Eric Johnson

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AllThingsD Week in Review: Apple Freshens Up & Pinterest and Snapchat See Dollar Signs

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of some of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

  1. Okay, deep breath. Here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s iPad-and-MacBook refresh event, held this Tuesday in San Francisco: The company introduced a new, thinner 10-inch iPad; the iPad mini got an A7 chip and a retina display; the new MacBook Pro is also thinner (surprised?); Mac OS X Mavericks is free and available to download now (and here’s why that makes sense); iLife and iWork will be free with new hardware running Mavericks; the new Mac Pro ships in December; and, finally, Apple is keeping the iPad 2 up for sale because it can. There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? If you prefer pretty pictures to text, though, here’s the event in slideshow form.
  2. As expected, the other product events on Tuesday got a bit overshadowed by Apple, but Nokia’s event in Abu Dhabi included three medium-large announcements. The company showed off its first Windows 8 tablet, as well as two new Lumia phablets and a host of upcoming Windows Phone 8 apps, including (finally!) Instagram.
  3. Pinterest just got another huge infusion of cash: A $225 million investment round that valued the still revenueless but rapidly growing company at $3.8 billion. The money should help it expand to up to a dozen new countries by the end of the year.
  4. And just shy of Pinterest is Snapchat’s new valuation: Somewhere over $3.5 billion, thanks to a new round that sources said would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the ephemeral-messaging company.
  5. Two big industry moves in the e-commerce world this week: On Monday, the head of Amazon Prime, Robbie Schwietzer, left to become SVP of operations at Groupon and explained his move to Jason Del Rey. Then, the secretive mobile payments startup Clinkle picked up longtime Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy.
  6. Meanwhile, a management shakeup at Intel has claimed its first casualty: That would be 34-year veteran EVP Dadi “David” Perlmutter, who will leave the company in early 2014.
  7. Fitbit has a new wearable activity tracker: The $130 Fitbit Force. But as Lauren Goode notes in All Things Reviewed, it feels more like Activity Tracking 1.1 than Wearables 2.0.
  8. “Twitter has a music app?” Yes, but probably not for long. The company is strongly considering killing off #Music, just six months after launch.
  9. Walt Mossberg’s fall laptop guide is here, and he has some good news if you’re looking: “The confusing changes in the sagging laptop industry have settled down enough that if you need one, now may be the time to buy one.”
  10. Where does Facebook stand on the presence of controversial and shocking content in its News Feed? Wait a day and ask again. After defending users’ ability to circulate a violent viral video on Monday, Facebook then removed that video from its network on Tuesday.

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There was a worry before I started this that I was going to burn every bridge I had. But I realize now that there are some bridges that are worth burning.

— Valleywag editor Sam Biddle