FuboTV, said in a statement. “Simply put, this sports cartel blocked our playbook for many years and now they are effectively stealing it for themselves.” ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros.…

The Biden administration said this week that the government intends to provide $1.5 billion to the computer chip company GlobalFoundries to expand its domestic production in New York and Vermont. The announcement is the third award of direct financial support for a semiconductor company under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The law enables the government to invest more than $52 billion to revitalize the manufacturing of computer chips in the United States as well as advance research and development. “The chips that GlobalFoundries will make in these new facilities are essential,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters. “They power sophisticated military equipment, electric vehicles. They assure smartphones have the latest features, enable faster Internet connections for Americans.” In addition to the direct funding, the government…

According to market experts, Apple is poised to achieve a monumental milestone in 2024: a $4 trillion market capitalization. This prediction, articulated by the investment research firm Wedbush, comes from anticipation of Apple’s upcoming augmented reality announcements, which could revolutionize the company and unlock new earnings potential. POWERED BY IPHONE Central to Apple’s projected valuation surge is the much-anticipated iPhone 16, set to be released in September. Apple’s flagship product has consistently been at the forefront of technology and design innovation, captivating consumers worldwide. Wedbush predicts the production of 240 million iPhone 15 units in 2024 buoyed by a vigorous upgrade cycle in critical markets such as the United States and China, underscoring the iPhone’s pivotal role in Apple’s growth trajectory and its enduring appeal across diverse consumer segments. China…

Buying any car is complicated. Want to make it even more complicated? Consider buying a used electric vehicle. There are good reasons to consider a used electric vehicle. Perhaps you want an EV as an additional household vehicle — for your teenager who just started to drive, perhaps — or as a replacement for a vehicle you already own. But there are additional aspects about buying an EV that you’ll need to consider in order to get the best value. The car experts have put together five tips on what you need to know. RESEARCH THE POSSIBLE FUEL COST SAVINGS An EV typically costs less to charge and drive than paying to fill up the tank of a gas- or diesel-powered car. That can help you save money in your…

Several exclusive Xbox games will be soon making their way to rival consoles, the video gaming brand and its parent company, Microsoft, announced. In a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that four Xbox games will no longer be exclusive. That means players should be able to access them on other companies’ platforms. Spencer did not provide a firm timeframe or identify the four games but said that two will be “community-driven” games and two will be smaller titles. “The teams that are building those games have announced plans that are not too far away,” he said. “I won’t be talking about the titles specifically, but I think when they come out, it’ll make sense.” He did say that Microsoft-owned Bethesda titles Starfield…

American Airlines is raising the cost of checking bags and it is making other changes to push customers to buy tickets directly from the airline if they want to earn frequent-flyer points. The airline said this week that checking a bag on a domestic flight will rise from $30 now to $35 online and $40 if purchased at the airport. The fee for a second checked bag will rise from $40 to $45 both online and at the airport. American last raised bag fees in 2018. American, based in Fort Worth, Texas, introduced bag fees in 2008 — $15 back then — to cope with the rising cost of jet fuel. Since then, they have become a steady revenue source for most major U.S. carriers. American easily led the industry…

The maker of ChatGPT is now diving into AI-generated video. Meet Sora — OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator. The tool, which the San Francisco company unveiled, uses generative artificial intelligence to instantly create short videos based on written commands. Sora isn’t the first to demonstrate this kind of technology. But industry analysts point to the high quality of the tool’s videos displayed so far, and note that its introduction marks a significant leap for both OpenAI and the future of text-to-video generation overall. Still, as with all things in the rapidly growing AI space today, such technology also raises fears about potential ethical and societal implications. Here’s what you need to know. WHAT IS SORA? CAN I USE IT YET? Sora is a text-to-video generator — creating videos up to 60…

Marissa Mayer has long been an inspiration for innovative women battling to break through the gender barriers in a male-dominated technology industry. After graduating from Stanford University, Mayer joined Google in 1999 when the internet search giant was still a startup and then went on to design breakthrough products such as Gmail. She left Google in 2012 to become CEO of Yahoo in an unsuccessful effort to turn around the fading internet pioneer. But Mayer still managed to triple Yahoo’s stock price and create more than $30 billion in shareholder wealth before selling company’s online operations to Verizon Communications in 2017. Mayer, 48, now runs an artificial intelligence startup called Sunshine with Enrique Muñoz Torres — a former colleague at Google and Yahoo — from a Palo Alto, California, office…

Major technology companies signed a pact to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world. Executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok gathered at the Munich Security Conference to announce a new framework for how they respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. Twelve other companies — including Elon Musk’s X — are also signing on to the accord. “Everybody recognizes that no one tech company, no one government, no one civil society organization is able to deal with the advent of this technology and its possible nefarious use on their own,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in an interview ahead of the…

If you are battling a video game goblin who speaks with a Cockney accent, or asking a gruff Scottish blacksmith to forge a virtual sword, you might be hearing the voice of actor Andy Magee. Except it’s not quite Magee’s voice. It’s a synthetic voice clone generated by artificial intelligence. As video game worlds get more expansive, some game studios are experimenting with AI tools to give voice to a potentially unlimited number of characters and conversations. It also saves time and money on the “vocal scratch” recordings game developers use as placeholders to test scenes and scripts. The response from professional actors has been mixed. Some fear that AI voices could replace all but the most famous human actors if big studios have their way. Others, like Magee, have…

Americans have become increasingly reliant on their credit cards since the pandemic. So much so that Capital One is willing to bet more than $30 billion that they won’t break the habit. Capital One Financial announced this week that it would buy Discover Financial Services for $35 billion. The combination could potentially shake up the payments industry, which is largely dominated by Visa and Mastercard. For customers of the companies, it might eventually mean bigger perks and more merchant acceptance of Discover cards, and potentially lead to more competition in the payments industry. But most of the benefits will be going to the companies themselves, as well as the merchants who accept these cards. WHY IS THE DEAL IMPORTANT? Some of the biggest issuers of credit cards are banks, like…