Apple Intelligence was designed to leverage things that generative AI already does well, like text and image generation, to improve upon existing features.
Some users and designers are already panning Apple's new user interface dubbed Liquid Glass, even though it's a bit early. There are reasons to think it might improve — but also valid critiques.
A new report highlights the dangers of menstrual tracking apps, which collect data that could jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of people who menstruate.
Many hypergrowth tech stocks skyrocketed during the buying frenzy in meme stocks throughout 2020 and 2021. But in 2022 and 2023, many of those stocks stumbled as interest rates rose. Some bounced back in 2024 as interest rates declined, but cooled again this year as the Trump administration's tariffs, trade wars, and other unpredictable headwinds rattled the markets.
However, a lot of those hypergrowth plays are still built for long-term growth. So if you can stomach a bit of near-term volatility, these three stocks -- Pinterest(NYSE: PINS), AppLovin(NASDAQ: APPS), and CrowdStrike(NASDAQ: CRWD) -- might just be worth accumulating throughout the rest of the year.
Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Pinterest
Pinterest carved out its own niche in the crowded social media market with its virtual pinboards for sharing ideas, interests, and hobbies. That focus insulated it from the hate speech and misinformation that dogged other social media platforms, and its pinboards were a natural fit for digital ads and small digital storefronts.
Many retailers, like IKEA, have uploaded their entire catalogs to Pinterest's boards as "shoppable" pinboards.
From 2020 to 2024, Pinterest's year-end monthly active users (MAUs) increased from 459 million to 553 million, its annual revenue more than doubled from $1.69 billion to $3.65 billion, and the company finally turned profitable in 2024. Its MAUs grew 10% year over year to 570 million in the first quarter of 2025, which definitively deflated the bearish thesis that its popularity was just a pandemic-era fad.
Pinterest's recent growth was driven by its overseas expansion, new Gen Z users who curbed its dependence on older users, fresh video content, more e-commerce tools, and new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven recommendations, which crafted targeted ads based on its users' pinned interests. It should continue growing as it monetizes its overseas users more aggressively while deepening its lucrative advertising and e-commerce partnership with Amazon.
From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect Pinterest's revenue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to increase at a CAGR of 21%. It still looks cheap at 16 times this year's adjusted EBITDA -- and it could have plenty of room to grow as the social shopping market heats up.
2. AppLovin
AppLovin is a publisher of mobile games, but it also helps other developers monetize their apps with integrated ads. Most of its growth is now driven by the advertising business, which benefited from the growing popularity of its AI-powered AXON ad discovery services to help advertisers connect with potential customers.
To accelerate that expansion and evolution, the company acquired the mobile ad tech company MoPub in 2021 and the streaming media advertising company Wurl in 2022. It even placed a bid for TikTok's U.S. business, but that potentially transformative deal faces an uncertain future. AppLovin is also in the process of selling its slower-growth mobile gaming division to Tripledot Studios, and it could grow much faster and at higher margins once it closes that deal.
From 2020 to 2024, AppLovin's revenue more than tripled, from $1.45 billion to $4.71 billion. It slipped to a net loss in 2022, but turned profitable again in 2023. Its net profit more than quadrupled to $1.58 billion in 2024. Its robust profit growth and swelling market cap might even pave the way toward its eventual inclusion in the S&P 500.
From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect AppLovin's revenue and earnings per share to grow at a CAGR of 22% and 45%, respectively. The stock might seem a bit pricey at 51 times this year's earnings, but the rapid growth of its AI-driven advertising business should justify that higher valuation.
3. CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that eschews on-site appliances and offers its endpoint security tools only as cloud-native services on its Falcon platform. That approach is stickier and easier to scale, and it doesn't require any on-site maintenance or updates.
From fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2025 (which ended this January), CrowdStrike's annual revenue more than quadrupled from $874 million to $3.95 billion, while the percentage of customers using at least five of its modules (at the end of the year) rose from 47% to 67%. It's still not consistently profitable according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), but its non-GAAP net income increased at an impressive CAGR of 99% during those four years.
From fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028, analysts expect its revenue to grow at a CAGR of 22%. They also expect it to turn profitable on a GAAP basis in fiscal 2027 -- and more than triple its net income in fiscal 2028. That impressive growth trajectory should be driven by its continued disruption of on-site appliances, the expansion of its new AI-driven threat detection services, and a resolution of the legal and regulatory problems related to its widespread outage last July.
CrowdStrike's business is gradually maturing, and its stock might not seem like a bargain at 24 times this year's sales, but I think it remains one of the best cybersecurity plays for long-term investors.
Should you invest $1,000 in Pinterest right now?
Before you buy stock in Pinterest, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Pinterest wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider whenNetflixmade this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation,you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidiamade this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation,you’d have $868,615!*
Now, it’s worth notingStock Advisor’s total average return is792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to173%for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you joinStock Advisor.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Leo Sun has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, CrowdStrike, and Pinterest. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Ask me what I’m reading at any given moment and I’ll probably rattle off at least three titles, not to mention comics and the occasional textbook I may also be chipping away at in the background. Reading multiple books simultaneously might sound chaotic (at least, people always tell me it is), but there is a degree of organization to it all: each book in my pile of current reads is in a different format. I'll have one physical, paper book, an ebook and an audiobook in progress at a time, so I always have something on hand to read no matter where I am.
While I used to carry around a dedicated ereader, I've shifted more toward using my phone for the job these days, especially since getting a foldable. Consequently, I've tried out a bunch of different apps for reading and logging my books. These are the ones I like most.
Libro.fm
Audiobooks have really grown on me over the last few years, almost entirely replacing podcasts as the thing I'll throw on when I'm cleaning, taking a walk or going for a long drive. While I tried to make do at first by only borrowing audiobooks from the library, I quickly found that the extremely limited selection from my library system coupled with really long wait times just wouldn't cut it if I wanted to stay up on new releases. After researching all the options, I settled on Libro.fm, an audiobook platform that shares a portion of profits (about half, according to a 2022 interview) with independent bookstores. And even better, you get to pick which bookstore to support with your purchases.
I wasn't expecting to find my favorite local bookstore — a tiny shop in a small town in New York's Hudson Valley — on Libro.fm, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned up in the search. With that, and the fact that all audiobooks from Libro.fm are Digital Rights Management (DRM) free, so you can actually download the files and do with them as you please, I was sold. You have a few options for buying audiobooks through Libro.fm: you can subscribe for $15 per month, which gives you one audiobook credit and a 30 percent discount on all purchases; you can buy credit bundles to save on purchases without a subscription; and you can purchase individual titles at their full, non-member price. There are also plenty of free books to choose from.
Bookshop.org app
The moment I found out that Bookshop.org had launched ebooks and an app to read them on, I made the site my sole destination for buying digital books and haven't looked back. Just like Libro.fm, Bookshop.org lets you choose a local bookseller to support with your purchases. It's been doing this for physical book sales for the last five years — and according to its tally has raised over $38 million for independent bookstores in that time — but until now, there hasn't been a similar option for ebooks. The new app is a no-frills ereader app where you can browse the Bookshop.org catalog to save titles to your wishlist (purchases have to be made on the site) and read all the ebooks you've bought. There are some things I'd love to see it gain in the future, like comics and the option to display pages side by side for reading book-style on a foldable, but it's a great start as it is, especially if your primary concern is supporting small businesses.
Right now Bookshop.org's ebook service doesn't sync with any of the mainstream ereader devices, so you're locked into reading on Android, iOS or a web browser, but the company said it's working on Kobo integration and we could see that happen before the end of this year.
Libby
Libby, aka the library app, is my app of choice for older, less in-demand ebooks and audiobooks, or for when I don't have anything particular in mind and just want to browse the catalog to see what jumps out at me. It lets you link multiple library cards, meaning you potentially have a huge pool to pull from, and since you're borrowing books rather than buying them, it's entirely free. Libby also connects with Kindle, and you can have your titles automatically sent to your ereader. Some Kobo devices support OverDrive (the distributor behind Libby) too.
While using an app may not be quite as satisfying as perusing the stacks IRL, I really like Libby's tag system, which lets you organize your borrowed books and To Be Read titles in whatever way works best for you. You can have a dedicated TBR tag, or create several different tags to group things by genre, mood, etc. Libby is also a great place to find magazines.
Moon+ Reader (Android only)
Moon+ Reader is the best app I've used yet for instances where I have the actual file for a book or document. It supports a ton of different file types — including ePUB, PDF, AZW3, MOBI and many more — and allows you to highlight and annotate text, in addition to offering auto scroll and text-to-speech so the text can be read aloud to you. It's really customizable, too. You can choose things like font, font color, background, margin width, line spacing and more for each document, and save the final build as a theme so you can use it again later. Designwise, the app feels almost like a relic of a bygone digital era, organizing all of your books in a skeuomorphic virtual bookshelf, and I love it. There are a few style options for the bookshelf too, or you can turn off the bookshelf and just see your books in a standard grid.
There's both a free and paid version of the Moon+ Reader, and this is a situation where getting the paid version (Moon+ Reader Pro) is actually worth it. It's a one-time purchase of $10, and going that route will get rid of ads and open up more customization options. In addition to importing your own files into the app, Moon+ Reader has Project Gutenberg integrated so you can directly access that library of over 75,000 free books.
The Storygraph
Naturally, I need a way to keep up with all the reading I'm doing, and that's where The StoryGraph comes in. The StoryGraph is a data-focused app for keeping track of everything you're currently reading, everything you've read and the ever-growing list of titles you want to read. It even allows you to mark books as "did not finish." I love that I can have five in-progress books logged at a time, and can even update each entry to note how far along I am, which is nice for those I'm dragging my feet on completing.
When you leave a review, you have the option to be really detailed about it, going beyond a star rating and a blurb. Reviewers can indicate whether the book would appeal to readers who like a particular mood, with over a dozen options. You rate the pace and answer basic questions about the plot and characters, like whether there's character development or if the characters are even likeable. There's also the option to add content warnings.
Where The StoryGraph really shines, though, is in the stats. There are tons of actual graphs built into the experience to show you a comprehensive breakdown of your reading habits, from the genres, moods and pacing you prefer, to how much fiction you've read versus nonfiction. You can set challenges for yourself, like a yearly reading goal, and you'll be shown a Reading Wrap-up at the end of the year. It'll tell you how long it takes you to finish a book on average, and compare your reading stats to previous years.
There is a mild social component to the app, but it's tucked away in its own tab and not shoved in your face, which I appreciate as someone who tends to shy away from those things. If you want, though, you can participate in or create readalongs, start buddy reads and book clubs (and even write out a code of conduct for the latter) or just see what other people with similar interests to yours are reading. The StoryGraph team also really seems to take users' feedback into consideration, and is constantly adding new things to the app and tweaking existing ones to improve the experience, which is always nice to see.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/the-best-apps-for-reading-tracking-and-listening-to-books-120047705.html?src=rss
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 86, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you've cleared your schedule for some Karting this weekend, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a delightful new way to take pictures on your iPhone, the big new title for the Switch 2, a long interview with a Microsoft CEO, a fun way to soundtrack your pool parties, and much more. It's going to be a game-filled next few weeks, friends. Let's do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to want to know more about? What are you playing / watching / reading / listening to / plugging into your TV this week? Tell me everything: in …
Login
TechCrunch
Wired
