Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Wednesday, October 30, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. The Apple release week continues with new MacBook Pros. Github goes multi-model. Alphabet earnings were good, but Reddit earnings were massive while Samsung is having such a hard time since the summer and a summary of the color Kindle reviews.
Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Apple has updated the MacBook Pro with M4 Pro or M4 Max chips, Thunderbolt 5 and 16GB Plus of RAM, starting at $1999 for the 14-inch and $2,499 for the 16-inch shipping November 8th. The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro is also getting a small design upgrade in the form of an extra USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port on the right-hand side and a space-black option to match
its more premium brethren. Like previous models, the M4 Pro equipped laptops will start at $1999 for the 14-inch, the 16-inch ones again starts at $2499, but it's getting an upgrade to 24GB of RAM. The basic 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro still starts at $1599, but that model now mercifully starts with 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB. The new MacBook Pros
will be available on November 8th with pre-orders available now. Outside of chip bumps and RAM improvements, the 14-inch and 16-inch Pros with M4 Pro Max chips are also the first Mac laptops with Thunderbolt 5 ports. All three MacBook Pros come with new 12-megapixel webcams that feature a desk view and they can each be configured with a new nano-textured display capable of up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness and 1600 nits of HDR. Those ancillary
upgrades are nice, but the big changes are still in the chips. Apple claims that the entire M4 generation of chips has the world's fastest CPU core and the industry's best single-threaded performance. Single-core performance has been a strong suit of Apple's Mac chips since the M1 generation and the M4 chips are promised to have dramatically faster multi-thread performance. The M4 Pro and Max also have faster GPU cores with a ray tracing
engine that's twice as fast. The neural engine is also 2x faster than the M3 generation for improved machine learning and AI workloads. But that's not all. Apple says the MacBook Air with M2 or M3 chips will now come with 16GB of RAM as standard up from 8GB and leaves the pricing unchanged at $999 plus. Quoting and gadget. You'll still have to live with a Paltry 256GB of storage on all of the base MacBook Air systems, but hey, at least Apple
is finally listening to our demands. We've long argued that it's worth bumping up to 16 GB of RAM for most laptops. That's particularly true for Apple Silicon systems which have memory directly built into their systems on a chip and can't expand their RAM down the line. You can thank AI as the main reason Apple and Microsoft with Copilot Plus AI PCs are now pushing for 16GB of RAM. Well, Apple Intelligence requires 8GB of RAM to function.
The company previously admitted it may not be enough to run the AI features in Xcode 16. As AI models grow and become more complex, their memory demands will only increase. More than ever, it pays to invest in as much RAM as you can up front. You can order the refreshed MacBook Airs with 16GB of RAM online today and they should be available in stores soon. As Alex Heath said on Twitter last night, nothing to see here, just Microsoft offering
tons of AI models beyond those from OpenAI. GitHub says Copilot will support Anthropic, Google and OpenAI models unveiled an AI tool to build a micro web apps called Spark, Copilot for Xcode and more. Quoting the verge. GitHub Copilot users on the web or VS Code can select Cloud 3.5 with Gemini 1.5 Pro in the coming weeks. OpenAI's GPT 4001 preview
and 01 mini models will also be available in GitHub Copilot soon. Developers will be able to toggle between models during a conversation with Copilot Chat to find the model that's best for a particular task. There's no one model to rule every scenario and developers expect the agency to build with the models that work best for them. Says GitHub CEO Thomas Dumpke. It's clear the next phase of AI code generation will not only be defined by
multi model functionality but by multi model choice. Microsoft own GitHub was the first to launch its AI tool called Copilot in 2021 ahead of Microsoft's push to make Copilot the center of its AI efforts. It was the first major result of Microsoft's initial $1 billion investment into OpenAI and GitHub announced last week that Copilot now has more than
1 million paid subscribers. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft adopts GitHub's multi model approach and opens up its own Copilot AI assistant to models from rivals like Google and Anthropic. GitHub is also announcing Spark today an AI tool that makes it easier to build web apps using natural language. An initial prompt uses OpenAI and Anthropic models to produce live previews of what the web app will look like and GitHub Spark users can compare versions as they make changes.
GitHub Spark lets experience developers directly manipulate code while novice ones can create a web app entirely using natural language. I mean if we're doing a wrap up of the biggest text stories of the year, the horrible job market situation in gaming has to be up there, right? PlayStation is closing Firewalk Studios which debuted the shooter game Concord in August before taking it offline. And Mobile Studio, Neon Koi is also seeing layoffs impacting around 210 jobs.
Quoting Bloomberg Concord failed to stand out in a saturated market when it was released in August and was pulled from stores shortly afterward with PlayStation offering refunds to customers who bought it. Herman Holst who leads Sony's Studio Business Group said the company had spent the last few months exploring all our options for the game. After much thought we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio he wrote.
I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit, and dedication. Alphabet's earnings were great Q3 revenue up 15% year on year. Net income up 24% search revenue up 12%. The all important Google Cloud revenue was up 25%. YouTube ad revenue was up 12.2%. But the headline that got a lot of chatter was this. Sooner Pichai said, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI than reviewed and accepted by
engineers. The results indicate that while many people feel Google isn't as reliable as it once was, the company continues to operate a very strong business. AI is a huge focus across Google with the release of features like custom AI chatbots powered by Gemini called Gems, automatic AI note taking in Google Meet and a bunch of generative AI tools to help YouTube creators. Google's
well-reviewed Pixel 9 lineup of smartphones were also packed with AI tools. In search, our new AI features are expanding what people can search for and how they search for it. CEO Sundar Pichai says in a statement, in cloud our AI solutions are helping drive deeper product adoption with existing customers, attract new customers, and win larger deals. And YouTube's total ads and subscription revenues surpassed $50 billion over the past four quarters for the first time.
End quote. Let me underline that last bit. YouTube makes $50 billion in revenue a year now. That makes it the number one highest grossing video app compared to Netflix, which comes in at number two, making around $37 billion a year. But you know who had really good earnings? Reddit, they reported Q3 revenue up 68% year on year to 348.4 million. And it's not just making money. Dows were up 47% year on year to 97.2 million. So reddit's stock jumped more than 24% overnight. Quoting CNBC.
Average revenue per user was $3.58 for the third quarter, which beat analysts estimates of $3.24. It was another strong quarter for Reddit and our communities as we achieved important milestones, including new levels of user traffic, revenue growth, and profitability. Reddit CEO Steve Hoffman said in a statement, Reddit continues to be one of the most visited and trusted sites in the world with opportunities available to us that aren't available to most companies.
This is Reddit's third earnings report since the company went public in March. Based on the after hours pop, the stock has almost tripled in value since its IPO. At the close, Reddit had a market cap of $13.6 billion. Since last year, Reddit has benefited from Google search updates that helped push its content higher in results, bringing in a flood of new users to the 19-year-old
social media service. However, the newer users, which Reddit refers to as logged out users, generate less online advertising revenue for the company than logged in users, who typically spend more time on the platform. Reddit has detailed and financial filings. Reddit is trying to get logged out users to sign up to the service and is making it easier for them to do so. Hoffman told CNBC in August. He also said that Reddit's direct traffic is really resilient to any Google search changes.
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compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Investing involves risk. Acorns advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash ride. But you know, who's stock isn't doing well? Samsung, who's seen shares fall 32% from their 2024 peak on July 9th, losing $122 billion from its market cap more than any other chip maker worldwide.
Why? Quoting Bloomberg. As concerns mount that the company is losing out to smaller rival SK hynics in AI memory and failing to gain on Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing in outsource chipmaking, Samsung shares have tumbled 32% from this year's peak on July 9. The company has lost $122 billion of market value in that span more than any other chip maker worldwide. Smartphones and other consumer electronics still account for the biggest share of Samsung sales, but semiconductors
have been contributing the most profit in recent years. With the recent crisis in its chip business, the Suwon based company issued a rare apology to investors earlier this month for disappointing results. The company's story highlights how AI is the key factor minting winners and losers in today's chip sector. While foreign investors have led an exodus from Samsung, Nvidia has become one of the world's largest companies. TSMC, the key maker of chips designed by Nvidia and Apple,
has added over $330 billion in market value this year. Things went south for Samsung quickly. It's stock flirted with a record high after it posted a 15-fold surge in operating profit for the June quarter. As recently as August investors were optimistic, it could win more business supplying Nvidia with high bandwidth memory to work alongside AI processors. That hope has been snuffed out with the company admitting delays with its latest generation HBM chips in early
October. Soon after SK Heenix said it had begun volume production. Meanwhile, US rival Micron technology is stepping up efforts in HBM as well and has reported strong demand for its offerings. Samsung is quote, losing its technology leadership in the semiconductor business said young J. Lee, London based senior investment manager of the global emerging markets high dividend team at PICTET asset management. Technology leadership is difficult to regain in the short term by
nature, he said, adding that the firm has been reducing its Samsung holding. Beyond its lag and AI memory, Samsung has struggled with a costly years-long effort to close the gap with TSMC in foundry business, like Intel, which has run into similar difficulty with plans to expand its outsource chip making operations. The Korean firm is now moving to cut jobs and make other efforts to stop
the bleeding. Heads up if the following job descriptions describe you. Microsoft says Russian hackers have sent highly targeted spear fishing emails to thousands of US officials, defense workers, and others during the past week. Quoting Bloomberg. In some of the emails that were part of the latest campaign, the senders impersonated Microsoft employees, according to the blog, spear fishing involves sending tailored emails to individuals, including links to malicious websites that can then steal
information. It wasn't immediately clear how many of the attacks, if any, were successful. Microsoft has said the attacks are perpetrated by a sophisticated Russian nation-state group, it calls Midnight Blizzard, which US and UK governments have connected to the SRV, the Russian foreign intelligence service. The company said in January that the group attacked its corporate systems, getting into a small number of email accounts, including senior leadership and
employees who work in cybersecurity and legal. End quote. Finally, today, after years of anticipation, Amazon, as you know, has finally entered the color e-reader market with its $280 Kindle color soft. And I read all the reviews, so you don't have to. The consensus seems to be this, while competitors like Kobo, Bookes, and Remarkable have already established themselves in the color e-ink market. Amazon claims its delayed entry was strategic,
waiting until the technology met their standards. The color soft features a seven-inch screen using modified e-ink Colito 3 technology. Amazon's custom display stack includes several technical improvements, a 24-volt oxide backplane for faster pigment movement and better contrast. Nighttried LEDs for enhanced color and brightness and a specialized coating to reduce color mixing between layers. These modifications aim to deliver smoother page turns and reduced screen refresh
artifacts. In comparison to its closest competitor, the $220 Kobo Libra color, the color soft screen displays notably cooler colors, potentially offering better color accuracy. However, this comes with a bluish tint that can be uncomfortable in low light conditions, though easily adjusted using the device's warmth settings. The color soft also includes a vivid mode for
enhanced color saturation, though its effects are subtle. Text clarity on the color soft is slightly compromised compared to traditional black and white Kindles, an inevitable trade-off with color e-ink technology. However, the reading experience remains solid, with familiar Kindle interface features like customizable themes, quick navigation, and annotation tools. The device also includes practical features like auto-adjusting front lights, and smooth pinch-to-zoom
functionality for comics and graphic novels. Apparently, the color soft particularly shines when displaying full-color content like comic books, graphic novels, and book covers in your library. Here's the conclusion from Engadget's review quote. Well, it's very late to the color e-ink party. The Kindle color soft is a solid premium e-reader that provides an excellent experience,
both in color and black and white. I focused a lot on comparisons in this review because most people will not have the opportunity to have the color soft, and any of its contemporary side-by-side, unless you're my dad, who buys almost every e-reader, and small tablet under the sun. But to be clear, the color soft is a good Kindle, and in many ways Amazon did pull an Apple here. If you're already heavily entrenched in the Kindle ecosystem and have been holding out for a color
e-reader, this is the device to get. Just be prepared to pay a premium for it. Also, like Apple and its various operating systems, there's something to be said about the convenience and ubiquity of the Kindle ecosystem. The library is seemingly endless with discounts galore, supplemented by prime reading and Kindle unlimited, so it's easy to get sucked in when you're already shopping on Amazon for household goods and holiday gifts. But when it comes to value for
your money and pure spec breakdown, you can get more from Kobo and Boog's devices. Kindle isn't the only name in town anymore for e-readers, and it hasn't been for a long time, and that seems to be a more pronounced fact now with the introduction of the color soft. If nothing else, Amazon has finally filled a glaring hole in its e-reader lineup with this device. If you check out the Rad History Feed, this week's episode is on Fernando Valenzuela.
I had him on the list as a potential topic from the beginning, but since he left us a week ago, I crammed and did an episode on the great man in honor of his passing. If you remember Fernando Mania, listen to recall why he was so much fun, but if you're unfamiliar, listen to hear about the career of one of the great sporting icons of the 1980s. Talk to you tomorrow.