Author : zebethcontrol

Binance chief says FTX going down ‘not good for anyone’, warns of greater regulatory scrutiny • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Binance, Changpeng Zhao, Crypto, FTX, VentureNo Comments

Binance founder and chief executive Changpeng Zhao says FTX “going down is not good for anyone in the industry,” and the ongoing episode has “severely shaken” the confidence of consumers, a day after the world’s largest exchange signed a non-binding agreement to acquire its most formidable rival firm. Zhao said the sudden liquidity crunch at FTX will attract greater scrutiny on crypto exchanges from regulators. “Licenses around the globe will be harder to get. And people now think we are the biggest and will attack us more,” he said in a note to employees Wednesday, before publicly tweeting it. The billionaire, widely considered as the most powerful man in crypto, also asked the employees to not trade FTT, FTX’s native token. “I asked our team to stop selling as an organization. Yes, we have a bag. But that’s ok. More importantly, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than even in banks,” he wrote. The FTT token has fallen about 70% since Tuesday, now trading at about $4.5. Binance announced on Tuesday that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire the three-year-old firm FTX, delivering a shocking twist to the public spat between the world’s two largest crypto exchanges. Zhao said Binance reached the decision after the three-year-old exchange FTX’s chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried reached to him and sought help. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is the first investor that backed FTX, but as the younger firm grew in popularity, the relationship between the two started to wither. The firms haven’t disclosed the financial terms of the deal, but it is likely utterly terrible for investors of FTX, which was valued at $32 billion in a financing round earlier this year. The two executives had been hurling snarky remarks at each other for several months, but the relationship hit an all-time low earlier this month after Zhao said that Binance was selling its holdings of FTT, the native token of FTX exchange, that it had received as part of an exit from the firm last year. Zhao said the firm was liquidating its FTT holdings as a “post-exit risk management,” giving some credence to a widely circulated rumor about Alameda Research’s concerning financial health. Alameda and Bankman-Fried had earlier refuted such concerns. The Binance founder asserted that he did not “master plan this” deal or “anything related to it.” And urged employees to not view this deal as a “win for us.” “It was less than 24 hrs ago that SBF called me. And before that, I had very little knowledge of the internal state of things at FTX,” Zhao said. “I could do some mental calculations with out revenues to guess theirs, but it would never be very accurate. I was surprised when he wanted to talk.” Binance is the world’s most valuable crypto exchange, estimated to be worth over $300 billion. FTX was valued at $32 billion in its most recent funding round (a Series C) in January this year. The firm counts Sequoia, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Paradigm, Thoma Bravo, SoftBank, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Altimeter Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Sino Global, Bond and Iconiq Growth among its long list of backers. FTX and its FTX US business raised over $2.2 billion across several funding rounds, according to Web3 Signals, a crypto dealbook. Tuesday’s announcement shocked the business world and even the crypto community, which has grown accustomed to topsy-turvy developments this year. Bankman-Fried was hailed as a crypto savior earlier this year after he bought a series of firms. FTX Ventures, the ventures arm of the crypto exchange, is also a major investor in a large number of crypto startups including Aptos Labs, Messari, Sky Mavis, LayerZero, YugaLabs and 1inch Network.

With new capital, Adapty is betting it can help app devs make more money • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Adapty, app revenue, app stores, Apps, mobile developers, StartupsNo Comments

Mobile developers earned more than $260 billion on Apple’s App Store between its launch in 2008 and the end of 2021. And yet, Apple doesn’t provide an easy way for companies to maximize how much they make from their apps — and neither does Google, which owns the rival Google Play Store. Enter New York City-based Adapty, which hopes to help developers earn more from their apps. So far, it has been doing this mostly by powering A/B testing for paywalls, but it has a broader road map, its co-founder and CEO, Vitaly Davydov, told ZebethMedia. It is never a good time to leave money on the table, but even less so when Apple moves to collect a 30% cut of even more mobile app trade and as overall mobile app spending might be declining, meaning that developers are likely hungrier than ever for additional income. Paywall A/B testing helps optimize revenue, by letting developers figure out which conversion screen will bring the best results. It is one of the main offerings of Adapty, but not its only one: The startup sees itself as growth-focused, rather than infrastructure-focused. Adapty is used by about 2,500 apps, up from 50 when it raised pre-seed funding in 2020. Its team has also grown to some 40 full-time employees, but there’s more hiring to come, according to Davydov, at a time when other startups are laying off staff or freezing hires. Having closed a seed round this year that brings its funding to date to $2.5 million, Adapty is focusing on two goals that require more headcount: geographic expansion and incorporating machine learning. The latter will be used to come up with features including a lifetime value (LTV) prediction tool. Growth2 Adapty’s round was led by Surface Ventures with participation from irrvrntVC, two funds with which the startup connected via 500 Startups. Adapty was one of the companies presenting at the accelerator’s 27th demo day in February 2021 — and one of ZebethMedia’s favorites at the time. Adapty has been “on track” since graduating from the program, Davydov said. Tracking is the word: The startup’s landing page claims “8 million monthly tracked events.” This tracking is done on behalf of Adapty’s clients and fed back to them in the form of analytics and dashboards, which can be used by developers and user acquisition managers alike. Image Credits: Adapty Adapty serves clients big and small, from solo developers on its free tier who may be able to learn from its community and content to larger clients attracted by its growth-focused features. Adapty’s decision to add an LTV prediction tool is inspired both by customer demand and by firsthand experience from Davydov and his co-founders, Kirill Potekhin and Dima Podoprosvetov. The team thinks it is now better placed to predict LTV than app owners themselves. “This is a thing that you are unlikely to be able to repeat internally, because we see a lot of data, and they are diversified — from all categories in the app store[s],” Davydov said. “And by design, we have more knowledge about the app market, while if you have only one application, it only shows your data. We believe we can build much more accurate models because of this.” Adapty isn’t alone in the mobile subscription management category, whose leader is arguably RevenueCat. But its road map connects two trends that seem to be on the rise — leveraging pooled data and applied machine learning. We will keep on tracking these, as well as the ongoing impact of Apple’s privacy policy changes.

IBM unveils its 433 qubit Osprey quantum computer • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Enterprise, Hardware, IBM, quantum computingNo Comments

IBM wants to scale up its quantum computers to over 4,000 qubits by 2025 — but we’re not quite there yet. For now, we have to make do with significantly smaller systems and today, IBM announced the launch of its Osprey quantum processor, which features 433 qubits, up from the 127 qubits of its 2021 Eagle processor. And with that, the slow but steady march toward a quantum processor with real-world applications continues. “The new 433 qubit ‘Osprey’ processor brings us a step closer to the point where quantum computers will be used to tackle previously unsolvable problems,” said Darío Gil, Senior Vice President, IBM and Director of Research. “We are continuously scaling up and advancing our quantum technology across hardware, software and classical integration to meet the biggest challenges of our time, in conjunction with our partners and clients worldwide. This work will prove foundational for the coming era of quantum-centric supercomputing.” Image Credits: IBM IBM’s quantum roadmap includes two additional stages — the 1,121-qubit Condor and 1,386-qubit Flamingo processors in 2023 and 2024 — before it plans to hit the 4,000-qubit stage with its Kookaburra processor in 2025. So far, the company has generally been able to make this roadmap work, but the number of qubits in a quantum processor is obviously only one part of a very large and complex puzzle, with longer coherence times and reduced noise being just as important. Ideally, that’s something developers who want to work with these machines wouldn’t have to worry about, so increasingly, the tools they use are abstracting the hardware away for them. With the new version of its Qiskit Runtime, for example, developers can now trade speed for reduced error count. The company also today detailed its Quantum System Two — basically IBM’s quantum mainframe — which will be able to house multiple quantum processors and integrate them into a single system with high-speed communication links. The idea here is to launch this system by the end of 2023. Image Credits: IBM

Akamai leads $38M round in Macrometa as the two strike partnership • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Akamai Technologies, cloud computing, edge computing, Macrometa, StartupsNo Comments

Edge computing cloud and global data network Macrometa has raised $38 million led by Akamai Technologies, as the two announce a new partnership and product integrations. The funding also included participation from Shasta Ventures and 60 Degree Capital. Akamai Labs CTO Andy Champagne will join Macrometa’s board. Macrometa founder and CEO Chetan Venkatesh told ZebethMedia that its GDN enables cloud developers to run backend services closer to mobile phones, browsers, smart appliances, connected cars and users in edge regions, or points of presence (PoP). That reduces outages because if one edge region goes down, another one can take over instantly. Akamai’s edge network, meanwhile, covers 4,200 regions around the world. The partnership between Macrometa and Akamai means the two are combining three infrastructure pieces into one platform for cloud developers: Akamai’s edge network, cloud hosting service Linode (which Akamai bought earlier this year) and Macrometa’s Global Data Network (GDN) and edge cloud. Akamai Edge Workers tech is now available through Macrometa’s GDN console, API and SDK, so developers can build a cloud app or API in Macrometa, and then quickly deploy it to Akamai’s edge locations. Venkatesh gave some examples of how clients can use the integration between Macrometa and Akamai. For SaaS customers, the integration means they can see speed increases and latency improvements of between 25x to 100x for their products, resulting in less user churn and better conversion rates for freemium models. Enterprise customers using the joint solution can improve the performance of streaming data pipelines and real-time data analytics. They can also deal with data residency and sovereignty issues by vaulting and tokenizing data in geo-fenced data vaults for compliance. Video streaming clients, meanwhile, can use the integration to move their platforms to the edge, including authentication, content catalog rendering, personalization and content recommendations. Likewise, gaming companies can move servers closer to players and use the Akamai-Macrometa integration for features like player matching, leaderboards, multi-player game lobbies and anti-cheating features. For e-commerce players competing against Amazon, the joint solution can be used to connect and stream data from local stores and fulfillment centers, enabling faster delivery times. Macrometa will use the funding for developer education, community development, enterprise event marketing and joint customer sales with Akamai (Macrometa’s products are now available through Akamai’s sales team). In a statement about the funding and partnership, Akamai EVP and CTO Robert Blumofe said, “Developers are fundamentally changing the way they build, deploy and run enterprise applications. Velocity and scale are more important than ever, while flexibility in where to place workloads is now paramount. By partnering with and investing in Macrometa, Akamai is helping to form and foster a single platform that meets evolving needs of developers and the apps they’re creating.”

Meta slashes expenses on reduced hiring and capex investments • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in CAPEX, expenses, Facebook, meta, metaverse, SocialNo Comments

Meta’s body blow layoff announcement will see the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp making its first-ever major layoffs as a company, cutting 11,000 employees, 13% of its total; predictably investors are responding favorably, bumping the stock up by over 5% in pre-market trading. While the dust settles and we start to get an idea of how specific departments, products and regions are being impacted, Meta’s also released some updated financials for 2023 that detail billions shaved off of its expenses estimates on the back of reduced hiring and less capex spending in areas like metaverse. In an 8-K filing today, the company confirmed it will reduce hiring next year, shaving off between $1 billion and $2 billion off its 2023 total expenses range as a result. Overall expenses for 2023 are now estimated at between $94 billion and $100 billion, versus its previous range of $96 billion to $101 billion. “The updated range reflects our plan to add fewer employees in 2023 than we previously expected as we are significantly slowing our hiring trajectory through the beginning of 2023,” Meta said, expanding on words from CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his open letter, which referred to a “hiring freeze” in Q1. (The expenses figure includes $2 billion in charges due to reduced office facilities, which Meta had previously disclosed.) Meta also noted in the 8-K that it is narrowing capital expenditures for 2023 by $2 billion at the top end. Capex estimates are now between $34 billion and $37 billion, versus $34 billion and $39 billion previously. Meta doesn’t detail here which areas will be hit by those cuts — capex can include any number of things such as data centers and network infrastructure, as well as Meta’s costly “metaverse” effort — but it does note that the latter of these is not looking very bright. “We continue to anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year,” Meta said. Again, it doesn’t specify numbers, but Reality Labs (the division that houses the metaverse operation) accounted for $285 million in revenues in Q3, just 1% of the company’s total for that period. The company’s ambitions to grow metaverse and other new lines of business have been a big pull on Facebook’s balance sheet. For context, in 2020, the company sunk $15.72 billion into capex, a figure that ticked up in 2021 to $19.24 billion. In 2022, capex looks to be even more outsized against a stark backdrop of sluggish revenue due to declining returns on its core advertising business: Meta estimated in Q3 that 2022 capex would be in the range of $32 billion and $33 billion. “In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient,” Zuckerberg wrote in his note today. “We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas — like our AI discovery engine, our ads and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse. We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint. We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency.” Revenue ranges previously provided by Meta for Q4 revenue — between $30 billion and $32.5 billion — are unchanged, it said in the 8-K filing today, as are the ranges it provided for overall expenses in 2022, which are between between $85 billion and $87 billion.

Ping wants to simplify global payments while helping Latin Americans embrace crypto • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in bank transfers, Fintech, latin america, ping, VentureNo Comments

If the global pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you could work from anywhere as long as you had a computer and good wireless signal. However, getting paid when you live, say, in Argentina but work for a company on the other side of the world is not so simple. Many fintech startups have taken on this challenge, including Ping. The company was started in 2021 to solve payment challenges in Latin America, where about 70% of the population does not have a traditional bank account. Today, it is a digital payment tool, available on Android, iOS and desktop, facilitating international payments for remote workers, contractors and freelancers in both their local currency and in fiat and cryptocurrency. Ping users create a free account in U.S. dollars to receive bank transfers in either their local currency or crypto, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It also provides an invoicing system so that freelancers and contractors can send invoices to their employers. The company makes money from fees from its professional tier. The company was founded by Argentine natives Pablo Orlando, Mary Saracco and her brother, Jack Saracco. The team has a heavy background in both cryptocurrency and finance, having worked previously at organizations such as UBS Investment Bank, World Bank, Deloitte and the Stock Exchange of Buenos Aires. When more Latin Americans were working from home following the pandemic, Mary Saracco said the company realized how important it was to have a stable way to get paid amid inclusionary countries — and unstable economies made earning in U.S. dollars “extremely appealing.” “Then we said, ‘okay, there are clearly a lot of people working remotely in Latin America looking for higher paying jobs in dollars. Why don’t we help people?’” she told ZebethMedia. Ping is now being used in 16 countries. That’s also when Jack Saracco’s background in crypto came into play. He led the building of the company on the rails of Latamex, Latin America’s largest fiat-to-crypto gateway that provides what he told ZebethMedia is a safe option for users to buy and sell crypto from exchanges like Binance. The possibility of opening a U.S. bank account or a crypto account and receiving a payment in U.S. dollars while also seamlessly swapping from one to another and making withdrawals in any country was “certainly an interesting niche market that’s growing in the region,” Jack Saracco added. That combination of payment from anywhere and the ability to operate in crypto seems to have caught on early for Ping. The platform launched four months ago, and within its first month of operations, the company generated over $1 million in payment volume, CEO Pablo Orlando told ZebethMedia. He also said that it’s too early to discuss much of the company’s traction but did say that users are coming back monthly, and in some cases within 15 days to use Ping again. The company is now also working off of $15 million in seed funding from a group of investors, including Y Combinator, Race Capital, BlockTower, Danhua Capital, Signum Capital and Goat Capital. The funds will be deployed into team expansion, including hires for marketing and sales, and into product development in what will become a premium feature that will be a monthly subscription. Mary Saracco expects that to launch in March.

Hackers start leaking health data after ransomware attack • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Australia, cybersecurity, health insurance, medibank breach, ransomware, SecurityNo Comments

Medibank has urged its customers to be on high alert after cybercriminals began leaking sensitive medical records stolen from the Australian health insurance giant. A ransomware group with ties to the notorious Russian-speaking REvil gang began publishing the stolen records early Wednesday, including customers’ names, birth dates, passport numbers, and information on medical claims. This comes after Medibank said it would not pay the ransom demand, saying, “We believe there is only a limited chance paying a ransom would ensure the return of our customers’ data and prevent it from being published.” The cybercriminals selectively separated the first sample of Australian breach victims into “naughty” and “good” lists, with the former including numerical diagnosis codes that appeared to link victims to drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. For example, one record carries an entry that reads “F122,” which corresponds with “cannabis dependence” under the International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organization. It’s also believed the leaked data includes the names of high-profile Medibank customers, which likely includes senior Australian government lawmakers, like prime minister Anthony Albanese and cybersecurity minister Clare O’Neil. The portion of data leaked so far, seen by ZebethMedia, also appears to include correspondence of negotiations between the cybercriminals and Medibank CEO David Koczkar. Screenshots of WhatsApp messages suggest that the ransomware group also plans to leak “keys for decrypting credit cards” despite Medibank’s assertion that no banking or credit card details were accessed. “Based on our investigation to date into this cybercrime we currently believe the criminal did not access credit card and banking details,” Medibank spokesperson Liz Green told ZebethMedia in an emailed statement on Wednesday, who deferred to its blog post. The cybercriminal gang behind the Medicare ransomware attack, whose identities are not known but has relied on a variant of REvil’s file-encrypting malware, has so far leaked the personal details of around 200 Medibank customers, a fraction of the data that the group claims to have stolen. Medibank confirmed on Tuesday that the cybercriminals had accessed roughly 9.7 million customers’ personal details and health claims data for almost 500,000 customers. What should victims do? In light of the data leak, which exposed highly confidential information that could be abused for financial fraud, Medibank and the Australian Federal Police are urging customers to be on high alert for phishing scams and unexpected activity across online accounts. Medibank is also advising users to ensure they are not re-using passwords and have multi-factor authentication enabled on any online accounts where the option is available. Medibank also launched a “cyber response support package” for affected customers, Medibank’s Green told ZebethMedia. This includes hardship support, identity protection advice and resources, and reimbursement of government ID replacement fees. The health insurance giant is also providing a wellbeing line, a mental health outreach service, and personal duress alarms. Australia’s federal police are investigating the breach in collaboration with agencies from around the Commonwealth, as well as from the other members of the “Five Eyes” group of intelligence-sharing governments, including the U.K., U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. Operation Guardian, the Australian government’s response to the recent wave of cyberattacks that began with the data breach at telco giant Optus, will be extended to Medibank to protect its customers from “financial fraud and identity theft.” “Operation Guardian will be actively monitoring the clear, dark and deep web for the sale and distribution of Medibank Private and Optus data,” said AFP Assistant Commissioner Cyber Command Justine Gough. “Law enforcement will take swift action against anyone attempting to benefit, exploit or commit criminal offenses using stolen Medibank Private data.” What’s next? In its latest update, Medibank is bracing for the situation to worsen, saying that it “expects the criminal to continue to release files on the dark web.” On its dark web leak site, the cybercriminals said they planned to “continue posting data partially, including confluence, source codes, list of stuff and some files obtained from medi filesystem from different hosts.” Medibank says it will continue to contact all affected customers with specific advice and details of what data the attackers have accessed. However, customers at a heightened risk of being targeted by fraudulent emails should ensure that emails are coming from Medibank. Medibank said it would not ask for personal details over email. If in doubt, don’t click any links. It’s not yet known whether Medibank customers will receive compensation following the breach or whether Medibank will face action for failing to protect users’ confidential medical data. The breach comes just weeks after Australia confirmed an incoming legislative change to the country’s privacy laws, following a long process of consultation on reforms. The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 will increase the maximum penalties that can be applied under the Privacy Act 1988 for serious or repeated privacy breaches and greater powers for the Australian information commissioner. Two law firms also said on Tuesday that they are investigating whether Medibank had breached its obligations to customers under the country’s Privacy Act. The firms, Bannister Law and Centennial Lawyers, will investigate whether Medibank breached their privacy policy and the terms of their contract with customers and will also assess whether damages should be paid as a result of the breach.

Equals secures $15M investment to supercharge spreadsheets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Andreessen Horowitz, Apps, Craft Ventures, Enterprise, Startups, worklifeNo Comments

Equals, a New York-based startup ambitiously aiming to challenge Excel’s dominance with a supercharged spreadsheet, today announced that it raised $16 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Craft Ventures, Box Group, Worklife and Combine. Co-founded by Ben McRedmond and Bobby Pinero, two former Intercom employees, Equals claims its spreadsheet is one of the few with built-in connections to databases, versioning and collaboration features. Equals isn’t the first startup on a mission to kill the traditional spreadsheet. There’s Airtable, of course, plus upstarts like Spreadsheet.com, Actiondesk and Pigment — the last of which raised $73 million last November for its data analytics and visualization service. But Pinero, Equal’s CEO, claims that Equals is unique in that it doesn’t so much replace the spreadsheet as incorporate additional tools, like live data integrations. “Equals comes from a really simple and obvious insight: that the spreadsheet is the best way to do analysis,” Pinero told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “Excel was built nearly 40 years ago. Google Sheets 16 years ago. The way companies work today is meaningfully different. Our data is way more accessible. We should automate much of the painful, manual work of getting data into a spreadsheet. And we’ve learned so much about how teams better collaborate over the past decade. A spreadsheet should incorporate those learnings. That’s Equals.” Customers can tap Equals to build analyses with real-time data directly from a database or data warehouse, with or without using sequel query language. It supports standard formulas and offers templates for common use cases, like tracking recurring revenue and measuring user engagement. Image Credits: Equals Soon, Equals will be able to import scripts to allow users to connect spreadsheets to different APIs and internal tools with JavaScript or Python. Also on the way are pivot tables and connectors to business intelligence apps from Salesforce, QuickBooks, Stripe and Google Analytics. “Equals represents a massive opportunity to get business stakeholders — typically folks who are neglected from being able to get their own data — access to data. To be able to work with data in a tool they’re comfortable and already know how to use: a spreadsheet,” Pinero said. “No more manual spreadsheets that take hours to manually update across the team. No more dumping data from BI tools into spreadsheets to then do analysis.” That’s a lot to promise, but Pinero is well aware of the hurdles ahead. He doesn’t expect 10-employee Equals to be profitable for a while — the Series A proceeds will go mostly toward R&D, he says; Equals has raised $23 million to date — and the platform will remain gated behind a waitlist pending the next major product release. Pinero claims that “thousands” of people have signed up so far. “It speaks to the excitement and traction with Equals that in this market we’ve been able to raise a significant series A. At our current burn, we have eight-plus years of runway,” Pinero said. “We’re very well positioned to outlast this downturn, however long it may go. As the saying goes, generational companies are built during these downturns, and we plan on making Equals one of those.”

Apple’s Freeform aims to be a collaborative whiteboard for everyone • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, collaboration, design, Figma, iPadNo Comments

Apple announced its so-called Figma Whiteboard competitor called Freeform at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. The company hasn’t rolled out the idea board app to everyone yet but if you are using public or developer beta, you will get to play with the app with the iOS 16.2 update, and on Mac with macOS 13.1 update. While Figma is for people who might already have some design experience, Apple’s Freefrom app caters to all kinds of users who just want to dump their ideas with multiple media formats on a board. On the face of it, Freeform is just a large board with a grid that lets you put different things like text, images, videos, notes, objects, documents, and more. Apple wants to provide users with an infinite board and basic tools that hardly requires onboarding. Most folks would have used some of these editing tools like Apple’s own apps like Photos and Notes. For the initial test, we used iPhone and iPad running beta versions of the software. Features When you start Freeform on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’ll get a blank board. You can start sketching using different brushes that will let you adjust the color and opacity or just select the text box option and start writing. All the options for input are on the top including sketching, text, notes, shapes, and files. If you want to hide this grid, you can tap the Zoom controller in the bottom right and Hide Grid; for Mac, you can access this option through View > Hide Grid. You will get more than 700 shapes available in the shapes library in different categories including birds, symbols, animals, food, arts, and science. Apple said it will keep adding more shapes based on community feedback. Image Credits: Apple You can change the color fillings and outline of the object by tapping on it. There are also additional options like cut, copy, duplicate, send to front/back, lock, and constraint proportion available through the three-dot menu. In addition to that, users can insert any file type including a photo or a video through, a document, or a link (which shows up as a card). You can scan a document to include it on the board, too. You can move around the object by holding and dragging it with one finger. When you’re moving an object around, Freeform will show you alignment guides in reference to other objects that will help you format your document better. To resize these objects you can swipe across the canvas holding the resizing lines around it. For uniformity, if you want to make two objects of the same size, start resizing one object and tap on the other object to match the sizes. To rotate it, hold the object with one finger and use the other finger to move it around the central axis. You can break apart some objects as well— for instance, the sides of a cube. So all in all there are a lot of options for you to play around with objects. Image Credits: ZebethMedia Sharing Notably, all your projects will be synced across the devices — but don’t forget to turn on iCloud sync for Freeform. You can share this board through a link with your friends. If they don’t use Apple devices, that link is not going to work for them. In that case, your only option is to export the board as PDF and share it. Currently, there is no option to export the board as an image. Your best bet at that is taking a screenshot (like the one posted above). Collaboration Freeform is not just a whiteboard for yourself, but it allows you to collaborate with your friends or teammate too — as long as they are in the Apple ecosystem. You can share the link to your board with others through email, Slack, or any other messaging app. If you share your board in an iMessage thread, you can have live collaboration powered by SharePlay. That means you can see participants adding, removing, and moving objects around the board. If you’re not working on the board, you will see activity updates on top of the messages thread whenever someone makes changes. Apple said that it won’t show notifications for every small update as it could be very annoying and intrusive. Apple has tried to make this version simple to include every user. While they may not use designing tools in their everyday workflow, this tool could be handy for things like coaching charts, event planning, pet journaling, and redesigning home with rough sketches and notes. Freeform won’t make professions shift from tools like Figma, but it will let beginners try their hand at collaborations and designing. Freeform will be available for everyone when the stable releases of iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS 13.1 are released in a few weeks.