 This 10th year of Daily Techno Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Ole'em Bones, Mike Aikens, Norm Physikas, and our new patron, William! On this episode of DTNS, Microsoft introduces new hardware without Penis Panay. Apple's leather alternative, Fine Woven, is not getting rave reviews, and allow the robot to help you at Las Vegas' new Sphere Event Center. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 21, 2023, from Studio Mars. I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. And from your nation's capital, your boy, be Chris Ashley. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Chris Ashley, are you from the nation's capital, or are you from the DMV? Well, they're one and the same. Are they? They seem to be our love of Virginia. Yeah. See, I don't know, I don't know. People who live over there have feelings about these sorts of things. Yeah, no. There's definitely a lot of feelings because there's certain areas that are not considered to be part of DMV, even though they're in Maryland, Virginia, or TC, and they get real bad out of shape. Like, why are we not included? Well, we all are a team on the show today. So let's talk about some tech starting with the quick hits. The Wall Street Journal sources say that Apple spent billions of dollars developing a new modem chip for the new iPhone 15 lineup in an effort to cut ties with chip maker Qualcomm. However, the new chip reportedly was slow, prone to overheating, and its circuit board was so big it would have taken up half of an iPhone, making it kind of impossible to use. Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly said in 2018 to design and build a modem chip to his team. Challenges poor communication and manager splits over how design, the design of those chips rather than by them caused delays and setbacks, leading to unrealistic goals and unmet deadlines. Basically, the project was shelved. Cisco, a leading manufacturer of networking equipment and software and services vendor has agreed to buy cybersecurity firms Splunk for $28 billion in its biggest ever deal up to its biggest deal to this point. And it wants to do this to capitalize on the rising use of artificial intelligence. Combine Cisco and Splunk will become one of the world's largest software companies and will accelerate Cisco's business transformation to more recurring revenue, a joint statement said. Cisco offered $157 in cash for each share of Splunk representing a 31% premium on the company's last closing price. If you are a parent of a child who may have made some in-app purchases in Fortnite without your permission or even with your permission but you regret the decision, you can now claim a refund. This follows a $245 million settlement which was finalized back in March after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission accused Fortnite developer Epic Games of tricking users into making unwanted purchases. The deadline to apply for a refund is January 7th, 2024 and filers have to be at least 18 years of age. So, if you're a parent, leave a guardian or someone else who has experienced this, now is the time. The 10-day MGM resorts computer shutdown which started two Sundays ago due to a cyber attack that affected hotel and restaurant reservations, credit card processing, room keys and more has come to an end. Experts are pleased that all of our hotels and casinos are operating normally the Las Vegas-based company posted on X. Experts said the attacks exposed critical cybersecurity weaknesses at MGM and Caesars who were also hacked but paid a $15 million ransom to have its systems restored. YouTube today announced a couple things. First, dream screen which is the new feature coming to its short form video platform called Shorts that will let users create an AI-generated video or image background just by typing in what they want to see. At the company's live event made on YouTube Thursday morning, YouTube CEO Neil Mohan used the example of a panda drinking coffee and then the image appeared on screen. They probably went through that a couple of times before the announcement but anyway. YouTube also announced AI creator tools to find music for videos and dubs to its creator music feature which the company announced last year. Experts can now, could already use creator music to search for songs or a specific artist or a music genre that they wanted to use in a video. Now they'll be able to get that with a little help from AI Friends and if you get the Beatles reference, thank you in advance. So before we get into Microsoft's big hardware announcements, let's spend just a little more time on our ongoing saga, accessories that people do not like. Today, that category belongs to Apple's new fine woven iPhone cases and accessories. In the words of the Verge, Apple's new fine woven iPhone cases and accessories are bad. Like really bad. I've been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles, picking them up, setting them down, petting them. Seven days later, I still can't make sense of them and I have no other choice but to say out loud, fine works are very fine. I should say fine woven is very bad. I mean, somebody, somebody worked on fine woven. Yeah. Oh, damning words from the Verge. OK, so just a reminder, if you're kind of confused, fine woven is Apple's new fabric option that you'll find on iPhone 15 cases, air tag holders, MagSafe wallets, Apple Watch bands, replacing leather, which the company said at its iPhone event just last week, it would no longer use. Apple said we're done with leather. Apple calls fine woven a luxurious and durable micro twill. It costs $59 for an iPhone case, $35 for an air tag holder, $99 for an Apple Watch band. It is the same price as leather. So expectations were high, right? At least, you know, you would assume that it would be comparable to what you were interested in. Not everybody hates it, but boy, do a lot of people hate it. Definitely getting a lot of backlash from folks who think luxurious is not the word you would use for this price. Now, Apple always gets attention for a mess. Sounds like this might be a mess to a lot of people. But let's all think about the last accessory that we bought that kind of sucked. Yeah, I'll go first because it took a second for me because I was like, I know I bought something that I absolutely in the end didn't like. And I remember I was trying to, you know, reduce some of the bulk on my head when I was doing the podcast. And I was looking at a Bluetooth transmitter that would hook into the stereo, I mean, to the mixer and then into my ear. And I'm telling you, I might as well had put the mixer on top of my head as close as I had to be to the transmitter for this thing to work. It was a hot mess. It just just sounded terrible. It was the delay on it was probably a good full two, three seconds up between the audio. So it was just absolutely such a disappointment. I had such high hopes for this thing. So that's probably my biggest disappointment from an accessory standpoint. Rob, do you have do you have that particular mess that stands out? I do. And this didn't affect me directly, but it affected my daughter. So my daughter is a big Apple user. I've been getting her MacBooks since I believe she's like in the seventh or eighth grade. So a few years ago, I bought her the an Apple mouse and it was cute. It was really, really nice looking and everything. But ergonomically, when you plugged it in to charge it up, when you plug the USB cord into it, you couldn't use the mouse anymore. So I just remember, you know, she's got this brand new mouse. She's working on a paper for school and she comes to me and other pet. Dad, my mouse is dead. I can't charge it up. I need to use your computer. I need to use your mouse. And I'm like, we'll just plug it in. You just to be able to use it like you can't when you plug it in, you physically can't slide the mouse anymore. And that's always stuck with me. I thought that, well, that was a probably a big miss from an Apple standpoint, because why would you actually put the charging port at the bottom of the mouse where you can no longer use it while it's charging up? I will say this is not one product specifically, but I will say of a product line that I've had the most problems with Amazon basics. Really? Oh, yes. Interesting. I cannot tell you how many times I and and maybe it's what I'm buying. Right. You know, I'm frequently buying like Ethernet to USB or Ethernet to USB to, you know, or, you know, a variety of kind of daisy chain things when I run out of ports on my Mac many kind of thing, you know, looking at my situation here. That stuff, I cannot tell you how many times someone else has been like, I don't know what's wrong. Everything was fine until today. And I'm like, did you buy it from Amazon basics? Yeah. Yeah, that's what happened. I don't know. I don't know why, you know, maybe bad batches. That stuff happens to absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, that that that would be my, you know, I proceed with caution. Anytime I either buy something like that, even though it's cheaper or or or tell somebody else to buy something like that because it's cheaper. I have gone through two of the of their cords from my camera. But that was I'm talking the first one up to my fault. And then we'll see what happens on this one. And the only other thing that I have, which has actually held up well, is their their their monitor arm seems to be holding up pretty well so far. Although I'm starting to see where my new monitor is a little bit heavy for. Well, if you want to stay up to date in the fast moving world, artificial intelligence, we definitely talk about that a lot on DTNS. But you know who else does it really well? The show AI named this show. It launched during DTNS Experiment Week back in August. And it's great. Each week, Tristan Juntra and Teja Custody wade through the hype and the doomsdaying to keep you informed about all the latest in AI news and how it can affect your life for the better. Catch it at AI named the show dot com. All right, let's talk about Microsoft because Microsoft had a hardware event today in New York City unveiling quite a few things. But let's start with its latest convertible laptop, the Surface Laptop Studio 2. Keeps the previous 14.4 inch display, has some new bells and whistles, though, for two thousand dollars to start. It runs on Intel's i7-H class 13th gen chips. Pricier versions have an NVIDIA RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 GPU inside. Also has an Intel neural processing unit, also known as NPU, which Microsoft Microsoft says is the first Intel NPU in a Windows computer up to two terabytes of storage, 64 gigs of RAM. If you upgrade also has two USB-C ports, one USB-A port. A micro SD card reader. People always love those and the Surface Slim pen too. All right, who's buying this? So if I was in the market for a laptop, I'd probably look at this one because actually I had this serve. I've had a ton of surface devices. I had the original Surface Pro. I had the Surface Pro laptop. The one thing I would have to double check on on them is that I had a consistent issue with heat and to the point where they warranty was great. So they replaced it, but the battery was behind the monitor and it got just started getting so hot that it started to explode and separate the screen from there. But other than that, they replaced it. I had it on two different machines. But other than that, I mean, everything about this thing was awesome. And so this one looks really cool. I always I like the way that the monitor kind of flips down with the with the hinge system, like half of the monitor is the hinge system. That that looked really slick too. So I would if I was looking at a new laptop, I would definitely be taking a look at this bad boy. Yeah, these are nice looking laptops and they started 2000, which doesn't sound that bad. But when you start configuring these bad boys up, they can they can get expensive pretty quick. So don't don't think you're getting this. It's like some significant discount as to a comparable MacBook Pro, per se, you aren't. They these things are not inexpensive gaming laptop, right? Yeah, this is a gaming laptop. So it's like, you know, it's it's got a lot of hardware in it. So it's going to cost. But like I said, it's not, you know, it's no longer are we in the days of when you can buy a Mac or buy, you know, two PCs for the price you can buy a Mac. This is this is well priced. Yeah. Is anybody still following for that? The starts at price. The what we also known as the Okie Doke. All the Okie Doke. I mean, I don't listen. The only time that this actually gets me is when I am in the market for a new smartphone, you know, I'm not a user. So, you know, but it but it's all the same. It's like starting at you go to grand. Well, OK, all right. But like, what's the laptop that you really want more like 35? Right, right. But I wouldn't go that high. I but man, I love the way that this thing looks. And I like the way they had actually sculpted the bottom because you see that it actually is almost like a bezel, which which I'm believing because it looks like there is a lot of vents there that they change the way this works to kind of address the heat things that you would see on this bad boy. So that's what when I was looking at it. That's what I was looking for is to see what changes they made because it's to the overall to the outside of it. So some other cool news that came out of Microsoft today was that they announced a unified version of its AI companion co-pilot experience that will be built in the windows 11. And as the company says, seamlessly available across all the apps and experiences you use most, including Office 365, Windows, the Edge browser and Bing. Microsoft Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yousef Mehdi described co-pilot as a handshake between you and technology available when you need it and out of the way when you don't. I love that way of describing like, hey, if you don't want AI, we're not going to make you use it. But it's built into everything that you might want to use it for. I think that's actually a pretty good strategy, you know, for the company for everyone's who's sort of like, well, how is this going to help me? I, you know, I'm in that camp of I still don't really know how all of this helps me day to day. But I like the opportunity to have it, you know, at the ready, just in case. Yeah. So when I was watching this and I always approach a lot of these announcements with the OK, this is a huge gimmick. But one of their examples actually resonated with me. And that was the summary email one because I have definitely been a part of coming in late to an email chain. That's like six or seven long emails deep. And, you know, when you're like trying to catch up and to figure out what's going on so you know how to make a decision to move forward, having the ability to use the AI to say, hey, summarize this email for me and give me the key points so that you can quickly get up to speed on a topic that, you know, may require a pretty precise response. So that is when I started, I took a step back and started looking at it like, OK, now that that is something that would definitely resonate and work for me. So then translating in that in the personal life, like where you're trying to maybe start a new business or, you know, learn a new topic and you've taken some notes down, being able to tell the AI is, hey, summarize what I just wrote down and spit it back to me so you can so you can kind of get it ingrained in both, you know, pretty, pretty significant use cases as far as I'm concerned. So this is kind of really turned out to be rather interesting to me. Yeah, I fully expected this for no other reason than, you know, Google just recently announced that Bard is now part of Gmail and, you know, and it's Google Docs and Google Drive applications. And not that Microsoft just started working on this, but you knew that they had to do something to make sure that they're not going to be losing pace to their biggest competitor. So so all of this AI in their products makes absolute sense to me. Yeah, I haven't messed around with it. I've been hesitant to, but I may start now. I just feel like I can't find the use case where I, you know, wake up and say, ah, thank God for AI. I kind of just, I'm still just, I'm like, humans do human things, especially for what we're doing right now. I'm not sure that AI can do my work for me, but if you do have thoughts on that, we always like to hear them feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Oh, but that's not all everybody. Microsoft also announced the Surface Hub 3. That's the big one that you see in big office conference rooms. Now supporting a smart rotation and portrait mode, letting users physically rotate the screen to a vertical orientation if they so desire, while the layout updates automatically. We've got two sizes to choose from 50 or 85 inches. So these are big designed again for conference rooms. Or, yeah, I don't know, some sort of replacement for a TV and a monitor. If you have that sort of situation, the Surface Hub 3 runs Microsoft Teams on Windows will integrate co-pilot in the future as well. So that's all kind of fun. And if you're saying, sounds great, what's the price? It's $9,000. Yeah, definitely clearly for business applications. So I have personally have actually had the opportunity to use use this multiple times and I'll be honest with you. It's actually pretty awesome that it hasn't integrated that too. Yeah, that the integrated camera that it has that actually sits on the desk and then can, you know, throw it follows the speaker around the room. That was pretty cool. You know, the way you can just click directly on the screen on some of them and, you know, and facilitate, you know, quick taking quick notes on maybe you're on a planning session. They're actually pretty cool. Now, it's not obviously not practical for a regular person, but the only thing is is the landscape support. I'm like, unless you plan on permanently leaving it that way. I mean, it is a massive, massive screen. And it's obviously what's so much built into a lot heavier than just a regular TV screen, so that's kind of interesting to me that they did that. I mean, I suppose if you were, let's say, you know, we're post pandemic, but teams are remote to the point where something like this could work really well in a conference room. If you were going through a variety of slides, for example, leaked Microsoft slides that the FTC got a handle of, you know, maybe they look better in portrait or landscape mode. It's kind of nice to have the option, right? Oh, yeah, the option there is pretty good. And when I hear about it, I think it's kind of, you know, when I hear something like that, like a feature that's like portrait or landscape, I'm envisioning a active rotation of a screen, even though I suspect that it was just like maybe like a kiosk mode, you're signing somebody up or something. Yeah, you're more leaving it in that direction. But I though, you know, so that's just the way my brain works. What do you think, Rob? I see this being used to play massive and epic battles of tic-tac-toe in conference room by people. Don't hate that idea. But do you know there's more? Microsoft announced more. So for those of you that are straight up looking for a thin as possible laptop, that isn't $9,000. Microsoft unveiled the Surface Laptop Go 3, which the company says will run up to 15 hours on a single charge. The Go 3 has a 12.4 inch touchscreen with a 3 to 2 ratio, a resolution of 1536 by 1024 and 320 nits of brightness. Perhaps more importantly, Microsoft claims it's 88 percent faster than the original model with a 12 gen Intel Core i5 CPU and Intel Iris Z graphics with up to 16 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM and 256 gigs of storage 512 in the commercial version. Other fun specs include a 720 PhD front facing camera, fingerprint power button, Dolby Audio, a USB-C 3.2 port, a USB-A 3.1 port, a three and a half millimeter headphone jack and a surface connect port, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 rounds this out. You can get this on October 3rd for $799. I'm actually really interested in this one. Yeah, no kidding. This is the price of not even the most expensive iPad Pro. This is like the low end or middle range iPad Pro. And this is a full functioning laptop that is also a full functioning tablet. So I'm I'm I'm really interested in this particular device. Yeah, one interesting thing that I caught that they did is they added the fingerprint reader to the to the power button. And the reason why I find that to be significant is because I as a person who docks my laptops all the time, I don't get to use the camera for facial recognition for login. So being able to just put I can access the keyboard by reaching underneath my table here and being able to log in and use that. Well, I like that they added that piece in there. And this thing looks great. I'm a fan of the lap, the the goal line. I have two regular surface goals as well and was looking at getting the laptop from my daughter before we just but they didn't have it in stock. So we had to get something quick for school. Yeah, I mean, for this for this price and everything that's, you know, built into the price, you know, in the in the stock model, so to speak. This is nice. I it's it's real nice. I I I would like one. I would, yeah. Yeah, this looks really good. And, you know, I don't know if any of you have ever owned a surface, but very sleek devices. They just look good. They feel good, always been happy with the ones that I've had. Yeah, this is a really keen device for eight hundred bucks. You know, I mean, just the base model eight hundred is a really nice eight hundred dollar laptop slash slash tablet. So this is a good one. But there's more. So just a few days before the hardware event, Microsoft Chief Product Officer Penos Penae announced that he was leaving Microsoft and the timing seems significant. We now know that Penae is leaving Microsoft for Amazon and insider sources say this was due to recent budget and staff cuts, canceled products and potential reorganization in his unit at Microsoft. Penae reportedly was unhappy with the recent changes in the Windows Plus devices division and the move to Amazon was not unexpected. So here's what's really interesting about this. He's moving over to Amazon. I believe the the division there is lab one twenty six. That's where they make like the Kindle where they make the Amazon Echo. He's moving there because they are actually, you know, it's been reported that those employees are unhappy a little bit disgruntled because of the cuts that have been happening there. The products that have been slashed that have been happening there. So they're bringing him in to try to turn this all around. And my gut tells me if he does anything at Amazon like what he did with surface in about two and a half, three years, Amazon will be cooking with gas with their products division. I hope so. I mean, as somebody who's very much in the Amazon ecosystem as far as the smart home and smart devices in general, I, yeah, it's kind of funny. You know, we we've been hearing for the better part of two years. Like, you know, the whole smart, you know, a name, you know, who I'm talking about, you know, Amazon had hoped for more, but, you know, people just keep asking her what the weather is and not using all the features that, you know, that was supposed to be part of, you know, the modern lifestyle going forward for a it sounds like quite beloved person who's been at Microsoft and certainly a surface evangelist. Pane to come to Amazon. This is obviously been the works. It's not like he just quit the job, quit Microsoft two days ago. But it's a pretty big deal. And I wonder what really, I mean, I wonder what it says for Microsoft. But more importantly, I wonder what it says for Amazon to to to spark a little life into this whole thing. Yeah, for sure. This is definitely, in my opinion, a huge loss for Microsoft. Because I, you know, I watched the original event and while I was intrigued, it was the passion and the excitement that Panos Pane had for launching the product. I mean, this cat skateboarded on a surface into the into the announcement. So there you go. And I can promise you that I've, you know, I've watched maybe one or two Amazon events, never once was I ever seen anything that I was like, oh, I'm excited. I got to check that out at the very least and most likely purchase it. So just even if he brings that aspect to the table and he will probably get that cashier at least automatically for the first event that he's a part of launching where he'll bring more eyeballs on just because he knows how to talk about one, they're already going to get some wins off of that. So I don't know how it always surprises me when companies let, you know, solid talent go out the door. But, you know, sometimes they just, you know, they just get a little bit ahead of themselves. I think sometimes the companies have no choice. They they wrote it in the sand for themselves. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Speaking of the sands, actually not, but in the general vicinity, the MSG sphere in Las Vegas, if you haven't heard of it, it's a big old sphere. It sounds exactly what it sounds like. It has unveiled a robot called aura, a humanoid robot that will permanently live in the arena when the arena launches later this month. Arena is for events, concerts, you know, a variety of things where you're inside truly a very large sphere. In fact, five aura robots will greet guests and be on hand to answer questions like how to get somewhere within the sphere or has a voice story and recognition and can focus on one person speaking directly in front of it at a time, even if there are a bunch of people around and uses AI advances as it learns more about humans through guest interactions, which the company says will roll out slowly. Human lab technicians will be on hand as well. That's not creepy at all. I mean, in the slightest, I mean, I don't know. We talked about this a little bit on GDI the other day. I think the whole Vegas thing is the right place to try out things like this. I yeah, I would agree with you there here. But if one of them looks up and says run, it's a wrap, we're done. Yeah. Or if you see a bunch of them start heading for like a was it a storage storage units off off in the background? You see all the robots running for storage. Yeah, you know, you're in trouble. Yeah, I don't know. It's it'll be it'll be interesting to see how people who actually interact with the robot either say, this is the best or this is not. And yeah, yeah, report back to us. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Chris, Ashley, report back to the show as soon as possible because we love having you in the meantime, let folks know where they can keep up with your work. You can definitely check us out on a barbecue and tech at barbecue and tech and barbecue and tech.com. We had some really cool recipes and smoke smoking going on this past week. And then, of course, me, Rob and Mr. Rod Simmons doing our best to talk tech on SMR podcast to two places. You can check us out for sure. Yeah, I will actually go ahead and do this is the first time since Chris has known me, I think we met in 2007 or eight. Thank you for coming on the show. I know he's recording it and it will be used in a clip at some point because that never happened. I was you heard it here, people. Rob thanked Chris. I did thank him. But you know what, folks, stick around, patrons stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet, where Wired's Megan attempts to break down if captures are more about making humans behave like bots or less about filtering bots by testing it for human. Oh, God, I love a cap shot reminder, everybody, whether you're a robot or a human, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday because we do it live. 4 p.m. Eastern 20 hundred UTC is where it all goes down. Find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We are back tomorrow with Shannon Morris joining us. Don't miss it. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com. Primer Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.