Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/26 – Apple Raises Wages

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Apple is attempting to fend off a unionization movement by… paying people more. That Broadcom/VMware deal is real. You can now pay close to $1000 for a Gucci Oura Ring. After a decade of declines, EV battery prices are going up. And the last payphone in New York City is gone. Sponsors: AltoIRA.com/techmeme Smith.ai promocode techmeme for $100 off signup Links: Apple Boosting Pay Budget for Workers Amid Tight Labor Market (WSJ) Leaked Audio: Apple VP Gives Apple Store Workers Anti-Union Speech (Motherboard) Broadcom is acquiring VMware for $61 billion (The Verge) Oura collaborated with Gucci to make an 18 carat gold smart ring (Engadget) Apple to Keep iPhone Production Flat as Market Grows Tougher (Bloomberg) Snowflake stock falls as executives forecast a narrower margin than expected (CNBC) Twitter jumps after Musk increases commitment in takeover bid to $33.5 billion, in talks for other funding (CNBC) After a Decade of Declines, EV Battery Costs Are To Rise 14% This Year (The Electric/The Information) The Trouble With Lithium (Bloomberg) NYC's 'last' payphone will be displayed at the Museum of the City of New York (TimeOut New York) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, May 26, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple is attempting to fend off a unionization movement by paying people more. That Broadcom VMware deal is real. You can now pay close to $1,000 for a Gucci aura ring. After a decade of declines, EV battery prices are going up. And the last pay phone in New York City is no more. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Apple Pay is going up. Apple Pay is going up. up. See what I did there. I don't know how much we've talked about this, but the movement to unionized tech workers has spread to Apple, at least to their retail employees. And I guess to get

ahead of that, Apple says it will raise the hourly pay for U.S. workers to $22, up 45% from 2018 amid inflation and the unionization push. U.S. starting salaries are also expected to rise, quoting the Wall Street Journal. In recent months, Apple has been facing unusual. labor unrest. That discontent has spanned from front-line store retail workers agitating for unionization to salary to engineer's unhappy with the company's plans to return to the office. Some workers, including those hourly workers in its stores and AppleCare, were told their annual reviews would be moved up three months and that their pay increases would take effect in early July, according to a memo reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The normal review process coincides with the end of Apple's

fiscal year in the fall. Those workers were told that companies' increased compensation budget would be in addition to pay increases and special awards already received within the past year, end quote. Not helping matters on the PR front is the video that Vice got a hold of that shows Apple SVP of retail and people, Deirdre O'Brien, telling employees that joining a union would make it harder for Apple to improve working conditions, quoting motherboard slash vice. We have a relationship that's based on an open and collaborative and direct engagement, which I feel could fundamentally change if a store is represented by a, Union under a collective bargaining agreement, said Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's vice president of retail and

people, in a six-minute video circulated yesterday among Apple's 58,000 retail employees in the United States and obtained by motherboard. Apple moves incredibly fast, she says, and I worry that because the union would bring its own legally mandated rules that would determine how we work through issues, it could make it harder for us to act swiftly to address things that you raise. It turned my stomach, an Apple retail worker and union organizer who viewed the video and requested to remain anonymous said, as someone who genuinely likes my company but is working to organize my store to hold it to its values, I'm disappointed not only in what was said in the video, but also in how convincing it will be to some people that are on the fence, end quote.

Apple retail workers have cited pay, benefits, and unpredictable hours as reasons for their unionization push, end quote. It's official, Broadcom has announced plans to acquire VMware for around $61 billion in cash in stock, paying $142.50 per share, and will assume VMware's $8 billion in net debt, quoting the Verge. This giant acquisition for VMware is designed to boost Broadcom's software business. VMware, which was owned by Dell until it was spun off last year, focuses on cloud computing and virtualization technology. If you've used a virtual machine at work over the past decade, the chances are it was powered by VMware or its competitor Citrix. Devices from Apple, Google,

and more use Broadcom chips, and it's likely that the devices you've used with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth were probably powered by Broadcom chips at some part of the networking chain. The combination of VMware and Broadcom could be a powerful one, focused on enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing. Broadcom previously acquired CA Technologies, makers of security and database software for $18.9 billion in 2018, and it even acquired Symantex Enterprise Security Unit for $10.7 billion in 2019. Less than 12 months later, it sold the Symantecotech business to Accenture for an undisclosed sum. Broadcom is now planning to rebrand its Broadcom's software group to VMware and incorporate its existing infrastructure and security software offerings as part of

VMware. Combining our assets and talented team with Broadcom's existing enterprise software portfolio all hosted under the VMware brand creates a remarkable enterprise software player, says Raghu Ragaram, CEO of VMware. The deal which is expected to close in Broadcom's fiscal year 2023 has the backing of Michael Dell, who together with Silver Lake owns around 50% of VMware. If the deal closes, it will be one of the largest tech deals of all time, end quote. ORA has partnered with Gucci on the Gucci Times ORA ring wearable. It actually says Gucci Xora ring, but I'm assuming they say times or something. Letting users monitor heart rate, sleep, and more available at select stores for $950.

Quoting a gadget. ORA, the startup that's pushing the limits of how small a wearable can be, just announced a collaboration that could boost its profile considerably. It's teeming with Fashion House Gucci on the Gucci Times-ORA ring, crafted in black synthetic corundum, and adorned with the famous interlocking G and a braided torquence pattern, both in 18-carat yellow gold. It comes with ORA's latest Generation 3 tech,

letting users monitor live heart rate, sleep activity, and more. The ring weighs just 4 grams or 0.14 ounces. but can read heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature to tell users if they're stressed or sick. It can supposedly measure heart rate more accurately than wrist-based smartwatches by using arteries in the fingers. Users also receive sleep analysis based on those same vitals, with everything summarized into sleep, activity, and readiness scores displayed on the ORA app. It can then offer, quote, science-backed content on how to optimize each day, according to the company. In our latest ORA ring hands-on, we noted that the company has switched to a subscription model

that costs $6 per month on top of the price of the ring, $300 for the current ORA ring. Getting it down to such a small size was quite the feat of engineering, but it's still a tad chunky compared to a regular ring. You'll obviously pay a premium for the Gucci Times aura ring, now available at select stores around the world for $950. The good news is that ORA's lifetime membership subscription is included in the price, so you'll never have to pay for that, end quote. Quick Everything Everywhere All at Once segment. Segment. More signs of economic slowdown in tech this time with Apple as the leading indicator. Sources are telling Bloomberg that Apple plans to keep iPhone production at around 220 million

units about the same as last year compared to around 240 million units the market was forecasting, and Apple says this is amid inflation and a tough market. Snowflake stock dropped around 10% this morning on week Q2 growth guidance after reporting Q1 product revenue rose 84% year-over-year to $394 million, and a net loss. of $166 million, which was down from $230 million in losses last year. Last year, we saw certain customers experience much higher than expected consumption of their own businesses were growing extremely fast. Mike Scarpelli, Snowflake's chief financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts, today some customers face a more challenging

operating environment. Specific customers consume less than we anticipated amid shifting economic circumstances, we believe are unique to their businesses, most notably consumer-facing cloud companies. Although these customers are still growing, we believe as long as are impacted by macroeconomic headwinds, the consumption will be impacted, end quote. And Bolt Financial laid off 185 employees are about one-third of its workforce, a few of whom will have to pay back loans they took from the company within 90 days. Huh? Quoting Axios.

In February, Bolt offered loans to employees who wanted to buy vested shares. Bolt's loans were 51% recourse, which means they're collateralized by employees' personal assets, while 49% were secured by the shares. Any loans tied to covering taxes were 100% recourse. Moreover, if an employee stops working at Bolt for any reason, the loan must be repaid within 90 days. Imagine having your boss hand you a pink slip and then reach into your pocket, because that's exactly what's happening to some folks who worked at Bolt. A Bolt spokesperson says that only a single-digit number of laid-off employees took out the loans and that the aggregate amount was below $200,000. Moreover, she says the company plans to, quote,

work with these individuals, end quote. It's been a few days since we've checked in on Elon, so let's do that. According to a regulatory filing, he plans to provide an additional $6.25 billion in equity financing for his Twitter buyout, thereby boosting his commitment to $33.5 billion. Twitter stock rose more than 5% on the news, because I guess the market thinks this makes it more likely that the deal happens. But quoting CNBC, early on Wednesday, Twitter shareholders, voted not to re-elect Silver Lake CEO Egon Durbin to the company's board. Durbin through Silver Lake is a longtime business associate and backer of Musk's companies and past business deals, end quote. And worth noting that Jack Dorsey left Twitter's board

of directors effective yesterday. Dorsey has discussed rolling over his 2.4% Twitter stake into the takeover deal, but no word if that is going to happen. Keeping our eye on the possible speed bumps to what had seemed like electric vehicles taking over the world. The information is reporting. that after a decade of declines, EV battery costs are set to rise 14% this year. Quote, the abrupt electrification of the auto industry has been fueled in large part by a steep drop in the cost of their batteries, bringing the price of electric cars closer to parity with traditional vehicles. But the International Energy Agency says those declines are about to end and reverse.

A surge in the price of critical metals is on track to push the average cost of lithium ion batteries to about $150 per kilowatt hour this year, a 14% shift. jump from 2021, the IEA said Monday. It would be the first annual increase in the average cost of an EV battery in the last 12 years, end quote. On that lithium part of the equation, more from Bloomberg. Elon Musk wants to mine it. China is scouring Tibet for it. Battery makers are crying out for it. Lithium, the wonder metal at the heart of the global shift to electric cars, is in a full-blown crisis. Demand has outstripped supply, pushing prices up almost 500% in a year, and hindering the world's most successful effort yet to halt global warming. The shortage of lithium is so acute

that in China, which makes about 80% of the world's lithium ion batteries, the government corralled suppliers and manufacturers to demand a rational return to lower prices. Analysts at Macquarie Group warned of a perpetual deficit, while Citigroup nearly doubled its price forecast for 2022, saying an extreme rally could be coming. The consequences of failure to produce enough lithium are potentially devastating. Global investment in EVs has grown faster, than any other new energy sector over the past few years, outstripping even wind and solar power. Current lithium spot prices could add up to $1,000 to the cost of a new vehicle, benchmark mineral intelligence said, along with higher prices of other raw materials that is reversing

years of falling prices as EVs race to become cost competitive with gasoline-powered cars. If battery makers can't get enough lithium, it would curb the expansion of clean energy vehicles, making it harder to meet global emissions targets. It looks like the expansion ramp is not going to be fast enough to hit demand, over the next three years, said Cameron Perks, an analyst at benchmark. EV makers, quote, have been asleep at the wheel, end quote. The crunch prompted a characteristically blunt tweet from Elon Musk in April. Price of lithium has gone to insane levels, he posted on Twitter.

Tesla might actually have to get into the mining and refining directly at scale unless costs improve, end quote. The silvery white metal, the third lightest element after hydrogen and helium, is in the throes of an unprecedented boom because of a slump in 2018-2020 that halved its value caused by chronic underinvestment in new sources of supply, just as EV demand was taking off. For battery makers, those woes have been compounded by the pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine, which have snarled supplies of other ingredients they need, including nickel, graphite, and cobalt, end quote. And finally today, truly the end of an era, quoting Timeout, New York. A New York City payphone,

one of the last relics of an analog past, was removed from the strong. on Monday, signaling the end of an era for many. The payphone was on 7th Avenue at 50th Street and was removed by the city to make room for one of the newish-link-Nyc kiosks. The payphone is said to be the last one in NYC, but several New Yorkers have tweeted that there are others around the city that still work. Either way, the removal stands as a symbol of moving fully into the future and leaving the payphone's dial tones and cords in the past. This particular payphone isn't going to be tossed in a municipal garbage heap. It's going to the museum of the city of New York, install it in its recently opened exhibit Analog City. The exhibit, which opened on Friday,

explores NYC before computers when industries grew through pneumatic tubes, telephone operators, linotype and teletype machines, and card catalogs. This exhibit has been in the works for some time, and then as luck would have it, we were approached if we had an interest in the payphone. It felt like a natural and obvious opportunity, Lily Tuttle, curator of Analog City tells us, noting that the museum often gets offers to take items. This is one answer that was staring us in the face and it came together pretty quickly. We are trying to act rapidly to incorporate it into the exhibition. All I can say is stay tuned, end quote. The exhibit records how the city thrived in the 20th century without the use of digital technology like smartphones and computers, but through the use

of the Times' own technology. It's broken up into four sections, libraries, the news media and journalism, the New York Stock Exchange, and the age of skyscrapers and infrastructure that outline what tools were used to build them up and keep them up with the Times. Analog City is on now through December 31, 2022 at the Museum of the City of New York, end quote. Looks like there are some nice examples of typewriters and other such analog devices in this exhibit. Maybe I'll have to take my kids there and somehow attempt to explain to them that you could make a phone call on a phone you didn't own that was bolted to the ground by putting in quarters. Nothing about that will make sense to them.

Dear listener, I have a personal tragedy to report to you. My Mac studio is not being delivered today, as I had hoped. The delivery estimate has slipped to Tuesday, May 31st. According to UPS, it's just sitting there in Hong Kong for unknown reasons. So I don't get to do my weekend of setting up my new rig, even though I'm all ready for it. The big 38-inch monitor came yesterday. The backup hard drives for the files are full. The new hard drive for the time machine backup is here. I'm already using a new Apple keyboard, the black and gray one. I'm good to go. I'm good to go, except for one little important piece of the puzzle. Oh well. Talk to you tomorrow.