The Daily Crunch 07/27/16

Wall Street gives and Wall Street taketh away (market cap that is), a hardware AR firm mismanages itself out of existence and celebrity chefs cook TechCrunch fake burgers. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for July 27, 2016.

1. Apple impresses Wall Street

Apple did good during its most recent earnings report, pushing stock values up aftermarket in a rally that continues today. That's in spite of a slowdown in sales across most of its product categories, except, kind of, for iPad, which got a boost sequentially – but was still down year-over-year. The most interesting tidbit to come out of the report might've been how much Apple is spending to spur innovation: its cash pile decreased for the first time in a long while, and Cook said on the analyst call that Apple is acquiring smaller firms at a rate of about one every three or four weeks.

2. Twitter does not impress Wall Street

While Apple's modest shrinking was welcomed by the markets, Twitter's declines had the opposite effect. Twitter's user growth is basically flat, with a tiny 1 percent growth for the quarter, but its one good number, revenue, also saw a big slowdown in growth, which precipitated a stock price drop that went into double-digit percentage territory this morning at market open. This bird has flown.

3. Skully wipes out

Augmented reality on mobile might be a hot topic right now thanks to Pokemon Go, but don't go thinking the tech's boom time has come. AR motorcycle startup Skully is just about dead, and has pretty much done everything you would to wind down but turn out the office lights. Skully's use of AR is fairly niche, of course, so it's not representative of the health of the market as a whole; it is, however, a sign that AR tech that requires dedicated hardware still has a steep hill to climb before achieving real market viability.

SPONSORED CONTENT GetResponse Marketing Automation. Free 30-day trial! Become a Marketing Automation expert with Email Marketing, Tagging & Scoring, Web Traffic Tracking, Cart Abandoned and free onboarding. Try now! Learn More…

4. Your smartphone battery will have to keep suffering from Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go just destroys smartphone batteries (and those charge/discharge cycles add up quick people), but the Go Plus wearable accessory seemed like a good way to avoid a big chunk of that drain. Luckily, people can get their hands on it starting in July so... oh wait what? Oh no. Turns out, Nintendo is pushing back the ship date to September, by which time our phone batteries might already be ruined from all those lovely cycles.

5. Apple Pay faces a united front out back

When Apple Pay launched in Australia, it only had one major financial institution signed up – ANZ. Now, the rest of the big players are looking to force Apple to open its doors to their own proprietary mobile payment systems, with a petition to Australia's competition regulatory body. It might be the most public resistance Pay has faced in any market yet, so keep your eyes on this space.

6. This veggie burger bleeds. That's... good, I guess?

Impossible Burger had renowned Momofoku chef David Chang cook fake meat burgers for a bunch of journalists, and our own Stefan Etienne got to chow down on one. His verdict? "Pretty good," or basically the closest thing to real meat that isn't real meat. The key to its meatiness is "heme," a molecule that provides meat its meatiest qualities. But these patties have fewer categories and more protein than real beef burgs. It sounds like a promising step, although I know a few vegetarians who would argue that aiming to replicate the authentic look and feel of beef is barking up the wrong tree. All I know for sure is that I'm hungry now.

7. This Cider House rules if you're into DIY

It's incredibly hot here so cider's on my mind, and this hardware startup knows it. Alchema wants to make home brewing a safe process that requires no special skills with its new home brewing system for fruit-based beverages including mead, wine and yes, cider. The crowd-funding project is designed to help scale up manufacturing for a broad product launch next year, by which time I'll be very thirsty indeed.