Apple announced how much money they made in Q4 2017 - $8.7b profit off $52.6b in revenue. They sold 10.3 million iPads, 46.7 million iPhones, and 5.4 million Macs during the quarter. I thought it's interesting that Apple's services division (App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay, iTunes, Music, etc.) made more money than the AirPods, other accessories, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPod touch, and Beats products combined. Mac revenue is history, but the iPhone still provides over 55% of Apple's revenue. Apple plans to rake in $84b-$87b next quarter, which if it does, will be a record for any company, ever. My favourite stat though, is that Apple has over US$269b in cash stashed around the world. They are filthy, stinking rich.
The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned celebrities to stop pimping crazy ICOs "without disclosing the nature and amount of compensation they’re being paid to advertise them". The SEC is afraid people will invest in these highly speculative investments (the SEC's already warned investors to avoid ICOs) because celebs like Floyd Mayweather and Paris Hilton are going around saying they're the best thing since sliced bread, but aren't also telling their fans that the only reason they give a damn about the ICO is because they were paid very, very handsomely to do so. Which, if you recall the FTC's advice to Instagram influencers, is illegal and will incur a fine.
The ACCC will hold a public inquiry into why the NBN sucks, because it's alarmed with all the complaints it and the TIO are receiving about it - most of them about poor speeds via lack of CVC and poor handling of issues between NBN & RSP, leaving the customer in mushroom status. The inquiry is scheduled to conclude in December 2018, so any outcomes from it probably won't be implemented well into 2019. Telstra are trying to get ahead of this issue and will be reviewing how much CVC it buys from NBN on a rolling weekly basis, as well as installing "robots" (that's how Telstra's managing director of networks described it) in its latest customer routers, that give Telstra advanced telemetry to know if someone's internet sucks because of their home network, NBN itself or a lack of CVC at that node/POI.
TPG got busted by ACMA for sending spam. The second largest telco in Australia didn't unsubscribe people from their SMS robo messages, even though they sent messages to users saying they did. Someone cracked it enough to report it to ACMA and as a result, ACMA slapped em with a $360,000 fine. Heaps of companies do this and it's way more annoying than email spam. I hope this sets a precedent for more companies to get fined (Mantello Hyundai I am looking at you, you deadset scumbags - I couldn't care less about your magic 3 day sale!) by ACMA.
An absolute legend working at Twitter decided to delete Donald Trump's account on their last day at work. It wasn't suspended or banned, it was straight up deleted by this hero who went out in a blaze of glory from their "customer support" role at Twitter. For 11 minutes @realDonaldTrump did not exist. It was a beautiful 11 minutes. Unfortunately, Twitter was able to restore the douchebag's account pretty rapidly and everything's back to normal now. Imagine how much of a shitstorm Trump would cause if his account was actually deleted. The ultimate dummy spit.
To go with the iPhone X hype today, the ABC has a nice story about Kyle Wiens, the co-founder of iFixit. You've probably seen the fantastic teardowns they do for each new device. I really enjoy seeing how these marvels of engineering are put together, observing how each company decides to tackle what is more or less the same magic rectangle internet square. But did you know what Kyle makes the trek out to Australia from the USA every year so he can be first in the world to get his teardowns published? That's some hardcore dedication.
Heaps of you have asked me, so I will oblige - my first impressions of the iPhone X. The notch isn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Watching videos in landscape mode, it disappears. Not having a home button is fine, but I'm still getting used to the app switching gesture vs. double tapping a button. Face ID is excellent TouchID is obsolete. I don't like how the back gets all fingerprinty now that it's glass. I might buy a cheap Qi pad off eBay for shits and giggles, but I really want the AirPower mat. I sent some Animojis to my wife and now she wants an iPhone X. The only thing I don't like is the OLED screen. Mine is certainly screwed, with a magenta tint along the right hand side, but even without that obvious fault, viewing angles are poor compared to the IPS LCD in the iPhone 7. The OLED suffers colour temp shifts even if you view the screen a degree or two off dead centre. Apple usually has the best displays on the market, so this regression is extremely disappointing.
Wireless 1 has a 20% off TP-Link gear sale on eBay (no coupon required, price is reduced on checkout), which when combined with a general 5% off eBay coupon going around right now (P5OZZIE), results in some very cheap networking gear.
That's it, see ya Monday!
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
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