Wayne Ma
The Information
Singapore
Contact Wayne
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Wayne:
Apple Devising Software to Help Anyone Build AR Apps, to Drive Headset Sales
Apple is developing software to make it easy for users of its upcoming mixed-reality headset to build their own augmented reality apps, according to four people who have worked on the headset. With the software tools, Apple hopes that even people who don’t know computer code could tell the ... → Read More
Apple Working on Cheaper Mixed-Reality Headset to Reach More Consumers
Apple’s first mixed-reality headset, which it has discussed pricing at around $3,000, could test the limits of how much Apple fans are willing to spend on one of its devices. But the company’s engineers are already at work on a more affordable version of the headset to reach more consumers, ... → Read More
Apple’s Privacy Rules Leave Its Engineers in the Dark
Privacy is one of the selling points of Apple products. But for employees who develop these products, it can be a pain. Apple doesn’t collect a lot of customer data from its services, including Apple Maps, the Siri voice assistant and its paid video-streaming service, according to more than a ... → Read More
AirPods Are a Huge Hit With Consumers—and Counterfeiters
U.S. Customs officials are seizing record numbers of counterfeit wireless headphones amid a surge in the popularity of Apple’s easy-to-copy AirPods. Roughly 360,000 counterfeit wireless headphones with a retail value of $62.2 million were confiscated in the first nine months of the U.S. ... → Read More
Ex-Apple Design Boss Jony Ive Recruited at Least Five Former Colleagues to New Firm
Wan Si, a 16-year veteran of Apple’s famed design team who worked on numerous Apple app icons, buttons and home screens, recently joined the consulting firm founded by Apple’s former design chief Jonathan Ive, The Information has learned. She is one of at least fiveApple design team members Ive ... → Read More
Apple’s Supplier List Shifts Towards China Despite Trade War
Apple has disclosed the list of its top 200 suppliers for the first time in two years, revealing an increased reliance on Chinese companies—even as some of them have expanded production to Vietnam and India to avoid U.S. tariffs and export controls. Meanwhile, the company relied less on ... → Read More
Seven Apple Suppliers Accused of Using Forced Labor From Xinjiang
Advanced-Connectek has made unglamorous but critical computer components for Apple for more than a decade. For two of those years, it operated a factory inside an industrial park on the edge of the deserts of Xinjiang, a region of western China populated by a predominantly Muslim group known as ... → Read More
Apple Hosts Apps Run by China Paramilitary Group Accused of Uyghur Genocide
Apple’s App Store has been distributing more than a dozen apps created by a Chinese organization sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses against Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, The Information has learned. The apps, which provide news, offer information about government ... → Read More
Apple Forbids Facial Scanning of Employees—But Not Factory Workers
Apple says privacy is a “fundamental human right,” and shielding people’s privacy is the cornerstone of the company’s public relations fight against rivals such as Google and Facebook. But those privacy concerns don’t necessarily apply to the workers who make its products. Apple recently told ... → Read More
Tencent’s Investments Got $120 Billion Boost From 2020 Rally
It’s the kind of track record that would make any Sand Hill Road venture capitalist jealous. Tencent, best known for its WeChat messaging app, is one of the world’s biggest and savviest tech investors, holding stakes in a range of companies including Snap and Meituan. Previously unreported ... → Read More
Inside Apple’s Mad Dash to Avoid Shipping Delays Amid Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused havoc for manufacturers shipping goods around the world. Just ask executives at Apple why they shipped empty cardboard boxes from the U.S. to Asia, the reverse of the usual route. Last February, Apple’s Singapore distribution center ran out of the brown mailing ... → Read More
New Apple Mixed-Reality Headset Details: Swappable Headbands, Eye-Tracking
A mixed-reality headset Apple is developing will be equipped with more than a dozen cameras for tracking hand movements and showing video of the real world to people wearing it, along with ultra-high-resolution 8K displays and advanced technology for eye tracking, according to a person with ... → Read More
Tencent Ramps Up Consumer Lending as Rival Ant Group Struggles
Chinese tech giant Tencent is planning a big new push into consumer lending in China just as its archrival, Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, is reeling from a regulatory crackdown. Tencent, already a force in payments through its hugely popular WeChat messaging app, is working with a consortium of ... → Read More
Apple Turned Blind Eye to Supplier Breaches of Chinese Labor Laws
In 2014, Apple executives became alarmed when China enacted a new labor law meant to protect workers’ rights. The law required that no more than 10% of a factory’s workforce be temporary workers. Typically these employees have fewer benefits and legal protections than permanent ones, but Apple’s ... → Read More
Inside Apple’s Eroding Partnership With Foxconn
When Apple’s 2018 iPad Pro was undergoing production trials at the company’s largest outside manufacturer, Foxconn Technology, the Taiwanese firm gave Apple a list of how many workers it needed to develop the new product. That was standard procedure for Foxconn, whose factories across China have ... → Read More
Apple’s China Loopholes Are Starting to Close —
In 2017, Apple rolled out a flurry of projects executives hoped would endear it to Chinese officials. It announced three new research and development centers in China and ceded control of Chinese user data to a local partner. Soon after, Apple’s newly appointed head of Greater China, Isabel Ge ... → Read More
How Coronavirus Is Affecting Big Tech Firms —
The spread of the coronavirus epidemic may be starting to slow, but its reverberations continue to be felt in various industries. Tech companies taking a hit range from Apple to Airbnb to Alibaba, all of which rely on either China’s production engine or its consumption machine—or both.But the ... → Read More
What Apple Learned From Automation: Humans Are Better —
Eight years ago, Apple executives including CEO Tim Cook attended a meeting in China where they watched a video of an experimental manufacturing line for the iPad operated by robots rather than humans. Cook and the other Apple executives watched as iPad parts traveled along conveyor belts and ... → Read More
Tencent Continues Europe Deal Spree With $260 Million Investment in Czech Game Studio —
Chinese game giant Tencent has bought a stake of between 70% and 80% in Czech Republic–based videogame developer Bohemia Interactive for around $260 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investment is the latest in a string of deals Tencent has made in Europe to bolster ... → Read More
Apple to Make New Headphones in Vietnam in Shift From China —
Apple is about to face a big test of its ability to manufacture its devices outside China—by making a brand-new product in Vietnam.Apple has tapped factories in Vietnam to make its own forthcoming over-ear headphones, a new phase in its effort to diversify manufacturing away from China amid ... → Read More