Apple became the first U.S company with a $2 Trillion Market Capitalization on Wednesday (19th August 2020) as its share price climbed above U.S $467.77. The tech giant joins Saudi Aramco as the only companies to reach a $2 Trillion market value.

Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, briefly crossed the $2 Trillion level a few days days after its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in December 2019. Currently, that company is worth U.S $1.82 Trillion.

Apple's Market Capitalization has soared by 59%, or U.S $695 Billion this year. Shares have gained 22% since 30th July 2020, when the company reported blockbuster second-quarter earnings and announced a 4-for-1 stock split.

Apple reached the $2 Trillion milestone just over two (2) years after becoming the first U.S company to achieve a $1 Trillion Market Capitalization on 2nd August 2018. Since then, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft have all joined the ultra-exclusive $1 Trillion club. Both Amazon and Microsoft currently have Market Capitalizations of about $1.6 Trillion while Alphabet is near $1.05 Trillion.

The first company in the world to reach a $1 Trillion valuation is state-owned Chinese oil giant PetroChina, which briefly eclipsed the level back in 2017.

Apple is expected to release its eagerly-awaited iPhone 12 models in early October 2020, several weeks later than its usual September release, due to COVID-19 related manufacturing delays. The Apple Watch Series 6 and other products may still be released in September 2020.

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Samsung revealed a slew of new products at its virtual Unpacked Event today (Wednesday 5th August 2020) including the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, a new smartwatch, fully-wireless earbuds, and more. Samsung also teased the second-generation of its foldable smartphone.

The Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra features large 6.7-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively. The Ultra model features a 3088 x 1440 resolution with a super-rich 496 PPI and very slim bezels.
Another standout feature is a 120Hz display for the Note 20 Ultra, something also rumored to arrive with Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup.

Other features of the Galaxy Note 20 series include the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, up to 12 GB of RAM, 108 MP primary rear camera sensor with up to 50x hybrid zoom, and 128 GB base storage. The Galaxy Note 20 starts at US $999 while the Note 20 Ultra starts at US $1,399.

Samsung’s latest fully wireless earbuds now comes with Active Noise Cancelation (ANC) and the new Galaxy Watch 3 comes with hardware to support blood pressure and blood oxygen readings, and more.

The Ministry of Health has announced on Monday evening (30th March 2020) that Trinidad and Tobago now has a total of 83 positive cases of COVID-19, adding another case since this morning’s update. So far there have been three (3) deaths and one (1) person has been discharged. Tobago reported its third confirmed case earlier today.

​According to the Ministry, the new additional case comes from a person with a history of recent travel.

The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) has tested a total of 539 samples to date.

The Ministry notes that of the 83 positive cases, 49 of these came from the group of T&T Nationals who recently returned from a cruise.

T&T is currently locked down for all non-essential businesses until 15th April 2020 in an attempt to slow the rapidly growing number of COVID-19 cases in the country.

​See the Media Release below from the Ministry for further information.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a WhatsApp service that aims to bring facts about COVID-19 to billions of people around the world who use WhatsApp. The service can be accessed through a link that opens a conversation in WhatsApp.

Users can simply type “hi” to activate the conversation, prompting a menu of options that can help answer their questions about COVID-19 or provide the very latest facts and figures.

According to WHO, the latest figures show there are 266,073 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally and 11,184 deaths.

The Ministry of Health has also endorsed this initiative by WHO.

Below is a screenshot of the menu of options you get when you enter the WhatsApp chat.

After many months of beta testing on both iOS and Android, Facebook is finally enabling Dark Mode for WhatsApp for all users today (Tuesday 3rd March 2020). Dark Mode will be mostly pure black on iOS devices and a darker gray on Android.

So, how do you enable it?

Besides ensuring that you’re running the latest app version of WhatsApp on iOS or Android, there’s not much for you to do actually. If you already have Dark Mode enabled at the system level on iOS 13 or Android 10, then WhatsApp will automatically switch over to the new Dark Mode. iOS 13 is a requirement to enable Dark Mode there. If you’re running Android 9, you can simply enable a new dark theme in the WhatsApp Settings Menu.

Facebook didn’t just slap a dark theme onto WhatsApp, however. They took their time to ensure Dark Mode actually lowers the brightness of a phone’s display.

​According to a WhatsApp Spokesperson:

Watch the funny launch video for Dark Mode on WhatsApp below, which features a never-before-released version of Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence.”

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Facebook first announced they would be redesigning their Messenger app to be simpler and easier to use back in August 2019 and it appears the company is starting to roll out that new design this week.

Facebook previously made its Messenger app a one-stop-shop for connecting people and businesses, adding bloat like games, shopping, and confusing chatbots to serve as automated middlemen between users and businesses. Now the company will be hiding most of that unwanted bloat and focusing on just two (2) tabs at the bottom of the app: Chats and People. The latter will be a page dedicated to Stories, which is where you share photos and videos that stay up for only 24 hours. Facebook more or less ripped off its popular Stories feature from Snapchat. A sub-tab adjacent to Stories shows which friends are currently online.

Instagram, another Facebook app, averages a whopping 500 Million daily users of its Stories feature as of January 2020. So it’s not difficult to see why Facebook is also pushing the Stories feature hard on its Messenger app. Since Stories also display ads, more eyes on users’ Stories means more revenue for Facebook.

Any content previously found in the Discover tab of the Messenger app isn’t gone for good. Now you’ll just have to access it via the search bar, which the majority of users would not do - so businesses will have a hard time committing more resources in this area. Facebook, however, says it remains committed to promoting businesses on its platforms and that they still play an important part of Messenger.

See screenshots below from the redesigned Messenger app and let us know your thoughts in the comments.