It's official: WhatsApp now available for download on iPad
Users are now asking that parent company Meta make WhatsApp available for Apple Watch and release an Instagram app for iPad as well. — WhatsApp
WhatsApp has officially introduced its long-awaited app for iPad.
"As one of our biggest requests, we're excited to announce that WhatsApp is now available on iPad," the company said in an announcement on its blog.
WhatsApp Messenger for iPad supports multitasking features including Split View, Slide Over, and Stage Manager (available on compatible iPad models), which allows users to organise and switch between multiple app windows.
Users can also make group video or audio calls with up to 32 people. It added that WhatsApp also works with Apple accessories Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil.
WhatsApp Messenger for iPad is available for download on the App Store.
WhatsApp had earlier hinted at the release of the app for iPad in a cryptic post on X yesterday (May 27). Users expressed both excitement and scepticism.
Hours later, the company's latest announcement about WhatsApp for iPad has received more than 1.2 million views.
Users are now asking that parent company Meta make WhatsApp available for Apple Watch and release an Instagram app for iPad as well.
Telegram responded to the WhatsApp's announcement with a GIF asking: "What year is it?", implying that perhaps, WhatsApp for iPad has just taken too long.
One user replied: "Only 15 years later, you're doing great Mark (Zuckerberg)."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Free Malaysia Today
4 hours ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Zuckerberg says Meta AI bot used a billion times monthly
Google revealed AI Overviews has grown to over 1.5 billion users since debuting in search results last year. (Reuters pic) CALIFORNIA : Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg touted the tech firm's generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) assistant on Wednesday, telling shareholders it is used by a billion people each month across its platforms. Zuckerberg noted the milestone anew at Meta's annual gathering of shareholders and as the social media behemoth vies with Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and others to be a leader in Gen AI. It was not clear how much Meta AI use involved people seeking out the chatbot versus passive users of Meta AI, as it is built into features in its family of apps. Since Google debuted AI Overviews in search results a year ago, it has grown to more than 1.5 billion users, according to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai. 'That means Google Search is bringing Gen AI to more people than any other product in the world,' Pichai said. Google's AI Overviews are automatically provided summaries of search results that appear instead of the previous practice of simply showing pages of blue links to revelant websites. Pichai said last week that Google's dedicated Gemini AI app has more than 400 million monthly users. Tech rivals are rapidly releasing new AI products despite ongoing challenges with preventing misinformation and establishing clear business models, and little sense of how the tech will affect society. Meta unveiled its first standalone AI assistant app on April 29, giving users a direct path to its Gen AI models. 'A billion people are using Meta AI across our apps now, so we made a new standalone Meta AI app for you to check out,' Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Instagram at the time. Zuckerberg said the app 'is designed to be your personal AI' and would be primarily accessed through voice conversations with the interactions personalized to the individual user. Use of Meta AI is growing fastest on WhatsApp, according to chief financial officer Susan Li. 'Our focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI,' Zuckerberg said when Meta announced quarterly earnings at the end of April.
The Star
15 hours ago
- The Star
Techie testosterone
WALKING into the crowded hotel conference room, Andrew Batey looked like any other tech guy attending ETHDenver, an annual cryptocurrency conference. A venture capital investor based in Florida, Batey wore a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the logos of more than a dozen crypto companies, with names like LunarCrush and bitSmiley. Batey, however, was at the conference not to network with fellow crypto enthusiasts but to fight one of them – live on YouTube. At the hotel, a short drive from the conference convention centre, he was preparing for his official weigh-in, the final step before a fight the next evening in an arena packed with crypto colleagues. Under the watchful eye of a representative from the Colorado Combative Sports Commission, Batey, 40, stripped down to his boxers. He weighed in at just under 88.5kg, on target for the fight. The bare-chested venture capitalist raised his biceps and flexed for the cameras. The nation's tech elite, not content with unfathomable wealth and rising political influence in Washington, have recently developed a new obsession – fighting. Across the United States, men like Batey are learning to punch, kick, knee, elbow and, in some cases, hammer an opponent over the head with their fists. The figurehead of the movement is Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire CEO of Meta, who has charted his impressive physical transformation from skinny computer nerd to martial arts fighter on Instagram, one of the apps he owns. The tech industry's newfound devotion to martial arts is one facet of a broader cultural shift that has upended US politics. Many of these tech founders-turned-fighters are chasing a testosterone-heavy ideal of masculinity that is ascendant on social media and embraced by President Donald Trump. An enthusiastic practitioner of Brazilian jujitsu, Zuckerberg, 40, lamented this year that corporate culture was getting 'neutered' and was devoid of 'masculine energy.' In 2023, Zuckerberg's fellow billionaire Elon Musk, a longtime corporate rival, challenged him to a televised cage match. (The fight never took place.) A çlout-forming exercise' Most of the tech world's aspiring fighters have a crucial thing in common: Before they started pursuing their extravagant new hobby, they made a lot of money. In 2018, Batey founded Beatdapp, a company that develops software to eliminate fraud in music streaming. He also runs a venture capital firm, Side Door Ventures, that invests in crypto startups. Two years ago, Batey's venture fund invested US$500,000 (RM2.1mil) in Karate Combat, a would-be competitor to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The league operates as a hybrid between an athletic competition and a tech startup. Rather than offering traditional shares, Karate Combat gave Batey's firm Karate tokens –a cryptocurrency that fans can wager on Karate Combat fights, which stream on YouTube as well as TV channels like ESPN Deportes. Last year, the company created a new competition for billionaire amateurs called the Influencer Fight Club. Karate Combat's fights have an extensive following on Crypto Twitter, and Influencer Fight Club has helped attract more of those super-online fans. Over the past 18 months, the competition has featured some big names in the crypto world, including Nic Carter, a venture investor. At a crypto conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last summer, Carter knocked out a tattooed crypto marketer in one round. On social media, he was hailed as 'kingly' and adopted the nickname 'Tungsten Daddy.' 'This is an amazing clout-forming exercise,' Carter said in a recent interview. 'Not to be cynical about it.' Batey attended an Influencer Fight Club event in Austin, Texas, last year and decided he wanted to fight, too. Once an amateur athlete who dabbled in boxing, he had gained a lot of weight as his career took off. He was about to turn 40 and needed to get into shape for health reasons. But he also wanted to have the sort of athletic experience usually reserved for serious fighters, who sometimes train their entire lives for the chance to compete on TV. 'This is my 40th birthday party – me fighting,' Batey explained. 'Maybe it's a midlife crisis.' For four months, Batey put his career on hold and spent $75,000 on a trainer, a nutritionist and a rotating cast of professional sparring partners. After the fight was scheduled for ETHDenver, a conference devoted to the cryptocurrency Ethereum, he booked a block of nearly 30 hotel rooms to accommodate his friends and supporters. At first Batey had trouble finding a suitable opponent. Then a solution emerged: Chauncey St. John, a crypto entrepreneur based in upstate New York. St John does not seem much like a fighter. 'I've got this Mister Rogers vibe to me,' he said recently. But he had endured his share of hardship in the crypto world. In 2021, he founded Angel Protocol, a startup that aimed to help charities raise money using crypto. Unfortunately, he steered his clients toward an investment platform tied to Luna, a digital currency whose price crashed overnight in 2022, erasing much of what the charities had raised. After the Luna crash, St John, 38, retreated from public view. He reimbursed the charities with money his firm had saved up and embraced Christianity, searching for meaning in the worst moment of his career. One day in January, St John glanced at a group chat that included other crypto enthusiasts. His eyes fell on a message from an industry colleague who goes by the nickname 'The Degen Boii': Karate Combat needed a fighter for ETHDenver. The invitation 'felt like testimony from God,' St John said. Nerds trying 'to man up' A few hours after the weigh-in, Batey drove to the Stockyards Event Center, a venue on the outskirts of Denver where Karate Combat had erected four sets of stands, overlooking a pit lined with mats. An entourage came along: two trainers, a couple of fighters from Batey's gym and a filmmaker shooting footage for a documentary. With 24 hours to go until the fight, it was time for the ceremonial face-off, an opportunity for trash talk. Batey drew close to St John, almost nose to nose. 'Are you going to kiss me?' St John asked. 'We'll find out,' Batey replied. When the theatrics concluded, St John walked down to the pit. Unlike Batey, he had not had much time to prepare; his entourage consisted of a single person, a trainer with no pro fighting experience. Chiheb Soumer, a former professional kick boxer, was watching him closely. A native of Hamburg, Germany, Soumer, 36, had once worked as an in-house trainer for Snap in Los Angeles, teaching tech employees how to box. He travelled to Denver as Batey's trainer. 'I love to see these nerds all of a sudden try to man up,' he said. In the ring on fight night On fight night at the Stockyards, the enemy combatants warmed up a few feet from each other as the arena slowly filled with spectators – men in crypto T-shirts and backward baseball caps, swigging beer and taking photos. At 6pm, a roar spread through the building, as St John and Batey slid into the pit. What followed more closely resembled a schoolyard scrap than a professional martial-arts bout. The choreographed moves that Batey had rehearsed were nowhere to be seen. Over and over, he threw punches and missed, lunging forward and then lurching back. St John swung his arms wildly, whirling in a circle, like a helicopter. Next to the pit, a panel of announcers offered live analysis for the YouTube audience. 'What they lack in technical, they make up for in the heart,' one commentator said. His partner offered a blunter assessment: 'It's hilarious.' By the end of the first round, Batey's nose was bleeding heavily. But soon he forced St John to the ground and straddled him, raining punches down onto his head. Within 10 seconds, the referee intervened: St John couldn't continue. It was over. Batey held his arms aloft and started to dance, thrusting his pelvis toward the crowd. 'I just want to thank my wife,' he told the cheering crowd. 'Thank you for supporting me, making my meals, putting the kids to bed.' Backstage, St John was smiling. 'I didn't embarrass myself,' he said. All the effort had been worth it. He would happily do it over again. That night, Batey went out to celebrate. He had showered, changed and cleaned up his face, except for a single streak of dried blood that was intact on the bridge of his nose. At the entrance to a party near Civic Center Park, Batey informed the bouncer that he had featured in 'a pro fight tonight, a fight on TV.' The bouncer didn't seem impressed. But Batey found a more appreciative audience on the dance floor, where his friends swarmed him, offering hugs and fist bumps. Soon a chant went up: 'Batey, Batey, Batey, Batey.' Away from the group, Batey confided that at the arena, not long after the fight, he had approached St. John to express his respect and gratitude – and to make clear that he was 'proud of him, as a human.' St John had fought hard, Batey said. Maybe someday they would be friends. 'He's a good guy,' Batey said. 'We're both just good dudes.' — 2025 The New York Times Company This article was first published in The New York Times.
The Star
16 hours ago
- The Star
‘A boy's idea of what it means to be a man'
The tech guys are fighting. Literally. — NYT WHEN Meta billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg was challenged by fellow billionaire Elon Musk to a televised cage match in 2023, his longtime corporate rival immediately suggested his ideal venue: the Roman Colosseum. The fight never took place but ancient ancient Rome is, in some ways, a useful reference point for this era of ultrarich braggadocio. The wealthiest Romans were fascinated with violent combat. The Emperor Commodus even joined in the gladiatorial contests, claiming he had fought as many as 1,000 times. By the early 20th century, fighting was still a popular pastime for the elites: An avid boxer in his Harvard years, Teddy Roosevelt regularly sparred at the White House. These days, the rise of mixed martial arts that both Zuckerberg and Musk swear to is part of a cultural revanchism that has thrived in the so-called manosphere, where hypermasculine online commentators complain that women have become too powerful in the workplace. In this corner of the internet, men are seeking to reclaim a kind of aggressive masculinity that came under scrutiny during the #MeToo era. It's the latest iteration of a phenomenon that feminist writer Susan Faludi described in her 1991 book Backlash about how men have historically reacted to advances in women's rights. In an interview last month, Faludi said the growing male obsession with fighting amounted to 'a boy's idea of what it means to be a man.' 'Living out this childhood fantasy of being pro athletes, that's just puerile,' she said. 'These guys need to discover yoga.' The urge to fight has recently spilled over from the tech billionaire class to the industry's trenches, where mere decamillionaires and millionaires now practice martial arts in increasing numbers. Zuckerberg's transformation offered a 'beacon of hope' for other executives, fellow tech bro Andrew Batey said. 'Dreamers can latch onto something like this and say, 'Maybe it's possible.'' Until lately, though, a run-of-the-mill tech founder hoping to flex his muscles on TV would have had limited options. Then a company called Karate Combat glimpsed a market opportunity. Karate Combat's primary business is professional fighting – mixed martial arts contests featuring seasoned athletes, some of whom also fight in UFC. (A representative for Karate Combat declined to reveal how much money the league generates.) Last year, the company created a new competition for amateurs and started offering it as the undercard at pro events, which are sometimes held at crypto conferences. The competition was called Influencer Fight Club, and its premise was simple: Put a couple of tech guys in the ring and see what happens.
