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Apple in my eye

Apple beats earnings expectations

The iPhone maker reported earnings after the bell Thursday.

7/31/25 4:40PM

Apple beat analyst revenue and earnings estimates in its third quarter, which ended in June. After the market closed Thursday, the iPhone maker reported plenty of numbers that beat expectations:

🏦 Earnings per share of $1.57, compared with FactSet analyst consensus estimates of $1.43.
💵 Revenue of $94.04 billion, versus expectations of $89.35 billion.
📱 iPhone revenue came in at $44.6 billion, compared to the FactSet consensus of $40.1 billion.
☁️ Services brought in $27.4 billion, versus expectations of $26.8 billion.
🇨🇳 Greater China revenue was $15.37 billion, compared with analysts’ $14.9 billion.
🇺🇸 The Americas were a slight miss, with revenue coming in at $41.2 billion versus the expected $41.8 billion.

“Today Apple is proud to report a June quarter revenue record with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and Services and growth around the world, in every geographic segment,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the earnings press release.

Investors have been waiting to see how tariffs, which were announced during this reporting period, would affect Apple’s financials. We’ll get specifics on tariffs during the earnings call today, but so far earnings were better than expected. Last quarter the company estimated that tariffs could add $900 million to its Q3 costs. Analysts have also been concerned with how the company plans to remedy what many consider its lagging artificial intelligence program.

Prior to the earnings report, the stock was down about 17% this year. The stock rose up 3% after-hours on the news before settling down to a roughly 1% gain.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5