Stock Movers: Apple, Ant, Clearlake
On this episode of Stock Movers: - Apple is exploring the idea of adding cameras and visual intelligence features to its smartwatch, thrusting the company into the AI wearables market. Also: Apple makes major executive changes following its Siri struggles, while the EU is pushing hard to open up iOS. - Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter. Ant used domestic chips, including from affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co., to train models using the so-called Mixture of Experts machine learning approach, the people said. It got results similar to those from Nvidia Corp. chips like the H800, they said, asking not to be named as the information isn't public. - Clearlake Capital Group has agreed to acquire Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc. in a deal that values one of Wall Street's oldest data and analytics providers at $4.1 billion. The private equity firm will pay $9.15 per share in cash for Jacksonville, Florida-based Dun & Bradstreet, according to a statement Monday that confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report.
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Miami Herald
29 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Apple WWDC underwhelms fans in a crucial upgrade
Do you know about Asch conformity experiments? Solomon Asch performed them in the 1950s. He invited individuals into the lab and asked them to judge the length of a line. He also placed 6 actors in the same room who were assigned to give the wrong answers so that the ignorant subject could hear them before he provided his own answer. On average, 35% of the subjects followed the opinions of the actors even if their answer was obviously wrong. That is horrifying. What is even worse is that the study has been replicated numerous times. Now, imagine a scenario in which the actors are given money immediately after giving the wrong answer, and the subject can see that too. What would be the percentage of subjects that gave the wrong answer then? Related: Google resolves major privacy issue That study hasn't been done, but I think we are witnessing something similar unfolding in the tech space. Marketing is everything. If artificial intelligence were called "pattern matching and transformation," it would not sound so cool, would it? Alas, there is precisely zero intelligence in AI. It is just pattern matching and transformation. This is why it hallucinates so much. The farther away from its training data the query you give to the AI is, the crazier the reply you'll get. Public companies don't do marketing just for consumers; they also need to attract investors. And when everyone around you starts hyping AI to attract investors, you may find yourself in a dilemma - is it OK to promise something you probably can't deliver? Apple (AAPL) seems stuck in this dilemma but also faces significant pressures outside Trump's threat of a 25% tariff on iPhones not manufactured in the U.S. put Apple under pressure. The company expects tariffs to add $900 million to its costs for the current quarter. I've already written why large language models can't become sentient. But Apple can't afford to say that. They carefully dance around it by occasionally releasing a research paper on AI's limitations, but that usually looks like a jab at the competition. The company's management probably feels like a person in Asch's experiment, except that the actors are the competitors. Rivals promise stuff from science fiction, but that is still attracting investors. Chaos created by unrealistic marketing is real. Microsoft recently invested in an AI company that went bankrupt. The company had no AI but a huge number of humans doing the work. Related: Elon Musk's DOGE made huge mistakes with veterans' programs Anthropic launched its AI blog in June, seemingly planning to show that AI can replace writers. They killed this project after just one week. It looks like AI companies are playing a game of telephone on the inside, and that is how that project got greenlit. More Tech Stocks: Palantir gets great news from the PentagonAnalyst has blunt words on Trump's iPhone tariff plansOpenAI teams up with legendary Apple exec Apple is held to a much higher standard by consumers than other companies. The company can't afford the luxury of delivering subpar products. In a world full of people with crippled attention spans from watching TikTok and YouTube shorts, Apple delivered an hour and a half of pure boredom. I don't have a problem watching long informative videos, but this one wasn't that. Thank you, YouTube, for the video speed settings-a lifesaver. Apple has veered off course due to pressure. Their new design language, Liquid Glass, isn't original. Windows Aero was trendy in 2006. The Linux desktop environment KDE Plasma has featured numerous transparent/glass themes over the last 17 years. Related: Nvidia's latest project may supercharge quantum computing Yes, Apple did it with more polish. But transparency and monochrome icons ruin accessibility. They are cool-looking only if you are a child. You don't have time for distractions if you have work to do. As for the big AI reveal that some people were hoping for, there wasn't one. The best feature they presented was a call translator. I am not sure how many people need it, but those who do will greatly appreciate it. Long-time fund manager Chris Versace, wrote on TheStreet Pro "It is hard to disagree, at least for now, that Apple is taking, as some have called it, a "gap year" on Apple Intelligence, but one of the great advantages the company has is its developer community and that's the core audience for WWDC." Apple used to have a slogan, "Think different." Well, if the company thinks differently, it ain't showing it. Related: Popular cloud storage service might be oversharing your data The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk backtracks on Trump criticism. How will the tech world react?
Days after a fiery online feud seemed to signal an end to the relationship between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, the tech billionaire has backtracked. In a social media post early on Wednesday, Musk expressed regret for the very public feud, saying he went 'too far.' Musk also shared he thinks it was 'worth it' to have his net worth drop while he worked with the Trump administration on the Department of Government Efficiency. After becoming one of the leading voices of the MAGA movement before and after the 2024 election, the dispute between the president and Musk shocked their Republican supporters. While Trump has made a few comments about the fight on social media and to the press, including firing off a few warnings Musk's way, he's mostly sidestepped questions from reporters. Now, Musk seems ready to reconcile, but whether Trump is ready to repair the relationship is less clear. The relationship between Musk and Trump, and Trump and other tech industry titans, seemed to indicate the political maturation of Silicon Valley as they work to shape public policy to their benefit. But Musk's rise and fall is also a warning to those same titans, a clear example of the risks of engaging in the messy world of politics. Musk's posts come just days after the president told NBC News that the former DOGE leader was 'very disrespectful to the office of the president.' During their spat, Trump threatened that Musk's company SpaceX could face a termination of government contracts and potentially other retribution. It's unlikely that Trump will cancel SpaceX's contracts 'anytime soon,' Dan Grazier, a senior fellow at a national security think tank, told NPR. Musk in response threatened to decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, but later walked it back. The feud began over Musk's displeasure with the Trump-backed 'big, beautiful bill,' which cleared the House last month. The bill would cut electric vehicle credits and could hurt his other company, Tesla. But John Helveston, a professor at George Washington University, told NPR the end of federal EV credits may not hurt Tesla as much as its competitors. Musk, a multibillionaire serial entrepreneur, spent much of the last several months positioned beside the president. His role in the Trump administration sparked concern among critics over what sway he had over Trump's decision-making, but hope among those who thought the duo could change the way Washington works. Peter Loge, a public affairs and political communications professor at George Washington University, said it may have seemed like Musk's influence on the president was 'higher and different' than other advisers, but, in reality, there's historical precedence. In the past, railroad titans, industrialists and shipping magnates have all sought to have power over government and its policymaking. Now, it's the tech sector, Loge said. 'It's a small collection of really rich people who get a lot of attention and who think they know best; they try to exert their force over public policy,' he told the Deseret News. Trump's inauguration ceremony was striking, as a string of powerful tech CEOs from Silicon Valley, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Musk, sat behind the president during his address. This growing influence comes at a time of significant change for the industry. 'A lot of these companies like crypto and AI are new to Washington and are new to trying to influence public policy. They could ignore Washington and do their own thing, and they discovered what Google, Microsoft and every other organization coming out of Silicon Valley discovered in the past decades, which is that you ignore Congress at your own peril,' Loge said. Pundits have also pointed to other tech giants who may step in to replace Musk, including venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who already has a relationship with Trump. Thiel has long been in Trump's orbit, endorsing his 2016 campaign and signaling the relationship between the tech world and Trump-era politics. There's a spiderwebbing impact that stems from Thiel, as Fortune highlighted in a report. Musk may now rely on his relationships in the tech world and with others in the administration, like Vice President JD Vance, to try to get back into Trump's favor. Meanwhile, the tech world will need to decide how far to lean into their political relationships. 'I'm heartened to see that we have, over the past two decades, seen a significant increase in terms of our political influence and engagement and we hope it continues to grow,' Ahmed Thomas, the CEO of the nonpartisan business association Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said. However, Thomas noted that going forward, he believes the tech industry should focus on emerging technologies, workforce development opportunities and be less dependent on the loudest voices in the room. 'I think for so many people, there's a focus not on opportunity, but rather where we have … more personalities and conflict,' he said. Regardless of whether Trump cuts out Musk entirely, or shifts his attention to another major tech player, Loge noted that Musk's dramatic rise and fall in the Trump administration is representative of a larger conversation about the relationship between wealth and political power. 'I think that, even as we wrestle with this new question, right, 'What about Elon Musk? What about crypto? What about AI?' It's important to remember that these are in many ways, very old questions about the connection between truth, persuasion, power and democracy,' Loge said.
Time Business News
an hour ago
- Time Business News
Mobile App Development in San Francisco
As the digital revolution continues to reshape how businesses operate and users interact, cities like San Francisco have emerged as epicenters of technological innovation. The ever-growing demand for immersive user experiences has not only propelled mobile app development in San Francisco to new heights but also expanded the role of augmented reality app development companies in defining tomorrow's tech landscape. In this article, we will explore the dynamic ecosystem of mobile app development in San Francisco, its impact on global businesses, and how augmented reality is poised to redefine user interaction in ways never imagined before. Whether you're a startup, enterprise, or visionary entrepreneur, this guide will provide valuable insight into how these technologies are shaping the present and future. San Francisco, often called the tech capital of the world, is home to Silicon Valley—a hub for global giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and countless innovative startups. This strategic positioning has transformed the city into a goldmine for mobile app development. The city offers: A vast pool of tech talent from top universities and global backgrounds. Cutting-edge infrastructure and access to VC funding. A thriving ecosystem of tech incubators and accelerators. But what truly sets mobile app development in San Francisco apart is its forward-thinking approach to user experience, performance, and cross-platform compatibility. Mobile apps developed in San Francisco aren't just limited to consumer entertainment. They power industries such as: Healthcare: Telemedicine, health monitoring, patient engagement. Telemedicine, health monitoring, patient engagement. Finance: Fintech applications, payment systems, and investment platforms. Fintech applications, payment systems, and investment platforms. E-commerce: Custom shopping apps with AR features. Custom shopping apps with AR features. Real Estate: Virtual tours, AI-powered recommendations. Virtual tours, AI-powered recommendations. Education: Learning platforms with gamification and AR elements. These applications are no longer just functional; they're intelligent, personalized, and often, immersive—thanks in part to the rise of augmented reality. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital content—like images, sounds, or other data—on the real world using smartphones, AR glasses, or tablets. From Snapchat filters to industrial training simulations, AR is now a practical tool across industries. As hardware becomes more powerful and affordable, businesses are increasingly turning to an augmented reality app development company to innovate the user experience. AR isn't just a trend; it's a transformative force. Here's how: Enhanced User Engagement: AR can increase interaction time and engagement by offering immersive, gamified, or 3D experiences. AR can increase interaction time and engagement by offering immersive, gamified, or 3D experiences. Data Visualization: Complex data is easier to understand when presented in 3D through AR. Complex data is easier to understand when presented in 3D through AR. Remote Assistance: AR is now used in remote support for healthcare, field services, and education. AR is now used in remote support for healthcare, field services, and education. E-commerce Integration: Users can 'try before they buy' through AR fitting rooms or product previews. In fact, major brands like IKEA, L'Oréal, and Nike have already integrated AR into their mobile apps, a trend that San Francisco-based companies are helping push forward. The intersection of mobile app development and AR technology is where the magic happens. Let's explore how businesses are leveraging both to stand out in crowded marketplaces. Imagine pointing your phone at your living room and placing a digital version of a sofa right in your space. Retailers are using AR to let users preview furniture, clothing, makeup, and more, reducing returns and improving satisfaction. Augmented reality combined with healthcare mobile apps enables remote diagnosis, 3D imaging of organs, and interactive rehabilitation sessions—all from the palm of your hand. Potential buyers can now take virtual tours of homes using AR even before stepping on the property. Combined with mobile notifications and financing tools, the property buying journey becomes seamless. While the opportunities are enormous, choosing the right mobile app or AR development partner is critical. Here are key factors to consider: Ensure your partner has proven experience with cross-platform tools like Flutter, React Native, and AR frameworks like ARKit (iOS) and ARCore (Android). Whether it's healthcare, education, or fintech, your developer should understand industry-specific compliance and UX patterns. Companies in San Francisco tend to be more experimental—leveraging design thinking, agile development, and user testing as core processes. Seek firms that prioritize innovation over routine delivery. The journey doesn't end at deployment. Regular updates, analytics, user feedback integration, and scaling strategies should all be part of the package. San Francisco is not just riding the wave of mobile and AR tech—it's building the wave. Here's what the next few years might look like: Imagine AR apps that respond dynamically to user behavior using machine learning. Personalized education, virtual shopping advisors, and AI-powered health monitors are all on the horizon. With the expansion of 5G, data-heavy AR applications will run faster and smoother, leading to richer mobile experiences. Apps are moving from phones to wearables. Apple's Vision Pro and Meta's smart glasses hint at a future where mobile AR apps are used hands-free. AR will play a role in visualizing city infrastructure, allowing users to interact with real-time data about energy usage, traffic, or safety in urban spaces—starting in smart hubs like San Francisco. If you're considering building a mobile app or exploring AR solutions, start by asking: What problem does your app solve? How will AR enhance the user experience? Who is your audience and what devices do they use? What is your budget and timeline? Who will maintain and scale the app post-launch? Collaborate with a team that understands both the present and future of app ecosystems—especially one rooted in San Francisco's dynamic tech scene. The fusion of mobile app development in San Francisco and innovations from augmented reality app development companies is creating a new era of digital interaction. What was once futuristic is now a reality, and businesses that invest early are likely to dominate their industries. Whether you're creating a lifestyle app, an enterprise tool, or an educational experience, the combination of mobility and augmented reality will be the foundation of engaging and profitable digital platforms in the years to come. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
