Technology
What's Up With Apple: World's Most Profitable Company, New Macs and Watches, and More
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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is not only the world’s most valuable company (measured by market cap), the Cupertino giant is also the world’s most profitable company. Last year, Apple posted a profit of $57.4 billion, more than four times Walmart’s profit for the year with about 49% of Walmart’s revenue.
The data was reported in the 2021 Fortune Global 500 rankings. According to the magazine, the 500 companies on the list accounted for revenue totaling $31.7 trillion, down 4.8% from $33.3 trillion in the 2020 ranking. The decline was the first in five years and was due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The combined sales of these 500 companies represent more than one-third of global gross domestic product.
Of the 10 global companies with the highest revenue, Apple ranks sixth, behind Walmart, China’s State Grid, Amazon, China National Petroleum and Sinopec. The other four companies in the top 10 were CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group, Toyota and Volkswagen.
Apple has, by far, the fewest employees. Walmart employs 2.3 million people, compared to Apple’s 147,000. CVS Health, with 256,500 employees has the second-lowest total. And Apple’s total assets are valued at $323.8 billion, about half the $666.1 billion in assets of State Grid, China’s largest supplier of electricity.
On Monday, Apple filed documents with the Eurasian Economic Commission listing previously unknown model identifiers for new Macs and Apple Watches. According to a report at MacRumors, the company filed six new Apple Watch identifiers and two new Mac identifiers. Apple also updated information for six new iPhone identifiers that were filed earlier this year.
According to MacRumors, the Apple Watch identifiers are “likely” to be Watch series 7 running WatchOS 8, while the new Macs “could perhaps be” new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models running Apple’s updated M1 chip (designated as the M1X) or the next generation M2 chip. Apple’s update to the iPhone filings indicates the new iPhones will ship with iOS 15.
Speaking of iPhone’s operating system, Apple has stopped signing iOS 14.7. That means that people who update their iPhones to the latest iOS 14.7.1 software will no longer be able to revert to the 14.7 version. According to MacRumors, “Apple routinely stops signing older versions of software updates after new releases come out in order to encourage customers to keep their operating systems up to date.” iOS 14.7.1 contains a critical bug fix, among other fixes and new features.
Finally, Twitter has added a “Sign in with Apple” (or Google) feature that lets people create new accounts linked to their Apple account. So far, the feature is only available for new accounts, not existing ones. To use the new feature, you must use two-factor authentication and be signed in to iCloud with that Apple ID on your Apple device.
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