Apple changed up its product-unveiling style yesterday and focused on a single theme — education — for its new slate of products. At a Chicago public high school, Apple unveiled a new, faster version of its iPad tablet that supports the Apple Pencil stylus, along with classroom software for students and teachers. Apple has a lot of homework to do if it wants to catch up with Google, which already has a strong lead in the U.S. education market. [Dan Frommer / Recode]
Recode Daily: Apple focuses on creativity in education at its spring product launch event
Plus, Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress, Waymo is buying 20,000 Jaguar SUVs for its self-driving effort, and what are screens doing to our eyes?
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Recode and MSNBC will interview Apple CEO Tim Cook today. Kara Swisher and Chris Hayes will interview Cook from Chicago; a TV special will premiere next Friday, April 6, but you can follow live coverage of the chat today, starting around 10:30 am ET / 7:30 am PT via the Recode Twitter feed.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress about the data privacy scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. Details TBD. Facebook sources believe Zuckerberg’s willingness to testify will also put pressure on Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do the same. Politico thinks Zuckerberg could testify April 12 at a House commerce panel. Meanwhile, Facebook has delayed — but hasn’t scrapped — plans to roll out its own version of an Alexa-like connected home speaker, for obvious reasons. [Dylan Byers / CNN]
Alphabet’s Waymo division is purchasing 20,000 Jaguar SUVs in its effort to put driverless vehicles on the road. Waymo unveiled a new vehicle, called the Jaguar I-Pace; the cars will first be available in a ride-hail service in Phoenix, Ariz., where Waymo currently has a fleet of driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans. Meanwhile, Uber has decided not to renew its permit to test driverless vehicles in the state of California, and Nvidia is temporarily stopping testing of its autonomous vehicle platform. [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Google could owe Oracle more than $8 billion after a federal appeals court said it didn’t have the right to use the Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices. [Susan Decker / Bloomberg]
Atlanta’s municipal government has been tied in knots by a sustained ransomware attack that started last Thursday morning. Security experts identified the assailants as the SamSam hacking crew, which is believed to have extorted more than $1 million from some 30 target organizations in 2018 alone. The digital extortion demand amounted to about $51,000; meanwhile, for five days, Atlanta’s six million residents couldn’t pay their traffic tickets or water bills online, and travelers at the world’s busiest airport couldn’t use the free Wi-Fi. [Alan Blinder and Nicole Perlroth / The New York Times]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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