The Morning After: Friday, February 03 2017
It's Friday. Right this way.
Welcome to Friday. Snapchat makes a move to become an even bigger business, Uber's CEO bows out from President Donald Trump's advisory council and hey! There's the long-awaited, brand new Engadget app!
Snap Inc. officially files for IPO
So far, Snapchat has had an easy time keeping information to itself because it was not a publicly traded company. That will change soon, however, as it has filed papers for an initial public offering that could reach a value of $20 - $25 billion. The filing revealed it has over 158 million daily users, and yes, it knows the interface is tough to learn.
NVIDIA makes it more difficult to resell bundled games
The hustle of selling off pack-in games may be over, now that NVIDIA links its redemption codes to the GeForce Experience app. People were frequently selling or trading them online, but to activate them, you'll need to actually have the right graphics card installed.
We have an all-new edition of the Engadget app, packed full of our news, reviews, galleries and videos. It's also incredibly customizable so you can subscribe to the topics you're interested in, and turn on push notifications for (relevant) breaking news. If you still have the old app, just update to the new one or grab it from the store on iOS or Android.
Apple's 'polarizing' new products are paying off
During 2016, it seemed like lots of Apple fans were unhappy. The year brought few updates to the Mac, a barely redesigned iPhone with no headphone jack, AirPod headphones that shipped two months late and a new Apple Watch that was a modest improvement to a product still seen as nonessential. However, Apple just reported a massively successful quarter. According to CEO Tim Cook, both iPhone and Apple Watch sales hit records for both unit sales and revenue. In the case of the iPhone, that reversed three consecutive quarters of declining sales. Further still, Mac sales also generated record revenue, despite the fact that the new MacBook Pro was limited in supply and the rest of Apple's computer lineup hasn't been updated in a long time.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaves Donald Trump's advisory council
And Tesla CEO Elon Musk won't, saying "he and others will "express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy."
Classic racing series 'GTR' will return in 2018
It's taken more than a decade, but GTR 2 is finally getting a sequel. SimBin says that GTR 3 is being built on the Unreal 4 engine and is just months into development. However, we're already getting a few ideas about what will feature in the game. Chris Speed, the CEO of SimBin's parent company Sector3, confirmed that the game would feature a day-night cycle, dynamic weather and vehicle damage. Further still, dynamic water movement will mean rain can pool organically, which will lead to aquaplaning and other handling quirks. 2018 is a ways off, and the game still needs to find a publisher and some form of licensing: the FIA GT Championship that the game series was previously built from no longer exists.
Being fancy and renting an Audi through its concierge app
Launched over a year ago in beta and still under the radar, Audi on Demand is the automaker's premium car rental service. As you'd expect, it's for Audis only. But if you've ever had a hankering to drive an R8, you can fire up the app, reserve one and make all of your friends jealous when it gets delivered to your home or office. And isn't that the point of most things?
