Tech News: Microsoft Surpasses Apple in Market Cap
Apple has been the most valuable publicly traded company since 2011 when it usurped the oil giant Exxon Mobile, but Cupertino might be in for a shock as Microsoft has recently surpassed them in market cap. After chasing Apple’s lead for over a decade, the tech giant’s market cap crossed the $3 trillion mark twice this month, currently sitting at 3.01 trillion compared to Apple’s 2.9 trillion.
Satya Nadela’s 10 Year Anniversary as CEO
Satya Nadela is celebrating his 10-year anniversary as CEO of Microsoft, and for good reason. The milestone is being treated by the tech media as an opportunity to ask how Nadela was able to stay ahead. A big part of the answer is continual investment into cloud infrastructure and having quick feet to sidestep scandals and controversies that have plagued other tech giants.
Investment in AI
Microsoft has heavily invested in AI, while Apple has taken a slower approach. However, Apple has announced that they will reveal some big AI news later this year. Microsoft, on the other hand, recently announced an AI-infused partnership with Semaphore, a news website founded by veterans of BuzzFeed News, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Media Group in 2022. This partnership will see Semaphore journalists using AI tools to search news sources across multiple languages and write articles themselves.
Demand for RTX 490 GPUs Drives Prices Up
The demand for RTX 490 GPUs in China is driving up prices in other Asian countries. Despite Nvidia releasing the Chinese-exclusive 490D variant to comply with US export regulations, a black market has grown for the original full-fat non-D GPUs. Retailers in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam have stopped selling the graphics cards individually and are putting them inside pre-built systems to deter scalpers.
Vision Pro Analysis
The Vision Pro has now been thoroughly analyzed by Reddit users, with some noting a small field of view and reflections in the lenses. Users have discovered that using the headset without its light seal can increase the field of view by 15 degrees, but at the expense of potentially damaging the display.
Quick Bits
Samsung’s head of customer experience claimed there is no such thing as a real picture, defending the generative edit feature on the Samsung Galaxy. An AI heist cost a multinational company $25 million, using deep fake technology to deceive employees. Japan’s Slim Moonlander faces challenges surviving the lunar night, and a YouTuber built a functioning 16-bit CPU inside Microsoft Excel.
