Technology

  Bloomberg As it firms up plans to upend the auto industry, Apple Inc. is looking toward British carmaker McLaren and San Francisco-based startup Lit Motors for help. Both would give Apple some of the know-how needed to compete head to head against or forge a meaningful partnership with automakers. Yet the two companies exist on opposite ends of the ...

  Bloomberg A teardown of the latest generation iPhone 7 shows that in terms of material costs, the new handset is not a rip off. According to the customary IHS teardown that follows the launch of any digital object of desire, if the cost of the latest iPhone were based purely on its materials plus the labor required to put ...

  Bloomberg Google unleashed its digital assistant for the first time, arriving late to the intensifying race among the largest technology companies to create a more personal and lucrative way for computers to interact with humans. The Google Assistant uses artificial intelligence tools, such as voice recognition and natural-language processing, to answer questions and satisfy other requests delivered verbally and ...

  Bloomberg Instead of hiring a professional photographer for an important marketing job last year, Massimo Portincaso gave the job to computer software. Portincaso, the head of marketing at the Boston Consulting Group, was tasked with overhauling his company’s website. It was a straight-forward assignment, giving the site a fresh look highlighting the business’s capabilities. When the time came to ...

  Relaxnews Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, took to Twitter to announce that the world’s leading music streaming site has topped 40 million paid subscribers — a new record. Spotify now counts more than twice as many paid users as its main rival, Apple Music, which has already signed up 17 million subscribers in just over a year. This new record ...

  AFP Twitter has announced it is easing its 140-character limit on tweets, in the latest effort to broaden the appeal and boost the user base of the social network. The new policy announced in May and now in effect no longer factors in certain add-ons, including pictures, into a message’s length. “Say more about what’s happening! Rolling out now,” ...

  AFP Google has sent out invitations to an October 4 event, hinting that the Internet titan will show off a new smartphone powered by its Android mobile software. Emailed invitations revealed only the time and place for the gathering in San Francisco, the message topped by blue, red, yellow, and green dots of color. Google fired off a Twitter ...

  Bloomberg Oracle Corp. unveiled new services that help customers take advantage of cloud computing, putting it more directly in competition with Amazon.com Inc. The company has announced Cloud@Customer, which puts the same hardware and software Oracle uses in its data centers in the customers’ own facilities, Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said Sunday during a presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in ...

  Relaxnews Apple recently caused a stir by removing the headphones jack from its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus smartphones, a trend that could soon spread to other manufacturers and which will no doubt boost sales of Bluetooth headphones. Here are three pairs of wireless headphones promising some of the best performances in their fields. NOISE-CANCELING CAPABILITY The Bose QuietComfort ...

  Bloomberg Few things motivate Samsung employees like the opportunity to take advantage of weakness at Apple Inc. Earlier this year, managers at the South Korean company began hearing the next iPhone wouldn’t have any eye-popping innovations. The device would look just like the previous two models too. It sounded like a potential opening for Samsung to leap ahead. So ...