Charlotte Henry

On June 18 1993 John Sculley’s 10-year run as Apple CEO came to an end. As Cult of Mac recalls, it followed AAPL stock collapsing from $4.33 a share in 1992 to 73 cents a share in 1993.

A few things led to Sculley’s departure. He wanted to move back to the East Coast, and considered taking the role of CEO at IBM. He was also heavily involved in politics, supporting Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. From the perspective of Apple’s board, he was too involved with the Newton, at a time when Apple was facing increased competition from rivals. After Sculley stepped down, the Apple CEO role was handed over to Michael Spindler, formerly the company’s COO. Sculley remained Apple chairman until October 1993, departing with a golden parachute of around $10 million.

Apple looks set to move the manufacture of the 2020 iPhone SE to India in order to avoid heavy import taxes. Such a move has been rumored for a while. AppleInsider has a good round-up of the situation.

Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL star who started ‘taking the knee’ protest against racisms, has joined the board of blogging platform Medium. Boss Evan Williams made the announcement Thursday, saying Mr. Kaepernick will contribute to its publications.

Kaepernick Publishing’s mission is to uplift and elevate voices for Black and Brown communities, something that has been desperately needed in the publishing space. Through this partnership, Colin will be publishing across Medium’s platform, including a collaboration with Medium’s editorial team leading Level and Momentum. He will be sharing his thoughts on anti-Black racism in our society, and Medium and Kaepernick Publishing will co-publish thought-provoking feature stories from diverse writers of color.

Twitter announced on its blog that it is testing out voice tweets on iOS. It is in a bid to give users of the service a “more human experience.”

Each voice Tweet captures up to 140 seconds of audio. Have more to say? Keep talking. Once you reach the time limit for a Tweet, a new voice Tweet starts automatically to create a thread. Once you’re done, tap the Done button to end your recording and go back to the composer screen to Tweet. People will see your voice Tweet appear on their timeline alongside other Tweets. To listen, tap the image. On iOS only, playback will start in a new window docked at the bottom of your timeline and you can listen as you scroll. You can also keep listening while doing other things on your phone or on the go.

The COVID-19 outbreak brought huge, in-person conferences to screeching halt. CNet has looked at how tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google have reinvented the major set-piece events.

While many big tech conferences have been cancelled as a result, Apple, Microsoft and Sony are taking a different tack. Each company has chosen to hold its typically in-person events entirely online, giving live access to many more people than they could fit in convention centers as the companies stream their announcements on the internet. “Running a virtual event well requires stitching together several different technologies. It’s not just a webcast or several webcasts,” said Adam Preset, a senior research director at Gartner, whose clients are increasingly asking for help putting these types of events together. The challenge companies will face, in addition to technical glitches or family members suddenly interrupting at home, is keeping the audience engaged, he said.

Slack has become essential during this period of working from home. On Monday, the company unveiled a set of remote working emoji to help users communicate with their colleagues. It said in a blog post that the emoji will be rolling out over the coming days.

We’ve created a handy set of custom emoji for using in your status (or in messages or reactions) for those moments when you need to convey more information. This emoji pack for remote work is rolling out now and will be available to everyone in the coming days. You can add this set of emoji by clicking the “add emoji” button within the emoji picker. If you still need help, here’s a link to our help center article on adding custom emoji to Slack.

Some Gulf states are using COVID-19 contact tracing apps as mass surveillance tools. The issue was highlighted in research by Amnesty International, reported on by The Verge.

Amnesty International found that the Gulf states’ apps it analyzed were among the most invasive, collecting and storing GPS data and making it easy for the government to identify someone based on their account ID. Norway’s app was also flagged for putting its citizens’ privacy at risk for collecting and storing location data on a central server. But the country on Monday said it would pause the rollout of its the app, called Smittestopp, after Amnesty International shared its findings with the Norwegian government… Apple and Google are still in the process of developing a more privacy-focused system for the US and other countries that would work across both Android and iOS, while some governments have simply made their own apps along separate lines.Gul

Following a hit is always hard. Gamesmaker Niantic has found this after the mega-success of Pokémon Go. The company’s boss John Hanke told Bloomberg News on how it is trying to create the next big thing.

“We’re hard at work on our games pipeline with a multiyear product road map made up of games and other forms of AR experiences,” John Hanke, chief executive officer of the San Francisco-based studio, told a group of reporters last week. “We are extending the concept of what constitutes a Niantic game in a variety of ways,” he added, without elaborating. AR technology, which blends digital elements with real-world environments, is seen as one of the next big leaps in mobile tech and many firms are gearing up to seize the opportunity. That includes Apple Inc., which Bloomberg News has reported will build 3-D cameras into this year’s iPhone generation like it’s done for the latest iPad Pro. Formerly a part of Alphabet Inc.’s Google — which has its own AR ambitions — Niantic is in charge of the most popular AR app in history with Pokémon Go.