 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Ollie Sanjabi, Andrew Bradley and Dale Mulcahy Coming up on DTNS meta cuts hardware including a watch that had cameras Apple is becoming a finance company and Microsoft takes the early lead in game streaming This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday, June 9th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio reddit I'm Sarah Lane deep in the heart of Texas. I'm Justin Robert young I'm the show's producer Roger. Oh my friends Do we have some conversations for you is game streaming even a thing that you care about? We're gonna fight. We're not gonna fight But we're gonna talk about that. Let's start with a few tech things. You should know Tiktok is adding new features to limit your time in the app Including a reminder tool telling you you've been using it for whatever period of time you yourself define as enough time Tiktok is also adding a new safeguard to existing daily limits Users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be prompted to use the screen time limited tool If they spend over 100 minutes in the app in any given day And the app is also adding a new screen time dashboard that shows a summary of app usage statistics Yeah, because the ads don't work that far in anyway The Vivaldi browsers have added a free built-in email client in beta testing since last year This joins the browser's integrated calendar and feed reader all three can be viewed from a sidebar while browsing go give it a try The Vivaldi browser. I was using it today. I'm a big fan Dell redesigned its XPS 13 lineup the XPS 13 laptop uses 9 watt 12th gen Intel processors a 1.8 X smaller motherboard uses a single cooling fan boasts a 12 hour battery life and Ditches a headphone jack, but includes a usb-c to headphone adapter. It's available now starting at $1,000 We also have the XPS 13 2-in-1 It now comes with a detachable display with an XPS folio keyboard sold separately optional integrated 5g and weighs 1.6 pounds without the keyboard comes out the summer But we don't have pricing on that one yet Microsoft continued its pro worker campaign Wednesday announcing it will no longer include non compete clauses in US employment agreements And it will remove them from existing agreements Microsoft will also no longer include non disclosure agreements that would prevent employees from revealing Allegations of misconduct it will publish findings from a third-party civil rights audit and in compliance with Washington law on this last one publicly disclose salary ranges for US jobs starting in January 2023 Bill can announce the sound form at nano wireless earbuds for kids designed for children 7 and up that keeps volume below 85 decibels the buds are also ipx 5 rated for water resistance Offer 5 hours of battery on a charge and come with ear tips for extra small ears little options for the small ears Yeah, they go on sale at the end of June for $50 for you I'm going to keep a pair on me on flights just in case A child is what I've had without ear buds for youth All right enterprise products where decent consumer tech goes to die when the consumer world doesn't love it anymore Google glass magic leap get ready to welcome the Facebook portal The information sources say that meta is going to try selling the portal to businesses now instead of consumers as a Device meant to help keep employees connected in a hybrid working environment Meta also according to this information article Launching AR headsets a couple of years down the road They the new roadmap is going to postpone the launch of augmented reality headsets by a few years All of this is supposedly cost-cutting executives said in April that meta will reduce expenses by three billion dollars this year And the information says these are part of the way they're going to cut those costs Cost-cutting may also have played a part in shelving another project as well So I think there's a few things here that you should pay attention to number one the portal moving to enterprise like Tom mentioned is indeed The graveyard of where projects and verticals can now Pretend like they have some kind of use if you can sell fleets of them to various different companies I think that is a white flag on the idea that Amazon has a reputation and Utility for being able to be in your home and listen to you at all times Facebook, which already has privacy concerns does not As for the AR, I think that's the bigger story because quite frankly I don't think that this is reshuffling around to to avoid whatever Apple's gonna put out I just think that the tech isn't there and what I would cite as evidence is show me an AR device That's even close to what we would expect an AR device to be right now I mean the HoloLens is the closest at this point, right and even that and that's going well Yeah, exactly, and that's I mean it's there. It's a few thousand dollars, but We should probably tell them the one other cost-cutting measure that that apparently Facebook is taking as well before we we move on a little bit Indeed Bloomberg sources say meta has halted work on a smartwatch code named Milan that had dual cameras One five megapixel camera was below the display in the second 12 megapixel camera sat on the backside of the wrist The second one was supposed to be used as we're moving the watch from the strap So you could use the watch face as a viewfinder for a picture. However, meta has talked about using something called Electromyography to translate server signals into hand gestures that can be interpreted for gesture control the second camera on the watch Reportedly interfered with those sensors those kind of sensors could be used to control virtual avatars and interact with objects and on make augmented reality something that is more of a priority for the newly renamed meta Supposedly meta is now working on other wrist worn devices Well, and I think that brings us back to that augmented reality situation where they may be saying we need to focus on How people are going to behave in this thing before we push out something because before if you remember we talked Not that long ago on the show about their roadmap saying like oh, we'll come out with this one Glasses that'll do a little bit of stuff and then we'll expand it and they'll do a little bit more stuff And and I think maybe meta is making a somewhat smart decision to say let's come up with a good control device and wait For the environment to be there before we push out a headset that nobody's gonna buy Here's here's the biggest problem with AR right now. It's your field of view And that was the problem with HoloLens That's been the problem with everything that's come out is that you know for virtual reality It did not get good until you were effectively No matter where you looked out of the side of your eye You would never see a border and we're not nearly there yet with AR And I don't think that we're even at the starting line until we get there Yeah, and Apple is probably gonna come out with their first product in in in January Earlier this week the word was like ah that's gonna let meta beat him to the punch But now the information is saying well, they're gonna come out with new Oculus headsets VR headsets But they aren't gonna come out with AR headsets Which then kicks it to Apple to be the one to make the case. Ah, this is why you want it This is why you waited but also puts them in the rather unusual position of being first to market with something They very rarely are Yeah, I mean a lot of this feels like We've got you know The four or five companies who all say we're we're trying to be the leader here But we're none of us are quite ready for this yet Apple is the most silent of all the companies on all of this But yeah, if you're if you're Facebook and you've got some hardware stuff in the pipeline And you're sort of wondering what the industry standard is gonna be might be you might be another company Company like Apple might be somebody else. I feel like we're and as a VR enthusiast Very much so, you know, I'm still kind of like AR. Okay. I mean, how do I use it day to day? You know, if I'm playing a game or something on a mobile device fine But how does this actually become part of my life and we're just not there yet? Yeah, it feels like we're close to being there, but we're not there I don't think the display technology is good enough as Justin was making that point very well And I don't think the use case is clear You know, there's a lot of good stuff being done around like oh This could be your workspace monitor because your screens can be as big as you want and that's interesting But it's also not as mobile As as even though it's on your your your head It's like you have to put it on and then when you take it off. You're not gonna see your screens anymore So it's it's not permanent Maybe it's too mobile It's also a real fit Issue with this in terms of weight because unlike VR AR is making the argument that you should be wearing this more. You're not going to a destination. You are yeah It's it's real-world stuff. You're not yeah, you know hanging out in your garage, you know playing a VR game It's the reason why that initial Google Glass demo video is one of the greatest Promises of vaporware ever because like that use case is what got people excited about Modern AR right like in a real-world device was give me directions Allow me to see my text messages as they come in. Let me look at the weather real quick while I'm while I'm on Walking around this busy New York City Street We're not close to any of that. Oh so many years down the road Meanwhile, the big news here is is meta getting rid of this watch Which like who was gonna object to a company that runs Facebook putting two cameras on your wrist that sounds like a great I mean and even if it wasn't meta the you know, the the whole idea of you know What one of the things that my Apple Watch doesn't have is I can look at photos But I'm not taking taking pictures, but it's also supposed to be able to pick it up up off the band easily Yeah, and you know, that's the way you lose things. It just it feels clunky to me feels clunky Yeah, I think the bigger story here, too is meta is retrenching Meta is saying we're not gonna waste money anymore and and that's that's part of a wider trend that's going on in this economy Of course, but but it's also meta Trying to decide where they really need to spend their money And apparently it's on taking more time to develop AR and not consumer devices like the portal like the watch Well one company that has decided they know where the money is and I think they might be right Apple revealing more details about its Apple pay later feature, which is coming to iOS 16 Let's explain a little more about that first Yeah, so if you missed it pay later is a buy now pay later or BP and L Be BNPL rather service for short letting you split your purchase up into four payments interest free So BNPL big business with companies like Klarna or after pay getting a lot of attention Many of you might use one or both They make their money by getting a cut from the retailers that they work with The idea being is they bring in more business by handling the short-term loans Then they can also make money off of late fees and interest Usually interest charged on late payments that sort of thing much of that is is is pretty cut and dry But what is new here? Yeah, so Apple's creating a wholly owned subsidiary That's called Apple financing LLC to handle Apple pay later now that brings it a little more in-house than Apple card Apple card is largely operated by Goldman Sachs, but Apple pay later will still have large chunks operated by external vendors So when you see headlines saying Apple brings everything in-house not everything master cards white label product called Installments is still going to handle the payments to the merchants. So master cards handling the merchant retail Relationship merchants won't have to do anything on their end for Apple pay later to work It's just the way that the payments are delivered to the merchants and Apple isn't a bank yet Yet so it will rely on Goldman Sachs to be the technical issuer of the loan and Goldman Sachs is going to handle some of the payment Processing as well, although Apple's apparently working on that end is to bring it in-house as well But what they're bringing in-house right now is Credit checks and approving the loans themselves Apple's gonna run what's called a soft credit check This is when they just look for limited information to make sure okay Does this this person to have the capability of paying back a loan? Instead of doing the full credit report like you would if you got a mortgage or something like that And it's capping the loans sounds like the loans will be kept at a thousand dollars So you wouldn't be able to use Apple pay later on on a MacBook Anything large or an iPhone. Yeah, or most of the iPhones. Yeah, yeah If payments are missed and remember by now pay later is usually installment payments within a month You might you you might pay weekly you might pay every a couple weeks. It's not a monthly payoff It's just delaying the payments. So sometimes people don't make that last payment if those payments are missed No further Apple pay later purchases will be approved But Apple says it will not report missed payments to credit bureaus. So if you use Apple pay later It would not affect your credit score. I don't know why anybody who has followed this company for any Significant length of time would be shocked that Apple wants to bring more and more of their processes in-house That is their MO. It is their corporate Structure, it is their ethos and they are the scorpion and the frog Why do they do it because it is their nature? They they they know no other way than to perfect things internally that being said It shows that Apple is very much more a services company than they have ever been before And one of the big things that people think of when they think of services is the money service Yeah, I mean you can't operate services without bringing in money and if you're Operating the part that brings in the money the payment processing the loaning all of that You're making more money makes it all Also just makes it a lot more attractive to someone saying ooh, I really want this new iPhone say but yeah I don't have $1,300 in my pocket, but oh four payments interest free. This all sounds pretty nice now, of course As anybody who's familiar with credit knows it can get away from you and this would be no different So it's not like Apple saying hey, we're not like other credit card companies We're just gonna well, you know you used iPhone which really isn't the best example This is I'm in the store and I'm buying clothes. I can use Apple pay later To stock up on extra clothing that I wouldn't have bought otherwise the yeah, that's a good point I mean this is this is not just like oh what I'm buying in the Apple store This is what I'm buying period the product. They are trying to replace is money like you've seen that in their ads where the guy is in line to buy a Candy bar and he doesn't have cash on him So he applies Apple card in line and then gets the candy bar because it's that fast They're replacing a lengthy process with a less lengthy process now. They are taking a very big painful issue Oh, no, my card is not Accepted, but I really want to get this I don't know present for my child I'm just writing an Apple commercial now now. They are able to do it along with this feature Apple is literally money. Yeah, I Remember on buzz out loud at CNET when Molly Wood and I covered Apple acquiring PA semi The designer of chips and the mind boggled. Why would they want a designer of chips? Well, we now know that was a very smart move that started a cascade of events that led to the M1 chips This might be the equivalent in finance. Yeah Hey folks, if you're thinking of adding solar panels to your home You've got to listen to our solar panel round table Myself Sarah and three guests explain the process things to consider what you can expect to spend what you can expect to save Whether you're gonna DIY it or hire someone to do it for you. It's coming into our feed this Saturday So be sure to listen to it Saturday. And if you're like, no, I want to listen to it now Well become a patron because patrons already have access to it at patreon.com slash DTNF All right, Microsoft previously said it's moving away from making a game streaming device and towards putting apps on multiple platforms We've talked about it on the show and we have the first Version of this the Xbox app is launching on June 30th on Samsung's 2022 smart TVs with plans to expand to other models and other manufacturers it gives users access to their Gamepass ultimate account Xbox on Samsung TVs will work by Bluetooth with Xbox wireless Xbox adaptive elite series 2 and Sony dual-sense controllers So you got some options there the Xbox app will be available in the Samsung gaming hub You can also log in to access An existing subscription if you have one or sign up for a new one from within the app as well So Tom for those of us who need a little bit of reminder remind us what game pass gets you Yeah, if you're you're unfamiliar Xbox game pass ultimate has more than a hundred games available to stream for $15 a month There's a few other things here, but for the purposes of this story, that's the important part There are cheaper versions that are limited to either your PC or your Xbox itself But ultimate gives you access across platforms and that now includes Samsung 2022 TVs You don't have to pay anything to play fortnight through Xbox game pass app You can just log in with a Microsoft account and be able to play fortnight for free That's the biggest of the Microsoft Xbox related announcements, but Microsoft made some other announcements today, too Indeed they did Microsoft also announced that later this year all game pass ultimate subscribers will get the ability to stream some games that they have purchased Outside the game pass ultimate library the company announced that within the next year project more Croft will get to submit Demos of their games and get paid for them Microsoft didn't detail how those payments would work just said that they would work Somehow Xbox cloud gaming beta also launched in Argentina and New Zealand Okay, but let's get back to playing Xbox games on a TV If I had something I want to do and that sounds pretty good because you know, I got a TV already. How does it work? Yeah, it's Better than I would have thought according to the verges Cameron Faulkner Cameron Faulkner wrote up a great Rundown of trying this out on a Samsung TV in a hotel over Wi-Fi And Faulkner points out like you probably want to wire this thing up if you're doing it yourself but I was using it over hotel Wi-Fi and It worked. It was a little smoother than Android Faulkner wrote minor instances of hitching and some noticeable a compression aside It was a perfectly serviceable yet inherently imperfect Experience it's never going to be a one-to-one parallel to experiencing the latest games directly from a console that can render native 4k or close to it But in the absence of a console I'd be smitten to use this TV app instead of loading games up on a tablet or phone And then continued to say what I'm getting at is that this app feels like it should be good enough to serve as the sole avenue for gaming for a lot of people I Think this is compelling Because of that because not just is it easy access for people like oh, it's already on my TV and yeah Right now it's on a limited number of Samsung TVs But the idea is eventually it's going to be on a bunch more But it's also the second game console for the kids to play while you're on the real console Is it I mean, I don't know. I feel like this is this I liken this to okay if I'm if I'm watching a if I'm streaming a movie and You know, it's hiccuping and you know and buffering it's like, okay This is unwatchable But if it's it's kind of not the 4k experience that I thought it would be but still pretty good I'm still gonna watch it. That's that's how I feel like a lot of people will be able to use something like this You know out and about will they I mean I mean they will if they're desperate enough. Yeah problem with games streaming though You have two very divergent very different communities that both fall under the umbrella of gaming You've got very very casual mobile players that want to play their cookie collectors or me with heart stone That are playing in this realm and and we are Legion where there's there's a gigantic Infinite amount amount of us then there are PC and console people Please hold your tomatoes. I'm gonna put you all in one bucket for just trying to get along for the boat for the purpose seconds Or I will turn this metaphor right around There are people that want to pay a lot of money. They want to get very invested They have a larger budget and for that they want the best experience I and what game streaming seems to me is a bridge technology that could either bring along people from a more casual community Or be the methadone to the heroine of the the harder core community And I think it is more likely to be the latter There's more likely to be people who are ready have Xbox game pass that are like yeah, whatever. I'm on the road I'll play this on a hotel Wi-Fi Then there is from from the casual group I still don't know whether or not this is the future in the way that people talk about it being the future because to me seems like the mushy middle I disagree I think this is The silent majority that want this there are an over-representation of people Who say they want? No lag and the best you know resolution and lots of them mean it I'm not trying to say they don't but there's a lot of people who say it and then we'll put up with something else or say It and don't actually buy the equipment. They need to get it and will Take the convenience right the the compromise of convenience to be like well I could try to buy that thing and install it or I could just use the app that's on here and it's pretty close to as good And that's where the genius comes in if Microsoft like Netflix in the early days is everywhere It's on all the platforms. It's on Roku. It's on LG TVs. It's on Sony TVs It's already on iPhones Android Tablets and you're like oh, I can just have this account and play whatever game I want It can be limited. It could be casual. It could be more more advanced. I can use whatever controller I can use a Sony controller. I can use a Microsoft controller instead of the mushy middle. It's the easy choice Right. It's the convenience Trump's fidelity argument that I'm making We'll see Well, we were talking about AR and and what is it good for earlier in the show Amazon has launched a virtual try-on for shoes feature and it's mobile app iOS app That helps you visualize footwear that you might buy and you might think would look good on your feet from the Product page you point your phone's camera towards your feet and then you get a sense of how the shoes would realistically look if your shoe Gazing you have the option to switch colors inside the AR mode You can share some images with friends if I was like hey Tom Hey Justin, do you like these shoes? iOS only as I mentioned although Amazon says the Android is coming soon in the US and Canada initial brands pretty fitness focused You got Adidas, Asics, Lacoste, New Balance, Puma, Reebok, Soccany, Superga No Nike though and no Brooks. Tom. I know you like your Brooks. Brooks is what I wear But but you know you got some brands at least at the beginning also worth noting This won't give you information about how well a shoe is going to fit you That's something else entirely. This is just how would it aesthetically look if you were to wear them? I've been buying Skechers since they rebranded as a shoe for old people with back problems Yeah, and do you care what they look like or just that they already help your back? No, they look fine and they were the shoes that I bought as a child It was a very effective marketing pivot for them I imagine that everybody in our in our within ear shot of this podcast is like I don't care what they look like. I want to know if they fit I want to know if if they if they work I think I think why not both? Yeah You know like I want shoes that are comfortable I like I am well past the era of wearing, you know shoes that make me hate myself But I also would like them to look as nice as possible and some shoes just are more flattering than others Or just fit your body better. This is gonna get you halfway there. It's not if they look good on your feet Yeah, as you ram your toes on the front because they're too small I will say though that Amazon has long ago kind of given their best solution for the fitting problem with their like free returns Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah stuff and and we've talked before in the show about technology that will be able to You know and estimate your fit and and I wouldn't be shocked if Amazon adds that to this down the line If this takes off or just replaces it entirely with something To be honest, I would almost rather go with an AI based on my past purchases of other clothing than yeah I actually want the AI to tell me what looks good, too. Yeah, I'm with you there You should you should just have Dolly the Machine learning dressing. All right, let's check out the mail bag All right, this one comes from Tynas in Cape Town Who says as the same goes the devil is in the details something that has become clear following Mondays WWDC keynote iPad OS finally has a differentiator between the pro-class and the non pro-class devices in iPad OS 16 the m1 chip power devices get the new stage manager feature But the non pro-class doesn't is the cheaper iPad the iPod touch of the future Well, okay, Dennis like yes The cheaper iPad is always the iPod touch of the future because they they always retire the cheapest iPads for the newer iPads We all the iPod exactly But good news. It's not just pros. It's m1 ships and there is an m1 chip in a non pro apple announced stage manager Monday if you don't know it's a multitasking interface and Apple noted as tennis pointed out that It was only going to be available on iPads of an m1 processor Which means the iPad pro twenty one point nine inch fifth gen the iPod pro eleven inch third gen and the fifth gen iPod iPad air Why are they doing this? Apple says it's because stage manner Manager requires the fast memory swap feature that is only available on the m1 It uses storage for RAM in a more efficient way than you could use on an Intel chip And they say stage manager uses a crapload of RAM So they they have enough RAM on a desktop to be able to do it on Intel But maybe not enough on the iPad although we'll see maybe they'll limit it To to m1 max as well But they're saying when you have eight programs running at once on an iPad the a series chips can't handle it the m1 can because of The memory swap feature so at least they tried to explain a technical reason why they're doing this Well, thank you for the the explanation Tom and thanks to everybody who emails us feedback sometimes it's a question Sometimes it's a thought sometimes. It's an idea. We want them all send them our way feedback at daily tech news show Dot com also. Thanks to Justin rubber young for being with us today Justin. Where can people keep up with all that you do? Why are you not able to text 9-1-1 and send them a picture maybe a video of something that's happening? What if I told you that the government approved the plans for this over a decade ago and yet for whatever reason States have drugged their feet that and much more discussed including Taylor Lorenz and Chesa Boudin being recalled from San Francisco on the latest We're not wrong featuring myself Jen briny of the congressional dish and Andrew Heaton of the political orphanage the best cold open in podcasting this week was on that episode Yes, it was it was a colorful one Yeah, if you are if you are a family friendly listener then then understand that the cold open goes Go some places some places on Richard gear that you may not want your kids to listen for people who don't know What a cold open is. It's the first thing that you hear when you play this particular Very beginning before the theme song or saying what show it. Yeah Yeah, well, we also have a couple new bosses to thank Larry and skip just started back in us. Oh, Patriot. Oh, thank you Larry. Thank you skip Larry and skip I don't know if you all know each other, but yeah, I mean it sounds like you're like a great duo already. That's right I Reminder there's a longer version of the show called good day internet rules right in after we finish here on DTNS And it's available at patreon.com Dtns reminder we are live if you can join us live We'd love to have you Monday through Friday for p.m. Eastern 20 hundred UTC you can find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live Tomorrow's Friday and we'll be back doing it all again with Len Peralta and David spark to talk to us about RSA What it all means talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants calm I hope you have enjoyed this program