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from the half-eaten-fruit-strikes-again dept.
Apple Doesn't Want You Weighing Things With Your iPhone Just Yet
Can you turn an iPhone 6S into a working digital scale? The answer, apparently, is yes, but Apple doesn't want you to right now.
In an interesting post on Medium, developer Ryan McLeod explains how he and his friends built a digital scale app for the new iPhones by taking advantage of Apple's new pressure sensitivity feature, 3D Touch. The company only uses 3D Touch for a few functions — adjusting how quickly you scrub through music and video, for example, or quickly accessing app shortcuts from the home screen — but McLeod says he was inspired by all the "creative workarounds" on the App Store to hijack it for something else.
-- submitted from IRC
Apple Sales, Profit Surge On iPhone Strength
Apple logged another healthy rise in sales and profits for its most recent quarter on the strength of record iPhone sales and strong results for Macs.
The company's revenue rose 22 percent from a year earlier to $51.5 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 26. Sales of iPhones reached a fourth-quarter record, and the company said it sold more Macs than ever. Sixty-two percent of revenue came from outside the U.S., and revenue in China nearly doubled.
The company's profit grew even more strongly than sales, up 31 percent to $11.1 billion, or $1.96 per share. For the full year, Apple made $53.4 billion.
Both sales and profit beat the consensus forecast of analyst polled by Thomson Reuters.
What will Apple do with its mounting pile of cash?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday October 30 2015, @11:38AM
What Apple will probably do with all that extra cash: Continue making money for its investors. Put some money into R&D to see if they can find another cash cow. In other words, what every company with a big pile of dough does.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2015, @11:55AM
"every company with a big pile of dough"
Few companies have the kind of liquid assets that Apple does. It can be argued that keeping all those liquid assets is irresponsible. The money should be invested, or paid out to investors. It would be cool to see investors file a suit demanding a payout, which would help to deplete those liquid assets, resulting in a smaller payout even if the plaintiffs are successful. Worse, a significant payout won in such a fashion would help to devalue Apple stocks. Vicious circle there.
The single best use of those assets would probably be R&D. What I would like to see, is for Apple to invest in one or more space programs, such as SpaceX, but I don't anticipate that happening.
Please note that I am not an Apple phanboy, I own no Apple stocks, nor do I hold any great antipathy toward Apple. I don't like them much, but I don't despise them like I despise Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday October 30 2015, @02:34PM
If they keep the money in the bank isn't it being tacitly reinvested? I mean the banks don't just sit on the money while paying interest, they would go out of business!
Likewise, even if they sat on that pile of money, by the fact that they took the money out of circulation they have increased the value of all money that is left in circulation. So they are countering inflation for just about every person in the US who has money. (Yes I understand that it also has the unfortunate side effect of not de-valuating the debt, of which a lot of people have quite a bit of).
Anyway, like all things that we all love to argue about, this is not simply white or black.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday October 31 2015, @01:48PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @11:50PM
Because of the tax loopholes Apple is using, much of their profits end up at their divisions in Ireland and the Bahamas (perhaps also the Netherlands?). Apple may be biding their time until after the U.S. presidential election. If a Republican president gets installed and wants a tax holiday [wikipedia.org] (meaning Apple could bring its money to the United States and pay a reduced tax, or none), Congress might well go along with the idea.
If that doesn't happen, I recommend they invest in casinos. Casinos are illegal in Ireland, except that there's a loophole in the law under which a private club can operate one for its members. I would assume that casinos are legal in the Bahamas; just about everything is.