Apple executive confirms iPhones will come with USB-C world over for the foreseeable future

Apple has officially confirmed that the upcoming iPhones and all subsequent mobile devices will have USB-C ports, at least for the foreseeable future.

Earlier this year, the European Union passed legislation that made it compulsory for all mobile phone and electronics manufacturers to adopt USB-C as the universal, standard charging port. The legislation was mainly aimed at Apple and their continued usage of the Lightning Port on their iPhones and a number of other devices. 

Responding to a question about Apple’s adoption of the Type-C port, Apple marketing lead Greg Joswiak told The Wall Street Journal that the engineers at Apple will replace the Lighting port even if the teams are not happy with the change.

The Apple executives said “the Europeans are the ones dictating timing for European customers” which is a sophisticated way of saying nothing about the timeline for the switch. Joswiak refused to answer whether Apple will ship a connector sold outside the EU, but that seems very unlikely.

The interview involved software VP Craig Federighi as well but none of them revealed when exactly the move will happen.

The exec also talked about Apple’s dedication of going its own way and trusting its engineers rather than complying with standards by lawmakers and adopting third-party hardware. He even brought up micro USB and how Apple has been pushed to meet ill-considered requirements.

The marketing lead added that charging bricks with detachable cables solved the issue of standardization, claiming the switch to USB-C would create a lot of e-waste as people are pushed to buy new cables and discard the old ones. 

This is actually a very old trick that Apple representatives use. They have often been accused of greenwashing. Apple is notorious for making their devices difficult or too expensive to repair, so any statement from them that talks about e-waste rings hollow. Moreover, even if we ignore the e-waste that the Company forces its users to generate, we should remember that this is a company that forces it customers to buy charging bricks separately from their device, and get it shipped, in extra boxes, which takes up a lot of space during the process.

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Doctors have started ‘prescribing’ smartwatches to patients, thanks to their life-saving capabilities

There have been numerous instances where smartwatches have saved the lives of people using them regularly. Now a number of doctors in the US have started prescribing smartwatches such as those coming from Fitbit, Samsung, Apple and Google for the life-saving technologies that they come loaded with.

A case in point would Dr. Thomas Ficho. Dr Ficho himself met with an accident after he fell down a basement, and lost consciousness. At that time, he was wearing his Apple Watch Series 5. After the fall, the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature kicked in and called emergency services on Dr. Ficho’s behalf. Although Dr Ficho regained consciousness within minutes, the Apple Watch had alerted local emergency services who had already dispatched emergency responders to Dr Ficho’s location, who reached him, right as he came to his senses.

Good smartwatches often come loaded with features that can act on your behalf and save your life, by getting you help in the nick of time. Google and Apple’s crash detection, for example, has proven to be a must-have if you indulge in dangerous activities or are required to frequent a stretch of road that happens to be an accident blackspot.

Just like Apple, most smartwatch makers have a fall detection feature that can literally save your life. In April this year, a 60-65-year-old woman in Delaware fell down in her bathroom and broke her back. She was wearing a smartwatch from Samsung, but because she couldn’t move she couldn’t call for help. Luckily for her, the smartwatch sent out an SOS alert to one of her emergency contacts, who then asked the emergency services to visit the woman.

Smartwatches have proven to be great diagnostician tools as well. Doctors are increasingly relying on the data from smartwatches to monitor their patients’ cardiac activity. Most smartwatches come with a basic heart rate monitor, but there are a few out there which give you a very accurate and detailed reading. This not only helps doctors determine whether their patients have any sort an Arrhythmia and if yes, what exactly may be the problem. 

We recently saw the story of a 12-year-old girl, who was able to detect that she had a rare form of cancer, because her smartwatch consistently gave out heart rate alerts that were off the charts. Such cases are not uncommon.

Smartwatches can also help you with your sleeping disorders. While most smartwatches cannot diagnose what exact sleeping ailment a patient is suffering from, they can help record and track changes in the sleeping pattern of their wearers.

Given that there are a ton of smartwatches out there, do keep in mind the features that you may be needing, while you shop around for one. Also, it would be better to remember that certain manufacturers oversell their features. These are not exactly smartwatches but oversized fitness bands and should be avoided. As far as smartwatches are concerned, go for something from a known and reputable brand.

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After Google’s Fine, CCI to now speed up its investigation into Apple's anti-competitive behaviour

The Competition Commission of India imposed two fines on Google totalling Rs 2,274 crore over the tech company’s anti-competitive behaviour. Now, the CCI has decided that it will be speeding up its investigations into Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour, and will finalise its investigation into Apple Inc., by the end of January 2023.

The allegations against Google were twofold. The first penalty of Rs 1,338 crore was imposed on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in relation to Android mobile devices and forcing OEM device manufacturers to provide Google’s own apps over the apps from their competitors as the default, preinstalled options. 

The second penalty, amounting to Rs 936 crore was imposed for making access to the Play Store for app developers dependent on mandatory usage of GPBS (Google Play’s Billing System) for paid apps and in-app purchases.

The second infraction that Google was found guilty of, forcing app developers and studios to use Google’s billing system for paid apps and in-app purchases is similar to what the anti-trust allegations have been levelled against Apple in India. 

Apple is actually facing a similar case in the European Union as well, where regulators Started an investigation into Apple’s imposition of an in-app fee of 30 per cent for the distribution of paid digital content and other restrictions.

The case in India was filed by a non-profit group called Together We Fight Society, which is based in Rajasthan. They argue that Apple’s fee of up to 30 per cent hurts competition by raising costs for app developers and customers, while also acting as a barrier to market entry for smaller developers.

Given the manner in which Google’s case proceeded and the reasons for which they were fined, it looks like Apple will be dealt with a similar blow. If such a scenario indeed rises, it will be interesting to see how Apple proceeds in such a case. Apple faces a possible hefty fine and may have to open its mobile payment system to competitors. Alternatively, they may be forced to change the manner in which they process payments for apps and in-app purchases in India.

So far, we know that the CCI’s comments on Apple show that it follows the argument that Google has been making, saying that Apple has a much larger market share globally according to revenue-based market share than Google’s Play. If this becomes a factor during the final stages of the investigation, chances are, Apple will be hit with a much larger fine.

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Black marketers, and private sellers are minting money owing to shortage of iPhone 14 Pro series

In case you have tried to purchase the iPhone 14 Pro or the iPhone 14 Pro Max from an authorised retailer in Delhi NCR in the last couple of weeks, chances are that you may have heard from a number of retailers that the devices are not available with them. And for good reason.

While it was announced that Apple, in a bid to reduce its reliance on China, will start making the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro series in India. However, a number of reports have surfaced that claim that Apple is not making the iPhone 14 Pro series in India, just the regular, vanilla version of the iPhone 14. The iPhone 14 Plus’ production has been suspended mainly because of a lack of demand.

The devices that people are looking for the most, the base variant of the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max, are not readily available in India, at least in Delhi-NCR. This has turned out to be a golden opportunity for players in the black market and for private sellers, who are making money hand over fist.

Says Nilesh Kamra, one of the many mobile phone sellers who operate out of New Delhi’s Gaffar Market, “We are not aware of any such shortages, we are getting our devices regularly.” When asked how much is he selling the devices for he stated, “We sell the iPhone 14 Pro 128GB version for about Rs 1,05,000, without the bill and accept only cash.” 

The same variant costs Rs 1,29,900 when you buy it from authorised channels, with a bill. While sellers like Nilesh claim that the devices are India-ready and that Apple will entertain warranty claims for these devices in India, the refusal to provide a bill is a major red flag. 

Gaffar Market is known for its electronics shops and the fact that devices such as gaming consoles, laptops and smartphones are sold here at much cheaper prices. The catch is, that in most cases, because the products are bought in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other places in the Middle East, they are far cheaper, and they don’t have any paperwork with them. As a result, authorised service centres will refuse to entertain any warranty claims raised on these devices.

The availability of devices in such markets is never an issue. And despite the fact that devices that are sold in the black market do not have any applicable warranty or taxes and duties paid, people still buy them.

Because sellers who sell on the black market are able to pocket a much bigger portion of the money that a customer spends on a device, private sellers as well as authorised resellers have started dabbling in a similar practice. 

In the past, we have seen the authorised showrooms of a number of Chinese smartphones, such as Vivo and Xiaomi acting in a similar manner – first claiming that they do not have the devices and then offering the device after “getting it arranged from another store.” The conditions that they will sell you under? You will have to pay in cash, and the bill, if it is being provided, will be of an earlier date. However, this is the first time that we are seeing Apple devices being sold like this.

Govind Kushwaha, a salesperson who works with one of the oldest mobile phone sales centre in Laxmi Nagar, said “We have been instructed to turn customers away If they are looking to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max with a bill and using UPI, or credit card, or if they need a bill. If they are okay with not getting a bill or a predated bill under a different name, we give them the phone.” 

But what happens if stores don’t have the phone? “We can arrange it in half an hour tops. In case the customer is willing to wait for that half an hour. If they plan to return and pick up the phone on some other day, we ask them to pay some Rs 10,000-20,000 as an advance. Shortage really isn’t an issue.”

This, however, does not mean that there isn’t a shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro series in Delhi-NCR – there genuinely is a shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, mainly due to the sporadic lockdowns in China. When a Twitter user flagged Apple, the Ministry of Home Affairs and a bunch of other government officials complaining about the fact that private sellers are selling iPhone 14 Pros in black, Union Minister of State for Electronics & Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded to the tweet – 

I hv spoken wth Apple n they hv said while iphone14 demand is being met also wth india productn, the iphone14 pro demand has surged n is facing supply constraints which they r addressing

pvt sales are probably “alternate” supply channels https://t.co/wLxJdxbFi9

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) October 26, 2022

To their credit, Apple, is trying to get on top of the situation and is trying to manage its supply chains in such a manner that all of its sales regions get an equitable distribution of the devices.

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Black marketers, and private sellers are minting money owing to shortage of iPhone 14 Pro series

In case you have tried to purchase the iPhone 14 Pro or the iPhone 14 Pro Max from an authorised retailer in Delhi NCR in the last couple of weeks, chances are that you may have heard from a number of retailers that the devices are not available with them. And for good reason.

While it was announced that Apple, in a bid to reduce its reliance on China, will start making the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro series in India. However, a number of reports have surfaced that claim that Apple is not making the iPhone 14 Pro series in India, just the regular, vanilla version of the iPhone 14. The iPhone 14 Plus’ production has been suspended mainly because of a lack of demand.

The devices that people are looking for the most, the base variant of the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max, are not readily available in India, at least in Delhi-NCR. This has turned out to be a golden opportunity for players in the black market and for private sellers, who are making money hand over fist.

Says Nilesh Kamra, one of the many mobile phone sellers who operate out of New Delhi’s Gaffar Market, “We are not aware of any such shortages, we are getting our devices regularly.” When asked how much is he selling the devices for he stated, “We sell the iPhone 14 Pro 128GB version for about Rs 1,05,000, without the bill and accept only cash.” 

The same variant costs Rs 1,29,900 when you buy it from authorised channels, with a bill. While sellers like Nilesh claim that the devices are India-ready and that Apple will entertain warranty claims for these devices in India, the refusal to provide a bill is a major red flag. 

Gaffar Market is known for its electronics shops and the fact that devices such as gaming consoles, laptops and smartphones are sold here at much cheaper prices. The catch is, that in most cases, because the products are bought in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other places in the Middle East, they are far cheaper, and they don’t have any paperwork with them. As a result, authorised service centres will refuse to entertain any warranty claims raised on these devices.

The availability of devices in such markets is never an issue. And despite the fact that devices that are sold in the black market do not have any applicable warranty or taxes and duties paid, people still buy them.

Because sellers who sell on the black market are able to pocket a much bigger portion of the money that a customer spends on a device, private sellers as well as authorised resellers have started dabbling in a similar practice. 

In the past, we have seen the authorised showrooms of a number of Chinese smartphones, such as Vivo and Xiaomi acting in a similar manner – first claiming that they do not have the devices and then offering the device after “getting it arranged from another store.” The conditions that they will sell you under? You will have to pay in cash, and the bill, if it is being provided, will be of an earlier date. However, this is the first time that we are seeing Apple devices being sold like this.

Govind Kushwaha, a salesperson who works with one of the oldest mobile phone sales centre in Laxmi Nagar, said “We have been instructed to turn customers away If they are looking to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max with a bill and using UPI, or credit card, or if they need a bill. If they are okay with not getting a bill or a predated bill under a different name, we give them the phone.” 

But what happens if stores don’t have the phone? “We can arrange it in half an hour tops. In case the customer is willing to wait for that half an hour. If they plan to return and pick up the phone on some other day, we ask them to pay some Rs 10,000-20,000 as an advance. Shortage really isn’t an issue.”

This, however, does not mean that there isn’t a shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro series in Delhi-NCR – there genuinely is a shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, mainly due to the sporadic lockdowns in China. When a Twitter user flagged Apple, the Ministry of Home Affairs and a bunch of other government officials complaining about the fact that private sellers are selling iPhone 14 Pros in black, Union Minister of State for Electronics & Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded to the tweet – 

I hv spoken wth Apple n they hv said while iphone14 demand is being met also wth india productn, the iphone14 pro demand has surged n is facing supply constraints which they r addressing

pvt sales are probably “alternate” supply channels https://t.co/wLxJdxbFi9

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) October 26, 2022

To their credit, Apple, is trying to get on top of the situation and is trying to manage its supply chains in such a manner that all of its sales regions get an equitable distribution of the devices.

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NASA plans on testing crash landing space module on Mars to make inter-planetary exploration cheaper

NASA as well as a number of other space agencies have had many successful missions to Mars, and are currently exploring the Martian surface for a number of reasons. All in all, NASA themselves have landed on Mars about 9 times so far. However, the space agency now wants know, what it would take to crash land onto a different planet, and how should they go about it.

NASA is currently testing out an entirely new way to land on the surface of Mars and other similar planets, in which, instead of going for a soft landing, they plan to crash land their vehicles.

The American space agency had just successfully conducted their DART mission, in which they crashed a basic satellite into the Didymos moon of the Dimorphos mini asteroid. NASA plans to take a similar approach with their latest experiment, but this time around, the objective is to ensure minimal damage to the crash-landing spacecraft.

To that end, NASA has designed a new experimental lander called SHIELD or Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device. The new lander uses an accordion-like collapsible base, which functions in a manner similar to the crumple zone of a car. This would allow NASA to build a superstructure that would be free of impact, on top of the base structure.

To test whether this theory is plausible, a team of scientists and engineers dropped a full-sized prototype of the SHIELD’s collapsible attenuator, which consisted of an inverted pyramid of metal rings that would absorb a majority of the impact. They also fitted the superstructure of the aircraft with a couple of computers, a radio, a smartphone and an accelerometer to gauge the impact that the electronics would have to deal with.

The SHIELD was dropped at a speed of 110mph to mimic how it would land on Mars. Normally, spacecrafts reach speeds of up to 14,500mph before they enter the lower atmosphere of Mars. However, the atmospheric drag reduces that speed by a significant amount.

If successful, then this newer design will help to drastically reduce the cost of landing on Mars by simplifying entry, landing and expanding options on Mars and even beyond the red planet. “We think we could go to more treacherous areas, where we wouldn’t want to risk trying to place a billion-dollar rover with our current landing systems. Maybe we could even land several of these at different difficult-to-access locations to build a network,” Lou Giersch of NASA’s JPL, SHIELD’s project manager, said in NASA’s blog.

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A look at WhatsApp and its many outages

After an outage of nearly two hours, WhatsApp has started working for users. While some users complained that their WhatsApp Web was still not accessible, the messaging platform’s services have been fully restored on the app.

The popular Meta-owned messaging app stopped working across many parts of the world including Asia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Europe at around 12.07 pm (IST) today (25 October).

Which services were unavailable during the WhatsApp outage? When has the communication app been down before? We explain.

ALSO READ: Explained: Why does WhatsApp ban accounts and how to prevent it 

WhatsApp down

Around 12 noon, people reported problems in sending images and videos on WhatsApp.

While users were able to access their old conversations, they were unable to send new messages or update new statuses.

For many users, a message saying “connecting” to the server appeared at the top of the app, but nothing happened, reported Bloomberg.

As many as 67 per cent users complained they were facing trouble sending messages on the popular Meta-owned platform, 26 per cent had server connection issues and seven per cent reported problems with the app, according to service status website Downdetector.

WhatsApp Web was also affected with users trying to access the page coming across a connectivity error.

As per Downdetector, the outage was reported in Canada, Colombia, France, India, Israel, Mexico, the UK, reports Al Jazeera.

Meta reacts

Acknowledging the outage, a Meta spokesperson told Indian Express, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages, and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”

Memes on WhatsApp down

Netizens flooded Twitter to share memes and tweets on #whatsappdown.

“Don’t recheck your internet connection… WhatsApp is down right now,” wrote a user.

Have a look at some hilarious memes:

WhatsApp Engineer right now #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/vRg0RZXYTd

— MB (@bowx_) October 25, 2022

When your WhatsApp is playing up but you come to Twitter and see that everyone else is having the same problem #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/pMcJm0Zn56

— Jamie (@GingerPower_) October 25, 2022

Me apologising to my wifi after finding out WhatsApp is down #WhatsApp#whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/3Xmr6yjtPB

— Vikash Fageriya (@vikash_fageriya) October 25, 2022

WhatsApp restored

WhatsApp came back online after the outage at around 2.15 pm gradually. WhatsApp Web has also been restored now.

Without underlying the reason behind the outage, Meta released a statement saying the problem had been resolved.

“We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We have fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience,” the statement read, as per BBC.

Why the outage?

The reason behind today’s outage remains unclear.

According to Indian Express, a product change can affect all users of a social media platform. However, with WhatsApp’s 2 billion users and Facebook with almost 3 billion, such changes are not launched in one go but for different sets of customers steadily.

Moreover, Meta has faced issues with its services earlier as well.

In October last year, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp had gone down for about six hours after a major Domain Name System (DNS) failure.

According to BleepingComputer, BGP or Border Gateway Protocol routing had caused the so-long disruption.

BGP helps facilitate ‘traffic from one (autonomous) system of networks to another’.

“BGP is a technology which ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) share information about which providers are responsible for routing internet traffic to which specific groups of internet addresses,” PJ Norris, principal systems engineer at Tripwire, told UK’s Metro newspaper.

Several Facebook employees on the condition of anonymity told Reuters that they believed that the outage was caused by an “internal mistake in how internet traffic is routed to its systems”.

“The failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same network in order to work compounded the error,” the employees added.

Facebook attributed the outage to a “faulty configuration change”.

It said in a statement, “Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication.”

“We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime,” the company had said, as per Metro.

Other instances

In March 2021, WhatsApp went offline for around 45 minutes. Meta said it was ‘a technical issue’ that ’caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services’. However, it did not give any specific reason, as per Indian Express.

There were four major WhatsApp outages in 2020. In January that year, the messaging platform was out for around three hours. The next outage was in April, then a two-hour outage in July and another in August, reports Indian Express.

In July 2019, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services were affected. In a statement, Facebook said that a “routine maintenance operation accidentally triggered a bug that made it difficult for users to upload or send photos and videos”, Al Jazeera reported citing the US media.

This came months after the 13 March 2019 outage when Facebook services were down for 24 hours due to a “server configuration change”.

With inputs from agencies

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Explained: Why is the US’ Republican National Committee suing Gmail

The spam filter that Google uses for its email services, Gmail, does not always work the way it is supposed to. This time though, the filter’s failure to work properly has landed Google in hot waters. The Republican Party, one of the oldest political parties in the United States of America has sued Google and Gmail over the way manner in which their spam filter has been targeting emails from the Republicans.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against Google in California for allegedly and unfairly throwing GOP campaign emails to the spam folder at a time when fundraising is especially crucial ahead of the November congressional midterm elections. The lawsuit specifically alleges that said emails get filtered to spam around the end of each month when fundraising is supposedly at its most fruitful.

Tech companies in the United States have long been accused of stifling the voices of those on the political right, and of being pro-Democrats especially when it comes to implementing their policies. The Republican party has often targeted companies like Twitter, Meta and Google and called engineers and moderators working in these organisations of being “communists” and “leftists.”

Their attack started garnering some legitimacy when a study from North Carolina State University apparently found that Republican emails were sent to spam at a higher rate than those sent by Democrats. However, Google has repeatedly denied that this is the case. There is ample evidence out there that suggests that it is not the content, but the mailing habits of a sender that helps spam filters determine whether an email is a spam or not. 

To counter such a thing from happening again, Google launched a program in August after taking the necessary approvals from the American Federal Election Commission that individual campaigns can apply for an exception with the intent of stopping emails from getting sent to spam. Reports suggest that the RNC is not part of this program, though it’s not clear whether that’s by choice or not. If it were, its emails would avoid traditional spam detection and would have a special banner on them signalling that the sender is part of the program.

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WhatsApp down for over an hour now, users unable to send/receive texts

In what came to be an unusual incident for several WhatsApp users, the social messaging platform seems to have gone down for thousands of people in India and in some other countries.

A bit after noon, WhatsApp started showing signs of disruptions as many were not able to see double checks in their texts. Following this, users also started reporting issues with WhatsApp on both their mobile phones and the web as they were unable to send or receive messages or any media files.

Apart from that, users are also reporting issues with loading the webpage of WhatsApp.

According to Downdetector, an outage tracking website, people started facing issues with WhatsApp mobile app and web at around 12:30 PM on Tuesday, 25 October. Besides, the website also pointed out the percentage of users encountering different issues on the platform. Also, in a statement issued by Meta to the media, it has been said, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”

User reports indicate Whatsapp is having problems since 3:17 AM EDT. https://t.co/cvGsWTfsWq RT if you’re also having problems #Whatsappdown

— Downdetector (@downdetector) October 25, 2022

On the other hand, many also took to Twitter and shared their complaints.

Check some reactions:

People Coming to Twitter to see if WhatsApp is down#WhatsappDown pic.twitter.com/eGi25KiQhU

— Bella Ciao (Chai) (@punjabiii_munda) October 25, 2022

When your WhatsApp is playing up but you come to Twitter and see that everyone else is having the same problem #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/pMcJm0Zn56

— Jamie (@GingerPower_) October 25, 2022

WhatsApp Engineer right now #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/vRg0RZXYTd

— MB (@bowx_) October 25, 2022

How are we going to communicate since Whatsapp is down?
Professor : and that’s where Twitter comes in#WhatsApp #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/NrqBGpPGK7

— Jackson Nyakoe (@Jacksonnyakoe) October 25, 2022

People come to Twitter as WhatsApp goes down … 😂🤣 #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/dLObqw3YW8

— Official_Ankit_Das 😇 (@AnkitDass21) October 25, 2022

#WhatsAppDown
Me: *checks Wi-Fi*
*disconnects from Wi-Fi*
*reconnects to Wi-Fi*
*checks WhatsApp*
*restarts phone*
*checks WhatsApp*
*checks Wi-Fi*
*finally checks Twitter* pic.twitter.com/gisUGylWSd

— ʜᴀʀꜱʜᴀʟ (@whois_harshal) October 25, 2022

#WhatsApp
Twitter is enjoying WhatsApp down 😂 pic.twitter.com/ypYWqnIFHw

— Mr. XAJID | Graphic Designer (@MrXAJID) October 25, 2022

While Twitter has been flooded with funny reactions and posts over the global outage, the exact cause of the issue is still unclear. Notably, other Meta services including Instagram and Facebook are working properly in the affected countries.

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WhatsApp goes down in a number of areas around the globe, users can’t access group chats or WhatsApp Web

WhatsApp, the Meta-owned instant messaging service has apparently suffered a major disruption with most of its services having being rendered inaccessible to its users. 

Apparently, WhatsApp’s services such as Group Chats and WhatsApp Web have been hit worldwide, whereas regular chats have been hit only in certain portions of the world, including India.

As of now, there is no clear reason as to why certain selective services of WhatsApp would be out of order, and not the entire platform. However, people have been speculating, that this may be because of the increased exchange of messages and media because of Diwali, or the outage may be due to the partial solar eclipse that is supposed to take place today.

Both of these speculations, however, should be taken with a massive grain of salt. WhatsApp has more than enough bandwidth to withstand sudden spikes in traffic. And in any case had either of the reasons, the overload of messages of the solar eclipse being a reason, been true, the entire platform would have been out, and not selected services in selected areas.

People have taken to Twitter to not only share that they are facing outages, but to share some pretty hilarious memes as well.

When your WhatsApp is playing up but you come to Twitter and see that everyone else is having the same problem #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/pMcJm0Zn56

— Jamie (@GingerPower_) October 25, 2022

When WhatsApp is Down.#whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/xHgsHd9h8v

— ɅMɅN DUВΞY (@imAmanDubey) October 25, 2022

WhatsApp Engineer right now #WhatsAppDown pic.twitter.com/vRg0RZXYTd

— MB (@bowx_) October 25, 2022

Mark Z when whatsapp stop functioning correctly#whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/Jr7qt9Z3FA

— Jo (@Justcallmejo69) October 25, 2022

Acknowledging the issue, a Meta spokesperson said it is working to restore services as quickly as possible. “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible,” said the spokesperson in an official statement.

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Explained: What is Clean Energy Charging that Apple has enabled on their latest iPhones

Apple has enabled one of the most promising charging features on its latest iPhones and certain older models of the iPhone, if they have updated to the most recent version of iOS, i.e. iOS 16.1. Called Clean Energy Charging, the new system, ideally, should be the next big thing in charging technology.

Over the last couple of years, battery charging technology, especially in smartphones has gone insane. We moved from 33W fast charging as the industry to 45W-60W in no time. We even have cell phones that go upto 150W of fast charging. While having a quick chrarging time is good, in the pursuit of speed, tech companies have completely ignored efficiency and just how wasteful certain charging methodologies can be.

What is Apple’s Clean Energy Charging?
Apple’s Clean Energy Charging feature aims to “reduce a user’s carbon footprint” by charging when lower carbon-emission electricity is available. Basically, what the new feature does, is that when it is enabled on an iPhone, the device gets a forecast of the carbon emissions in the local energy grid and uses it to charge the iPhone during times of cleaner energy production.

This way, users ensure that they are only using clean and efficiently produced energy to charge their iPhones. 

Unfortunately, this feature is currently available only in the USA, where private discoms are required by law to put out a forecast about their emissions on a daily basis. In countries where they have similar laws, Apple may release this feature, in the future. 

How to enable Clean Energy Charging?
Clean Energy Charging is enabled by default, but you can manage the setting by going into the Settings app, choosing Battery, and then Battery Health & Charging. Here, you’ll see a new toggle dedicated to the Clean Energy Charging feature.

However, users still need to enable a few things for the feature to work properly.

First of all, make sure that Clean Energy Charging is on. Users can do this by going to Settings>Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging.

Second, you also need to ensure that Location Services & Significant Locations is on. This can be done from Settings>Privacy & Security>Location Services>System Services.

Finally, ensure that System Customization has been enabled on your iPhone. This can again be found under Privacy & Security>Location Services>System Services.

How does the Clean Energy Charging feature work?
Clean Energy Charging works together with Optimized Battery Charging to learn your charging habits. Clean Energy Charging engages only where you spend the most time and regularly charge your iPhone for long periods of time, such as your home and place of work. The feature doesn’t engage if your charging habits are variable or you’re in a new location, such as when you travel.

iOS 16.1 also allows users to override Clean Energy Charging, even when it is enabled. This can be done from the lock screen itself, when the device is plugged in for charging. When Clean Energy Charging suspends charging, you’ll see a notification on your lock screen. Long pressing on the notification and then choosing the “Charge Now” option will override Clean Energy Charging.

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