It’s night. I’m at a lake near Oregon’s Mount Hood, sitting on the beach. Jazz music is playing as I write. I’m not in the real world.

Well, I sort of am. 

I’m wearing Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, which looks like a fancy pair of glowing ski goggles.

Apple’s long-awaited headset, which starts at $3,500, launches in the U.S. on Friday. It’s the company’s first major new gadget to hit the market since the Apple Watch debuted in April 2015. I’ve been testing it for nearly a week. While it has some shortcomings, it’s easily the most fun new product I’ve tried out in years.

Analysts don’t expect the Vision Pro to drive massive amounts of revenue initially. UBS anticipates Apple will ship about 400,000 headsets, leading to a “relatively immaterial” $1.4 billion in revenue this year. However, I’m convinced that if Apple eventually sells cheaper versions, we’ll see millions of people using them in the coming years.

The Vision Pro offers a new kind of experience that Apple calls “spatial computing.” You sit in your world while looking at a digital one, and then plop different apps around you. You can work, play games, watch movies or surf the web.

Thanks to very sharp displays, and a full M2 processor that’s usually found in Macs, the Vision Pro has the power to do a lot of what you’d expect from an Apple device. There’s a dedicated App Store for Vision Pro apps, but you can also install more than a million iPhone or iPad apps. Or pair it with your Mac and work while looking at a 4K display inside the goggles.

I’m only scratching the surface of the capabilities, but here’s the gist: This is an entirely new type of computing, providing a whole new world of experiences. It feels like the future.

Here’s what you need to know:

I was skeptical when I first met with Apple to see the Vision Pro. Companies have been trying to do virtual reality and augmented reality and mixed reality or gobbledygook reality for years.

Sometimes it’s cool, but most of the time I’m done after an hour or so.

With the Vision Pro, there are three key parts that come into play. It has super sharp and colorful screens, it allows you to see the world around you by default using “passthrough” technology, and it has a fast processor.

The displays help remove the “screendoor” effect that’s common in lower-cost headsets like the Meta Quest 3. That’s where you can see the pixels as you look through a headset. You can easily read text on a website or a book on the Vision Pro. And I was able to watch movies, including in 3D, on screens bigger and nicer than any TV in my house.

The Quest 3 and other headsets also have passthrough. But Apple’s works better. It’s clearer and sharper, enough so that I can comfortably see the room around me in full color and without any lag, though I still can’t read my phone. And I love how you can turn the small digital crown, just like on the Apple Watch or AirPods Max, to adjust the volume or transport yourself into a fully 3D landscape.

Virtual travel is a nice touch. You can work or watch movies in Hawaii, by a lake, in White Sands or at Joshua Tree. They’re all relaxing environments with calming sounds and slow animations – like clouds moving across the sky — that help you feel like you’re almost there.

Navigation is easy once you get the hang of it. This reminds me a bit of the iPhone moment, when Apple launched its multitouch display that changed how we interact with phones that had largely been navigated with a stylus, touchpad or keyboard. There aren’t any controllers here. The headset uses sensors to track your eyes (and even verify when you’re making purchases online or in the App Store.) Apple has a quick setup process that aligns the headset to your eyes and then has you look at a series of dots, pinching your fingers as you go so you can calibrate. If you wear glasses, Apple also sells inserts that pop into the headset.

It’s incredibly accurate. You just look where you want to go and then tap your thumb and index finger to select a button or app. There’s a white bar at the bottom of every app, for example, that you can grab to pull and push around. You can adjust the size of any app by looking at the corner and then dragging it out or in at a diagonal angle. And you can swipe through photos or scroll websites by holding your index finger and thumb together while pulling up or down.

Likewise, you zoom in and out by holding those fingers on both hands and pulling outward or inward. You don’t have to flail your hands in front of you. The headset’s external cameras can detect your fingers down in your lap. You can be subtle.

It packs a punch.

I launched more than a dozen apps around me. There’s no point in doing more, because you can’t see it all. I loved setting it up with a browser in front of me, music next to me and a TV screen above it all. But the world is yours to customize. You can open mail and a browser or leave Slack open next to a Word document with your calendar on the other side. Put your text messages on the ceiling if you want. It’s a completely new way to multitask.

A note: My screenshots show apps askew. But, in the headset, they’re all perfectly level.

I didn’t run into any slowdowns during my time with the Vision Pro. Part of that is due to how Apple renders content. It’s technically only sharpening the areas of the screen where you’re focusing, leaving the other areas blurry. That’s why some of the screenshots here look out of focus around the sides. Inside the headset, it’s all super crisp. It’s called foveated rendering, and it allows for optimized processing.

I loved watching movies with the headset. I lounged on my couch and put up a huge screen across the wall of my living room and watched an hour of “Barbie,” and the two first episodes of “Masters of the Air” before the battery was at about 5%. Another night I watched “Greyhound.” I used the NBA app, which was updated to work on the Vision Pro, to stream four games at once, with the main game in the middle and others pinned to the sides. It’s wild.

Apple also has some specially recorded content that’s so sharp you feel like you’re standing right there next to a rendered dinosaur or a video of a rhinoceros. There’s a slightly terrifying clip with a woman walking on a tightrope between cliffs. Don’t watch if you’re afraid of heights. The clips show the type of content third parties will eventually be able record and publish to the headset. I imagine sports highlights or even sitting courtside at a live game.  

The Disney+ app is fun. You can watch movies in one of about four different 3D landscapes. I sat in a racer on Tatooine and watched a bit of a Star Wars movie, but then switched over to watch “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” in 3D. Unlike 3D TVs and movies, which generally flopped, the effects work well in the headset. It’s neat, but I still prefer watching movies in 2D. It feels more natural to me.

FaceTime works well. You see a clear video of the person you’re calling on a screen in front of you. But they don’t see you. Or, not the real you. They see a 3D-rendered version of you called a digital Persona. It’s still in beta, and mine looked like a much older version of me. My colleague thought I looked like an 80-year-old man. My wife laughed.

You create a Persona by selecting an option in the settings menu and then removing the headset and following screens on the external display. It asks you to look up, look down, look left, look right, smile, smile with teeth, and close your eyes. Then, in seconds, it creates a 3D Persona.

It looks more human than cartoony like with other headsets. I spoke with people over FaceTime also using Personas, and it’s much easier to hold a conversation without feeling like you’re two goofy avatars trying to talk. You can hold a real meeting if necessary in your pajamas while your Persona is in work attire. Personas also carry over to other apps like WebEx.

Your Persona’s eyes can appear on the outside display. Someone will see glowing effects on the outside of the headset if you have screens up in front of you. If they begin talking to you and you’re in an immersive view – like one of the landscapes I mentioned earlier – they’ll start to fade into focus so you can see them. As you look at them, the eyes of your digital Persona become visible on the outside of the headset. It looks like you’re wearing a snorkeling mask.

In real life, I just removed the headset face when my wife came in to chat.

The built-in speakers are great. They get nice and loud and support spatial audio, so if you turn your head away from the movie in front of you, the sound stays in the same place, much like if you were watching a real TV. Music and movies sounded fantastic, with full surround sound. People can hear the audio coming out of the headset, though, so you’ll want to use AirPods in public.

I love the “spatial photos” you can capture using the cameras on the outside of the Vision Pro or with the latest iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The camera creates a 3D version of a photo or video. I filmed my 4-month-old daughter eating and my dog’s 9th birthday, for example, in hopes that I’ll be able to come back and relive some of those moments. I wish I had recorded some of these videos when my stepfather was alive because it’d feel like he was in the room with me. Some people might see it as a gimmick, but I found it moving.

Lastly, the build quality is superb. Apple used top-of-the-line glass, screens and metals. It feels like a premium headset and it’s comfortable to wear. My only complaint is that I had to be deliberate to hold it by the metal frame. The padded inserts pop off their magnets if you try to grab them. Those could be stronger, but they were designed to be easily removed so people could share the headset by popping in their own inserts.

Apple’s apps work well. You’ll find Notes, Music, Safari, Podcasts, Photos, Apple TV+, Maps and more. Other apps include SkyGuide and Disney+ and there are Apple Arcade games. Many more are coming, as most apps haven’t yet been built specifically for Vision Pro.

The Vision Pro supports more than a million iPhone and iPad apps. But you need to search for each app individually and some of them aren’t available. Netflix and Spotify haven’t been shy about not supporting the Vision Pro, though you can easily access either using the browser. Still, there are lots of others that I couldn’t find: 1Password isn’t there, which made logging into some apps a bit of a pain. You won’t find Uber, DoorDash (but there’s GrubHub!) or Amazon. None of Google’s apps are here, including YouTube TV, though it works fine in the browser.

Popular games like Diablo Immortal and Genshin Impact aren’t available. Facebook’s apps aren’t here, so no Instagram. These are just a few I noticed.

Some work well, though. I didn’t have any issues with the X iPad app, for example. CNBC’s app worked fine. Others, like Amazon Prime Video, exist but weren’t great during initial tests. A bug showed a big box in the middle of the screen when I was watching a movie. That bug has since been fixed.

For some apps that aren’t yet available, developers are working to optimize them and eliminate bugs.

Apple Keychain was sometimes buggy in iPad apps. This is Apple’s version of 1Password, and I rely on it to enter my username and passwords. It generally works fine. But if you have two usernames for apps, like my wife and I do for Amazon Prime Video or Peacock, the app locks up when you try to select a different login. I informed Apple of the bug.

The floating keyboard is useful for search or typing quick messages, but you won’t be able to type very fast at first. You look at each letter on a digital keyboard and select it, or reach out and tap the digital keyboard. I got faster during my time with the Vision Pro, but nowhere near as quick as I am on my iPhone or a real keyboard. You can just use Siri voice-to-text to respond to iMessages or enter URLs in the browser (and launch apps). Still, you’re going to want to use a keyboard if you have to do a lot of typing.

There’s also the battery pack that plugs into the headset with a proprietary plug that you twist in. I don’t mind it. I thought the pack worked fine, but it would be a lot easier if it was just embedded into the headset, though that would add weight.

I’d buy the Vision Pro right now if I had an extra $3,500. I’d even consider trading in my iPad Pro and MacBook Pro to offset the cost since the headset gives me a lot of the same capabilities. But that’s not an option.

You’ll definitely love it for movies. I think a lot of people will also really enjoy being able to read the news and browse the web while having a huge TV screen open and lounging on their couch. Some may find they can work in it. I did. It’s fun.

Apple’s real opportunity will materialize when it finds a way to mass produce the Vision Pro at closer to $2,000, or less. Until then, it may be a niche product. But the experience blows everything else out of the water. It’s Apple’s most exciting product in years and it’s the best example yet that this will become a new way of computing.

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Shares of iRobot, the maker of Roomba vacuums, closed up about 39% Friday after a report said the European Union is set to approve Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of the company.

Reuters said Thursday morning the deal is set to “win unconditional EU antitrust approval,” citing three sources familiar with the matter. The European Commission is expected to rule on the deal by Feb. 14.

Representatives from the European Commission didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The deal is still under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said in June the deal would not result in “a substantial lessening of competition” in the U.K.

Amazon shares were flat.

Amazon announced its intention to acquire iRobot in August 2022 for $61 a share in an all-cash deal.

The acquisition marks Amazon’s fourth-largest deal, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods in 2017, its $8.45 billion purchase of film studio MGM in 2021 and its $3.9 billion acquisition of boutique primary-care provider One Medical, announced last July.

— CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just had surgery as a result of an injury to his ACL that occurred during mixed-martial arts training.

The Facebook co-founder revealed his injury on Friday via an Instagram post in which he said that he “tore my ACL sparring and just got out of surgery to replace it.”

“I was training for a competitive MMA fight early next year, but now that’s delayed a bit,” Zuckerberg said. “Still looking forward to doing it after I recover.”

“Thanks to everyone for the love and support,” he added.

Zuckerberg included several photos of himself at an undisclosed hospital that shows the executive prior to his surgery and then after the procedure with his wife Priscilla Chan comforting him during his recovery.

The Meta CEO has taken an interest in MMA and competitive fighting in recent years and has been training in a variety of martial arts, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

In May, he revealed in a Facebook post that competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament in which he won a gold and silver medal.

Zuckerberg’s recent injury to his ACL comes after a brief verbal exchange between the Meta executive and Tesla chief Elon Musk who were floating a possible cage match.

The fight never took place, however, with Zuckerberg saying during the summer via a post on Threads that “we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on.”

Zuckerberg said that while Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White offered to make the match between the two executives “a legit competition for charity,” Musk never confirmed a date.

“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

Watch: Jim Cramer says this beer stock can go higher after the company’s promising Investor Day

Imran Ahmed refuses to be intimidated by Elon Musk. And he’s insisting that researchers at his nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate remain equally unafraid.

Earlier this week, the company formerly known as Twitter filed a lawsuit in federal court against the CCDH, after the organization in June published research that Musk didn’t like. The group found a rise in hate speech on Twitter since Musk purchased the company last year, and said X, as it’s now known, fails to take action against paying subscribers who post racist, homophobic, conspiratorial and other inflammatory content.

In an interview with CNBC, Ahmed said the CCDH has no plans to suspend its research into the spread of hateful content and other emerging problems it finds on the social media platform. Rather, Ahmed told staffers in a meeting after he heard about the lawsuit that they should “double down” on probing X.

“I’ve never, ever, ever walked away from a fight,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed, 44, lives in Washington, D.C., though he studied in the U.K. at the University of Cambridge. He founded the CCDH in 2018 after the death of Jo Cox, a U.K. Labour Party colleague and member of parliament, by a white supremist who was reportedly “a loner obsessed with Nazis.”

Lawyers representing X alleged in this week’s lawsuit that the CCDH improperly obtained access to social media analysis tool Brandwatch and also illegally scraped data from Twitter using other methods. The attorneys claimed the CCDH has used “flawed methodologies to advance incorrect, misleading narratives” that have driven away X’s advertisers, damaging its business.

In March, the CCHD published a study showing that since Musk took over Twitter, there’s been a 119% increase in tweets mentioning the grooming narrative, referring to a conspiracy theory that implies LGBTQ+ people are grooming children. The study was based on an analysis of 1.7 million tweets from the beginning of 2022 through February 2023. The CCDH said it obtained the tweets using a data-scraping tool and Twitter’s search function.

X said in its lawsuit that it’s seeking a jury trial, unspecified monetary damages, and wants to block CCDH and any of its collaborators or employees from accessing data provided by X to Brandwatch.

Ahmed declined to comment about the specifics of the case though he noted that X has not yet physically served him or the CCDH with a lawsuit.

He’s accustomed to the criticism.

Prior to the challenges from X, Meta and TikTok took issue with the CCDH’s research methodology after the group released reports alleging those platforms fostered misinformation and content that could harm the mental health of teenagers.

However, neither of those companies went so far as to sue the nonprofit or allege that it acted unlawfully.

The lawsuit from X follows a previous letter sent from another law firm representing the company, accusing the CCDH of false and misleading claims linked to a separate trademark-related law known as the Lanham Act.

Ahmed characterized Musk’s actions toward his organization as those of “a man who is desperately fishing around for ways to blame someone else.”

X did not respond to questions about the lawsuit or when it plans to serve CCDH with it. The company issued a statement to CNBC, reiterating prior comments and accusing the nonprofit of spreading false claims against X to stymie public discourse. Prior to the lawsuit, Musk referred to Ahmed as a “rat” and the nonprofit as “truly evil.”

Brandwatch and its parent company Cision didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ahmed defended the CCDH against claims that it’s a “censorship organization,” and also shot down allegations in the complaint and from Musk that the group is covertly bankrolled by potential competitors or foreign governments.

“I made clear that we don’t take money from tech companies, social media companies, and we don’t take money from governments,” Ahmed said. “We take money from philanthropic trusts and the public. If people want to donate, they can donate to us here.”

The CCDH has provided evidence to the governments of the U.S. and U.K. on Internet harms, and advocated for the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill, which was designed to make social media companies more responsible for the safety of their users.

When it comes to Musk, Ahmed has a particular point to make: He doesn’t “understand how free speech truly works.”

He’s a “self-proclaimed champion of free speech,” Ahmed said, but he “doesn’t understand the marketplace of ideas.”

Ultimately, Ahmed’s conclusion is that, “Musk is behaving like a child who simply cannot take responsibility for the fact that he pooped in his own pants and it wasn’t someone else that did it for him.”

Earlier this week, three Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Musk and X, accusing the world’s richest person of taking a “hostile stance” toward independent researchers. They said the studies have “raised legitimate and serious questions regarding X’s business practices since Mr. Musk’s acquisition.”

But Musk has his backers on the other side of the aisle.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the CCDH and Ahmed as part of a broader “censorship investigation.” The letter, which the CCDH confirmed it received on Thursday, said the committee is seeking documents from the nonprofit that show its “interactions” with the federal government, including the Biden administration, and social media companies.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote. “Certain third parties, including organizations like yours, appear to have played a role in this censorship regime by advising the government and social media companies on so-called ‘misinformation’ and other types of content — sometimes with direct or indirect support or approval from the federal government.”

Ahmed said that in the days since the X lawsuit was made public, the CCDH has received “hundreds of donations” and “so many messages of support” from organizations including Amnesty International, the Anti-Defamation League, Friends of the Earth, and Planned Parenthood.

Other groups that have voiced support for CCDH include LGBTQ advocate GLAAD, the Molly Rose Foundation, the Free Press, Check My Ads and Coalition for Independent Tech Research.

Ahmed said these organizations recognize what’s at stake, especially as Musk shows his increasing willingness to use his wealth and power to inject his ideologies onto a major communications platform.

There are “all these other groups who are all coming out going, no no, our information ecosystem is valuable,” Ahmed said. “We have the right to comment on it, on the private companies who administer significant parts of it.”

WATCH: Elon Musk has vision to make Twitter into ‘an everything app’ with X rebrand.

Alibaba shares dropped nearly 3% in after-hours trading after regulatory files revealed that SoftBank has sold a majority of its stake in the company.

SoftBank has sold roughly $7.2 billion worth of shares in the Chinese ecommerce giant via prepaid forward contracts, according to an analysis of the corporate filings by The Financial Times, published on Wednesday. Because of the sales, the report noted that SoftBank will now only maintain a 3.8% stake in Alibaba, which has a market cap over nearly $250 billion.

It was only about three years ago that SoftBank maintained a nearly 25% stake in the tech giant worth over $100 billion. At the time, Alibaba was SoftBank’s most valuable investment.

But over the years, SoftBank and its Vision Fund have been posting huge quarterly losses amid a slowdown in the tech sector that has hammered valuations. In February, the Vision Fund posted a pretax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen (or about $5 billion), marking the unit’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss.

At the time, Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of the Japanese technology conglomerate and holding company, said SoftBank would operate in a “defense” mode and be more “conservative.”

Son invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2000, helping the e-commerce startup grow into one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

In March, Alibaba said it would split into six business groups, with each unit able to receive its own funding and potentially go public. The move was “designed to unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness,” Alibaba said in a statement.

In 2020, Son stepped down from Alibaba’s board, shortly after Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma resigned from SoftBank’s board.

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Every January, Apple releases the total amount of money that App Store developers have earned since 2008, a data point that allows analysts and Apple investors to get an idea of how much money the App Store makes.

This year’s disclosure suggests that Apple’s App Store growth has plateaued.

On Tuesday, Apple said it has paid $320 billion to developers, up from $260 billion as of last year, a jump of $60 billion. Developers receive between 70% and 85% of gross sales, depending on if they qualify for Apple’s reduced rate.

If all developers paid a 30% cut to Apple, Apple’s App Store grossed more than $85 billion in 2022, based on a CNBC analysis. If Apple’s commissions were all 15%, the App Store’s estimated gross would come in lower, around $70 billion.

It’s the same amount of sales as Apple suggested with its data point last year, when the company said it had paid developers $60 billion in 2021.

This is a rough estimation that could vary because it’s unclear how many developers pay the lower 15% cut, versus the 30% cut, and because the stats Apple shares are rounded.

Attempts to extrapolate the size of the App Store business from developer earnings are inaccurate, Apple said, because the commission ranges from 15% to 30%, and the vast majority of developers pay the lower commission under the App Store Small Business Program that gives a lower cut to app makers who gross under $1 million per year.

Apple said in its release that 2022 was a “record” year for the App Store, and revealed 900 million subscriptions, up from 745 million subscriptions in 2021. Apple’s stat includes anyone who subscribes to a service through Apple’s App store, not just its own first-party services like Apple TV+ and Music.

But Tuesday’s data point underscores that App Store growth slowed last year, which is important for investors because the App Store is a major part of Apple’s services business, and is a profit engine for the company.

Apple’s services business grew in fiscal 2022 to $78.1 billion, a 14% increase. But that was a significant slowdown from the 27% growth rate the division posted in fiscal 2021.

Apple is dealing with tough comparisons to elevated 2021 and 2020 app use and sales as people bought games and software while riding out the Covid pandemic. Apple is also facing consumer uncertainty around the world as interest rates rise and economists worry about a possible recession.

Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring has been following slowing App Store growth. App Store net revenue decreased for six straight months from June to November, according to his data, before growing again in December.

Woodring wrote in a note this month that app sales will grow in 2023 because the year-over-year comparisons will be easier and as some app price increases in international markets late last year will start to benefit Apple.

“While App Store growth remains near its lowest levels in history, and we acknowledge the global consumer remains challenged, we are encouraged to see growth trajectory continue to improve after bottoming in September,” Woodring wrote.

Correction: Apple said in its release that 2022 was a “record” year for the App Store, and revealed 900 million subscriptions, up from 745 million subscriptions in 2021. An earlier version misstated a year.

A decade ago, Twitter’s future was looking bright. The company was benefiting from a flood of funding into the social-networking space, eventually leading to an IPO in 2013 that raised $1.8 billion.

Now the company is back in private hands. And they happen to be the hands of Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and one of the app’s most high-profile provocateurs.

It’s a massive moment. Twitter has become a key place for people to debate, joke and pontificate in their own circles of politics, sports, tech and finance. It’s also served as a platform that gives voice to the voiceless, helping protesters organize and express themselves in repressed regimes around the world.

In recent years, however, Twitter and social media rivals like Facebook have been at the center of controversy over the distribution of fake news and misinformation, sometimes leading to bullying and violence.

Investors had grown concerned about Twitter as a business. The company was generally unprofitable, struggled to keep pace with Google and Facebook, and often killed popular products with no real explanation.

What follows is a brief history of Twitter, which — despite its many flaws — is one of the most iconic companies to come out of Silicon Valley in the past 20 years.

2006

In March, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams created Twitter, which was originally a side project stemming from the podcasting tool Odeo. That month, Dorsey would send the first Tweet that read, “just setting up my twttr.”

2007

In July, Twitter received a $100,000 Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. The app’s popularity started to explode after being heavily promoted by the tech community during the annual South by Southwest conference.

2008

Dorsey stepped down as CEO in October, and was replaced by Williams. According to the book “Hatching Twitter” by journalist Nick Bilton, Twitter’s board fired Dorsey over concerns about the executive’s management style and public boastings.

2009

Twitter’s popularity continued to soar, leading to a high-profile appearance from Williams on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show alongside celebrity Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher would also write about Williams and Stone as part of Time Magazine’s Time 100 issue. Twitter was now a mainstream phenomenon.

2010

Twitter reached space, with NASA Astronaut Timothy Creamer sending the first tweet live from outer orbit. Behind the scenes, however, management woes continued with Williams stepping down as CEO, replaced by operating chief Dick Costolo.

2011

Twitter became an essential social media tool used during the Arab Spring, the wave of antigovernmental protests throughout Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Protesters used the site to post reports and to organize. As the Pew Research Center noted, Twitter’s role in “disseminating breaking news” was not “not limited to the Arab uprisings – the death of Whitney Houston, for example, was announced on Twitter 55 minutes prior to the AP confirming the story.”

2012

Twitter’s reach expanded to 200 million active users. Barack Obama used the “platform to first declare victory publicly in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, with a Tweet that was viewed approximately 25 million times on our platform and widely distributed offline in print and broadcast media,” according to corporate filings.

2013

Twitter went public in November. The combined wealth of Williams, Dorsey, and Costolo hit roughly $4 billion.

“I think we’ve got a tremendous set of thoughts and strategies to increase the slope of the growth curve,” Costolo told CNBC at the time. “I would consider some of them tactics, some of them broader strategies, in service of doing what I referred to as bridge the gap between the massive awareness of Twitter and deep engagement of the platform.”

2014

Slowing user growth led to several stock drops and analyst downgrades. Twitter also deemed 2014 the year of the “selfie.”

2015

Compared to rivals like Google, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, Twitter was starting to look like the runt of the Internet litter. Twitter was still unprofitable as its ad business struggled mightily against its larger competitors. Dorsey would also return as CEO of the company, while still maintaining the top job at his other company, Square (now Block).

2016

Rumors began circulating that Twitter was looking to be acquired, with Salesforce as a potential suitor. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook were criticized for their role in letting prominent users like Donald Trump, who would win the U.S. presidential election that year, spread misleading information without consequence.

“Having the president-elect on our service using it as a direct line of communication allows everyone to see what is on his mind in the moment,” Dorsey said at the time. “We’re definitely entering a new world where everything is on the surface and we can all see that in real time and we can have conversations about it.”

2017

For a moment, Twitter appeared to be on the upswing. Its stock was finally trending upward as the company’s finances were improving. Meanwhile, Trump as president continued to use Twitter as his megaphone. According to Twitter’s own data, “Trump was the most-tweeted-about global leader in the world and in the United States” that year, CNBC reported.

2018

Dorsey and Facebook’s then-operating chief Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about alleged interference by Russia-linked actors in the 2016 election. Trump and fellow Republicans became increasingly vocal about alleged political bias by Twitter and other social media sites.

“In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said at the time.

2019

Analysts found correlations between President Trump’s voracious use of Twitter and various markets, including gold, underscoring the cultural power of Twitter. Trump met with Dorsey — a Twitter spokesperson said “Jack had a constructive meeting with the President of the United States today at the president’s invitation.”

“They discussed Twitter’s commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections and efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis,” the spokesperson said.

2020

As Covid-19 spread across the globe, the spread of misinformation dominated the online conversation. And Twitter continued to struggle to grow its business. The service was also hacked that year, and miscreants gained access to over a dozen high-profile accounts, including those controlled by Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, and Musk

2021

Twitter permanently banned Trump over inflammatory comments the president made during the U.S. Capitol riots in January that the company said could lead to “further incitement of violence.” Trump would allege that Twitter workers “coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me.” Later, Dorsey suddenly stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer.

2022

Musk took over Twitter after a protracted legal spat that would have culminated this week in a trial in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. The Tesla CEO agreed in April to pay $44 billion for Twitter, but then attempted to renege on the deal. He changed course and opted to proceed, walking into the company’s San Francisco office on Wednesday with what appeared to be a porcelain bathroom sink in his hands.

“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” he tweeted, with a video of his entrance.

Musk immediately began making changes, firing Agrawal, finance head Ned Segal, and head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde.

WATCH: Billionaire Elon Musk steps into Twitter HQ, sink in hand

Apple recently updated its App Store Guidelines with changes that, yet again, impact Facebook’s ad business.

The new rule, introduced Monday, says that companies like Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, can offer apps that allow people to buy and manage advertising campaigns in dedicated apps without using Apple’s payment system, but it considers buying an ad in a social media app to be a digital purchase, from which Apple takes a 30% cut.

Meta wasn’t happy with the change. A Meta spokesperson told CNBC, “Apple continues to evolve its policies to grow their own business while undercutting others in the digital economy.”

The episode is the latest skirmish from companies like Meta that feel that Apple has too much power over mobile distribution and the ever expanding and changing rules of Apple’s App Store, which is the only way to install apps on an iPhone.

Meta and Apple have been battling for years, but the rivalry has grown more heated recently after Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency in the iPhone operating system last year. The privacy feature allows users to decline to offer app developers like Meta a unique device ID that can be used to track ad performance. Meta says the change could cost it $10 billion this year.

Meta and Apple also appear poised to compete in the world of consumer hardware, after Meta released the Quest Pro headset and Apple has been developing a competing VR headset for years that could reportedly launch next year.

Apple told CNBC that even before the new guideline the company considered social boosts to be the kind of digital purchase that needed to use Apple in-app purchases, and that the rule is more of a clarification than a new restriction.

“For many years now, the App Store guidelines have been clear that the sale of digital goods and services within an app must use In-App Purchase,” an Apple spokesman told CNBC. “Boosting, which allows an individual or organization to pay to increase the reach of a post or profile, is a digital service — so of course In-App Purchase is required. This has always been the case and there are many examples of apps that do it successfully.”

This individual restriction has long been a sticking point, and Meta, back when it was still named Facebook, negotiated with Apple over social media boosts and whether they would fall under Apple’s digital purchase rules, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Boosting features are offered by several social media companies. But most, like Twitter, already use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism that lists boosted posts for $9.99 on Apple’s App Store. TikTok sells coins, or a currency used to promote posts, through in-app purchases as well.

For Meta, it thinks Apple’s recent clarification crosses a line in taking a piece of advertising revenue, not just app sales. Meta points to previous Apple executive statements, some made as part of the Epic Games trial over App Store rules, where it said it didn’t take a cut of ads.

“Apple previously said it didn’t take a share of developer advertising revenue, and now apparently changed its mind. We remain committed to offering small businesses simple ways to run ads and grow their businesses on our apps,” the Meta spokesperson told CNBC.

Apple isn’t asking for a cut of every ad served through the Facebook or Instagram apps. But Meta clearly feels targeted by Apple’s increasing power over its platforms, and worries that the company could argue that it deserves a piece of Meta’s total ad sales through its ads manager app, according to The Verge, which first reported Meta’s complaint.

It’s unclear how big the boost market is. Most big advertisers use dedicated portals or apps to buy ads. Eric Seufert, an ads industry watcher and the founder of Mobile Dev Memo, wrote Monday that he suspects it is a “negligible proportion of revenue” to the social media companies.

The new entry-level iPad is totally redesigned.

The home button at the bottom of the screen is gone and has been replaced with a fingerprint reader in the power button. It has a more squared design, similar to the iPad Air and iPad Pro, with a large 10.9-inch screen, USB-C in place of the Lightning connector, and will ship in different colors like red, yellow, blue and white.

Apple also announced a new $249 Magic Keyboard Folio case for the iPad that has a kickstand, a trackpad with support for multitouch and a magnetic connector that automatically charges it. But there’s something strange about the Apple Pencil support.

The new iPad doesn’t work with the better second-generation Apple Pencil, which charges on the side of the iPad Air, iPad mini and iPad Pro. Since the new iPad uses USB-C instead of a Lightning port — which is used to charge the Apple Pencil on earlier models — you’ll need to buy a $9 USB-C to Lightning adapter in order to charge the Apple Pencil.

Apple will sell different configurations, including Wi-Fi only and WiFi + 5G cellular, but it starts at $449, which is a bump from the $329 starting price of the ninth-generation iPad. It’s available to order Tuesday and will be in stores beginning Oct. 26.

As in recent years, the company will sell two sizes of the iPad Pros: an 11-inch model and a larger 12.9-inch model with a nicer screen.

The big change to the iPad Pro is a new M2 processor, which is the same one that was introduced in the MacBook Air earlier this year. Apple said it’s up to 15% faster than the M1 processor used in the last model of the iPad Pro that was introduced in 2021.

The Apple Pencil works a bit differently on the new iPad Pros, too. The screen can now detect the tip of the Pencil up to 12 mm above the surface of the screen. Apple says this will allow artists to sketch with more precision and makes handwriting-to-text conversions faster.

The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 while the 12.9-inch model starts at $1,099. They’re available to order beginning Tuesday and land in stores on Oct. 26.

The Apple TV 4K has a faster processor and ships in two models, a Wi-Fi-only version with 64GB of storage and a Wi-Fi + Ethernet model, which allows for a wired internet connection and has twice the storage.

The streaming box adds support for HDR10+, another high-dynamic range standard that, if offered by the TV it’s connected to, should help improve picture quality, especially in dark scenes. And the updated processor, which Apple says is 50% faster than the previous version, should make things like loading apps and games faster.

The new Apple TV 4K has the updated Siri Remote with standard USB-C charging, which is the same cable used to charge iPads and non-Apple products. The remote used to use Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector.

The new Apple TV 4K starts at $129 and can be ordered beginning Tuesday. It hits stores Nov. 4.

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Twitter just reported earnings for the first quarter of 2022, in what could be one of its last reports as a public company after its board agreed to sell to Elon Musk for $44 billion.

Here are the key numbers:

Earnings per share: 4 cents, adjusted vs 3 cents expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analystsRevenue: $1.2 billion vs $1.23 billion expected, according to RefinitivMonetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs): 229 million vs 226.9 million expected, according to StreetAccount

Shares of Twitter up about 1.8% Thursday afternoon.

Twitter missed analyst revenue estimates, reporting 1.2 billion versus the 1.23 billion analysts were expecting, according to Refinitiv. But it beat estimates for earnings per share, at 4 cents, adjusted compared to 3 cents expected.

The company said the 229 million mDAUs it reported in the quarter represents a 15.9% increase from the same period last year. In the U.S. mDAUs were up 6.4% from the prior year’s quarter, at 39.6 million. International mDAUs came in at 189.4 million, up 18.1% from the year before.

It also corrected previously reported mDAU numbers that overcounted some accounts from Q1 2019 through Q4 2021. Twitter said the error, which incorrectly reported roughly 1.4 million to 1.9 million extra mDAUs per quarter during that period, was made after launching a feature allowing users to easily switch between their separate accounts. As a result, the company said that during that period, all linked accounts were counted as mDAUs when an action was made by the primary account.

Before the deal was formally announced on Monday, some analysts speculated that Twitter might have wanted to finalize the deal before reporting earnings this weak, anticipating a disappointing quarter.

Snap reported last week that its revenue was impacted by macroeconomic trends weighing on advertisers, which could similarly affect Twitter.

Though it could still take months for Musk’s deal to buy Twitter to close, the company canceled its usual earnings conference call in light of Monday’s acquisition news. It expects the deal to close this year.

Twitter also said it would not provide forward-looking guidance and is withdrawing earlier goals and outlook it has provided.

Musk has signaled he’d like to use his ownership to make Twitter a more open platform, both through transparency in its algorithms and processes and in being more tolerant of different views.

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WATCH: Less content moderation means more brand safety issues for Twitter, says JMP’s Boone