Apple just slashed its commission for apps making a million dollars or less from 30% to 15%

Tech Wire

Winners & Losers of the Apple App Market

Winners

98% of Apple app developers: Apple just slashed its commission for apps making a million dollars or less from 30% to 15%, potentially bringing in significantly increased revenue for the same work. Don’t worry, Apple hasn’t suddenly become more benevolent; most experts view this as political and legal maneuvering on Apple’s end as they face antitrust lawsuits.

Losers

The 2% of app makers who are still raking it in under the current commission rate. There are those concerned that this commission cut may disincentivize app developers that are nearing the threshold, but the number of developers in that category is miniscule, only .4 percent of iOS developers. But there’s still a chance, so we’ll count those app developers as losers.

Startup of the Month

Curative — This startup is super young, not even a year old, and in classic startup style, it’s already pivoted and grown. It’s all to your benefit: Originally launched as a biotech startup with the intention to develop a test for sepsis, they quickly shifted once COVID hit. Seeing the demand for and lack of COVID tests, they developed an oral swab test that can be administered at home and dropped off at their many drop-off locations for processing. They’ve also partnered with the city of Los Angeles to make testing free and available to anyone. The company currently has 872 employees. They acquired KovaLabs in May and are looking to scale, with the goal of processing one million COVID tests weekly.

There’s an APP for that

Hills & Markes launches app! The 114-year-old wholesale distributor of janitorial, food, packing and office supplies really has their customer in mind with their new app. Realizing that many of their customers may be in basements, freezers, or other places with poor cell service while they’re checking their inventory to place an order, they’ve included a feature that will preserve the order and submit it once the customer has better reception.

Tech Tips

Hack your workflow with these tips

Embrace your smartphone’s spacebar.

You’ll be a more efficient typist by tapping twice on your spacebar at the end of a sentence. This action adds a period at the end of the sentence, includes a space, and then automatically capitalizes the next word. This works on both Apple and Android devices.

Find keywords faster.

You know how sometimes you run a google search and a promising result pops up, but when you follow the link, you can’t find the keyword you were looking for? So frustrating. Control F to the rescue; just click it, a search bar will pop up in the right hand corner, type in your keyword and it’ll be highlighted wherever it shows up on the page. This also works for Word docs and pdfs, not just web browsers.

No more disappearing zeros.

Got an Excel mailing list with Lakewood addresses? Wondering where all your zeros went at the start of the zip code? Excel automatically deletes zeros at the beginning of a number. To prevent that, just put a single quotation mark, like this — ‘08701 — and your zero will be preserved (and printed without the quote mark).

Terms to Know

230 of the CDA (Communications Decency Act) protects website publishers from third party content. Basically, if you host a website/forum/social media platform, you won’t be held liable if someone says something illegal there. This protects large websites from trolls; they don’t have to police their content and make sure everyone behaves.

There’s been a lot of talk about ending this protection and making social media platforms take responsibility for what goes down on their sites. Both President Trump and President Elect Biden have said the protection should be abolished immediately. This raises questions about censorship, regulation, and responsibility, which are always difficult to answer. Keep an eye out for more discussion in this section.

Business Tech You Need

Otter.ai — You might already be familiar with Otter.ai because they’ve partnered with Zoom to transcribe meetings, but don’t think that’s all they’re good for. Otter.ai offers an excellent free plan enabling freelancers and small businesses to transcribe conversations live. This enables people with hearing impairments to participate in conversation with little lag time. It’s also easier and quicker to read a block of translated text than to engage in a conversation. Meeting transcriptions (or interview transcriptions) are great for reference and review. Trust a writer when she says it’s fantastic. Price: Pro Account $8.33 monthly, Business Account $20 monthly.

Pocketalk — Business is global, that’s old news, but even small players find themselves dealing internationally. Google Translate is a start, but ask anyone who knows anything in any other language and you know it’s nowhere near a complete solution. Pocketalk is a small, phone-size device and was designed to be your on-the-go translator. Using AI software, it can automatically translate material into up to 74 languages. This device is also great for travelers, teachers or even housewives with foreign domestic help. The device translates text to text and voice to text; you can also use the camera and the device will translate signs or other written words. Price: $299 for Pocketalk and $99 for Pocketalk Classic. Both devices come with a two-year free subscription to the service.

The Meeting Owl — Face it, even with an upcoming vaccine, business meetings will never be the same (and that’s not a bad thing). Enter the Meeting Owl, a smart video conference camera that allows participants in remote locations to access the main meeting site and feel fully engaged. The Meeting Owl Pro device has a 360-degree camera view, a mic that captures up to an 18-foot radius, and 3 internal speakers. These specs allow for a full immersion, with the ability to focus on the speakers and visually travel around the room. Price: $999 with a 30-day money back guarantee; due to popularity its arrival time is 4–6 weeks after order processing.

“I always hoped I would live to see this day, but it wasn’t always obvious I was going to make it.”

Professore Mault said this in reaction to the success of the DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, which can predict the shape of proteins in the body. This is Greek to most people, but anyone in biotech or medical research can attest to the complexity of proteins. Unlocking their secrets gives scientist greater accessibility to understanding diseases and developing medicines. What used to take months or years to complete can now be completed within hours or minutes with the AlphaFold system. Obviously, three-dimensional protein models are just one part of an extensive process in developing medicine and understanding the human body, but any shortening of the lengthy and exhaustive process is good news.

UPCOMING IPOS

ROBLOX

For those who don’t know (including myself), this is a gaming platform popular with teens that averages 31.1 million active daily users. Daily users surged 82% over the past 12 months; this is mostly attributed to COVID lockdowns.

ContextLogic

They’re the makers of the WISH app, which connects Chinese apparel and accessories makers with global consumers. WISH sales are up 32% in 2020 over the same period in 2019.

DOORDASH

Commands 50% market share in food delivery apps, after ranking 3rd just three years ago. They’ve seen incredible growth (over 200%) in the past year; this is mostly due to COVID and consumer hesitancy or inability to dine in.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 843)