 Coming up on DTNS Google AI can call your stylist for you. Microsoft wants better AI data for accessibility uses and there's something else molecular computing. All right, new iPhones. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, October 13th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from the increasingly darker forests of Finland, I'm Patrick Beja. I'm the show's producer, Roger Shane. And joining us, the folks from Snob OS are here today, Nika Monford. Welcome back. Hello. And Terrence Gaines. How's it going? Hey, how's it going, everybody? We've got some good Apple news to dig into. We were actually talking about clubbing on the day internet, though. So if you want that end of the conversation, become a member of patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. One plus co-founder Carl Pei has left the company. Pei co-founded One Plus with CEO Pete Lau in December of 2013. Emily Dai, who runs One Plus's India operations, will take over for Pei, leading the One Plus Nord team. Tech crunch sources say that Pei will start his own venture. TBD on that one, but One Plus will launch the One Plus AT later this week. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has rejected Foxconn's application for tax subsidies on the grounds that it has not built the large LCD fabrication facility described in its contract. It built a factory. It was a smaller factory that does different things. The Verge obtained documents that show Wisconsin and Foxconn attempted to renegotiate that contract in July, but the settlement period expired without a new agreement. Facebook Messenger is adding a slew of new features that announced in September, including support for chat themes, custom reactions, selfie stickers, and vanish mode. Messenger users will also get cross-app communication with Instagram automatically rolling out soon to users across North America with other regions to follow. A new Messenger logo includes shades of purple and pink from the Instagram logo along with Facebook blue. Gartner estimates that PC shipments in the US rose 11.4% in Q3, which is the strongest growth in a decade, 10 years. IDC estimated PC shipments rose 14.6. So, you know, similar. It's good news either way for PC shipments. Gartner has HP at number one with 30.8% market share. Dell was in second place at 25%, followed by Lenovo, Apple, and Acer. IDC shows Lenovo in the top spot, however. Now Gartner doesn't include Chromebooks or iPads in its research, at least for this particular report, but Chromebook shipments grew by 90%. Thanks, pandemic. Google shut down its Google Play Music Store on Tuesday. Google Play Music users will have until December to transfer to YouTube Music. Ah, the march of the decline of Google Play Music. eBay will launch a sneaker authentication service October 25th that lets you verify that the shoes you're buying on the platform are what the listings claim they are. The service will start with popular styles and brands, but eventually expand to cover all sneakers sold on eBay that cost more than $100. That should happen by early 2021. When you buy a shoe in the program, you have to have it shipped to a partner called SneakerCon, which is not a convention. It's a company that authenticates the sneakers. They do an inspection and if it passes, it's tagged as authentic and then shipped on to you, the buyer. Same process covers returns as well. Scientists at Yale University, Russell Lair, Polly, and the universities of Nanjing, Renmin, and Jiao Min have demonstrated a single molecule switch made of an atom of gadolinium inside a carbon buckyball. It's the first step in being able to build a molecular computer. Pretty cool. If it ever becomes practical, it could replace lithography in building chips and make five nanometers seem pretty darn big. Yeah, that A14 biomic. It's huge compared to this. The city of San Diego deactivated all sensor services on its 3,200 smart street lights. That includes the cameras. The program was launched in 2017 with GE Current in order to save energy, improve mobility, parking, and public safety. However, people got upset about privacy and surveillance concerns, including use of the video by police for solving crime, which led to calls for the system to be turned off. The sensors will now stay off until new ordinances that clearly govern how the data can be used for what reason and by whom are passed by the city council. All right, let's talk about getting a haircut. Let's do it. Google launched haircut appointment booking for Google Duplex. That's its AI chat agent. You might recall that this is something that Google had said was going to happen at Google I.O. back in 2018. Google told VentureBeat that users with supported devices in the U.S. can have duplexes AI called barber shops, hair stylists, and salons to reserve appointments for them. Duplex works on any device with the Google Assistant app or access to Google search and maps. In a search result, you tap on a button, you request an appointment, and you go from there. You can choose from men, women, general haircuts, and worse, other hair services, and select a person. I think it's just those three. That's the problem. Well, but, okay. You can't get your color? Can't get your color? Oh, geez. Really. Did not realize that. That's it. I'll cut my own hair, but I can't color it. You've always got to color it. Anyway, so, all right, so we're talking haircuts only. And then you select a preferred appointment date, time range, again, go from there. You also indicate whether you've been to that business before, and then you can have the option of entering the name of a preferred stylist if you have one. Duplex then calls for you, makes the appointment, and you're off and running. A call can be handed to a human operator if the business indicates they don't want to be recorded. Yeah, the fact that it's only men's, I'm looking at it again just to double check, men's haircut, women's haircut, general haircut, for other services, please contact directly at phone number. You know, and I read the same thing, and I was like, well, when they say haircut, they mean hair services, because there's so many other things that you get besides a haircut. I don't know, for some of us anyway, but. Sometimes you just call for a haircut. You're all like fancy people who go do tons of different things at your hairstylist. I just go for a haircut, and it's not like you can't go to the stylist. Like you don't have to use Google Duplex, it's just one additional thing. You don't have to use Google Duplex to get a haircut either, it's just an option. I just thought, I was under the impression that it was like, I would like the service at this particular place that I know offers the service, and Duplex would be able to help me if I have the appropriate mechanism. Well, it can if the service you want is a simple haircut. I'm just gonna cut my own bangs forever, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna say, I know that this would work for me, because all I do is get a haircut, but this would never work for my life. There's always something else that she needs done, and she's not gonna be able to use this. I don't know if anyone else wants to weigh in on that, but. I couldn't use it. No, I don't think I could use it either, because in our culture, in our barbershops, there's a whole language that goes behind just a haircut. I could not, if again, Google Duplex could help, if I, like you said it mentioned, I've been there before, and I could request a, of my regular stylist, for lack of a better, if I could do that, yes. But if I was just using it and said, hey, this place is close to me, book me a haircut. They've gotta know the whole lingo, the whole culture, in order to know exactly what I want, how it line up, so on and so forth. So, yeah, it would need to be a little bit more expanded before I could actually use it, as simple as my hair looks. There's a little bit of a net. Okay, forget about Google Duplex. I want to know more about all of that. Yeah, you're right. Right, I know the lingo. Yeah, there is a whole lingo behind it. And we were also talking before the show started, because I, where I am, hair salons are not open. Not legally, they're not open. You can do something outside. Nail salons are doing the same, but just not every facility has the, they don't have the room, they're not set up for that. But in other parts of least the US, it is open, even California. So, to me, I was like, this is a strange time to launch this feature, because who's getting the haircuts? But I guess it depends on where you live. In Georgia, it's open, you know? Nail salons, hair salons, everything is wide open. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's normal, except for, you know, depending on the location, they require, I know like at my nail salon, they require face masks, they take your temperature. And then once you come in, you get this piece of paper, you're the person who's ever doing your services, and they track pretty much whomever you see and what you get done. So if I go and get a pedicure, it's one person that does that, they kind of do their name. Then when I go to get my nails done, my paper goes with me to whoever my nail person is. So they have count like their own rudimentary, like contact tracing program within the nail salon and my hair salon, it's pretty much a boutique salon. So it's usually only pre-COVID, it was only usually one to two people in there at a time. So it's just now just one person in there at a time. And it's sanitizing between each person, you have to wear your mask and that type of thing. So other than that, you know, some places don't have those types of stringent rules. So it's pretty much, you know, come in and go as business as usual. But we're in a different part of the country and it's a different mindset where we are, as opposed to where you guys are. So hair and nail salons are open in Los Angeles too. So I think it's really just the Bay Area that's shut down with that. Yeah, maybe so. Microsoft is working with nonprofit partners to source data from people with disabilities to improve AI that could be used for accessibility. Most data has been collected by people without disabilities, which introduces bias into the algorithm, right? The first collaboration will be with Team Gleason. That's a team that works to improve awareness of ALS. So for instance, in their case, systems trained to recognize when you're paying attention to a screen, trained on abled people like me, probably aren't going to have the right data to work with users who are using a puff and blow controller or a head strap or a ventilator, which has a different appearance for whether the person is looking or not. Project Insight will collect face imagery of volunteers who have ALS to improve Microsoft's existing algorithms and be released free for others to develop as well. Other examples include systems trained by standing people. Those don't work so well for users in wheelchairs. And in fact, a project with City University London called Object Recognition for Blind Image Training will collect data for image recognition algorithms entirely from blind people who position the phone differently than sighted people do. Microsoft hopes to have its first release from this partnership, not only for its own products, but for other people to use sometime in late 2021. Man, this is cool. Yeah. It's, there are so many, just from what you read, Tom, there's so many examples where I'm like, of course, of course, and use machine learning for goods in the sense for people who are like, hey, this doesn't really work for me. It works for a lot of other people, but it doesn't really work for me. And here's specifically why I need very different data points. It's awesome. And kudos to Microsoft and other companies who put research money into this. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. So Apple had an announcement today. I don't know if you heard, all the iPhones that were announced today, and there were four of them, have an iPhone 4 like flat edge to them and include 5G. Well, a big deal was made about 5G. All the bands on all the models. So sub six gigahertz and millimeter wave alike. There's a feature that will switch. Sorry. What's that? I have a feature up there. Only in the U.S. In other countries, we won't get millimeter. Is that right? They didn't say that in the announcement. Where did you hear that? No, but it's been confirmed at least in France, but it's, I'm 100%, 99%. That would have been nice to know before the show, but thank you. That's a good clarification. There's a feature that will switch from LTE to 5G when the 5G would make a difference saving battery life. They all have the Corning ceramic shield glass, which claims four times better drop performance. And they're all IP68 waterproof. They all run on a five nanometer A14 bionic chip with a six core CPU, four core GPU, 16 core neural engine that does 11 trillion operations per second. A second gen machine language accelerator and an image signal processor. Apple is using 100% recycled rare earth elements. We've talked about that on the show before. Mining of rare earth elements is problematic. They're going to say 100% recycled rare earth elements in all the magnets in their iPhones. They also will no longer ship wall chargers or headphones in the box, just the lightning cable. And it will be lightning to USB-C. So that's for all the iPhones. Sarah, let's start by talking about the iPhone 12s. Let's do it. Okay, so the iPhone 12 has a 2532 by 1170 OLED screen with 460 PPI, 1200 nits, can do HDR10 Dolby Vision and HLG, which is good for live video. There's a dual camera with smart HDR3, plus a night mode on all the iPhone 12 cameras, even the selfie camera and a night mode time lapse feature, video feature, and a 4K at 60 frames per second resolution, starting at $799 pre-orders October 16th. That is this Friday shipping October 23rd. Now the iPhone 12 mini, pretty much exactly the same phone, just smaller for people who want that smaller form factor with a 5.4 inch display, same screen resolution and brightness starting at $699. That one goes on pre-order at November 6th, shipping November 13th. So anybody who wants either of these? I know Terrence and I are on the pro side. Is anybody on the iPhone 12 side? I mean, I'm a pro. Maybe not. I currently have an iPhone 10. I don't know that I would want one of those if I had a more recent phone than an iPhone 10, but I certainly want one and my 10 is broken. I thought it was interesting that they spent essentially 90% of the time of the pros talking about the camera, both photo and video. That seems to be the main improvement over the previous model. Well, I mean, it's pretty, I don't know. It's kind of impressive specs. What surprised you about that? That's kind of Apple's thing. Yeah, it is, but it also means they didn't have a lot of anything else to talk about. Meaning if you're not interested in the camera, I mean, yeah, if you're not interested in the camera, I don't know that you want this phone, but maybe Terrence are gonna tell me I'm completely wrong. Well, I think the design, I think people like that old, if not a flashback to the iPhone 5 design. I think all of the 12s pick up that similar look and aesthetic. I think people like that. I can't remember this the, and we'll probably get into a little bit later, but the MagSafe, is that included in the regular 12 and the 12 mini or is that the pro? Yeah, I think that's in all of them. It's in all of them, I think. Yeah, so all the different accessories that come with it. I think that could be enough to get somebody who has a 10 or maybe not an 11, but I know at the very least a 10, which I have the 10S Max. Definitely something good enough to get us over the scales. Like you mentioned the camera, like Angela mentioned earlier, Sarah, wow, jeez. Sarah. It's okay, you can call it Angela. Sarah before said, that's their thing, the camera. So of course they're gonna spend all the time talking about it. But yeah, I think all those features combined, I think it'd be enough for people to jump. Yeah, and I think they're gonna be pretty hard pressed to get someone who has an 11 to jump to the 12 unless it's just a diehard Apple snob who always likes the newest and the latest because I think they're really going for the folks who are in the 10s to get them to hop on over to the 12. Since like for me, when the 11 came out, I was like, no, I'm gonna wait for the 12 because it wasn't enough of a leap for me to go ahead and get the 11 I was waiting for. Personally, the 5G, that was the biggest for me. A lot of the benefits of the 12 are things that are hard to sell you on, right? 5G, they go fast, it's faster, it's faster. And honestly, it really won't be that much faster than LTE but capacity is better, which means you're less likely not to get a signal. Latency is better, which means a lot of operations that happen on the phone are going to work better. Your video is gonna be more up to date. It's gonna buffer less, that kind of stuff. And the A14 Bionic is just gonna make a lot of things work smoother and work better that you won't notice because they won't be a problem. And that's, it's always hard to sell that to somebody, like, hey, you'll notice fewer problems. Like, it's just- That's not as sexy as something so drastic. Yeah, so let's talk about those cameras. The iPhone 12 Pro, 6.1 inch, 2778 by 1284 screen, 458 PPI, 1200 nits OLED screen. And the triple camera, 12 megapixel ultra-wide, 52 millimeter telephoto, 4x optical zoom. And for photo nerds, Apple Pro Raw is going to be very interesting. Coming later this year, you'll be able to shoot multi-frame HDR straight into raw format. You can shoot Dolby Vision HDR live through the image signal processor at 4K, 60 frames per second. And they say you'll be able to edit it in the Apple app. There's also a LiDAR sensor on the Pro. It doesn't seem to be good for a whole lot yet, but that's gonna be better and better as augmented reality comes along. It also is gonna help with autofocus and low light depth. The iPhone 12 Pro starts at $999, come in Friday, October 16th, shipping October 23rd. So when I say coming up, ordering October 16th, shipping October 23rd. And the Pro Max is just the bigger version, 6.7 inch display, but its camera has a few extra features, 65 millimeter focal length telephoto, 5x optical zoom, and sensor shift optical image stabilization that stabilizes the sensor, not the lens, and promises to give you two second stabilized exposures. That's starting at $1099, but like the Mini, the Max pre-orders November 6th, shipping November 13th. And this was confusing. Thankfully, Sarah caught this before the show because I had some dates in here wrong, but the way to remember it is the Mini and the Max are in November and the not Mini and the Max are in October. I guess if you want a non-standard size, you gotta wait. I'm with Terrence. I've got the 10S Max. I skipped last year. I just couldn't really justify it, but it's time. And I already said, before we get our announcements, I'm getting one of these phones. I'm gonna get the Max because I like big screens, but I have seen quite a bit of kerfuffle online just in the last couple of hours after the announcement was over from people saying, why would the Max just have something better because Apple has obviously committed to giving people lots of different form factors and lots of different price points, but the pro and the pro Max should be the same phone. So why are you penalized slightly by having the smaller phone? I mean, maybe it has to do with size and they can fit more things in the model or maybe they just want you to buy the bigger phone. I have to say, I was very impressed by the idea that you can edit Dolby vision footage, shoot and edit on the phone. I mean, editing 4K HDR content on the phone, it feels, well, I guess it feels like Apple's Mac on Apple Silicon are gonna be able to run a lot of programs. Obviously it's a different environment, but I'm surprised at the power of these chips. Yeah, and I think, I don't think they could have anticipated what's going on with COVID, but it seems since we are, well, since some of us are still, indoors a lot of photo work and video work for magazines and people pushing out content, it needs that type of professionalism, that type of professional spin to it. So I don't think they could have predicted that, but I think a lot of people who are still following the stay at home type of things, but still need to get workout, they'll be able to get more benefit from it. I mean, starting at 10.99, I mean, that's, if you're in that industry, if you're in media, if you're in TV, if you're any type of content editor, I mean, it's a really good investment to be able to generate high quality content for really not that much when you think about it in those terms. It's interesting you say that, because it really feels like they've geared this towards content creators, people who are not just out and about, but I'm doing a cooking video in my kitchen, check it out. And, you know, I mean, you don't really need things like HDR or Dolby Vision, but it does make it nicer. It does add a little polish to what or would be an ordinary cooking video in your kitchen. And I could definitely see it where people are like, well, I don't need to invest in all of this other stuff. If I can just do most of it here and then upload it to whatever platform I need it on. Especially if you're doing a lot of content, you know, a lot of the content creators that I follow, I mean, day after day after day, multiple times a day, they're shooting, editing, uploading content. I mean, I guess it could be convenient if all that was done on one device. Yeah, I was watching the Pro Max demonstrations and them showing those films and thinking like, well, shoot, maybe I should just replace my camera with that, right? And I probably won't, but just the fact that that was sort of an involuntary consideration that came up, like that's what they're trying to say is like, this is not a, oh, well, it's a mobile device. This is a powerful computer that can do all kinds of stuff. And it's all in one package for you. Also, I know that there's that new blue color, but boy, that gold looks nice. Oh, you're getting the gold. I'm already determined, I'm going, the gold is already mine. I just need for Friday to get here. Right, all the other colors are fine. You're all very nice, but no, it's all gold. Nika, carried spirits. All have, as we mentioned earlier, MagSafe 4, the new iPhone models that use G wireless, but can snap to specially made accessories. Apple's making a series of cases, as well as a charger, a wallet attachment, and the MagSafe Duo for iPhone and Watch. Belkin is making a car mount and multi-charger dock and says there are more accessories to come. This was nifty. Did anybody else like this? I mean, it might be kind of gimmicky, but I was taken in by it with like, oh, that seems like a better way to do wireless charging. I kind of like that wallet thing. Cases that snap on sound like a good idea. I think they had to come out with something because of the failure of the AirPower mat. So they had to come out with something related to wireless charging after that big kerfunkle has been a few years. And I was a big proponent waiting for the AirPower mat. So I think they realized they had to come out with something Apple branded for wireless charging. Patrick, what were you gonna say? Just that MagSafe was one of the most interesting hardware design innovations by Apple. I understand why they had to let it go when they went to USB-C on the Mac, but it is extremely handy. And I think a lot of customers, it's the kind of thing that differentiates Apple from other manufacturers. And I'm sure there's one out there that does something similar, but it makes using your device all that much more convenient. So I don't think it's a side feature. I think it's a relatively important feature. All right, and finally, a new spherical home pod mini with volume buttons on top, an S5 chip, and intercom across multiple home pods along with the existing sync where you can play your songs across multiple home pods. You can also intercom, not just to the home pods, but also do an iPad, an Apple Watch, an iPhone. It's a fabric mesh covering on that spherical form factor in black or white, $99, November 6th for pre-orders, shipping November 16th. And Terrence, I know you're a Sonos fan, but you said this may have turned your head a little bit. It may have turned my head a little bit, definitely because like you mentioned, the intercom feature and something we didn't mention or we didn't talk about earlier, the fact that you can do the intercom to the multiple devices. I've got two daughters who never seem to hear our messages when it's time for dinner. So the fact that you can actually do the intercom to the devices, to their iPhone, to their Apple Watch has definitely a benefit. Like I mentioned, I kind of see now why they last week announced that they were removing like the Sonos and the Logitech and the Bose audio equipment from their online store. This is a, I would almost say comparable to those. Now there are some benefits that Sonos and Bose and Logitech have, but the fact that it integrates so seamlessly to some of the devices that I already have, that our Apple, I mean, I definitely can see this being a benefit and the fact is only $99. You were that guy in the demo video who was trying to get his kids to pay attention. Absolutely. I get it, yeah. Also, Apple built a house to show this off. Yeah, I saw that. No, it was always there, Tom. It was always there, you know, in that big old abandoned sphere that they live in. Speaking of spheres, I know you weren't super excited about the Amazon Echo form factor when they'd announced, I don't know, two weeks ago now, one week ago. I mean, apparently everybody's got the same idea. I'm just gonna abandon my objections. Spheres are the new thing. Everybody wants spheres, it's fine. Yeah, it reminds me of those old 70s round radios. I don't know if you've ever seen those, but they got the round dials that look like eyes. So I guess that's just cool again. That's fine. I mean, I'm with you Terrence. I'm a Sonos person. I've invested enough into the Sonos ecosystem that the company upsets me sometimes, but I'm like, I'm already here. And it works for me. There are things about when Apple first introduced the HomePod where I was like, it's just serious? Like it just didn't, it seemed really limiting and really high price. However, like you mentioned, the price is better and it for folks who are trying to get some smart speaker stuff going across the house, especially with a family, it starts to make a lot more sense. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks everybody who participates in our sub Reddit. You can talk about HomePod, you can talk about whatever you'd like, but you can submit stories that you care about and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Jeff Wilkes, Bjorn Andre, and Scott Hepburn. Also very, very, very special thanks to Terrence Keynes and Nika Monford from the Snob OS Cast. And we know you're doing kind of a big show on a lot of the stuff that we talked about on Thursday. Tell us more about where people could keep up. Yeah, you could definitely reach us at all platforms. When I say all platforms, I only mean Instagram and Facebook and Twitter at Snob OS Cast. And you definitely reach out at the website that's snoboscast.com. And you can find us individually on all social media platforms. I'm at TechSavvyDiva and Terrence is at Brother Tech everywhere. Very cool. Well, thanks to the Snob OS folks for being with us again. Also thanks to Patrick Beja who's with us every Tuesday. Patrick, what's been going on with you? You know, the usual, the rendezvous tech, le rendezvous jeu, I talk tech, I talk gaming. I do it on Twitch now as well. So if you speak French, you might just sit in following me there. I'm not Patrick, absolutely everywhere. And you can support our show on patreondailytechnewshow.com. Patreon, get bonus episodes. We just had a bonus episode come out today for all the people on Prop 22 and the future of ride sharing in California and beyond. But if you were a patron, you got that on Sunday. So you might want to get in on that now. Patreon.com slash DTNS. If you've got feedback for us, email us. Our address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. If you'd like to join us live, we're live Monday through Friday for 30 PM Eastern, 20 30 UTC. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson and Peter Wells talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.