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  • The identities behind the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s Georgia case | CNN Politics

    The identities behind the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s Georgia case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Fulton County’s sweeping indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 additional co-defendants also includes details involving 30 “unindicted co-conspirators” – people who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis alleges took part in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

    Some of the co-conspirators are key Trump advisers, like Boris Epshteyn, while several others are likely Georgia officials who were the state’s fake electors for Donald Trump.

    One of the unindicted co-conspirators who appears multiple times in the indictment is Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Willis was barred by a state judge from investigating Jones after she hosted a fundraiser last year for Jones’ Democratic opponent when he was a state senator running for lieutenant governor.

    The 98-page document alleges the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, who are not named, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities” across the 41 charges laid out in the indictment.

    “Prosecutors use the ‘co-conspirator’ label for people who are not charged in the indictment but nonetheless were participants in the crime,” said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and state prosecutor. “We do this to protect the identity and reputation of uncharged people – though they often are readily identifiable – and, at times, to turn up the pressure and try to flip them before a potential indictment drops.”

    CNN was able to identify some of the co-conspirators by piecing together details included in the indictment. Documents reviewed from previous reporting also provide clues, especially the reams of emails and testimony from the House January 6 Committee’s report released late last year.

    CNN has been able to identify or narrow down nearly all of the unindicted co-conspirators:

    The indictment refers to Trump’s speech on November 4, 2020, “falsely declaring victory in the 2020 presidential election” and that Individual 1 discussed a draft of that speech approximately four days earlier, on October 31, 2020.

    The January 6 committee obtained an email from Fitton sent on October 31 to Trump’s assistant Molly Michael and his communications adviser Dan Scavino, which says, “Please see below a draft statement as you requested.”

    The statement Fitton wrote also says in part, “We had an election today – and I won.”

    The indictment states that co-conspirator 3 appeared at the infamous November 19, 2020, press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, with Rudy Giuliani, one of the defendants in the case. Epshteyn was there.

    A November 19, 2020 photo shows Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC.

    The indictment also includes two emails between co-conspirator 3, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, two lawyers who pushed the strategy of then-Vice President Mike Pence trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021, including one with a draft memo for options of how to proceed on January 6.

    According to emails released by the January 6 committee, Epshteyn was the third person on those emails.

    Individual 4 received an email from co-defendant David Shafer, who was then Georgia’s Republican Party chair, on November 20, 2020, that said Scott Graham Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, “has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie,” according to the indictment.

    CNN obtained court documents that show Shafer sent this email to Sinners in November 2020: “Scott Hall has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie. I know him.” Hall is one of the 19 defendants charged in the indictment.

    The indictment notes an additional email from December 12, 2020, from Shafer to Individual 4 advising them to “touch base” with each of the Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia in advance of the December 14, 2020, meeting to confirm their attendance.

    CNN reporting from June 2022 reveals an email exchange between Sinners and David Shafer on December 13, 2020, 18 hours before the group of alternate electors gathered at the Georgia State Capitol.

    “I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote. “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result – a win in Georgia for President Trump – but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”

    Kerik’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, confirmed to CNN that his client is the unnamed individual listed in the indictment as co-conspirator 5. The indictment refers to co-conspirator 5 taking part in several meetings with lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Arizona, states Trump was contesting after the 2020 election.

    That included the meeting Kerik attended at the White House on November 25, 2020, with a group of Pennsylvania legislators, along with Trump, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and individual 6.

    Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernie Kerik at Trump National Golf Club on June 13.

    Parlatore took issue with Willis’ definition of co-conspirator in the case of Kerik, saying that the indictment only refers to him in the context of receiving emails and attending meetings.

    The indictment says on November 25, 2020, Trump, Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Individuals 5 and 6 met at the White House with a group of Pennsylvania legislators.

    According to the January 6 committee report, Waldron was among the visitors who were at the White House that day, along with Kerik and attorney Katherine Freiss. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Meadows, explained that their conversation with the president touched on holding a special session of the Pennsylvania state legislature to appoint Trump electors.

    The indictment also says on December 21, 2020, Sidney Powell, a defendant in the case, sent an email to Individuals 6, 21 and 22 that they were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

    The Washington Post reported last August that the email stated Waldron was among the three people to receive the data, along with Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders.

    Waldron at a hearing in front of Michigan lawmakers in December 2020.

    Waldron is the only person who was involved in both the White House meeting and received the Powell email.

    The indictment says Giuliani re-tweeted a post from co-conspirator 8 on December 7, 2020, calling upon Georgia voters to contact their local representatives and ask them to sign a petition for a special session to ensure “every legal vote is counted.” The date and content of the tweet match a tweet posted by Jones, who was at the time a state senator.

    Burt Jones, Georgia's Republican Lieutenant Governor

    Jones, who was elected lieutenant governor in November, appears more than a dozen times throughout the indictment as co-conspirator 8, including as a fake elector.

    After the 2020 election, Jones was calling for a special session of the Georgia legislature, something Gov. Brian Kemp and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan refused to do.

    On Thursday, Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told CNN that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Jones’ role in the state’s 2020 election interference case, after a judge blocked Willis from investigating him last year.

    The indictment lists several emails sent to co-conspirator 9 related to preparations for the fake electors who met on December 14, 2020, including an email from Chesebro “to help coordinate with the other 5 contested States, to help with logistics of the electors in other States hopefully joining in casting their votes on Monday.”

    According to emails obtained by the January 6 committee, that email was sent to an account belong to the Georgia GOP treasurer, which at the time was Brannan.

    Co-conspirator 9 is also included in the indictment as one of the 13 unindicted co-conspirators who served as fake electors.

    Co-conspirators 10 and 11 are Georgia GOP officials Carolyn Fisher and Vikki Consiglio

    The indictment says on December 10, 2020, Ken Chesebro sent an email to Georgia state Republican Chair David Shafer and Individuals 9, 10 and 11, with documents that were to be used by Trump electors to create fake certificates.

    The January 6 committee obtained as part of its evidence an email from Chesebro sent on December 10 sent to Shafer and three other email addresses. One is for Carolyn Fisher, the former Georgia GOP first vice chair, one is for the Georgia Republican Party treasurer and one is for the Georgia GOP assistant treasurer, the role Consiglio was serving in 2020.

    The email contains attachments of memos and certificates that could be used to help swap out the Biden electors with a slate of electors for Trump.

    Both co-conspirators 10 and 11 also served as fake electors in Georgia.

    Co-conspirators 2 and 8-19 are the fake electors

    Of the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, 13 are listed as the fake electors for Donald Trump, who signed papers “unlawfully falsely holding themselves out as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia,” according to the indictment.

    Three of the 16 Georgia fake electors were charged in the indictment: David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathleen Alston Latham.

    The other 13 fake electors, according to the fake electors certificate published by the National Archives, are Jones (co-conspirator 8), Joseph Brannan (co-conspirator 9), James “Ken” Carroll, Gloria Godwin, David Hanna, Mark Hennessy, Mark Amick, John Downey, Daryl Moody, Brad Carver, CB Yadav and two others who appear to be Individuals 10 and 11.

    Several of the fake electors who were not charged are only listed in the indictment for their role signing on as electors for Trump, while others, like Jones, appear in other parts of the indictment as being more actively involved with the alleged conspiracy.

    The indictment says Individual 20 was part of a meeting at the White House on December 18, 2020, with Trump, Giuliani and Powell, known to have discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines.

    The December 18 meeting featured prominently during some of the hearings from the January 6 committee. All but two of the outside advisers who attended have been named as co-defendants in the indictment already: former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

    The meeting featured fiery exchanges between Trump’s White House lawyers and his team of outside advisers, including on whether to appoint Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud, according to the indictment and previous details that have been disclosed about the meeting.

    The outside advisers famously got into a screaming match with Trump’s White House lawyers – Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann – at the Oval Office meeting. Cipollone and Herschmann, along with Meadows, pushed back intensely on the proposals, Cipollone and Herschmann testified to the January 6 committee.

    Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders

    Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders – who are both affiliated with Byrne’s America Project, a conservative advocacy group that contributed funding to Arizona’s Republican ballot audit. Hayes was a former surfer from Hawaii and Sanders has a cybersecurity background in the private sector.

    The indictment says on Dec. 21, 2020, Sidney Powell sent an email to the chief operations officer of SullivanStrickler, saying that individual 6, who CNN identified as Waldron, along with individuals 21 and 22, were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

    According to the Washington Post, Conan and Todd were the other two people listed on the email to receive the data.

    The final eight co-conspirators listed in the indictment are connected to the effort to access voting machines in Georgia’s Coffee County.

    Co-conspirator 25 and 29 are a Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and analyst Jeffrey Lenberg

    The indictment says that Misty Hampton allowed co-conspirators 25 and 29 to access non-public areas of the Coffee County elections office on January 18, 2021. Logan and Lenberg were the two outsiders granted access to the elections office that day by Hampton, according to surveillance video previously obtained by CNN. No one else was given access to the office that day, according to a CNN review of the footage.

    The indictment also notes that co-conspirator 25 downloaded Coffee County election data that SullivanStrickler then had uploaded to a separate server. Documents previously obtained by CNN show five accounts that downloaded the data – one account belongs to Logan and none of them belong to Lenberg. Still, CNN could not definitively determine who exactly downloaded the data.

    Logan and his company conducted the so-called Republican audit of the 2020 ballots cast in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

    The indictment says that co-conspirator 28 “sent an e-mail to the Chief Operations Officer of SullivanStrickler LLC” directing him to transmit data copied from Coffee County to co-conspirator 30 and Powell. CNN has previously reported on emails Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Sony’s PlayStation Access controller offers a new social lifeline for gamers with disabilities | CNN Business

    Sony’s PlayStation Access controller offers a new social lifeline for gamers with disabilities | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Grant Stoner said that he has loved playing video games his entire life, and that his earliest memory is of playing Super Nintendo in his parents’ bedroom at roughly 3 years old.

    “Gaming, for me, has always been a social activity,” Stoner, a Pittsburgh native who has spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a neuromuscular disorder, told CNN. “Because I’ve never really, physically, been able to participate in schoolyard events or sporting events or what have you, so I would bond with family and classmates through gaming.”

    For people with disabilities, Stoner said gaming has served as a lifeline for forming friendships and community. But for years, he adds, the technology underpinning the gaming sector has been notoriously not inclusive.

    “Disabled people would have to be very innovative, and either design or create their own adaptive setups with like, different maybe 3D-printed objects or in my case, a Popsicle stick,” Stoner told CNN. He said his brother used to attach a Popsicle stick to the trigger of one of his gaming controllers to find a way for Stoner to keep playing even when he lost strength in his fingers.

    Stoner’s struggles are all too familiar for Paul Amadeus Lane, who told CNN he learned how to play games using his chin, lips and cheeks to push buttons on a controller after an accident left him quadriplegic and without finger mobility some 30 years ago.

    Lane also recalls how his social circle changed after his accident, and isolation crept in after he could no longer do things like play basketball or go for a drive.

    “Gaming can help with those social barriers out there, especially with social isolation,” Lane told CNN. “And put us in an environment where we can have some enjoyment without being judged because of our disability.”

    Lane said he remembers getting a call back in 2021 to help advise Sony with a “secret project,” and was overjoyed to find out the tech giant’s gaming arm was quietly working on creating a controller specifically for people with disabilities. Sony Interactive Entertainment is the maker of the wildly popular PlayStation consoles and a lineup of fan-favorite PlayStation games. Microsoft’s Xbox gaming unit released an Adaptive Controller for Xbox back in 2018 to much celebration from the disability community, but people with disabilities still found wide gaps trying to play games on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles.

    Paul Amadeus Lane, an accessibility consultant working with Sony Interactive Entertainment, is pictured here with the Access controller, a Sony device specifically designed for gamers with disabilities.

    “I was really, really happy, because I didn’t think Sony would ever tackle something like this,” Lane told CNN.

    After years of tinkering and consulting with gamers who have disabilities like Lane, Sony Interactive Entertainment unveiled a first look at its Access controller for gamers with disabilities earlier this month. The Access controller is now available for pre-order and will be released on December 6, with a price tag of $89.99.

    The controller can be endlessly customized to meet the diverse needs of players with disabilities and Sony has the goal of helping these gamers play more comfortably for longer. The circular device can be configured with swappable button and stick caps to suit a range of mobility needs.

    Gamers get a first look at Sony's Access controller, a highly-customizable device designed specifically for people with disabilities, at an event in San Mateo in September.

    In a Q&A posted on Sony’s PlayStation company blog, Alvin Daniel, the senior technical program manager for the Access controller, said the development team quickly learned that “no two people experience disability in exactly the same way.”

    Daniel said his team tapped the help of players and accessibility experts to build a controller that could be as inclusive as possible. With the help of players and accessibility experts, Daniel wrote, “we did a really deep dive to try to understand what it was we wanted to help solve. And this came down to a very interesting insight: instead of looking at conditions, or impediments, instead, look at the controller.”

    “Look at the standard controller as it exists today. And ask yourself the question, ‘What prevents someone from effectively interacting with a standard controller?’” he added.

    The result is a Sony-designed device that gamers can tailor to meet their individual needs, that gamers don’t have to hold in order to use and features buttons that are much easier to press. Lane, who is among the group of gamers who has been able to try out the unreleased controller, said he was especially excited for how it gave him the ability to play racing games again for the first time since his accident.

    “I wasn’t able to play racing games because of just the dexterity that you needed with your hands and just how fast things are moving,” Lane said. “And then when I was able to try out Gran Turismo, I was like, I can game and play racing games again!”

    “I haven’t driven in over 30 years,” he added. “It takes me back to when I was driving.”

    Stoner said he’s excited about the PlayStation Access controller, and especially encouraged that the price point is relatively low compared to other options on the market. And while he’s been heartened to see an industry-wide push toward inclusive innovation in gaming, he emphasized that there is still work to do.

    “The industry needs to understand that the Xbox controller, the PlayStation controller, while they’re great and while they’re very beneficial, they cannot help everyone,” he said. “This is not a perfect solution.”

    “We need to keep innovating around games – the software aspect and the hardware aspect – because nothing that we have currently is fully accessible to every disabled person,” he added. “I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, just because of how individualistic the disabled experience is, but currently, there’s always more work to be done and the industry needs to remember that.”

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  • Microsoft gives ground on streaming in bid to remove UK block on Activision deal | CNN Business

    Microsoft gives ground on streaming in bid to remove UK block on Activision deal | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft has made a major concession to UK authorities in a bid to remove the last remaining regulatory obstacle to its huge takeover of Activision Blizzard.

    The companies have submitted a new proposal to the UK antitrust watchdog — the only regulator worldwide standing in the way of the $69 billion deal — that would see Activision’s (ATVI) cloud streaming rights outside the European Union and three other European countries sold to a rival, Ubisoft Entertainment. Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Tuesday that the companies believe the new proposal “presents a substantially different transaction” for the CMA to consider than its previous merger agreement.

    “We believe that this development is positive for players, the progression of the cloud game streaming market, and for the growth of our industry,” Smith said.

    The restructured deal, announced by the UK Competition and Markets Authority Tuesday, follows a decision by the CMA to block the acquisition on its original terms. That move put it at odds with EU regulators, which approved the plan in May. A US federal court also said in July that it would not block the deal from closing.

    CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said the regulator would now consider the new proposal.

    “Our goal has not changed — any future decision on this new deal will ensure that the growing cloud gaming market continues to benefit from open and effective competition driving innovation and choice.”

    Under the restructured deal, Ubisoft — a French video game developer — will be able to license out Activision’s content to any cloud gaming provider outside the European Economic Area, including in the United Kingdom. Shares in Ubisoft jumped 7% in Paris Tuesday.

    “This will allow gamers to access Activision’s games in different ways, including through cloud-based multigame subscription services,” Cardell said.

    Microsoft and Activision agreed last month to extend their merger deadline by three months to October 18, to allow more time to come to an agreement with the CMA. October 18 is now also the statutory deadline for a CMA decision on the new merger proposal, and Microsoft said it expects the agency’s review process to be completed ahead of that date.

    Microsoft (MSFT) announced the planned acquisition of Activision early last year. The transaction was valued at $69 billion at the time, making it one of the tech industry’s largest deals.

    Activision Blizzard is one of the world’s biggest video game developers, producing games such as “Candy Crush,” “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and “Overwatch.”

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • Britain says may clear restructured Microsoft-Activision deal | CNN Business

    Britain says may clear restructured Microsoft-Activision deal | CNN Business

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    Microsoft’s restructuring of its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard “opens the door” to the biggest ever gaming deal being cleared, Britain’s antitrust regulator said Friday.

    Microsoft (MSFT) announced the deal in early 2022, but it was blocked in April by the UK competition regulator, which was concerned the US tech giant would gain too much control of the nascent cloud gaming market.

    Activision Blizzard (ATVI), which makes “Call of Duty,” agreed in August to sell its streaming rights to Ubisoft Entertainment in a new attempt to win over the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

    The Ubisoft divestment “substantially addresses previous concerns,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement.

    “While the CMA has identified limited residual concerns with the new deal, Microsoft has put forward remedies which the CMA has provisionally concluded should address these issues,” the regulator said.

    Consummating the deal would turn Microsoft into the third largest video game publisher in the world, after Tencent and Sony.

    Microsoft said it was “encouraged by this positive development in the CMA’s review process.”

    “We presented solutions that we believe fully address the CMA’s remaining concerns related to cloud game streaming, and we will continue to work toward earning approval to close prior to the October 18 deadline,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

    Activision, which also makes “World of Warcraft,” “Overwatch” and “Candy Crush,” said the preliminary approval was great news for its future with Microsoft.

    The European Union waved the deal through in May after accepting Microsoft’s commitments to license Activision’s games to other platforms, the same remedies that Britain had rejected.

    The US Federal Trade Commission also opposes the deal, but it has failed to stop it. A federal judge ruled in July that the deal can close, a decision the FTC is appealing.

    The CMA’s decision to reopen the case was a radical departure from its play book, but it said on Friday it had been consistent and Microsoft had “substantially restructured the deal” to address its concerns.

    “It would have been far better, though, if Microsoft had put forward this restructure during our original investigation,” CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said.

    “This case illustrates the costs, uncertainty and delay that parties can incur if a credible and effective remedy option exists but is not put on the table at the right time.”

    Equity analyst Sophie Lund-Yates at Hargreaves Lansdown said the loss of the cloud gaming rights was not an ideal concession for Microsoft to have to make, but it was necessary collateral if the deal were to be waved through.

    “This looks to be the final bump in the road,” she said.

    The CMA said there were “residual concerns” around the Ubisoft deal, but Microsoft has offered remedies to ensure the terms of the sale were enforceable by the regulator.

    It is now consulting on the remedies before making a final decision.

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  • Meta’s Threads is finally available on desktop | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads is finally available on desktop | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Threads users, rejoice: the app is rolling out its highly anticipated web version Tuesday.

    The update — perhaps the most requested by users since Threads’ mobile-only launch last month — puts the new platform one step closer to recreating the functions offered by rival X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and could help reignite user growth following a sluggish period.

    Parent company Meta says Threads users will soon be able to log in, post, view and interact with other posts via a browser on a desktop computer, as the web version rolls out to users in the coming days. The company says it plans to add more desktop features in the future. In an early access test of some of the web-based features, CNN was able to post on the platform but could not yet scroll the home feed.

    Threads launched in early July with stunning success, garnering more than 100 million sign-ups in its first week on the back of months of chaos at Twitter. But the buzz faded somewhat as users realized the bare-bones platform still lacked many of the features that made Twitter popular, such as trending topics, robust search functions and direct messaging. Threads has been steadily rolling out smaller updates but the hotly demanded web version could help reignite stronger user engagement.

    The new web version could also raise fresh competitive concerns for X, after owner Elon Musk sparked user backlash last week by suggesting he might do away with the platform’s block feature.

    Meta employees have for weeks teased that a desktop version of Threads was in the works and being tested internally. Just last week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who is also leading Threads, said he had been posting from the platform’s desktop version and suggested “it’ll be ready soon but it needs more work.”

    Web access is just one of a series of recent updates to Threads as Meta continues to build out the new platform. Other features added over the past month include new “reposts” and “likes” tabs that show users the posts they have reshared and liked in their profiles, a chronological following feed and a button to share threads posts to Instagram DMs.

    Continued updates to Threads are essential if Meta wants to maintain the early traction it had with users. Despite the app’s stunning success following its launch, by the end of July, Threads’ daily active user count had fallen 82% to around 8 million users, according to a report from market research firm Sensor Tower earlier this month. By August 16, updates to Threads had helped the app notch slight gains to 11 million daily active users, Sensor Tower said in a report Monday.

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he is “quite optimistic” about the app’s potential.

    “We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we’re seeing more people coming back daily than I’d expected,” he said last month during the company’s earnings call. “And now, we’re focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we’ll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible.”

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  • Zuckerberg unveils Quest 3 as Meta tries to stay ahead in the mixed reality headset game | CNN Business

    Zuckerberg unveils Quest 3 as Meta tries to stay ahead in the mixed reality headset game | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta is moving forward in its efforts to dominate the AR world with the new and improved Meta Quest 3.

    Unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s virtual Meta Connect event Wednesday, the headset starts at $500 and is a complete redesign of earlier models. The Quest 3, first announced in June, offers improved performance, immersive new mixed-reality features and a sleeker, more comfortable design.

    With a much stronger processor, higher-resolution display, revamped Touch Plus controllers and a 40% slimmer physique, the Quest 3 is a big step up from its predecessors. The Meta Quest 2 allows for strictly virtual reality, while the Meta Quest Pro has advanced passthrough cameras for seeing your actual surroundings, but it costs a whopping $1,000.

    Most importantly, the Quest 3 has support for Meta Reality, allowing users to enjoy mixed-reality experiences that blend the real world with the virtual one — for example, you can play a virtual piano on your real-life coffee table.

    “If you pick up a digital ball and throw it at the physical wall, it’ll bounce off it,” Zuckerberg said at Meta Connect Wednesday. “If someone’s shooting at you and you want to duck the fire, you just get behind your physical couch.”

    The Meta Quest virtual library is fully accessible with the Quest 3 – a library that now features VR-friendly Roblox, released Wednesday, and is set to add X Box cloud gaming in December, giving gamers the chance to play titles like Halo and Minecraft on a large screen anywhere.

    The headset is available for preorder now and officially hit stores on Oct. 10, available in two storage options (128GB and 512GB).

    Zuckerberg explains features of the new Quest 3 headset on September 27, 2023.

    Meta’s newest headset comes three years after the Quest 2, under a year after the Quest Pro and under four months after the Apple Vision Pro.

    Dubbed by Zuckerberg as the “first mainstream mixed reality headset” the Quest 3 is part of an ongoing arms race between two of tech’s biggest players to command the headset space – and Zuckerberg’s personal vision for a next-generation internet where users can interact with each other in virtual spaces resembling real life. And it comes in at a much cheaper price than the Apple alternative (which will cost you $3,499, to be exact) and is still mainly a VR headset with alternative reality options, while Apple’s product is a dedicated mixed reality experience.

    To get ahead of Apple’s June unveiling of the Vision Pro, Zuckerberg teased the Meta Quest 3 just days before its rival’s big announcement. But the two companies had a tense relationship even before Apple’s entry into the market. They have competed over news and messaging features, and their CEOs have traded jabs over data privacy and app store policies. Last February, Meta said it expected to take a $10 billion hit in 2022 from Apple’s move to limit how apps like Facebook collect data for targeted ads.

    Meta has until now been the dominant player in the headset market, but it has so far struggled to attract a mainstream audience for its VR headset products. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Meta had just 200,000 active users in Horizon Worlds, its app for socializing in VR. And in 2023, IDC estimates just 10.1 million AR/VR headsets will ship globally from the entire market, far below the tens of millions of iPhones Apple sells each quarter.

    Morgan Stanley analysts called Apple’s Vision Pro a “moonshot” effort following its June announcement, saying the product “has the potential to become Apple’s next compute platform,” but that the company has “much to prove” before the headset’s launch next year.

    The biggest fight may not be between tech giants, but for the general public’s acceptance. Many analysts say the biggest hurdle to consumer adoption of mixed reality headsets is ensuring a wide range of potential use cases and experiences available on the devices. While Meta has introduced features that let users play games, explore virtual worlds, watch YouTube videos, workout, chat with friends and more, it has yet to convince most consumers that the device is worthwhile.

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  • US judge set to decertify Google Play class action | CNN Business

    US judge set to decertify Google Play class action | CNN Business

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    A US judge plans to free Google from having to defend against a class action by 21 million consumers who claimed it violated federal antitrust law by overcharging them in its Google Play app store.

    Monday’s decision by US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco could significantly reduce damages that Google, a unit of Alphabet, might owe over the distribution of Android mobile applications.

    Consumers claimed they would have paid less for apps and enjoyed expanded choice but for Google’s alleged monopoly. Google has denied wrongdoing.

    Donato said his Nov. 2022 class certification order should be thrown out because his decision, also announced Monday, not to let an economist testify as an expert witness for the consumers eliminated an “essential element” of their argument for certification.

    The judge said he couldn’t decertify the class immediately because Google had been appealing his November order. He directed lawyers for Google and the consumers to try resolving that issue before a Sept. 7 hearing.

    The class action included consumers from 12 US states and five territories, who were not part of a similar case against Google brought by various state attorneys general.

    Class actions let plaintiffs sue as a group, and potentially obtain larger recoveries at lower cost than if they were forced to sue individually.

    Lawyers for the consumers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Google and its lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests.

    The case is part of wide-ranging antitrust litigation that includes 38 states and the District of Columbia, and companies including Epic Games and Match Group.

    The case is In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 21-md-02981.

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  • Microsoft splits Teams from Office in Europe after EU pressure | CNN Business

    Microsoft splits Teams from Office in Europe after EU pressure | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft will allow business customers in Europe to buy its video and chat app Teams separately from its Office software, it said Thursday, a month after the European Union opened an antitrust investigation into the company’s bundling of the products.

    The change will take effect from October 1, affecting business customers in the EU and four other European countries that use Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites.

    Microsoft (MSFT) will also make it easier for other companies — for example, Zoom and Slack, which is owned by Salesforce — to integrate their products with Microsoft 365, the new name for Office 365.

    “We believe these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the best possible solutions at competitive prices,” Nanna-Louise Linde, the company’s vice-president for European government affairs, said in a blog post.

    Microsoft will continue to engage with the investigation and “remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe,” she added.

    The company will charge “core enterprise customers” €2 ($2.2) less per month for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 — which include Word, Excel and Outlook among other apps — without the popular Teams app.

    New customers in Europe will be able to buy Teams, best-known for its video-conferencing feature, separately for €5 ($5.4) per month.

    “Existing enterprise customers who already have a suite with Teams can choose to stay with their current productivity suite or to move to a without-Teams suite,” Linde said.

    The EU launched its probe into possible anticompetitive practices by Microsoft following a 2020 complaint by Slack that alleged Microsoft illegally tied Teams to its dominant workplace software.

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  • Epic Games to lay off 16% of its workforce | CNN Business

    Epic Games to lay off 16% of its workforce | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, said on Thursday that it will lay off 16% of its staff, around 830 employees, as it attempts to reverse what CEO Tim Sweeney called “unrealistic” spending.

    In a letter to employees Thursday, Sweeney said the video game company had been “spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic.”

    “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic,” Sweeney said in the letter, which the company shared publicly. He added that Epic plans to divest from the online independent music platform Bandcamp, which it bought last year and which will now be acquired by the music marketplace firm Songtradr. Epic will also spin off most of its marketing division SuperAwesome into a standalone company.

    Epic’s layoffs are just the latest job cuts to hit the tech industry, which was forced to adjust after the stunning growth many companies saw during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic began to slow. Meta, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Lyft and others have all reduced their workforces earlier this year. More recently, Google parent Alphabet made its second round of layoffs of the year, eliminating several hundred recruiting jobs in September after having cut 12,000 employees in January.

    About two-thirds of Epic’s Thursday layoffs will impact employees outside the company’s “core development” teams, Sweeney said. Some laid off workers announced on LinkedIn that they had been affected, including employees working in user experience for Fortnite, production, employee engagement and recruitment.

    Laid off employees will receive a severance offer that includes six months of base pay, accelerated stock vesting and other benefits, according to Sweeney.

    “We’re cutting costs without breaking development or our core lines of businesses so we can continue to focus on our ambitious plans,” Sweeney said. “Some of our products and initiatives will land on schedule, and some may not ship when planned because they are under-resourced for the time being. We’re ok with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals.”

    The Epic layoffs also come amid the latest escalation in a protracted legal battle between the video game company and tech giant Apple. Following a yearslong back-and-forth over an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic over Apple’s App Store payment practices, both companies have asked the US Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling in the case.

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  • Snapchat adds new safety features for teen users | CNN Business

    Snapchat adds new safety features for teen users | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Snapchat says it’s working to make its app even safer for teen users.

    Parent company Snap said Thursday that it is rolling out a suite of new features and policies aimed at better protecting 13- to 17-year-old users, including restrictions on friend suggestions and a new system for removing age-inappropriate content. The company also launched a series of YouTube videos for parents about the features and an updated website laying out its teen safety and parental control policies.

    The new features come amid increasing pressure on social media platforms by lawmakers, educators and parents to protect young users from inappropriate content, unwanted adult attention, illicit drug sales and other issues. A Snap executive testified alongside leaders from TikTok and YouTube in a fall 2021 Senate committee hearing about youth safety on social media, promising new tools to help parents keep their teens safe. And since then, Snapchat — like other platforms — has rolled out a variety of new teen safety and parental supervision tools.

    Thursday’s announcement follows the launch last year of Snapchat’s Family Center, which offers parents more insight into who their teenagers are communicating with on the messaging app. The app’s other existing teen safety measures include prohibiting young users from having public profiles and having teens’ Snap Map location-sharing tool turned off by default.

    As part of Thursday’s feature rollout, Snapchat will now require 13-to-17-year-old users to have a greater number of mutual friends in common with another account before that account will show up in Search results or as a friend suggestion, in an effort to avoid teens adding users on the app who they don’t know in real life. The app will also send a pop-up warming to teens if they are about to add an account that doesn’t share any mutual Snapchat friends or phone book contacts.

    “When a teen becomes friends with someone on Snapchat, we want to be confident it is someone they know in real life — such as a friend, family member, or other trusted person,” the company said in a blog post.

    Snapchat will also impose a new strike system for accounts promoting content inappropriate for teens in its Stories and Spotlight sections, where users can share content publicly on the app. If inappropriate content is reported or detected by the company, it will immediately remove the content and issue a strike against the poster’s account. If a user accrues “too many strikes over a defined period of time, their account will be disabled,” the platform says, although it does not lay out how many strikes would lead to a suspension.

    Teen users will also start to see in-app content aimed at educating them on online risks such as catfishing and financial sextortion — when someone persuades a victim to share nude photos and then blackmails them for money — and letting them know what to do if they see it, including providing hotlines to contact for help. The PSA-style content will be featured on Snapchat’s Stories platform and in response to certain search terms or keywords.

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  • Atari 2600+ sees its future in retro gaming | CNN Business

    Atari 2600+ sees its future in retro gaming | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Atari home video game system took the late1970s and early 1980s by storm, complete with faux wood paneling and a classic joystick with a big red button. Rival systems eventually surpassed the video-game pioneer but its iconic status, and fans, remained.

    Atari has been working to rebuild a lot of goodwill among those fans and within the broader video game industry ever since its new CEO Wade Rosen came on board in 2021.

    With Rosen at the helm, the company is taking a closer look at its own history to chart its future, releasing remastered or reimagined versions of its classics like “Missile Command” and “Centipede,” producing the critically acclaimed “Atari 50” interactive documentary, and introducing its soon-to-be released retro console the Atari 2600+.

    “I think the 2600+ has legs because there’ll be new content, new games coming out but also additional ways to play these games and to make them accessible to larger communities,” Rosen told CNN. “Do I think these things are going to replace modern consoles? Absolutely not. There’s like no way that would happen, nor would they need to. They’re radically different things.”

    The retro console arrives in November at a $130 price point and in a more compact version. While it comes packaged with 10 games in a single cartridge, the console will also play new titles and work with original Atari 2600 and 7800 game cartridges.

    Atari is reimagining the classic

    According to Rosen, retro games complement the times and reimagined Atari titles like “Haunted House,” arriving in October, or new, original games like “Days of Doom,” available now, reflect a speedy, pick-up-and-play style characteristic of the early days of the hobby.

    For instance, the remastered “Haunted House” is an elaborate stealth game where players evade colorful ghosts and monsters – but it retains the exploration mechanics of its namesake that simply featured floating eyes roaming a dark, 2D maze.

    What people want in video games has changed radically, Rosen noted, explaining that these experiences “are designed for an age of complexity,” he said. “Back when we had simplicity, I wanted 200-hour games with huge quests and branching narratives and all these things, and now I’m like: ‘I can do a couple of those a year, but life doesn’t allow for it very much.’ “

    In this photo taken on August 12, 2017, a visitor poses with a T-shirt depicting an Atari 2600 video game console from the early 1980s, during the Retro.HK gaming expo in Hong Kong.

    The company’s Atari Recharged line also takes classics like “Yar’s Revenge” and spruces them up for a modern audience. And its acquisition of Nightdive Studios earlier this year added new franchises to Atari’s stable of remasters like “Turok” and the upcoming “System Shock.”

    The recent “Atari 50” release actually did something different while mining nostalgia — it established the genre of the interactive video game documentary. The company looked at decades of its history, and invited viewers of the doc to become players.

    “As we come to view games as art, more and more, I think people want to understand all the pieces that went into that and all the history around it, but yet the medium is games so we probably should interact with it in a different way,” Rosen noted.

    While not in the company’s plans as yet, the Atari CEO also showed enthusiasm for a hypothetical handheld system that can play its retro games on the go like a Nintendo Switch.

    “I guess short answer, yeah, if there’d be an appetite for it. I’d worry the cartridges would be a little too big. That would be really fun,” he said.

    As the successor to Atari’s home console crown, Nintendo, pushes forward with its Switch system, and newer players like Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation 5 traffic in blockbuster, Triple-A games this holiday season, the Atari 2600+ retro console (but not a handheld yet) will join the scrum. It’s set to launch November 17.

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  • Apple confirms that a bug and some apps are causing iPhone 15 models to overheat | CNN Business

    Apple confirms that a bug and some apps are causing iPhone 15 models to overheat | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Apple is working on a software fix following reports that some of its new iPhone 15 models are overheating.

    The company told CNN the current overheating issues are not a safety risk and will not affect the long-term performance of impacted iPhone models. It also emphasized that iPhones have internal protections for components to help regulate the temperature if it gets too high.

    Apple also told CNN there are several circumstances that are causing its next-generation lineup to heat up. User complaints started to circulate after the latest iPhones hit stores on September 22.

    “We have identified a few conditions which can cause iPhone to run warmer than expected,” Apple told CNN in a statement.

    To start, overheating can occur with some recently updated third-party apps, causing them to “overload the system,” the company said. Those apps include Instagram, Uber and arcade racing game Asphalt 9.

    “We’re working with these app developers on fixes that are in the process of rolling out,” Apple said in a statement.

    It also said it discovered a bug in iOS 17 impacting some users, and plans to roll out a software update to address the issue. It did not comment on when the fix will be made available.

    In addition, Apple said the device may feel warmer during the first few days after setting up or restoring the device because of “increased background activity.”

    Apple’s support page warns users that a device can get hotter when restoring it from a backup, using graphic-intensive apps, streaming high-quality video, and charging it wirelessly.

    “These conditions are normal, and your device will return to a regular temperature when the process is complete or when you finish your activity,” the company states on the website. “If your device doesn’t display a temperature warning, you can keep using your device.”

    The news comes as demand for the iPhone 15 appears strong. Leading up to launch day, analysts at firms such as Wedbush Securities reported iPhone 15 pre-orders tracking better than originally expected, with a heavy demand on its premium iPhone 15 Pro offerings, especially the Pro Max. Delivery and shipment times have moved to late October through mid-November for various Pro models.

    The new iPhones come as Apple reported in August that sales fell for the third consecutive quarter. iPhone revenue came in at $39.7 billion for the third quarter, marking an approximately 2% year-over-year decline, as users update their devices less often.

    But according to Wedbush estimates, about 250 million iPhones have not been upgraded in more than four years. Advancements made to the processor, camera and charging system, along with discounts from mobile carriers, could be more than enough reason for users to finally upgrade this year.

    The iPhone 15 Pro starts at $1,099, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199. Apple’s entry-level iPhones, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, cost $799 and $899, respectively.

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  • Google’s antitrust showdown: What’s at stake for the internet search titan | CNN Business

    Google’s antitrust showdown: What’s at stake for the internet search titan | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Google will face off in court Tuesday against government officials who have accused the company of antitrust violations in its massive search business, kicking off a long-anticipated legal showdown that could reshape one of the internet’s most dominant platforms.

    The trial beginning this week in Washington before a federal judge marks the culmination of two ongoing lawsuits against Google that started during the Trump administration. Legal experts describe the actions as the country’s biggest monopolization case since the US government took on Microsoft in the 1990s.

    In separate complaints, the Justice Department and dozens of states accused Google in 2020 of abusing its dominance in online search by allegedly harming competition through deals with wireless carriers and smartphone makers that made Google Search the default or exclusive option on products used by millions of consumers. The complaints eventually consolidated into a single case.

    Google has maintained that it competes on the merits and that consumers prefer its tools because they are the best, not because it has moved to illegally restrict competition. Google’s search business provides more than half of the $283 billion in revenue and $76 billion in net income Google’s parent company, Alphabet, recorded in 2022. Search has fueled the company’s growth to a more than $1.7 trillion market capitalization.

    Now, the company is set to defend itself in a multiweek trial that could upend the way Google distributes its search engine to users. The case is expected to feature testimony from high-profile witnesses including former employees of Google and Samsung, along with executives from Apple, including senior vice president Eddy Cue. It is the first case to go to trial in a series of court challenges targeting Google’s far-reaching economic power, testing the willingness of courts to clamp down on large tech platforms.

    “This is a backwards-looking case at a time of unprecedented innovation,” said Google President of Global Affairs Kent Walker, “including breakthroughs in AI, new apps and new services, all of which are creating more competition and more options for people than ever before. People don’t use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to. It’s easy to switch your default search engine — we’re long past the era of dial-up internet and CD-ROMs.”

    The trial may also be a bellwether for the more assertive antitrust agenda of the Biden administration.

    In its initial complaint, the US government alleged in part that Google pays billions of dollars a year to device manufacturers including Apple, LG, Motorola and Samsung — and browser developers like Mozilla and Opera — to be their default search engine and in many cases to prohibit them from dealing with Google’s competitors.

    As a result, the complaint alleges, “Google effectively owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for roughly 80 percent of the general search queries in the United States.”

    The lawsuit also alleges that Google’s Android operating system deals with device makers are anticompetitive, because they require smartphone companies to pre-install other Google-owned apps, such as Gmail, Chrome or Maps.

    At the time the lawsuit was first filed, US antitrust officials did not rule out the possibility of a Google breakup, warning that Google’s behavior could threaten future innovation or the rise of a Google successor.

    Separately, a group of states, led by Colorado, made additional allegations against Google, claiming that the way Google structures its search results page harms competition by prioritizing the company’s own apps and services over web pages, links, reviews and content from other third-party sites.

    But the judge overseeing the case, Judge Amit Mehta in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, tossed out those claims in a ruling last month, narrowing the scope of allegations Google must defend and saying the states had not done enough to show a trial was necessary to determine whether Google’s search results rankings were anticompetitive.

    Despite that ruling, the trial represents the US government’s furthest progress in challenging Google to date. Mehta has said Google’s pole position among search engines on browsers and smartphones “is a hotly disputed issue” and that the trial will determine “whether, as a matter of actual market reality, Google’s position as the default search engine across multiple browsers is a form of exclusionary Conduct.”

    In January, meanwhile, the Biden administration launched another antitrust suit against Google in opposition to the company’s advertising technology business, accusing it of maintaining an illegal monopoly. That case remains in its early stages at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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  • Microsoft CEO warns of ‘nightmare’ future for AI if Google’s search dominance continues | CNN Business

    Microsoft CEO warns of ‘nightmare’ future for AI if Google’s search dominance continues | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned on Monday of a “nightmare” scenario for the internet if Google’s dominance in online search is allowed to continue, a situation, he said, that starts with searches on desktop and mobile but extends to the emerging battleground of artificial intelligence.

    Nadella testified on Monday as part of the US government’s sweeping antitrust trial against Google, now into its 14th day. He is the most senior tech executive yet to testify during the trial that focuses on the power of Google as the default search engine on mobile devices and browsers around the globe.

    Taking the stand in a charcoal suit and tie, Nadella painted Google as a technology giant that has blocked off ways for consumers to access rival search engines. His testimony reflected the frustrations of a long-running rivalry between Microsoft and Google whose tensions have permeated the weeks-long trial. (Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)

    Central to Google’s strategy has been its agreements with companies such as Apple that have made Google the default search engine for millions of internet users.

    “You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you search on Google,” Nadella said.

    Nadella testified that every year he has been Microsoft’s CEO, he has unsuccessfully sought to persuade Apple to switch away from Google as its default search partner. Nadella added that Microsoft has been willing to spend close to $15 billion a year for the privilege. (A senior Apple executive, Eddy Cue, testified last week that Apple has always considered Google the best search product for its users, a claim echoed by Google itself throughout the trial.)

    However, even more worrisome, Nadella argued, is that the enormous amount of search data that is provided to Google through its default agreements can help Google train its AI models to be better than anyone else’s — threatening to give Google an unassailable advantage in generative AI that would further entrench its power.

    “This is going to become even harder to compete in the AI age with someone who has that core… advantage,” Nadella testified.

    Despite being profitable, and despite investing some $100 billion in it over the past 20 years, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has only a single-digit market share in mobile search, and only slightly more — into the teens — in desktop search, Nadella said, adding that one of his dreams has been to see Bing account for at least 20% of the market in both segments.

    Bing has struggled to grow its market share in part because being the default search provider for billions of devices means Google receives enormous amounts of data through search queries that helps Google understand at scale what users are likely to be interested in, Nadella noted. And for years, that “dynamic data” has enabled Google to stay ahead of Bing, he added.

    “Every misspelling of a new movie, every local restaurant whose name you mistype,” Nadella explained, “…is a very critical asset to have your search quality get better.” And because the physical world is constantly changing, capturing shifts in search trends are essential to helping a search engine stay relevant as historical data becomes less relevant. Nadella previously led Microsoft’s cloud computing business and before that had spent several years overseeing the engineering team responsible for search and advertising at the company, making him well-versed in Bing’s various challenges.

    Now, Nadella has said that the same data advantage could create “even more of a nightmare” as large language models compete on the basis of the data they are trained on.

    “What is concerning is, it reminds me of what happened with distribution deals [in search],” he testified.

    Under questioning by a Google attorney, Nadella admitted that in some cases, defaults are not the sole determinant of success: Google was able to overcome Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer defaults on Windows PCs to become the market-leading desktop web browser.

    But Nadella attributed Google’s success to the relative openness of the Windows platform, arguing that on more tightly controlled mobile operating systems, and in search, default status plays a much larger role than in competition for desktop web browsers.

    In addition to training its models on search queries, Google has also been moving to secure agreements with content publishers to ensure that it has exclusive access to their material for AI training purposes, according the Microsoft CEO. In Nadella’s own meetings with publishers, he said that he now hears that Google “wants … to write this check and we want you to match it.” (Google didn’t immediately respond to questions about those deals.)

    The requests highlight concerns that “what is publicly available today [may not be] publicly available tomorrow” for AI training, according to the testimony.

    While Microsoft and Apple have their own defaults — for example, by making Apple Maps the default maps app on iOS devices — Google goes much further than other tech companies in using “carrots and sticks” to keep people using its products by default, Nadella claimed. He cited Google’s licensing requirements that make Google’s Play Store a required installed app as a condition of using the Android operating system — another topic of dispute in the trial. The equivalent would be if Microsoft threatened to withhold Microsoft Office if Bing were not the default search engine, Nadella said, a move he claimed would not be in Microsoft’s business interests.

    Acknowledging that Google would not be in its dominant position without Microsoft’s own antitrust battles with the US government in the 1990s, Nadella said the situation involving Google today is vastly different. Internet search and, particularly on mobile devices, is the single largest software business opportunity in the world.

    Google’s dominance in search is reinforced when websites and publishers optimize for Google’s search algorithm and not Bing’s, when advertisers flock to Google and when users stick to what’s familiar, Nadella argued.

    In his fruitless negotiations with Apple, Nadella said he has tried to argue that Bing’s current role is little more than as a useful tool for Apple to “bid up the price” of hosting Google as the default search provider — but that Bing provides an important counterweight to Google and that Apple should consider investing in the Microsoft alternative for competition’s sake. Nadella has also proposed running Bing on Apple devices as a kind of “public utility,” he said.

    “Let’s say Bing exited the market,” Nadella said. “You think Google would keep paying [Apple]?”

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  • A look back at every iPhone ever | CNN Business

    A look back at every iPhone ever | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The iPhone redefined the term “cell phone.” Apple’s trademark product revolutionized the mobile phone industry, shifting from flip phones and keyboards to large screens and powerful cameras.

    With 1.2 billion units reportedly sold, the iPhone is arguably the most popular tech device in the world.

    With Apple set to unveil the iPhone 15 on Tuesday — chock full of rumored new features like a USB-C charging port, new colors and better battery performance — here is a look back at every iPhone to hit stores.

    Apple releases the original iPhone, a much-anticipated device that combines an iPod, phone and what then-company chairman Steve Jobs calls an “internet communicator.”

    “This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years,” Jobs told the crowd when unveiling the new $399 product, a 16 GB phone with a relatively terrible 2.0 megapixel camera and relatively large 3.5” screen.

    Customers queue outside the Apple Store in London for the launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008.

    With the second version of the iPhone, Apple introduces the App Store and 3G connectivity. The new device, half the cost of the original iPhone, sold more than 3 million within a month, far outpacing its predecessor and expectations.

    An Apple Store customer plays with the new iPhone 3Gs on June 19, 2009 in San Francisco, California.

    The 3GS introduces capabilities to record videos, as well as basic voice control (though Siri is still years away). The first “S” update to the iPhone also doubles the storage system, offering users an upgraded 32GB.

    An Apple employee demonstrates

    A completely redesigned device hits the shelves: thinner and sleeker with a better battery, camera and screen, the iPhone 4 starts to resemble the phone many of us use today. And with the addition of a front-facing camera, selfies and FaceTime calls enter into the chat.

    “I grew up with the Jetsons dreaming about video phones,” said Jobs at the announcement. “It’s real now.”

    An Apple customer demonstrates the voice assistant program on his newly purchased iPhone 4s outside of an Apple Store in New York City on October 14, 2011.

    Apple introduces the world to Siri, its now-iconic voice assistant, and the iMessage feature that allows iPhone users to message each other freely. Users are also given iCloud, making it possible to automatically sync all Apple devices.

    A newly released Apple iPhone 5 sits on a coffee shop countertop next to Apple's lightning connection cable in September 2012.

    With the iPhone 5 comes the Lightning cable, a shift away from the larger charging port used in Apple’s original iPhones and iPods. The 5 also gets a larger screen and LTE connectivity, making the phone much faster than its predecessors.

    The new iPhone 5S is displayed during an Apple product announcement at the Apple campus on September 10, 2013 in Cupertino, California.

    The 5S added the Touch ID feature, Apple’s first foray into biometric data usage as a replacement for passwords. Apple iPhone fans are also offered gold versions for the first time.

    A woman uses her smartphone in front of a display for the Apple iPhone 5C outside the company's store in the Ginza district of Tokyo, Japan, on September 20, 2013.

    In a flash of colorful plastic glory, the iPhone 5C hits the markets as a low-cost alternative to the 5S. Available in green, blue, pink, yellow and white, the 5C is shortlived. Apple discontinues the product a couple of years later.

    A woman touches an iPhone 6 Plus as it sits next to an iPhone 6 after they went on sale at the Apple Store in Sydney on September 19, 2014.

    2014: iPhone 6/6Plus, bigger and bendier

    The first Plus option comes out, offering a much taller, thinner phone – but also one more prone to bending. Customers are quick to complain about bending iPhones after the 6/6Plus hit the market.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the iPhone 6s during an Apple media event in San Francisco, California on September 9, 2015.

    Apple releases the 6S and 6S Plus with a rose gold option, as well as adds new features like 3D touch and doubled memory capabilities. Plus, the bend problem is fixed.

    The new iPhone SE is seen on display during an event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California on March 21, 2016.

    Taking a step back, the iPhone SE is a cheaper, smaller device than the 6S, giving customers a chance to enjoy Apple’s phones at a much lower cost.

    The lightning connecting port is seen on an Apple Inc., iPhone 7 Plus during an event in San Francisco, California, on September 7, 2016.

    In traditional Apple fashion, the company does away with the traditional headphone jack, forcing customers to buy dongles that adapt older headsets or lightning-plug earbuds. The 7 is also the first water-resistant iPhone. It features a more static home button that cannot be pressed down, only touched, and the first dual camera lens with portrait mode.

    Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Apple, speaks about the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2017.

    Apple moves away from its tradition of releasing S versions on off years, instead leaping right to the 8 and 8Plus. This is the first iPhone to support wireless charging.

    The new iPhone X is displayed during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus on September 12, 2017 in Cupertino, California.

    Goodbye home button, hello notched screen. The X revolutionizes the Apple product once again for its 10th anniversary, turning the iPhone into something that looks very similar to today’s versions. An extra lens also added portrait mode to the front facing camera, a fan favorite for iPhones to come.

    People handle the new Apple iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max during a media tour at an Apple office in Shanghai, China, on September 21, 2018.

    After a massive physical overhaul with the X, Apple releases a largely unchanged Xs and XS Max other than an internal hardware update. Displays also became edge to edge, maximizing screen space.

    The new Apple iPhone XR is displayed during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theater on September 12, 2018 in Cupertino, California.

    Announced alongside the XS, the XR is smaller and cheaper, though still larger than the 8 Plus. And although it comes with only one back camera lens, the phone is available in six colors like blue, yellow and red.

    A woman holds an iPhone 11 Pro Max while giving a live broadcast after it went on sale at the Apple Store in Beijing, China, on September 20, 2019.

    The 11 also offers six colors to choose from, as well as better dual camera capabilities with ultra-wide len options. Starting at $699, it is one of Apple’s cheaper core line phones. Meanwhile, the 11 Pro and Pro Max boast a three-lens camera and Apple’s most advanced retina display to date.

    An Apple iPhone SE smartphone is seen on August 5, 2020.

    In a throwback to its older devices, Apple shrinks down its phones to put out the SE second generation, complete with a now-retro home button. Even at a lower cost, the SE is tricked out with some of Apple’s flashiest features like an advanced camera and wireless charging.

    The Apple iPhone 12 Mini is seen on display at the Apple flagship store during a product launch event in Sydney, Australia, on November 13, 2020.

    The iPhone 12 mini is smaller than the usual iPhone but packs a powerful punch. With all of the features enjoyed by the iPhone 12 minus a little size and some battery life, the mini gives people everything they want while taking up less space in their pocket.

    A customer tries out an iPhone 12 Pro Max at the Apple flagship store during a product launch event in Sydney, Australia, on November 13, 2020.

    With the iPhone 12 series, Apple continued to upgrade its camera and display, plus introduce its proprietary MagSafe charging options. The 12 has two camera lenses while the Pro and Pro Max have three plus night mode and enhanced zoom range. The 12 and the 12 Pro are the same size, while the Pro Max is significantly larger. The 12 series also marks the end of Apple including an in-box charger with each iPhone purchase.

    Customers walk past a digital display of the new green iPhone 13 Pro inside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, on March 18, 2022.

    The iPhone 13 stays at the same price as the iPhone 12 with double the storage space, as well as featuring a much smaller top notch. Battery life and camera features are also majorly improved. The mini continues to be a powerful phone in a small package, and the Pro and Pro Max offer even better cameras.

    Apple iPhone SE 3 smartphones are seen during the sales launch at the company's flagship store in New York City on March 18, 2022.

    The SE is back and better than ever, though still complete with a home button and Touch ID. It enjoys a lot of the same features seen in the higher-end iPhones: potrait mode, HD video, long battery life, et cetera.

    Customers queue at the Apple Fifth Avenue store for the release of the Apple iPhone 14 range in Manhattan, New York, on September 16, 2022.

    2022: iPhone 14 series, goodbye, Mini- and SIM cards

    Doing away with the iPhone Mini for the Pro, Apple brings back the larger Pro, as well as adds a slew of safety features like Emergency SOS via satellite. The Pro and Pro Max feature a “Dynamic Island” top notch that free floats from the top of the phone to better integrate into whatever is going on onscreen, as well as a better camera and display. A physical SIM card tray is also gone with the 14, pushing users towards eSIMs only.

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  • Microsoft, Amazon facing UK antitrust probe over cloud services | CNN Business

    Microsoft, Amazon facing UK antitrust probe over cloud services | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft and Amazon could be in hot water over apparently making it difficult for UK customers to use multiple suppliers of vital cloud services.

    The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the country’s antitrust regulator, said Thursday it was launching an investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market to determine whether players were engaged in anti-competitive practices.

    Cloud computing firms, such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), use data centers around the world to provide remote access to computing services and storage. This “cloud infrastructure” forms the foundation for how software applications, such as Gmail and Dropbox, are developed and run.

    The CMA probe has been initiated following a report from Britain’s media and communications regulator Ofcom, which found that the supply of cloud infrastructure in the United Kingdom is highly concentrated and competition limited.

    “We welcome Ofcom’s referral of public cloud infrastructure services to us for in-depth scrutiny,” CMA CEO Sarah Cardell said in a statement.

    “This is a £7.5 billion market that underpins a whole host of online services — from social media to [artificial intelligence] foundation models. Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential.”

    The CMA said it would conclude its investigation by April 2025.

    The probe is the latest evidence of increased scrutiny of big tech companies by European regulators, which have tightened rules in recent years in areas such as data protection and targeted advertising.

    The European Digital Services Act, which came into force at the end of August, reflects one of the most comprehensive and ambitious efforts by policymakers anywhere to regulate tech giants. It applies to companies including Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Snapchat, TikTok and Meta (META), the owner of Facebook and Instagram.

    According to Ofcom, last year Microsoft and AWS had a combined market share of 70-80% in the UK cloud infrastructure services market. Google is their closest competitor with a share of 5-10%.

    In its report, Ofcom identified features of the market that make it more difficult for customers to change providers or to use multiple providers, such as switching fees.

    “If customers have difficulty switching and using multiple providers, it could make it harder for competitors to gain scale and challenge AWS and Microsoft effectively for the business of new and existing customers,” Ofcom wrote.

    The report also raised concerns about the software licensing practices of some cloud providers, particularly Microsoft.

    Both Amazon and Microsoft said they would engage “constructively” with the CMA.

    But a spokesperson for AWS added that the company disagreed with Ofcom’s findings. “We… believe they are based on a fundamental misconception of how the IT sector functions, and the services and discounts on offer,” the spokesperson said, noting that “the cloud has made switching between providers easier than ever.”

    A spokesperson for Microsoft added: “We are committed to ensuring the UK cloud industry remains innovative, highly competitive and an accelerator for growth across the economy.”

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  • China wants to limit minors to no more than two hours a day on their phones | CNN Business

    China wants to limit minors to no more than two hours a day on their phones | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China is proposing new measures to curb the amount of time that kids and teens can spend on their phones, as the country takes aim at internet addiction and tries to cultivate “good morality” and “socialist values” among minors.

    A proposal released by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, on Wednesday would require all mobile devices, apps and app stores to have a built in “minor mode” that would restrict daily screen time to a maximum of two hours a day, depending on the age group.

    The restrictions, if approved, would mark an expansion of existing measures rolled out in recent years as Beijing aims to limit screen time among kids and reduce their exposure to “undesirable information.”

    Under the draft rules, which are open for public discussion until September 2, children and teens using devices on minor mode would automatically see online applications close when respective time limits are up. They would also be offered “age-based content.”

    No one under 18 would be able to access their screens between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. while using the mode.

    Children under eight would be able to use their phones for only 40 minutes a day, while those between eight and 16 would get an hour of screen time. Teenagers over 16 and under 18 would be allowed two hours.

    All age groups would receive a reminder to rest after using their device for more than 30 minutes.

    Mobile internet service providers should also actively create content that “disseminates core socialist values” and “forges a sense of community of the Chinese nation,” the draft says.

    Parents would be able to override time restrictions, and certain educational and emergency services would not be subject to the time limits.

    “Internet addition” has emerged as a major social concern in recent years, giving rise to an often scientifically dubious and at times dangerous industry of boot-camp style treatment centers.

    Parents interviewed by CNN voiced tentative support for the proposal.

    “I think it’s good. On the one hand, it can protect their vision as many young kids cannot stop themselves while watching something they like,” said a mother of two in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, who did not wish to provide her name.

    “On the other hand, it’s easier for us parents to control our kids screen time,” she said. “Most importantly the content under the minor mode is more positive and healthy.”

    Myopia has become a national health concern in China, with some experts linking the prevalence of nearsightedness among young people to lack of exposure to sunlight or excess screen time.

    China has one of the world’s largest internet user bases, with roughly 1.07 billion people in the country of 1.4 billion having access to the web, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. About one in five users were 19 years or under, as of December.

    The effectiveness of the new proposed measures may depend on buy-in from parents, according to a father of two in southeastern China’s Zhuhai city, who said children sometimes use their parents’ accounts to play online.

    The regulation could be useful to “help parents to supervise the children” and limit screen time.

    “Even us adults need it!” he joked.

    The new measures could present challenges for tech companies, which are typically held responsible for enforcing regulations.

    The proposal comes as a severe, years-long regulatory crackdown on China’s tech giants appears to be coming to an end.

    The Hong Kong-listed shares in some of the country’s top internet firms closed sharply lower on Wednesday, after the new rules were publicized.

    Tencent

    (TCEHY)    , which operates popular messaging platform Wechat, finished about 3% lower. Video-streaming app Bilibili

    (BILI)     lost 7%, while rival Kuaishou closed down 3.5%. Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, ended 4.8% lower.

    On Thursday, the firms were trading flat to higher, with the exception of Weibo, which was trading about 1% lower.

    CNN has approached mobile phone makers Xiaomi, Apple and Huawei for comment.

    Two years ago, Chinese regulators barred online gamers under the age of 18 from playing on weekdays and limited their play to just three hours on weekends, tightening earlier limits.

    Around that time, several tech companies introduced measures allowing for more parental controls, in lockstep with Beijing’s push for more oversight.

    Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, introduced a “teenage mode” in 2021 which limited the amount of time children under the age of 14 could spend on the short-form video app to 40 minutes a day.

    Kuaishou, another popular video app, has a similar option.

    Past efforts have relied on internet users to register with their real names. Last year, regulators mandated that all online sites verify users’ real identities before allowing them to submit comments or like posts.

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  • Meta’s Threads is temporarily blocking searches about Covid-19 | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads is temporarily blocking searches about Covid-19 | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Threads, the much-hyped social media app from Facebook-parent Meta, is taking heat for blocking searches for “coronavirus,” “Covid,” and other pandemic-related queries.

    The tech giant’s decision to block coronavirus-related searches on its service comes as the United States deals with a recent uptick in Covid-19 hospitalizations, per CDC data, and more than three years into the global pandemic.

    News of Threads blocking searches related to the coronavirus was first reported by The Washington Post.

    A Meta spokesperson told CNN that the company just began rolling out keyword search for Threads to additional countries last week.

    “The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement added. “People will be able to search for keywords such as ‘COVID’ in future updates once we are confident in the quality of the results.” 

    As of Monday, searches on the Threads app conducted by CNN for “coronavirus,” “Covid” and “Covid-19” yielded a blank page with the text: “No results.” Searches for “vaccine” also prompted no results. Typing any of these queries into the Threads app does, however, offer a link directing users to the CDC’s website on Covid-19 or vaccinations, depending on the search.

    Meta did not disclose what other keyword searches currently yield no results.

    Meta’s Facebook and other social media platforms faced controversy in the early part of the pandemic for the apparent spread of Covid-19-related misinformation online.

    Meta officially launched Threads in early July, and the app quickly garnered more than 100 million sign-ups in its first week on the heels of months of chaos at Twitter, which is now known as X. But much of the buzz faded somewhat in the weeks that followed as users realized the bare-bones platform still lacked many of the features that made X popular with users.

    Threads released its much-requested web version late last month, and its keyword search about a week ago. But the current limitations around its search function highlights how the platform still has some kinks to work through before it can fully replace the real-time search and engagement experience that social media users have historically relied on with X.

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • Apple rejected opportunities to buy Microsoft’s Bing, integrate with DuckDuckGo | CNN Business

    Apple rejected opportunities to buy Microsoft’s Bing, integrate with DuckDuckGo | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Since 2017, Apple has turned down multiple opportunities to chip away at Google’s search engine dominance, according to newly unsealed court transcripts, including a chance to purchase Microsoft’s Bing and to make the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo a default for users of its Safari’s private browsing mode.

    The previously confidential records, unsealed this week by the judge presiding over the US government’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, illustrate the challenges that have faced Google’s rivals in search as they’ve tried to unseat the tech giant from its pole position as Apple’s default search provider on millions of iPhones and Mac computers. It’s a privilege for which Google has paid Apple at least $10 billion a year.

    The closed-door testimony by the CEO of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg, and a senior Apple executive, John Giannandrea, offers a glimpse of the kind of failed deals and backroom negotiations that have helped Google maintain its lead as the world’s foremost search engine.

    But it also shows how Apple has wrestled with Google’s rise and how some at Apple yearned for “optionality.” Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Giannandrea testified last month Apple began seriously considering a deal with Bing in 2018, after a conversation between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella launched a series of further discussions between the two companies. (Last week, Nadella testified that he has spent every year of his tenure as CEO trying to persuade Apple to adopt Bing.)

    Apple insiders ultimately came up with four options for Cook: Buy Bing outright; invest in Bing and take an ownership share of the search engine; collaborate with Microsoft on a shared search index that both companies could use; or do nothing and continue with the Google partnership.

    At the same time, Apple had been actively working with DuckDuckGo on a proposal that could have made it the default search in Safari browser’s private mode, while still maintaining Google as the default in normal mode, which logs user activity, Weinberg testified.

    DuckDuckGo logo displayed on a phone screen and DuckDuckGo website displayed on a laptop screen in October 2021.

    “Our impression was that they were really serious about [it],” Weinberg told the court last month, referring to the roughly 20 meetings and phone calls that DuckDuckGo held with Apple officials, including some senior executives, from late 2017 to late 2019 on the matter. The two companies deliberated over everything from product mockups to contractual language; Apple even went as far as sending a draft contract to DuckDuckGo outlining specific proposed revenue shares.

    “If we were the default in [Safari] private browsing mode, our market share, by our calculations at the time, would increase multiple times over,” said Weinberg, according to the transcript. “We would be getting exposure for our brand every time someone opened up private browsing mode.”

    Ultimately, however, Apple backed away from both potential deals.

    Weinberg blamed Apple’s contract with Google for sinking the initiative, calling it the “elephant in the room” during many of his team’s meetings with Apple. Similar negotiations with other browser or device makers, including Mozilla, Opera and Samsung, fell through due to the Google contract as well, Weinberg claimed, prompting DuckDuckGo to abandon its efforts to gain better browser placement.

    In his testimony, Giannandrea acknowledged a perception that the Apple-Google relationship could be undermined by such plans. In discussing a 2018 slide presentation prepared for Cook and introduced in court, Giannandrea said the slides suggested that even a joint venture with Bing “would probably put us in head-to-head competition with Google” that would “probably” result in the end of the Google search contract with Apple altogether.

    Giannandrea was opposed to moving ahead with a Bing deal, he said, largely because Apple’s testing showed Bing to be inferior to Google in most respects, and that replacing Bing as the default would not best serve Apple’s customers. He made a similar argument internally about DuckDuckGo, saying in an email that moving ahead with that partnership was “probably a bad idea.” (DuckDuckGo licenses search results from Bing.)

    Still, Giannandrea testified, some within Apple thought that dealing with Bing in some fashion could yield benefits to Apple. In one 2018 email introduced in closed session, Adrian Perica, who leads Apple’s strategic investment and merger efforts, argued that collaborating with Microsoft on search technology would help “build them up, create incremental negotiating leverage to keep the take rate from Google and further our optionality to replace Google down the line.”

    Giannandrea believed the proposal “wasn’t a very feasible idea” and in his testimony dismissed Perica’s thinking as a businessperson’s spitballing.

    Apple today has the enormous resources to build a true rival to Google, Giannandrea testified. But, as he wrote in a 2018 email, “it’s probably not the best way to differentiate our products” — a belief he said he still holds today.

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  • Threads user count falls to new lows, highlighting retention challenges | CNN Business

    Threads user count falls to new lows, highlighting retention challenges | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Threads, Meta’s Twitter rival, is struggling to retain users roughly a month after its highly publicized launch, according to fresh industry estimates showing that app engagement has fallen to new lows.

    The data from market research firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower highlight the challenges facing Meta as it seeks to exploit the opening created by the chaos surrounding Twitter’s management.

    Threads’ daily active user count is down 82% from launch as of July 31, according to Sensor Tower, with just eight million users accessing the app each day. That is the lowest it has been since the day after the app’s release when daily active users peaked at roughly 44 million, Sensor Tower said.

    People are also opening the app less frequently and spending less time there, Sensor Tower added.

    On its launch day, Threads users opened the app an average of 14 times and spent an average of 19 minutes scrolling through it, the company reported. By the end of the month, however, those figures had fallen sharply.

    As of August 1, Threads’ daily average time spent fell to just 2.9 minutes a day, and people spent only 2.6 sessions per day using the app, said Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower.

    Findings from Similarweb showed the same pattern of decline. Threads’ user count peaked at roughly 49 million on July 7, the day after launch, and fell steadily to just over 11 million by July 29, said David Carr, a senior insights manager at Similarweb.

    The steepest drop-off occurred in the two weeks immediately following Threads’ launch. But the new data show how the decline has continued and is ongoing.

    According to Sensor Tower, Threads’ daily active user count is still falling at a rate of roughly 1% per day.

    Speaking on the company’s earnings call last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “quite optimistic” about the app.

    “We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we’re seeing more people coming back daily than I’d expected,” he said. “And now, we’re focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we’ll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible.”

    Threads launched with only a handful of features and later promised to add in highly requested tools like a reverse-chronological content feed, a desktop version of the app and direct messages.

    On July 10, Zuckerberg announced that more than 100 million people had signed up for Threads, making it one of the fastest-growing apps in history. The company has reportedly looked into adding “retention-driving hooks” that can keep users engaged.

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