Techcrunch blog!: Apple broke something on purpose

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Good afternoon, and welcome to your TechCrunch PM edition. You liked our testing of Google's Gemini so much that you helped it propel to one of the top reads today. You also get a twofer in more Gemini developer news. And if you were waiting for prices to come down on one of Lucid's cars, you're in luck. Also on the docket for today: an answer as to why iPhone web apps are broken in the European Union. Enjoy!

— Christine

Image Credits: Apple

TechCrunch PM Top 3

EU iPhone users got a trick, not a treat: It seemed like a bug was behind the broken iPhone web apps in the European Union, but no, that's just Apple. The consumer tech giant took to its website to explain that it is blaming the new EU regulation, the Digital Markets Act, for the change, saying that the complexities involved with the DMA's requirement to allow different browser engines is the root cause.

Is Google's Gemini any good?: Yes and no. Kyle ran the Gemini chatbot through a battery of tests that included asking over two dozen questions. See how it fared. Also, Google is expanding the range of Gemini large language models it is making available to developers on its Vertex AI platform.

OpenAI's Sora looks sorta good: One of the critiques of AI-generated videos is that they look . . . well, fake. Enter OpenAI, which today unveiled Sora, a generative AI model that creates video from text. And some of its early examples "are impressive," according to Kyle.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

More top reads

Cash App takes on Apple: Cash App's answer to Apple boosting its interest rate for the Apple Card savings account to 4.5% annual percentage yield (APY) is for Cash App to now offer "up to" a 4.5% APY for its Cash App Savings customers. Meanwhile, Meta wants in on the fun and said it will soon pass on Apple's 30% service charge to its customers. Let the games begin.

Lucid's prices got low, low, low, low, low, low, low: Lucid Motors dropped the prices of three of its models, including the base model Lucid Air Pure, which now comes in at just under $70,000. That's not all — there is also a deal toward the purchase of a home-charging solution and it includes some free scheduled maintenance.

TikTok, the Apple Vision Pro version: TikTok launched a native and refreshed app for the Apple Vision Pro. Updates include a more immersive viewing experience, the navigation bar and like button are moved off-screen to allow for full-video viewing, and the comment section and creator profiles appear as expansions on the side of the feed.

The heat is on: Some states are trying to move quickly to get millions of heat pumps installed in homes. Arch, a software company that caters to HVAC installers, said it can help with that.

Clickbait: A new app called Bulletin is leveraging AI to help remove clickbait and summarize the day's news. In a way, it is picking up where Artifact left off.

Don't get dizzy: Now that you've got Apple's Vision Pro at home, here's how to avoid the dreaded virtual reality sickness, or treat it if it's already here.

What’s going on at Variston?: The Barcelona-based spyware startup is showing signs of cracks amid staff leaving and some of its secrecy exposed. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on because the company and employees have really subscribed to “the first rule of Variston is that you don’t talk about Variston.”

Image Credits: NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images

On the pods

This week on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. Yat co-founded Animoca in 2014, and since then it has invested in over 400 web3 projects across a range of sectors like DeFi, education, infrastructure, blockchain gaming and the metaverse. Jacquelyn and Yat discuss the importance of digital property rights, growing NFT communities and what makes a project stand out from others. Listen here.