 Coming up on DTNS Microsoft might open up the Windows Store Facebook's internal PR email and all the new Apple stuff This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday April 20th 2021 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the shows producer Roger change. We have got a packed house today joining us UK associate editor from the Mac Observer Charlotte Henry welcome back. Hello nice quiet slow news day to join you on Yes, exactly We scheduled Charlotte before we even knew that this was happening. So it was quite fortuitous That's how I think we all we also have the host of the snob o s cast the snob o s show including Tech savvy diva nika monford Welcome back glad to be back always glad to be with you guys It was good to hear your voice yesterday on the new teching while black segment on the show Thank you for doing that for us as well Welcome and of course her co-host on snob o s show Terrence Gaines. Welcome back Terrence. Hey, how's it going? How's it going everybody good to have you good to have you? We were just talking about kind of our own personal takes on the Apple stuff like what stuff we might want to get What we're thinking about if you want that wider conversation get good-day internet become a member at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Fitbit announced the fashion-focused Lux Fitness tracker available for pre-order now for $149 and 95 cents although no release date was announced Fitbit claims the Lux offers five days of battery life with a buttonless color OLED touch screen and can monitor heart sleep oxygen saturation and standard fitness activity First Fitbit under the new Google regime, right? PayPal plans to launch a local wallet in China focused on cross-border payments Rather than competing with domestic payment systems in January PayPal became the first foreign firm with 100% ownership of a payments platform in China The Wall Street Journal sources say that discord has ended its talks with three companies including Microsoft about a possible sale Discord prefers to stay independent and is exploring the option of a stock IPO I saw some collective size of relief in our discord about that earlier Venmo added support for four types of cryptocurrency bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash No douche coin. Sorry users cannot yet make purchases with crypto You can just buy sell or hold it using your linked bank account or debit card World design guide guide published details on its annual awards and out at a new HTC VR headset called the Vive Air before it was announced The Vive Air is a wireless headset with breathable quick drying materials aimed for fitness uses That's all the rage with VR these days Components are easy to pull off and wash And HTC told Engadget the design is a concept with elements that you may see in future HTC products as well Vivecon 2021 starts May 11th when we expect we'll hear official details on this headset All right, we have another facebook leaked email, but this one's from facebook to itself. Sarah. What's this about? All right, so dutch outlet data news reports that it received an internal email from facebook detailing its pr response to recent coverage of public user data being scraped and then aggregated by malicious actors It was first sold online and then recently made available for free To be clear, this was data that users had made public themselves But a flaw in a facebook tool made it a lot easier For people to access and then perhaps use for malicious purposes The email about the incident that was dated on april 8th Detailed a long-term press strategy for coverage of data scraping Discussing long-term plans the email said quote We expect more scraping incidents and think it's important to both frame this as a broad industry issue And normalize the fact that this activity happens regularly and quote It proposed follow-up blog posts to detail anti scraping work and provide more transparency saying quote We hope this will help to normalize the fact that this activity is ongoing and avoid criticism that we aren't being transparent About particular incidents and quote So one way to see this is facebook wants to educate the public about what these incidents actually are What people are doing while explaining what it's doing to make it harder to access public data to then be abused Another way you might see it is that facebook cares more about its image than it does about anything else like user data and privacy so Uh, let's go around the horn and get everybody's uh thoughts on this charlotte. We'll start with you What do you think about uh facebook strategy here Look, I think i'm gonna have to go with your last take the more cynical one. This is a company that has Kind of it's regularly gotten a mess over these incidents. At least it's it's probably properly acknowledging How serious they are and how much they concern users but just because For me it would be a far better use of The vast resources that company has to better protect user privacy and data than spend time Trying to mitigate the problems when they go wrong. I think we have all as consumers come to accept that Data privacy incidents happen. We we know that we ever but In you know, i'm thinking back to like the marriott hotel one and stuff that sometimes you're thinking Maybe the company could have done a little bit more to protect me And I would like if facebook put its resources into that instead of a You know a bit of spin and pr Terrence, do you agree with facebook that this is a broad industry issue? Or do you think facebook has unique challenges? Well, so I was just going to say And speak on the fact that they wanted to frame it as a broad industry issue Now, I don't know how that sounds to y'all but to me that sounds like okay, snitch on everybody else Throw everybody else under the bus as well So it's like i'm which one is it are you going to take onus of this and say hey We're working on this we're doing this we're doing that or are you gonna say hey look at them over there? They're doing it too. Which one is it? Yeah Nika, what are your thoughts? I i'm not sure how you feel about facebook these days um I think it's par for the course for facebook and like you said they care more about their image I think we've seen that in the links that facebook went to Uh to have the full page ads about the data privacy that comes in Um in ios 14 and the tracking and framing it as we're looking out for the small guys the small businesses Framing it in a way that it takes a little bit of the the spotlight off them to say see we're we're only bringing this up to help other people When ultimately they brought it up to to help themselves I'll be honest I thought it was going to be worse when I saw the headline and when you're talking about an internal email People are concerned with the image pr wise I I think this was actually fairly tame and and shows that the pr people at facebook always have One one eye on the fact that their emails could be leaked at any time So, you know, I was I was surprised that it was as measured as it was I remember remember those pr and comms people are led by a very Previously very senior politician here in the uk who was used to his emails perhaps being of that, you know You can get freedom of information requests. I think on a lot of government material. So deputy prime minister, right? All right, what about windows? All right, so windows sources windows central sources rather say that microsoft is working on a brand new store app for windows 10 Designed to be more open to both end users and also developers Right now the windows store requires developers to package apps as an msi 6 m6 and use microsoft's update and e-commerce platforms It is somewhat limiting that way the new store reportedly will let devs submit exe or msi packages Also host apps and manage updates on their own cds also permit the use of third party commerce platforms in apps That at least would mean that microsoft wouldn't get a cut of the revenue The verge points out that the security could be handled the same way It is for microsoft's windows package manager, which handles many non-store apps right now package manager uses static analysis sha 256 hash validation and also smart screen the new store may be part of the sun valley overhaul Expected to come to windows later this year Yeah, this this if it bears out Is a total reversal from current app store trends, right? Not taken a cut Letting anybody host their own updates and their own stores. This is microsoft repositioning and saying You know, nobody wants to use our our app store right now because it's such a mess after windows 8 and universal Let's let's just open it up So people will want to use it and users will want to use it because everything they want might be in there You might get chrome and firefox, etc Yeah, I mean I I have to admit I kind of forgot that there was a windows 10 store I'm not using windows 10 regularly But I would still have heard about collapse or or you know new evolution of the store Just you know in in our tech circles, but it's been kind of dead So this seems like a great idea for microsoft. Is anyone else here excited about a revamped windows 10 store? But this could be also be an answer to you know the app store issues apple is going through with epic and You know all the other things for our windows to say, hey, you know draw some attention this way You can do whatever you want on windows store. So, you know, give us some attention, right? Well, it's an interesting test case, isn't it in two massive companies taking a different model You know, we know there's as you say the epic apple cases massive rows between the two companies of the 15 and the 30 take and so on if you know if Microsoft is offering in operating in a different way. It's a really interesting test case Yeah, and it's pretty developer friendly too I I think that that's the big thing is like we they want to repair that relationship They've been doing a lot to repair that relationship and this is another step All right, folks, you need a little more explanation on big tech topics out there like like thunderbolt a lot of talk about thunderbolt today What is it? Well, we just put out a a revised episode about thunderbolt also wi-fi 6 usbc 5g and more check out our related show Know a little more to know a little more about all that and more at know a little more com Let's get into the apple announcements starting with the ipad pro now with the m1 inside and What the top model the 12.9 inch model with a mini led xdr screen 2 terabyte storage option up to 16 gigs of ram Sports the ps5 and xbox controllers Thunderbolt support in that usbc port now. It's not just usbc 5g built in Something called center stage That when you're using the camera will keep you in the center of the view not by moving But just by some ai that centers you up in the in the view screen the 11 inch 799 dollars 12.9 inch with that mini led xdr screen 1099 that's 1099 dollars You can start ordering that april 30th available the second half of may and nika. I know you've uh been thinking Do I want one door one? Yeah, it's been kind of floating around i'm not sure if i'm going to Pull the proverbial trigger or not. Um, I think I have to think on it a little more To see if it's something I want to to go with I've been waiting for a larger screen My quick pro with m1. So we'll we'll see where where I land Yeah, it's pretty much just a faster processor at a nicer screen, right Basically And same price for the 11 inch, but you don't get the nicer screen there You have to you have to pay a little extra now Uh up 100 dollars for the 12.9 inch version of this But the 12.9 for me is just too big I have small hands It's it's too big for me to to use the way I currently use my ipad. So That's a good point. Uh, I I haven't used an ipad in years Um, I used to use one really regularly and once the iphone started getting bigger I don't know. I just kind of stopped using the last ipad. I had was just 10 inches So 12.9, you know, I say, oh, that's the nicer screen. That's the one that I want. I mean hypothetically, I don't have Don't have the finances to get any of these things we're about to talk about but but I but I really like the idea of the ipad pro But it it to me even though I know it's not running mac os It it it's more of a laptop than anything I've ever seen before from apple, especially with that m1 chip Yeah, that's all to say that's the one thing holding it back is you can't download apps traditionally Like you would on a regular desktop or laptop And that's probably the one thing that they're purposely possibly holding it back to differentiate from a traditional macbook because You can outfit a 12.9 inch Uh ipad pro with a fancy keyboard and it has all the usbc So you can connect the third party 4k 6k display to it, you know What's it stopping to replace completely a macbook air? Well, obviously not not having a mac os So it'd be interesting to see how people go for this, you know, depending on all the app app support Which of course they brought out all the photo shops and they brought out all the gamers But still that one thing is can I install like traditional apps on it or do I have to go through an app store? But it's so pretty It's very pretty Is I mean I was watching it going I don't I've got an ipad I use for reading and a bit of writing I don't need I don't need it. Oh my god. It's so quick and it's got two terabytes of memory I was really surprised with that extra storage too. I was like I got it my laptop. Yeah. No, I know that's why it's like really confusing It's like are they trying to say it's a laptop replacement But not but when you give it two terabytes of storage with a 19 with a 12.9 inch screen and the The pro x dr. I mean it's kind of like giving me, you know, laptop replacement vibes Yeah, I I'm ready to take bets on how fast someone hacks it to run mac os Speaking of something that's pretty iMac with an m1 chip in seven colors green yellow orange red purple blue and white thin because they Replaced the bulky thermal system with two small fans. So it's like It doesn't bulge out in the back anymore 24 inch display that they say is just a tiny bit larger than the frame of the 21.5 inch The top model gets ethered at through the power adapter because the power adapter has got a thunderbolt in it Now with a 1080p camera works better in low light for usb-c ports on the top model two of which are thunderbolt Support spatial audio from dolby atmos touch id on some of the magic keyboards depending on how you configure it Also got some shortcuts in there The keyboards can match the color of the iMac new mouse and touchpad Also in colors that match the ipad starting at $1,299 For a choice of four colors eight gigs of memory 256 gig solid state drive and two Thunderbolt ports no touch id keyboard 1499 dollars Get you an eight core gpu. That's one more core than in the 1299 Two extra usb-c ports magic keyboard with touch id and that ethernet in the power adapter They are available for order april 30th and shipping in the second half of may and they're very also very nice looking Machines here. They're gorgeous. They're few machines. I'm pleased apple is finally starting to put proper cameras Into its devices. This was sorry. It's non iphone devices. Let's be clear. That's not fair. Yeah, right to dismiss the iphone cameras But it's really nice to see that. I'm root if it was a 27 inch screen we'd be in shut up and take my money territory I think the only spatial audio effect of it as well That's coming to you know, essentially a desktop machine. So I thought that was pretty pretty interesting as well I remember when the the first iMacs, you know, we're hitting college dorms and at the time I was not a Mac person and I remember thinking You know, all these colors, you know, it's such a, you know, it's just like it's very gimmicky And you know, they they sold a lot of those iMacs And then they became streamlined over the years and the colors went away and colors are back And I have to admit I was one of those people who was like, oh the teal Oh the red But and I'm not trying to downplay the fact that apple can repackage something and give it a color and everyone says I need that color, but most of the color will be on the back, right? Yes, you get some color looking at you most people not everybody Are going to have a computer up against a wall. So some of that color is a little bit lost, but I get why Uh, they got so much attention. I also I don't totally know how they got the thing so darn thin But when you look at it from the side the foot is kind of the same size So yes thin is cool, but you're still kind of taking up the same amount of space when you're on a desk Well, I was just going to say about the color sarah. You don't discount the guy in starbucks It brings his iMac in so you got to look out for that too I'm sure he will But that that's what that's marketed for. Is that what you're saying? And then you go, oh, you're the one who got the yellow. I was wondering All right, a few other things here the air tags are finally here You can personalize them with an engraving, you know, like I saw some some Korean letters and some emojis Any iphone with a u1 chip can be used to find the air tag. It uses ultra wideband Has a user replaceable battery something you can go buy at a 7 11 Rotating identifiers are not shared with apple So there there did a lot to try to explain that they're protecting the privacy They're not going to get any of this data $29 for a single air tag or a pack of four for $99 Order on this friday april 23rd at 5 a.m. Shipping april 30th Now if you want to attach them to something they will also sell you some accessories A polyurethane loop cost 29 bucks a leather loop 39 bucks leather key ring holder 35 bucks Or of course what we're all saving up for the air mezz key chain ring $349 Air mezz luggage tag 449 and the air mezz bag charm $299 or I don't know terence and I were talking about maybe we just get that belkin one that's in the store for 13 bucks That seems like a better deal. Well, you know, they they they rolled out apple cash apple card family So now you can put that on the the installment plan. So there you go Your whole family gets it that's what it's for But everyone in the family and I'm as tag and then that's it If you use your apple card, you get cash back and you get more cash back if you spend that much money You see it now you see it the vid is all coming together now All kidding aside though 29 bucks for an air tag. It's not bad, right? Not bad at all. Not bad No, if you don't want any of the accessory touch it touch it to stuff. No Yeah, and and it it's going to compete with tile terence. I know you have tile I know you're saying you're going to try this you're going to do a little comparison Well, definitely and probably the one thing that's going to push me over to apple is the fact that my tile Keychain holder that also organizes my keys I have to charge it and if I don't forget to charge it then the tile portion where it can locate my keys It's kind of pointless. Well with the air tags with the what year long lasting Replaceable battery then I don't have to worry about it for an entire year And then just have to pony up the extra money to get a replacement battery when I'm assuming There's a low battery indicator. I'm I wouldn't I'm I'm assuming the phone will tell you like hey the battery's getting low Right, right, but what I saw was interesting was how precise you can use your iPhone actually locate this device It actually shows like arrows that kind of points you to you know, what side of the room it's on So I thought that was actually cool. That's something that tile currently does not do it just pings and gives you like a Approximate location versus this is yeah Because if I if I have it right tile is using sort of a radio delay system But it's not ultra wideband apple using ultra wideband that does give you a lot more precision We covered that on know a little more if you want to find out more about how that works But it seems like air tags is be the one that most people who have iPhones anyway are probably going to dip in and buy There's also the apple tv 4k. It's got an h12 bionic processor So it can do a a little bit more a little more powerful processor including hdr in high frame rate It can even do hdr in high frame rate over airplay They have a nifty trick where you can use an iphone Hold it up to your tv and it will communicate with the apple tv to adjust the picture quality on the apple tv So you're not to adjust it on your television. It'll it'll color balance for you there But the thing everybody's talking about is the new remote design It looks like the second generation apple tv remote. It's silver with black buttons Click pad that is touch enabled that outer ring can be can be kind of touched in a circular motion for scrubbing Has a power button and a mute button the seributton got moved to the side I can already hear people complaining about hitting the seributton all the time when they pick this thing up The apple tv 4k 179 dollars for the 32 gig version 199 dollars for the 64 gig version coming april 30th Available for shipping in the second half of may so you can order it on april 30th shipping second half of may But if you're like already have an apple tv, can I just get the remote? Yes, you can buy the remote separately for $59 Which is more than a chromecast or many rocus, but you can do it if the apple event would have been Absolutely nothing except hey, we just wanted to let you all know that we're getting a new apple tv remote. I would have been happy I would have been happy I mean and it's it's you look at the remote and you're like, okay They made some changes the biggest change is that when you you know when you're not looking straight at it You feel on the bottom. Oh, this is where the buttons aren't Instead of it being exactly the same on the top and bottom and the buttons in the middle It's going to change my life. I don't need to I will not complain about the apple tv any longer as I have for many years. It's very excited about that I have the pleasure of working with some very calm very sensible very balanced lovely people at the mac observer There's very few things that anger my colleagues One of them tends to be this old apple tv remote It's one of the things that gets many of them animated and I think there'll be a lot of people who are excited I thought it was also noticeable that again buried in one of the apple press releases Think for 149 dollars. You can get an hd apple tv with the new remote That's what was interesting. Maybe is a way of kind of clearing house for the hd Apple tv They're they're basically don't want to continue to anger people by selling the old remote is what that is what that tells Yeah, yeah And they also showed us a ted lasso trailer and announced apple tv plus is getting a new season of ted lasso july 23rd Apple card family plan your spouse and your partners can now share and merge credit lines with equal rights and equal credit building Billing there there had been Some complaints that that women were not getting the same credit limit on the apple card as as men So this is an attempt to rectify that you can also have your entire family on a card Everybody 13 plus any and do some parental limits Podcast is getting a a redesign. They're adding something called channels that you can subscribe to that'll have multiple podcasts in it And subscriptions so that you can pay certain podcasts for ad-free early access, etc Is something we do through patreon apple is going to offer that through their apple podcasting app directly and a purple iphone 12 Come in april 30th the fastest iphone announcement they've ever had ever Yeah, so quick I've been very excited by the ted lasso trailer though. It's been a quite frantic 24 36 hours in the world of soccer and we all needed a bit of ted lasso Yeah, you got a row. What does ted lasso think of the rogue league of the super? I'd like to go everyone on the table and calm everyone down I was I was surprised. I mean, I know it's just a color, but Uh, the iphone 12 saying like all right flashy purple. Yay. Willy wonka song Okay, we're done It was it almost seems like it I don't know Maybe should have been part of an announcement last september and the purple color just wasn't ready and so they're like I just threw it in the april announcement. Yeah I agree. It was like a blip No, sorry. I just say the whole thing felt a bit breathless. Didn't it particularly at the beginning Yeah, deca what were you gonna say? No, I was just saying, you know, it was like a blip and I agree with charlotte the way they went through You know the color this What apple card and the way they went through the podcast? I mean, he was just You know going through those things like he didn't have any time left on this planet And I was like, wow, what's the what's the rush in it? It kind of made me excited because I was like they're trying to get this out of the way because they have some really beefy stuff to show us, you know, the rest of the time, but Um, yeah, it did feel rushed to me at the very beginning for sure I'm telling you they're super proud of that Ted Lasso. They played that entire trailer They really could have used some of that time and maybe gone into some details about how Intricate they used to make this purple color iphone 12. Yeah, they also needed to save time for They needed to save time for tim cook parachuting into the apple campus and right Placing an m1 chip in the ipad. All right. Uh, let's check out the mailbag sarah. What do we got? All right. So thank you to james c smith for pointing us to an article on the houston chronicle Which quotes the woodlands fire chief palmer buck On the fire after a tesla accident that we discussed yesterday with our guest Tim stevens. So yesterday we noted that harris county constable mark herman said that it took 30 000 gallons of water To extinguish the car fire and our subsequent conversation mentioned It supposedly took four hours to extinguish kind of a big deal Chief buck told the chronicle it took two to three minutes to get the fire under control adding After that it was simply cooling the car as the batteries continued to have a chain reaction due to damage Buck said that the fire was an example of how firefighters need to keep up with technology Now bodie of the kilowatt podcast wrote in and said i'm a firefighter and one of the biggest issues I see with ev fires. That's kind of like the tesla story We were talking about yesterday buck says uh bodie says then involve the battery is getting the crews back in service Water isn't necessarily an issue the time on scene is the issue We can't commit crews for 24 to 36 hours to ensure that the battery isn't going to reignite It's not a good use of their time They need to return to service so they can take calls as evs become more common fire departments and towing companies Are going to need to adapt to overcome these issues a fire department in the netherlands filled a dumpster up with water and submerged a bmw i8 to prevent thermal runaway bridge hill sells or it will be selling an ev fire blanket That basically smothers the fire allowing it to cool down below or not reach thermal runaway temperatures I have no idea if it works, but it's pretty cool Bodie says obviously the two solutions i gave are impractical But it's an example of how departments and companies are thinking outside the box. Yeah, no that that's good stuff We also still don't know if uh that car actually did have um autopilot autopilot on elan musk has tweeted that it didn't But the the county officials have said well if he knows that we'd like him to To share the info With us, but it very well may not have And and my opinion on this hasn't changed, which is I think these were two people that We're we're doing something risky and dumb And and they they shouldn't have and it is it is on them Sadly for that And I think the the fire aspect of this is is an important takeaway and this this is not a tesla specific thing It's it's all electric vehicles there Also, a few follow-ups here air tag is splash dust and water resistant We have confirmed uh according to imor that apple will take a 30 cut of podcast subscriptions I don't think anyone's shocked by that, but we know it for sure I believe that's just in the first year of the podcast Which would be consistent with their subscription stuff then it goes down to 15 percent. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay That makes sense. Uh, so yeah, so it's consistent with what they do in the app store already Well, thanks to james and thanks to bodi for writing in and giving us a little bit more of that ev battery context If you have more context of anything that we talk about in a show questions about anything We talk about on the show or might talk about in a future show feedback at daily tech news show.com is where to send that email Thank you Also, big shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels today They include logan larson dan voiles and david mosher Also, thanks to our brand new boss david louisa who just started backing us on patreon Good to have you david. Thank you to our new boss And thank you to our panel of guests today charlotte. We'll start with you. Where can people keep up with your work? Thanks so much. Yes, you can find me at charlotte ahenry on the twitters And my book not buying it on fake news is available on amazon And i'm now hosting a show for the mac observable media plus where we look at the world of digital media And once I even let some guy called tom there it on so yeah, that was fun. I enjoyed that episode Uh, nika monford one half of snobo west podcast. Where can people keep up with your work? I'm at tex avidiva across all platforms and of course, um, we are at snobo west cast on social media as well And you'll also hear nika more regularly on this show Giving us cool folks in the tech industry teching. Well black our newest segment. You heard her voice yesterday So nice to see you here today tarence gains the other half of snobo west. Where can people keep up with you? Sure, you can find me all over the Interwebs on the socials at brother tech b r o t h a t e c h And when i'm not doing that I am like you said one half of the snobo s cast like nika mentioned You can find us on twitter and socials at snobo west cast and you can write us on the web at snobo west cast dot com Thank you charlotte nika and tarence for being with us. It was a fun tuesday in the tech world folks We are live monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live back tomorrow with scott johnson talk to you that This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com Hope you have enjoyed this program