Hulu now has over 20 million U.S. subscribers – that’s up from the 17 million-plus it claimed in January. The news of its subscriber growth is being delivered alongside a series of pitches to advertisers at the company’s Upfronts presentation in New York this morning, where it’s also touting its upcoming original series and detailing its new ad products. One of those will be of particular interest to Hulu’s users, too – the company will at last allow subscribers to download shows to watch offline.

I love offline viewing with my Netflix account, so I’m sure this will be a big hit with Hulu subscribers. I tried Hulu a while ago, but I wasn’t all that impressed. I may give it another go.

Shares of Snap Inc sank as much as 22 percent to the lowest since its 2017 flotation on Wednesday, after first quarter numbers showed it losing confidence among users and advertisers due to a widely-panned redesign of Snapchat.

I’ve never been a big Snap user, but it seems to me that users of companies like this are very fickle—They could be very loyal one day and turn on you the next. This isn’t just about Snap, but every social media platform available today.

Amazon is pausing the unprecedented spree of headquarters construction that transformed the city of Seattle over the last decade, suspending plans to add 7,000 to 8,000 jobs in 1 million square feet of new office space.

Whether it’s a political maneuver to influence City Hall or an actual change in direction remains to be seen. But it could spook developers of housing and offices planning on Amazon’s continued growth.

Amazon has drawn a line in the sand and is sending a clear message to Seattle City Hall—approve this tax and we’re out.

Apple on Tuesday reported financial results for its fiscal 2018 second quarter, which ended on March 31, 2018. The company posted quarterly revenue of $61.1 billion, an increase of 16 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.73, up 30 percent.

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The news that Apple is discontinuing the AirPort line, although expected, is a bitter pill to swallow for many Mac enthusiasts that love the no-nonsense, easy to administer backup and recovery features on the Time Capsule series. Even though the Time Capsule will be no more, you can still use Time Machine for your backup and recovery purposes in your post-AirPort world.

I imagine this is a question a lot of people have since Apple announced it would discontinue the AirPort product line. The good news is, the Time Machine technology will work, without a Time Capsule.

Speaking of Gibson:

The company, which filed for chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, said it will continue to operate during the proceedings as it focuses on reorganizing around its core businesses. Gibson plans to wind down its Gibson’s Innovations business, which is largely outside of the U.S.

This is mismanagement at its worst. The Les Paul is my favorite guitar and I’m hopeful that someone will be able to save that instrument.

Last week, we reported that Tronical—the German company most well-known for its “robo-tuning” devices—had sued Gibson for $50 million. Now, Gibson has responded to Tronical’s lawsuit with a lawsuit of its own.

It’s true that most guitar players didn’t like the robot tuners that Tronical made, but I didn’t mind them. I have them on one of my more recent Les Pauls and they work fine, but I get why people don’t like them. Still, all of this Gibson mismanagement, financial problems, and lawsuits make me sad.

I joined John Gruber on his latest podcast and it was a great time, as always. We talked about MacBook keyboards, AirPower, and Google.

Apple on Thursday has officially discontinued its AirPort wireless networking products. The company told me that all AirPort Base Station products would continue to be sold in its stores “while supplies last.” […]

Gmail received some new features and a new look—It’s still clearly Gmail, but it does look better. This became available on my personal Gmail account this morning.

I’ve spoken with countless people over the years about how I use Apple Music, and how I get the most from the service. One thing I noticed is that many of these people stopped using the service and only listened to songs they had downloaded on their iPhone. I believe the reason they do that is they feel overwhelmed. […]

An appeal by Apple and Ireland against a European Union ruling for the U.S. firm to pay 13 billion euros ($16 billion) in disputed taxes is likely to be heard before the end of the year, Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said on Tuesday.

Apple and Ireland both say the company paid all the taxes that were due, but I can’t see the court reversing the EU decision.

Online streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music have become the recording industry’s single biggest revenue source, overtaking physical sales of CDs and digital downloads for the first time, a trade group said on Tuesday.

This, of course, comes as no big surprise. I still buy albums from iTunes for the bands I really love, but streaming on Apple Music is now the norm. What’s still unclear to me is how the musicians are doing financially with the rise of streaming services.

Google owner Alphabet Inc reported first-quarter sales and profit Monday that topped financial analysts’ estimates due to strong ad sales and a change in accounting for investments in startups, sending its shares up about 1 percent after hours.

Overall, Alphabet posted a $9.4 billion profit on sales of $31.1 billion.

Tim Cook:

“We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two … you begin to make trade offs and compromises.

“So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day. But that’s not what it’s about. You know it’s about giving people things that they can then use to help them change the world or express their passion or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don’t think that’s what users want.”

I have never been a fan of merging these two devices. There are always going to be compromises when you look at merging them that aren’t necessary. I’ll gladly take two devices, and two operating system over a merged device.

If a new European law restricting what companies can do with people’s online data went into effect tomorrow, almost 1.9 billion Facebook Inc users around the world would be protected by it. The online social network is making changes that ensure the number will be much smaller.

Facebook members outside the United States and Canada, whether they know it or not, are currently governed by terms of service agreed with the company’s international headquarters in Ireland.

Next month, Facebook is planning to make that the case for only European users, meaning 1.5 billion members in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America will not fall under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect on May 25.

It’s all a game.

Om Malik:

Douglas Weber is an American industrial designer based in Fukuoka, Japan. He formerly worked for Apple in Cupertino and is a fellow coffee nerd. He is currently working on what he deems the perfect coffee grinder at his new company Lyn Weber, which he founded with VFX designer Craig Lyn. We recently talked about the new wave of coffee and cafes and how and why design is becoming such an integral part of coffee culture.

Wow!

Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would continue requiring people to accept targeted ads as a condition of using its service, a stance that may help keep its business model largely intact despite a new European Union privacy law.

And

Facebook Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman said the social network would begin seeking Europeans’ permission this week for a variety of ways Facebook uses their data, but he said that opting out of targeted marketing altogether would not be possible.

Whether you like targeted ads or not, it makes sense that Facebook is still going to require users to accept them—it’s their entire business model. The choice is simple—accept the ads or delete the app.

Apple Inc. plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium subscription offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is part of a broader push by the iPhone maker to generate more revenue from online content and services.

Texture was all about magazines, but I wonder if Apple will include other forms of media, like paid newspaper subscriptions, as part of this new service.

Winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes were announced at Columbia University in New York City on Monday. The Pulitzers are highly revered and mark the best in journalism in 14 categories.

Congrats to the winners.

Netflix Inc’s blitz of new programming attracted a surprisingly high 7.4 million new customers from January to March, reassuring investors who are betting the video streaming pioneer’s massive spending will fuel growth around the world.

Netflix’s shows are great, as are many of the others put out by similar services. These numbers show how much consumers want these types of shows. This is exactly what Apple is looking to happen when it releases its video content—we’ll see how that works out.

From Apple’s internal memo:

Leakers do not simply lose their jobs at Apple. In some cases, they face jail time and massive fines for network intrusion and theft of trade secrets both classified as federal crimes. In 2017, Apple caught 29 leakers. 12 of those were arrested. Among those were Apple employees, contractors and some partners in Apple’s supply chain. These people not only lose their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment elsewhere. “The potential criminal consequences of leaking are real,” says Tom Moyer of Global Security, “and that can become part of your personal and professional identity forever.”

I have a hard time understanding the motivation for employees to leak information about upcoming products. I think this is a smart move by Apple, telling its employees that there are consequences for their actions. The fact that 12 people were arrested should scare the hell out of anyone considering leaking information.

Apple is not fucking around anymore. You’ve been warned.

Uber Technologies Inc said on Wednesday it is planning to offer more modes of transportation for riders through its app, giving people more ways to get around in cities.

In cities like San Francisco, having a variety of transportation options is especially important.

Apple’s ad for the newly announced iPhone 8.

Israel’s consumer protection bureau said on Tuesday it was investigating Apple over a failure to disclose to consumers that its software could slow performance in some iPhones.

I think what these investigations will come down to is Apple’s intent. I don’t believe for a second they did this to trick people into buying a new iPhone.

Tom Boger, Senior Director of Mac Hardware Product Marketing:

“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year.”

Matthew Panzarino provides some really interesting information in this piece after speaking to Apple. I especially like the new Pro Workflow Team.

The group is under John Ternus and works closely with the engineering organization. The bays that I’m taken to later to chat about Final Cut Pro, for instance, are a few doors away from the engineers tasked with making it run great on Apple hardware.

“We said in the meeting last year that the pro community isn’t one thing,” says Ternus. “It’s very diverse. There’s many different types of pros and obviously they go really deep into the hardware and software and are pushing everything to its limit. So one thing you have to do is we need to be engaging with the customers to really understand their needs. Because we want to provide complete pro solutions not just deliver big hardware which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. But look at everything holistically.”

Apple is hiring some of the industry’s top professionals to find out where the pain points are in the workflow and fix them. This is an incredibly detailed approach to getting the next Mac Pro out the door.

“We’ve been focusing on visual effects and video editing and 3D animation and music production as well,” says Ternus. “And we’ve brought in some pretty incredible talent, really masters of their craft. And so they’re now sitting and building out workflows internally with real content and really looking for what are the bottlenecks. What are the pain points. How can we improve things. And then we take this information where we find it and we go into our architecture team and our performance architects and really drill down and figure out where is the bottleneck. Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in the application is it in the silicon and then run it to ground to get it fixed.”

I can’t wait to see this new machine.