Technology

Re/wind: The iPhone 6s Goes on Sale, the Apple Car Arrives in 2019 and More

Also, Business Insider is close to a deal with a buyer.

Sep 27, 2015, 10:30 PM UTC

Vjeran Pavic for Re/code

The iPhone 6s has triggered an all-out brawl among U.S. wireless carriers, a couple of media deals are done or wrapping up and a bunch more happened in Silicon Valley this week. Here are the headlines that powered Re/code:

The rumors have legs: Apple is working on an electric vehicle that it wants to ship sometime in 2019. Why does Apple want to get into the car business? It sees an opportunity in electric cars in particular as fuel-economy standards rise and the domestic carmakers struggle to adapt.
Apple patched its new mobile OS, the iPhone 6s went on sale this week and people seem to be flocking toward the rose gold, a.k.a. “bros’ gold,” models. T-Mobile offered a $5-a-month leasing plan for the new 6s for customers who turn in their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus devices. Sprint responded with a $1-a-month lease offer and Verizon chimed in with a new annual upgrade plan for customers who have paid off half their original phones and turn them back in.
German media giant Axel Springer, which lost out on buying the Financial Times earlier this year, is close to acquiring Business Insider for $560 million. This isn’t too big of a surprise: In January, Axel Springer led a $25 million funding round for the highly trafficked Web publisher. In other media spending news, Hearst is putting $21 million into the Web publisher Complex to bolster its video unit.
At its developer conference this week, Oculus announced that the consumer-focused Samsung Gear VR headset (which runs on Oculus-powered software) will cost $99 when it ships in November. Also at the conference: A lot of people were very sensitive about protecting the integrity of VR gaming.
After about a decade of existence as an entirely free video network, YouTube is close to launching its subscription service. Expect to see the $10-a-month ad-free service late next month.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with dozens of executives from Silicon Valley companies this week, and he discussed hacking, intellectual property, climate change and much more with President Obama. One big takeaway: The American tech industry wields a lot of political power.
On this week’s episode of the “Re/code Decode” podcast, Microsoft acquisitions and partnerships chief Peggy Johnson talked with Re/code Executive Editor Kara Swisher about the strategic purchases Redmond is making to secure its future.
Oyster, a Netflix-for-books subscription service, is shutting down and most of its team is going to work for Google, which looks to take on Amazon with its Google Play Books service.
In the final installment of our video series focusing on women in the tech industry, Facebook engineering chief Mary Lou Jepsen said that Silicon Valley is hostile to women, calling out Google X by name.
In a column for Re/code, Tim Bajarin said that iOS has the potential to be the enterprise operating system for millennials. That’s why IBM, Cisco and others are rushing to work out deals with Apple, as user habits and business needs change.