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Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

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Articles by Charlotte Henry

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Foxconn Moving 155 Jobs From U.S. to Mexico

Charlotte Henry ·

Key Apple supplier Foxconn is moving 155 jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. They offshored jobs come from a factory located outside of Indianapolis, according to Reuters, who broke the news. It comes alongside continued criticism of the firm for failing to meet its job creation targets in Wisconsin.

The Taiwan-based electronics maker said in a filing in Indiana in November 2018 that it would lay off 155 workers at a computer factory outside Indianapolis, citing “changes in our business and production objectives.” The Labor Department in February determined that the jobs were eliminated because the company had shifted some production to Mexico, records obtained by Reuters through a Freedom of Information Act request show….The company told the Indianapolis Business Journal in November that the plant in Plainfield, Indiana, was operated by a subsidiary firm and added that the layoffs would not affect other Foxconn-related companies.

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Teen AirDrop Wars Get Serious

Charlotte Henry ·

AirDrop wars between teenagers are apparently a thing. Teens use the file sharing tool to send each other memes and other content, and adults are getting caught in the crossfire. YouTuber and Adobe Spark product manager Veronica Belmont was amongst those who told their story to The Atlantic.

Anyone who has accidentally left their AirDrop settings open to everyone around a group of teens is likely familiar with the deluge of memes, selfies, and notes that arrives so quickly it can often freeze your phone. “Another day another group of French teens trying to AirDrop me memes on the subway,” one woman tweeted. “in a crowd of teens and they keep trying to AirDrop me memes!!!” said another. One young Twitter user joked that she was going to a music festival last weekend “just to AirDrop”… The photos swapped are usually memes or odd pictures teens find on Google Images.

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YouTube Star Jailed for 15 Months After Tricking Homeless Man

Charlotte Henry ·

YouTube star ReSet tricked a homeless man into eating biscuits filled with toothpaste and posted the video online. He has been sentenced to 15 months in prison, ordered to pay his victim €20,000, and banned from social media for five years, the Guardian reported.

ReSet, who was born in China but grew up in Spain, was among the 200 most popular YouTubers in Spain and Latin America, with 1.1 million followers. In 2017 he accepted a dare to scrape the cream out of Oreo cookies and replace it with toothpaste. He found a Romanian man who was living on the streets of Barcelona, handed him the doctored biscuits and a €20 note, and filmed the encounter. The man later vomited. “Maybe I went a little too far, but look on the bright side: this helped him clean his teeth,” ReSet, 21, said. “I don’t think he’s brushed them since he became poor.”

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Square Sends Sensitive Receipts to the Wrong Person

Charlotte Henry ·

It is always awkward if you purchase something embarrassing or sensitive, and someone finds the receipt, right? Or your partner finds the receipt for a present you bought them? Well, the Wall Street Journal found that Square has been sending millions of receipts to the wrong person. It has created some very difficult situations.

Square has forwarded receipts documenting transactions as mundane as a cup of coffee and as sensitive as an obstetrician’s visit to people who were uninvolved in the purchases, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In some cases, neither the purchaser nor the recipient could say why Square sent receipts to the people it did. At issue are the methods that tech companies employ to make money off of the financial data of their users, as well as the degree to which those companies disclose or get consent from their users about those efforts. Data on individuals’ credit-card transactions can be particularly delicate and more revealing than their social-media posts or web-browsing activity.

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WDDC 2019: Apple is a Privacy-as-a-Service Company

Charlotte Henry ·

Away from the excitement of new Mac Pros and operating systems for Mac and iPad, another thing stood out at WWDC 2019. Apple is making privacy-as-a-service a core part of its offering, as Darrell Etherington noted at TechCrunch.

Apple has been playing up its privacy game for at least a few years now, and in the Tim Cook era it’s especially come to the fore. But today’s announcements really crystallize how Apple’s approach to privacy will mesh with its transformation into becoming even more of a services company. It’s becoming a services company with a key differentiator – privacy – and it’s also extending that paradigm to third-parties, acting as an ecosystem layer that mediates between users, and anyone who would seek to monetize their info in aggregate.

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EU to Speak to Apple About Spotify Complaint

Charlotte Henry ·

The EU said it wanted to hear from Apple about Spotify’s complaint against it. The complaint is being handled by European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, reported Reuters.

“We are looking into that and we have been asking questions around in that market but of course also Apple themselves, for them to answer the allegations. And when they come back, we will know more,” Vestager told reporters on the sidelines of an OECD conference. Vestager, who three years ago ordered Apple to repay about 13 billion euros ($14.6 billion) in unfair tax incentives to Ireland, can levy hefty fines on companies for breaching EU antitrust rules and also order them to amend business practices.

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Huawei Ban Could Lead to Drop in Global Phone Sales

Charlotte Henry ·

Analyst’s Canalys reduced down their estimates for global smartphone shipments in a new report. AppleInsider reported that they now expect sales in 2019 to total 1.35 billion units. That is down 3.1% from the 1.39 billion units sold in 2018. The Huawei ban is a key factor in the drop in sales.

If found to be correct, the 2019 forecast would be a continuation of the industry’s decline, following a year-on-year contraction of 4.5 percent in 2018 from 2017. Canalys does not break down the figures to relate to specific companies, but in its post it spends a lot of time discussing Huawei, the main subject of the US measures. The firm’s base assumption will be that restrictions on Huawei will be “imposed stringently” once the 90-day reprieve expires, which will dramatically affect its ability to roll out new devices in the short term.

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iTunes May Be Retired at WWDC 2019

Charlotte Henry ·

Could it finally be the end of the road for iTunes? That is one of the rumors circulating in the run-up to WWDC 2019. Bloomberg News reported that iTunes retirement could be announced next week.

The changes will showcase Apple’s new generation of devices and software: Apple Watches that are more independent from iPhones, iPads with software that reduces the need for a laptop, apps that run on any Apple device, and growth areas such as augmented reality and personal health-care management, according to people familiar with the plans. While the developer conference is software-focused, the company often sprinkles new hardware announcements in at the event. This year, Apple won’t show off a new Apple Watch or iPhone hardware until the fall, but has considered previewing the new Mac Pro at the conference.

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To Change Facebook, Change Mark Zuckerberg

Charlotte Henry ·

Facebook is under-fire at the moment. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about his position as the shareholder meeting yesterday. At Fast Company, Mark Sullivan argues that the only way to change the company is to change the man at the top.

Natasha Lamb, the managing partner of Arjuna Capital—is one of a growing number of investors calling for serious changes at the top, either by separating the roles of board chair and chief executive (Zuck has both) or losing him as CEO completely. They’re right to do it. If you want to change Facebook, you have to change Mark Zuckerberg. The reason is simple: Zuckerberg is Facebook and Facebook is Zuckerberg. The company, in word and in action, is the product of his vision, talent, ambition, moral compass, and worldview.

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David Cameron: Former UK Prime Minister Joins U.S. AI Firm

Charlotte Henry ·

Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has a new job. Mr. Cameron is to chair the advisory board of Afiniti, a Washington-based AI firm, the Guardian reported. He follows his former deputy into the tech sector. Sir Nick Clegg, who served as Deputy Prime Minister between 2010 and 2015, joined Facebook in October 2018.

The position represents one of Cameron’s most prominent appointments since he stood down as prime minister in 2016. He has previously taken a number of roles at not-for-profit organisations and has a memoir, For the Record, due out later this year. Cameron said he was “delighted” to take the job working on “transforming the future of customer service and interpersonal communications”. The advisory board features an array of high-profile figures including John Browne, former chief executive of BP and François Fillon, the former prime minister of France. Afiniti was set up by the US-Pakistani entrepreneur Zia Chishti and specializes in the use of AI in call centers.

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Angry Face Emoji Protestors at Facebook Annual Meeting

Charlotte Henry ·

Protestors armed with an angry face emoji attended Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. They were airing concerns about the scandals currently engulfing the firm. As Reuters noted, attempts to get reform in the company can easily be outvoted by Mark Zuckerberg and those close to him. However, the meeting will give a good indication as to whether investors share the protestors’ angry face sentiment.

The measures had little chance of succeeding, as a dual class share structure gives Zuckerberg and other insiders control of about 58% of the votes. Many investors have shrugged off the scandals swirling around the company, as it has beaten Wall Street’s estimates for revenue growth and continues to add users globally. Zuckerberg declined to answer a shareholder question on why he would not agree to create an independent board chair, instead restating his view that regulators should set the rules for companies around privacy and content.