Dieter Bohn Elon Musk is making unrealistic timeline promises again, so things are getting back to normal

It’s earnings season again, and yesterday’s most important (for our context) results came from Microsoft and Tesla. What did we learn? Microsoft makes more money on Surface devices when it makes ...new Surface devices and less money when it doesn't. But even if Microsoft had released this year's Surfaces earlier, they're not the company's core money maker. This is an Azure / Office business now.

We also learned that Tesla is doing better — though unfortunately that’s due in part to layoffs. I recently remarked to my colleague Liz Lopatto (who writes the occassional the This Week in Elon newsletter) that Musk has been particularly quiet and well-behaved lately. Did somebody take away his Twitter account for awhile? Doubtful — but perhaps the mandatory quiet period ahead of earnings chastened him. Liz agreed it was strange, but in a way that implied that I shouldn't get my hopes up as most things tend to revert to the norm.

Sure enough,  the call happened and Elon Elonned again. He almost surely overpromised on self-driving software and how quickly it would arrive. Some things never change.

- Dieter

+ Tesla ekes out a profit as all eyes turn to its China Gigafactory

Tesla says it turned its first profit since the fourth quarter of 2018 by slashing operating costs, which are the “lowest level since Model 3 production started” — likely aided by multiple workforce cuts the company has made, and Elon Musk’s “nano” managing.

+ Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ feature may get early-access release by the end of 2019

Musk later clarified on the call that by “feature complete,” he means the car will be able to drive from someone’s home to their work without intervention. Drivers will still need to be ready to take control if the car runs into a problem. Some experts have taken issue with the way Musk talks about these features in the past, arguing he is muddying the waters by overselling a Tesla car’s capabilities.

+ Microsoft’s Q1 earnings boosted by cloud and Office as Surface and Xbox stall

Office is the real star of the show in Microsoft’s Q1 earnings. Office 365 commercial revenue is up 13 percent year over year, and Microsoft now has 200 million Office 365 commercial subscribers. That’s a nearly 30 percent jump from the 155 million reported last year, and it shows that Microsoft is really capturing businesses as they move to the cloud.

+ Microsoft said the Surface Laptop 3 would be easy to open — and it actually is

iFixit seems genuinely impressed with the turnaround on the Surface Laptop’s overall repairability. It’s not where it needs to be yet, but it’s a huge step in the right direction. This detail is curious to me, though — is swapping an SSD really that scary? This used to be common practice with laptops, there’s no reason it couldn’t be again:

Microsoft warns against swapping [the SSD], saying that a “skilled technician” should be the only ones to do so, but the only thing holding the SSD down is a single Torx Plus screw — so if you know what you’re doing, and you’re willing to risk voiding your warranty, it looks like you’ll be able to add some storage to the laptop on your own.

+ Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed

Nilay Patel: “It’s been 194 days since Foxconn promised a statement or correction regarding The Verge’s report of empty buildings in Wisconsin.”

+ Google promises another Pixel 4 software update, this time for the screen’s refresh rate

+ Google just launched a handful of clever apps to help you spend less time on your phone

Google was right to make all these under an experiment label, but some of them are genuinely interesting. I’m going to try the wallpaper that counts how many times I unlock my phone.

+ Samsung has reportedly fixed the Galaxy S10 fingerprint recognition issue

The update is only available for S10 and Note 10 devices in South Korea for now, although it should be rolling out to additional countries in the near future.

+ Huawei’s folding Mate X ships next month for $2,400

This won’t come to the US, of course, but I will be watching closely to see if it fares better than the Galaxy Fold.

+ Drivers are killing pedestrians at the highest rate in almost 30 years

+ Really cool how-to from Vjeran Pavic: How to turn GIFs into a wallpaper for your Apple Watch