May the Fourth Be With You! Today we’ve got four short news items to make your day:
- Apple informs Windows users that the Texture app — which it recently purchased — will be retired on that platform on June 30
- Shares in Apple almost made it to $184 per share today, reaching an all-time high of $183.99 at one point (this was before the close of the market…) and a market cap of about $932 billion
- The Spanish-language People magazine’s latest issue features 50 portraits and a cover photo, all done with the iPhone X
- Facebook is looking into a subscription-based ad-free feed
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Friday, May 4th, 2018. May the 4th be with you!
Texture is a magazine subscription app that is quite impressive — so impressive, that Apple bought the company that developed Texture. Today Apple let Texture users who are still using the Windows version of the app that as of June 30th, that Windows app will be retired. According to Texture, Windows users can still access their subscriptions provided they have smartphones or tablets running iOS or Android. Apple announced that it was acquiring Texture in March, with iTunes VP Eddy Cue saying that Apple was “committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for users.” It’s thought that Apple may use Texture to update the Apple News app with a subscription-based news services that would include the Texture magazine subscription options. Like Apple Music, Texture provides a “one price for everything” subscription to more than 200 digital magazines — mostly major titles — for $9.99 per month.
Thanks to Warren Buffett buying 75 million shares of Apple stock, Apple’s share price today climbed to an all time high of $183.99 at one point. It may have actually gone higher than that, but we posted this before the close of the markets today. What that means is that Apple’s market capitalization inched ever closer to the big goal — becoming the first $1 trillion company. The market cap figure was hovering around $932 billion this afternoon. Apple’s gains this week were the biggest ever 5-day leap for the company, and the improvement in share price bumped the Dow Jones Industrial Average up about 150 points.
The iPhone X camera keeps getting kudos for how well it takes photos, and now the X was used to take all of the images for the “50 most beautiful people of 2018” issue of the Spanish-language People magazine. Rather than using a digital SLR, the photographers used the iPhone X to shoot all of the portraits of each of the top 50, as well as the cover photo for the issue.
Facebook has been in the news way too often lately, and the latest word is that the social network is thinking about the possibility of offering a subscription-based option. Don’t want any ads in your feed? You’d pay a monthly or annual fee for the privilege. Apparently, Facebook is in the midst of market research to figure out if a subscription-based ad-free version would add or keep more users.
That’s all the news for today – join me tomorrow afternoon for another edition of the AWT News Update.
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