This marks a major change to the way that Apple reports data and it will make estimating iPad, Mac, and iPhone product sales a more difficult task. Apple is perhaps making this change because its unit sales are decreasing while revenue is growing due to rising ASPs.

This quarter, for example, iPhone unit sales were flat at 46.9 million, but iPhone revenue was up 29 percent.

According to Maestri, Apple does not believe that unit sales over the course of a 90-day period are an indicator of the underlying strength of its business.

Apple also plans to rename the “Other Products” category to “Wearables, Home, and Accessories,” a change that will also be made in the December quarter. This category will continue to include the Apple Watch, Apple TV, AirPods, HomePods, Beats headphones, and more.

Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel has arrived in Russia for talks expected to focus on strengthening economic ties between the two countries.

The 57-year-old is due to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the capital, Moscow, on Friday as part of his first tour abroad that will also includes stops in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.

On Thursday, the Kremlin released a statement saying the two leaders planned to discuss “the state and prospects of the further consolidation of Russian-Cuban strategic partnership in various spheres and discuss opinions on current international and regional problems”.

During the Cold War, Moscow and Havana were close allies, with the Soviet Union pumping millions of dollars into the small Communist-run island. 

But following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 and subsequent economic hardship, Russia withdrew its economic aid to Cuba.

Putin, who visited Cuba in 2000 and 2014, has sought to revive ties with the Caribbean island. On Tuesday, Russian officials signed contracts worth $260m to modernise Cuban energy facilities and a metal factory. 

The two countries have also discussed expanding military ties.

Diaz-Canel, who assumed office in April, is the first person outside the Castro family to lead Cuba since the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

According to Cuba’s foreign ministry, Diaz-Canel will also transit through some western European capitals during his trip.

No signs of detente with US

The tour comes as Havana is considering far-reaching constitutional reforms, which include liberalising the economy and  dropping the goal  of building Communism. It also seen as an opportunity for Cuba to reinforce and revive alliances as relations with the United States continue to deteriorate.

On Thursday, US National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that the State Department had banned transactions with more than two dozen Cuban entities associated with the Cuban military and intelligence services.

Speaking in Miami, which is home to many Cuban exiles, before next week’s mid-term elections, Bolton branded Cuba and its left-wing regional allies Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny”. 

His comments came as the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning the economic embargo of Cuba by the US, while also rejecting proposed amendments put forward by Washington critising the island’s human rights record. 

The Assembly voted 189-2 to approve the Cuban-sponsored resolution, with no abstentions. The US and Israel voted “no” and Moldova and Ukraine did not vote.

While the vote is non-binding, it provides an indicator of the opinion of the international community and allows Cuba an annual stage to demonstrate the isolation of the US position on the embargo. 

A similar vote on the embargo – which was imposed in 1960 following the revolution led by Fidel Castro that resulted in the nationalisation of properties belonging to US companies and citizens – has been held annually for 27 years.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla called the embargo a “flagrant, massive and systematic vioation of the human rights of Cuban men and women” and said the US had no moral authority to criticise Cuba and others on human rights.

‘A waste of time’

In the separate decision on the US amendments, which were voted on individually, Ukraine and Israel were the only countries to join the US in voting “yes” to all eight measures, while the Marshall Islands backed one.

All of the amendments failed after more than 113 countries voted against them. More than 65 countries abstained.

More than 113 countries voted against them and more than 65 abstained.

Outgoing US Ambassador Nikki Haley called the vote “a waste of time” and said afterwards that the Cuban people have “once again been left to the brutal winds of the Castro regime”. 

“They have been abandoned by the United Nations and most of the world’s governments, but the Cuban people are not alone today,” Haley said.

“The American people will stand with them until they are restored the rights that God has given us all, rights that no government can legitimately deny its people.”

Former Cuban President Raul Castro and then-US President Barack Obama began an historic diplomatic re-engagement in July 2016, which paved the way for improved ties between the two countries.

However, relations have once again soured under current US President Donald Trump, who has announced new trade and travel restrictions against the island.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

Shouting “women’s rights are worker’s rights” and a number of other #TimesUp and #MeToo chants, upwards of 1,000 Google employees gathered in San Francisco’s Harry Bridges Plaza Thursday to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct cases.

Staffers from all of Google’s San Francisco offices were in attendance. An organizer, who declined to be named, told TechCrunch there were 1,500 Google employees across the globe that participated in the 48-hour effort to arrange a worldwide walkout. The effort was a major success. More than 3,000 Googlers and supporters of the movement attended the New York City walkout alone. As many as 1,000 Googlers and others came out for the San Francisco walkout, which the organizers said, was double the number they expected.

Cathay Bi, a Google employee in San Francisco and one of the walkout organizers, told a group of journalists at the rally that she was conflicted with participating in the walkout and ultimately decided not to go public with her own story of sexual harassment.

“I experienced sexual harassment at Google and I didn’t feel safe talking about it,” said Bi, pictured above. “That feeling of not being safe is why I’m out here today. I’d love it if everyone felt safe talking about it.”

“There were many times over the course of the last 24 hours that I emailed the group and said ‘I’m not doing this because I’m scared’ but that fear is something everyone else feels,” she said. “I said to myself last night, I hope I still have a career in Silicon Valley after this.”

Other organizers declined to go on the record.

There were protests around the globe today, including in London, Dublin, Montreal, Singapore, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Cambridge, following a New York Times investigation that revealed Google had given Android co-creator Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package despite multiple relationships with other Google staffers and credible accusations of sexual misconduct made against him. That story, coupled with tech’s well-established issue of harassment and discrimination toward women and underrepresented minorities, was a catalyst for today’s rallies.

At the rally, Googlers read off their list of demands, which includes an end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination, a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity and a clear, inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.

They’re also requesting that the search giant promote chief diversity officer Danielle Brown to a role in which she reports directly to chief executive officer Sundar Pichai, as well as the addition of an employee representative to the company’s board of directors.

Walmart is giving augmented reality a shot. The retailer today announced the launch of a new AR scanning tool in its iPhone application which will help customers with product comparisons. However, unlike a typical barcode scanner meant only to compare prices on one item at a time, Walmart’s AR scanner can be panned about across store shelves, offering details on pricing and customer ratings beneath the products it sees.

The technology was first developed by a team at an internal Walmart hackathon using Apple’s ARKit technology. At the time, their idea was to create a scanning experience that worked faster and felt faster when used by customers. They also wanted to build a scanner that offered more than just price comparisons.

“Walmart store shoppers love using our mobile app barcode scanner as a price checker. Our team sees the potential of this product as so much more, though,” explains Tim Sears, senior engineering manager at Walmart Labs, in a post announcing the feature’s launch. “When a customer launches the scanner, they get a direct connection between the digital and the physical world that their screen and camera lens creates for them,” he says.

The team won the hackathon, then went on to further redesign the experience to become the one that’s live today in Walmart’s application.

To use the scanner, you launch the feature in the Walmart app, then point it at the products on the shelf you want to compare. As you move the phone between one item and the other, the product tile at the bottom of the screen will update with information, including the product name, price and star rating across however many reviews it has received on Walmart.com. A link to related products is also available.

The AR scanner was designed to anchor dots to what you’ve scanned, but uses smaller dots instead of anchoring the entire content to the product itself to overcome the problems that could occur when multiple items are scanned together in a close space.

Despite the supposed advantages of AR scanning over a simpler barcode scan, it still remains to be seen to what extent consumers will adopt the feature now that it’s live.

Walmart isn’t the only retailer to give AR a go. Others have used it in various ways, including Amazon, Target, Wayfair and many more. But in several cases, AR’s adoption by retailers have been focused on visualizing products in your home, or — in the case of Target’s AR “studio” — makeup on your face.

Walmart’s AR scanner goes after a more practical use.

The AR Scanner is in the latest version of the Walmart iOS app (18.20 and higher), and works on iPhones that run at least iOS 11.3. This latter requirement is due to its use of ARKit 1.5, but will limit the audience largely to those with newer iPhones.