Weekend Wrap-Up: Lots of Apple News; Yahoo to Close the Directory
Happy Sunday, folks!
I typically try to shy away from covering a whole lot about one company in these Wrap-Ups. Unfortunately, not a whole lot happened this week, and Apple made the headlines quite a bit; for both good and bad reasons.
Yahoo made the news, too, though I’m sure it would rather not have. Let’s find out why.
Apple Breaks Records, iPhone 6 Sales Top 10 Million
The iPhone 6 broke pre-order records this year, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that Apple now has more news on broken records — sales records, to be specific. Apple announced this past week that iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales broke 10 million. A look at the Apple website, as well as the websites of many retailers, shows that iPhone 6 stock is extremely low right now. Demand is pretty high, and those sales numbers will only continue to grow as Apple replenishes its stock.
Apple Experiences a Bit of iOS Embarrassment, Pulls iOS 8.0.1
Apple was riding its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus high this past week, and issued an update to iOS 8 — iOS 8.0.1 — to patch up a few things. Unfortunately, Apple’s fix actually broke some functionality on its brand new phones — cell service disappeared on its next-gen iPhones, and some users experienced problems with the Touch ID sensor. Apple had to pull the update, but it did quickly replace it with iOS 8.0.2, which restored proper functionality to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
#Bendgate
As if the faulty iOS 8 update wasn’t bad enough, Apple had to deal with the controversy known on social media as #bendgate. After an iPhone 6 Plus buyer posted a photo of a bent phone on the MacRumors message boards, the Internet erupted with news stories about this purported weakness in Apple’s new phablet. Consumer Reports published some findings on Saturday, however, that stated that the iPhone 6 Plus was actually able to withstand around 90 pounds of force before bending to the point of deformation. So was the story a little overblown? Probably. But that is to be expected with Apple products, right?
Yahoo to Shut Down the Directory
The Yahoo Directory — the very reason the company exists in the first place — will be shut down on December 31, 2014. This news comes courtesy of Yahoo, which tried to make as little noise as possible about the closure. For being such a pivotal piece of the company at one point, it’s a little sad that Yahoo is trying to sweep the Directory under the rug, opting not to give it a proper send-off. But Yahoo is closing the Directory to focus more on its successful products; perhaps the best way to focus is to move forward.