Some people love ‘em, some hate ‘em…I fall in the 2nd camp on this. What is it, pray tell? Self checkout kiosks. Now, a couple big retailers are throttling back on the tech and adding back employees. BBC.com reports that, Target, Walmart, and Dollar General in the US are moving away from the tech that was designed to add convenience and speed for shoppers…and savings for the merchants. It turns out that one swamped employee for 6 frequently malfunctioning kiosks isn’t working so great…and the things cost a chunk…a four kiosk system can burn up a 6 figure amount of cash. That’s all before another problem with them…’shrinkage,’ a nice retailer word for shoplifting and stealing merchandise. When you add it all up, they’re losing money. Target is now restricting the number of items a buyer can purchase at one time. Walmart has actually started removing the kiosks in some stores to cut theft. Dollar General is ratcheting back on using them, and adding staff…some stores only had 2 employees on duty at a time. The main thing is the theft…apparently retailers that use kiosks have double the industry average! Maybe it will be a bit longer before our AI and robot overlords hoover up all the jobs!

Apple has apparently beaten Samsung and grabbed the crown as top global smartphone manufacturer in 2023. According to macrumors.com, it’s the first time in 13 years Samsung has lost the top maker crown. In 2013, Nokia was the top dog…remember them? The data was  crunched by IDC, which shows Apple with 20.1%, and Samsung with 19.4% of the smartphone market…the other 60% is split amongst a myriad of brands. Apple was also the only company in the top 3 to have positive growth year over year, going from 226.3 million units to 234.6 million. Overall, the world smartphone market declined by 3.2%.

The US Customs Agency has decided that Apple’s redesign of the Watch 9 and Ultra 2 is good enough to circumvent infringing on two Masimo patents related to the blood oxygen sensor. 9to5mac.com says Apple can keep selling the Watch 9 and Ultra 2, but without ‘pulse oximetry features’ in the US. Existing Apple Watches will still have the features. Actually, since the big waves of initial COVID, measuring blood oxygen has probably dropped in importance enough that most buyers won’t miss the feature. There is still a Court of Appeals decision regarding staying the watch ban through all the Appeals process…that decision could come down this week..but for now, it looks like the latest Apple Watches will be back on the market very soon. 

Microsoft’s ChatGPT powered Bing Chat…rebranded as Copilot, will now get a pro version. Engadget.com reports that Copilot Pro will run $20 a month. That will get power users access to the latest ChatGPT  releases, as well as access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps and other new features. Additionally, the Copilot iOS and Android apps are now available to everyone, following a limited launch last month. Microsoft says that Copilot Pro users will have access to GPT-4 Turbo at peak times starting today, and eventually they’ll be able toggle between different GPT models. The subscription also grants you better AI image creation, which will be faster and deliver higher image quality, with optional landscape formatting.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ’Technified’ for now.