 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Vince Power, John and Becky Johnston, and Chris Benito. Coming up on DTNS today, what is the future of satellite internet? What's Apple really working on? And what's up with those EV prices? This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, June 27th, 2022. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Richard Raffalino. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Got a lot to talk about today, talking EV prices, talking Apple rumors, some of it rumors, some of it probably true. But let's start with a few tech things you should know. All right, well, LG Electronics jointly acquired the South Korean electric vehicle charger developer, Apple Mango, with the deal made in partnership with the EV charging station operator, GS Energy, and its IT provider, GS Neotech. Apple Mango will become a subsidiary of LG. The company said it will work on making approachable UIs for charging stations and better coordinate its battery development, storage systems, energy management, and charging solutions. Global wafer announced it plans to build a $5 billion factory in Sherman, Texas to produce silicon wafers needed for semiconductor manufacturing. Global wafer claims that existing US wafer capacity can supply 20% of domestic demand by 2025. The factory will produce 300 millimeter wafers with a volume of up to 1.2 million wafers per month. It's the first new silicon wafer facility in the US in over two decades. Well, we've talked about bug bounties on DTNS before and they've become increasingly common with tech companies in recent years. If you're not familiar, they offer monetary rewards for security researchers who disclose vulnerabilities. Now it seems that cyber crime organizations are following suit with the launch of the LockBit 3.0, the ransomware as a service organization also introduced its own bug bounty program offering rewards between $1,000 and $1 million for submitted vulnerabilities. LockBit will also pay bounties for brilliant ideas on improving its operations and its top reward will be for doxing its affiliate manager known as LockBit SUP. Needless to say, helping a criminal enterprise is illegal in many countries. Indeed it is. When Apple settled its long running legal battle with Qualcomm back in 2019, its challenge on two Qualcomm patents were allowed to continue. The patent and trademark offices patent trial and appeal board ruled in favor on Qualcomm asserting that the patents had validity. The US court of appeals for the federal circuit dismissed an Apple appeal saying that it lacked standing due to the settlement. Apple then took its case to the Supreme Court. The court officially rejected Apple's appeal on the patents. Apple's current licensing agreement with Qualcomm runs until 2025 with an option to be extended to 2027. As of June 27th, consumers using the old Google Hangouts mobile apps will be prompted by an upgrade screen to use Google Chat, either it's standalone app or as part of Gmail. Once receiving this prompt, the classic Hangouts app will stop working with conversations automatically migrated for most users. Google warns though that some conversations may not migrate and it will email impacted users around September 2022. So that's a big deal to you. You have a vague amount of certainty. Users on Hangouts, a Chrome extension will be directed to Google Chat on the web. And in July, Hangouts in Gmail's website bar will be upgraded to Chat in Gmail. The Hangouts.google.com client will continue to work until at least October 2022 before being redirected to Chat as always with anything Hangouts very smooth and easy to understand. I mean, this is Google, you know, they've got this mailed, you know, dialed in, you know, Google. Just kinda love those naming conventions. All right, let's talk about internet and specifically satellite internet. Many times when we talk about the emerging networks of satellite delivered internet service, we think of it as solving a last mile problem. Places that aren't being served by modern broadband speeds, need something beyond what a sub six gigahertz 5G network can deliver regularly, right? You're probably out there saying, yeah, yeah, that applies to me. With the invasion of Ukraine, we've also seen how satellite internet can be used to provide access during nationwide conflicts. But it also turns out to be an effective way to stay connected when you're otherwise trying to intentionally be off grid, right, Rich? Yeah, and the Verge looked at one of these kind of early services that are offering this and it's StarLynx RV service. Looked how it stacked up against cellular connectivity across a variety of situations. This is in addition to StarLynx residential service that runs on more fixed terminals. The RV service isn't the cheapest option out there. It requires a $599 dish and a $135 monthly service fee. And it offers something like 50 to 250 megabit per second down and 10 to 20 megabit per second up. That's their stated performance goals. Those aren't like guarantees, but they're their goals. Comparing performance at crowded beach, a festival and in a tree-lined forest in Germany, the Verge found that performance mostly fell in line with those goals and notably exceeded cellular pretty significantly across the board. Yeah, so this really is like an off the grid type thing. If you're living in a tree house or otherwise out and about, not terrible speeds here. I mean, I need more than that for what we're doing right here the second, but for kind of general stuff, I think it would work out pretty well, as long as it's stacked up to what the speed say that they're gonna be. However, it was not perfect. Setup can take up to 15 minutes when connecting to a router. Some people are either not gonna have that kind of time or not really understand what's going on and locking onto a satellite to then get your service. And obstructions also cause network interruptions and a few outages. Yeah, they were saying in the tree-lined forest, they really kind of had to pick their spot to kind of get the best coverage. And that was where they had some of the most issues during their testing. Although they said it was still better than cellular. I mean, it was pretty remarkable. Again, this was a little bit of an extreme situations. They deliberately chose to do places where there was either gonna be a ton of people hitting a very few amount of cell towers or places that were really stretching the boundaries of cellular connectivity. But that's kind of the point with these kind of services. And what was interesting about that was, I can't remember the review now off the top of my head, but they were saying that it kind of changed how they thought about kind of this kind of van life, kind of going off grid where you could take a longer term trip somewhere and really not have to worry about that. And the fact that, yes, there is an initial investment that's upfront, but it's not like the service isn't on a contract. So you could suspend your payments on it. And if you're wanna do, hey, I'm gonna for three months travel out in the country or something like that, not really have to worry about that, presumably unless you're traveling through, I don't know, a dense redwood forest or something. Really wish Patrick Norton was here right now. Cause he would be the person who would say, here's where this is going to work and here's where it's not going to work. To me, it seems pretty cost prohibitive. You got a $600 dish, you only buy that once, 135 monthly service fee, for anybody who's used to, I don't know, paying for a cable subscription. I mean, maybe that won't break the bank too much. I think a lot more of this, though, is this Starlink RV service was probably put into place when a lot of people were like, let's get out of dodge. A lot of folks have been doing a little bit more extended road trip or getting out of cities. And there's plenty of that still going on, but I'm not sure if the market is ripe for this as much as it might've been, let's say, two years ago. Yeah, and what's interesting, what specifically Starlink is doing here is there is also an option to combine this in kind of like a hybrid configuration. You still have to pay for the dish so the cost prohibitive nature of it isn't going together, but it does get you to a point where you could say, okay, I'm gonna, I still need this for like a last mile situation or maybe it's just the best option speed-wise for what's in my area. So whatever the price is going to be, if I want internet connectivity at a certain speed, that's like what you have to pay, like if that's your only option, and then you can also have it as kind of this way to extend yourself if you are going out that way. You know, again, it's changing. I mean, I think a lot about when we first got like 3G service that could kind of, you know, you could kind of tether it to a laptop and you could start getting email, you could start doing like a little bit of messaging. Maybe you could edit your WordPress blog or something like that on the go and about what we can do with this. Now this is like a 10 pound antenna. It takes a not inconsiderable amount of energy, you know, you do have to attach it to a router. Like this is the most kluge it's going to be for these types of services, but the iteration on this is what really has me excited. Yeah, so if you're wondering, okay, how do I power my new Starlink RV service while I'm on the road, EcoFlow just announced new modular and expandable power kits to offer a turnkey solution for adding power to your off-grid location. Using stackable lithium ion phosphate batteries coming in two kilowatt and five kilowatt hour options with central inputs and outputs to have them charged with optional solar panels. If you're in a situation where you can make use of the sun, a vehicle's inverter as well or the mains. Three can be combined for up to 15 kilowatt hours enough to power a motor home for 18 hours or so. Pretty good. Pre-orders for 15 power kit bundles open on July 5th, ship mid-August, and range from about $3,800 for two kilowatt hours to $13,400 for an ultimate 15 kilowatt hours package. I mean, if you really want to go all in on van life, you can get your EcoFlow 15 kilowatt power. It's like, you thought it was expensive before. It's going to cost you as much as a house. But again, looking at prices for something that's mobile, again, these are really exciting for enterprise. I could see these definitely getting used by like vehicle modders, people that modify like Volkswagen Vans and stuff like that to put really cool stuff in there. RV companies and stuff like that taking advantage of these for sure, even if not just regular consumers. All right, well, before we were hit with a multi-year supply chain disruption, it seemed that automakers were ready to move electric vehicles from either being luxury vehicles with a comfortable range or a kind of box city cars into more mainstream offerings across a variety of price points. While we haven't seen automakers really slow down in announcing ambitious new model offerings that seem to flow with this trend. Indeed, as fleet seem to be anxious to announce electrification goals, we're seeing it accelerating of nothing else. The reality of the supply situation means prices have remained near luxury levels. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal reported on some new figures from JD Power showing that Americans paid an average of $54,000 for an electric vehicle, an EV in 2022 through May, which is up 22% on the year. Now, the auto industry as a whole seems to be grappling with increased prices. I've got a used car that is worth more than I bought it for. And the average price on internal combustion engine vehicles also increased 14% on the year to $44,400. Yeah, so I'm sure some of that is inflation related, but definitely supply chain playing a part as well. For EVs specifically, the supply chain situation means that a lot of this price increase just comes down to raw components for the vehicles. The analysts at Alex Partners report that the cost of lithium, nickel and cobalt, things that are prominently used in batteries for these vehicles have roughly doubled, resulting in raw material costs for EVs up 140% since March, 2020 to about $8,255 per vehicle, on average, obviously depends on the vehicle. This reality has caused almost every EV maker to increase prices with Ford's CFO, John Lawler, saying that combined with inflation, profits on its Mach-E EV have largely been gobbled up. They have been shifting prices to, of course, account for this, but that's a flagship vehicle for Ford for their CFO to come out and say that is a pretty big deal. Yeah, yeah. And Ford has been very bullish on EVs for some time now and people have been eagerly awaiting EV models, particularly in the truck area. Despite the market price pressure, though, consumer interest in EVs does remain high. People want EVs, but I don't think anyone's saying like, no, that's not for me. You might be one of those people, but most people say, well, sure, this, if it can help gas prices and my pocketbook, it's almost like installing solar panels on your house. It'll work itself out in a certain amount of time. Wall Street Journal reporting online EV searches up 73% on Kelly Blue Book and Auditrader since January. So people are interested, but those prices might be a bit of sticker shock. Yeah, and Roger, we were talking about this on the pre-show, but the idea that if people can overcome these higher barrett entries, and that is a lot, especially whether you're leasing or financing, that is a bigger barrier to entry, but theoretically, these vehicles require a lot less maintenance long-term that may still make the math kind of work out economically for some people. I mean, with our recent EV round table that we did, one of the things I learned was that the maintenance is really low on an EV. I mean, even brake pads aren't something that you replace as often because with regenerative braking, you aren't necessarily burning out your brake pads at the same rate. And what's fascinating is that a lot of people will bulk at the initial cost, but gladly sign up for lease for a quasi-luxury SUV, but that's an upfront cost. And if you amortize that over the life of a car, which let's just say it's 10 years, you keep a car for 10 years, it would actually still be cheaper than if you bought an internal combustion equivalent, assuming electricity prices don't go raging to the stratosphere for some reason. The other reason I suspect is that because EVs have a high cost for manufacturing initially because it is a relatively new segment, a lot of automakers like Tesla did initially, all their initial models are the pricey models, because that helps them justify the lower cost of something like a bolt. Mach EV is a very, it's a sports SUV. It's not, it's not a AMC Rambler where it just gets you home and to work again. It's, they're very high-appointed luxury treatments to it. And so I think what you're seeing is we're gonna get all the people willing to pay the money down first, even with the Ford F-150 Lightning. The prices on that is 50 plus and that's just with the base model, but people are willing to pay that. So the market will have the price that people are willing to bear and right now people are willing to bear those prices. And here's something to keep in mind also with, with this EV prices up 22% in the year. Tesla has a giant market share with EVs. If you look at Motor Trend had their top 12 car, their 12 selling EVs of 2021. And by far the Model Y and the Model 3 represent like over 50% of the amount of cars sold on there, like significantly more than that. So the idea is, you know, looking at Model Y pricing, that's up 28% on the year. That's the top selling car with like 100, over 150,000 vehicles that were sold last year. So if that is going up that significantly, that's gonna have a huge impact on like the overall, not to say that every EV maker isn't increasing prices because we clearly are seeing that. Like if you looking through the headlines preparing for this, it's very easy to find EV price going up, EV price going up. So I'm not saying anyone else is immune to that. Just that Tesla's kind of, you know, is certainly perhaps overrepresented when they raise prices that has a broader impact on that average. The other thing is that a very popular, another popular EV, the Chevy Bolt wasn't on sale for the beginning part of this year due to battery fire recalls. Probably a good reason not to be on sale. But that is on the cheaper end of the EV spectrum and they just announced price cuts for that. So that is potentially something that was off the market that people were interested in EV. They would be paying a higher price potentially for replacement, although there are other cheaper EVs than the Bolt, something like the Ionic or the Leaf are out there that are also more on the affordable scale. But that, you know, I can imagine that might have some impact on those numbers. And we'll see next year with, you know, because of the F-150 Lightning isn't accounted for this, it's probably gonna be a very expensive car. You know, that might, you know- And a very popular car. Yeah, with the amount of models kind of entering the market so quickly at a variety of price points even with increased prices, that makes it tough to make it a one-to-one comparison because the market is definitely not standing still with EVs for sure. Yeah, market's a little volatile in general. You might have thoughts on EV prices, thoughts on why they've gone up, why they might come back down or anything else that we talk about on the show. And you know what? We'd like to hear your feedback. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send an email and might make it into a future show. Thank you in advance. Well, if it's Sunday evening, you probably see the power-on newsletter from Mark Gurman. That's if you have access to my inbox. And if you do, please don't forward anything untoward. But he reports that Apple will release a deluge of devices over the next year. That is a deluge is his verbiage, not mine. While some are expected product refreshes, things you probably would assume Apple would release every single year, this product's surfeit seems to run widely across most of Apple's product lines. Yeah, so obviously Apple's mixed reality headset is looming. Everyone wants to know, does it exist? One's a coming out. Pretty sure at this point it exists, but one's a coming out. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo pegged this for a January release last week. Mark Gurman now claims this will include the base M2 processor with 16 gigs of RAM. On the iPhone front, Apple will release its usual four iPhone 14 models reportedly and the pros will have new features as well. Gurman also says the pros will offer a previously reported always on display to complement the new lock screen features in iOS 16. Also use a new A16 chip and the standard 14S will use last year's A15 chip and also ditch the mini size option because a lot of people just did not buy that many. Yeah, and Sarah, real quick, I mean, I'm curious what's your pulse on kind of reusing the chip here. Obviously they'll come with new, they'll have all the new software features from iOS 16 in there, but lacking that and that always on display, that's a device that moves, that's the top seller, right? Like the standard iPhone, right? Is the top seller. They're probably doing this because they don't have a lot of options from the supply chain perspective. Is that, we've seen this rumor out there for a while, Gurman confirming it makes me feel like it's pretty rock solid. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I have to assume that's what's going on here. I think that, yeah, I mean, Apple has the supply chain issue that we talk about ad nauseam on the show. I wish we didn't, but you know, it just still remains a thing. This is something that Apple has downplayed, you know, as a company, we've figured it out. No, Apple has not figured it. Nobody has totally figured this out. So I think, yeah, I think if you've got, if you've got a bunch of components and they can go into devices that can be sold for a pretty penny and that's what Apple does quite well, then I think you need to sort of deal with what you're working with. And the plus side, if you bought a 13, I guess you feel pretty good. You still have one of the latest chips in your phone. So that'll be kind of cool. But Gurman has some more. That would be me, Rich. That would be me. Well, I'm glad. Pretty smart. So is Mark Gurman. And he says that on the Mac front, he also expects M2 to come to the Mac Mini. Was a little bit of surprise they didn't announce that when they announced the Mac Mini, but also an option for an M2 Pro chip inside of Mac Mini. The M2 Pro and Mac's variants will also come to refresh 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. I would put that on kind of the expected refresh spectrum of these announcements. And the Apple Silicon Mac Pro will launch within the next year, according to Gurman, M2 Ultra and M2 Extreme options on board. So something new. And Apple's seemingly exhausting the supply of adjectives available to them. Then early next year, lining up on the Silicon, Gurman says Apple will launch devices with M3 Silicon, including an updated MacBook Air with 13 and 15-inch models. Again, that's a rumor we've seen out there before with 15 inches. And a new iMac, as well as possibly a 12-inch laptop. I'm not totally in the market for a Mac Mini, although I'm using a Mac Mini for the show. I bought it in late 2018, and it chugs right along. It's not an M1 chip. Soon as that got announced, I was like, darn it, Mac Mini. But it does what I need to do for the show. And I don't really push this particular machine all that much. I do some editing on this, but it's OK. It's worked out nice. I know Scott Johnson has an M1 Mac Mini that he was very happy with when he got it. And I feel like that is just the sweet spot for me. If you've got a monitor already, any monitor will do. And something that isn't going to take up a lot of space, it's not going to be cheap. You have other options, obviously. But if you want to go the Mac route, it's such a nice one. And to have something that is so much more robust in the small form factor, I mean, I think they'll sell a lot of them. Yeah, and that pro also gives you that for the person that's kind of afraid that a future proofing, right? Where they're like, I always want to get the next spec up because I want this to last for more than four years or something like that. Having that pro inside there does give you that latitude with presumably not being outrageously expensive, although the refresh MacBooks were a little bit more expensive than the M1s were a couple of years ago. The pricing on these obviously will be key. But I mean, if that were the end of it, that would be a lot of hardware. But the deluge continues, right, Sarah? It does. In fact, Mark Gurman expects three Apple Watch models in the next year. If you were having problem with keeping up with the name, it's just going to get worse. We got a new SE, supposedly, a standard Series 8 model and a recognized Apple Watch model. These would be powered by a new S8 chip that would have the same performance as the outgoing S7. And that S8 chip will also find its way into a new HomePod model that would be close to the original in terms of size and audio performance with an updated top display. He also expects an updated Apple TV with an A14 chip that I'm looking forward to. Also updated AirPod Pros and M2-based iPad Pros. Yeah, that HomePod, of all of the announcements, that has me the most interested because HomePod is, I don't want to call it, it's certainly not a failed product. Lots of people liked it, but it seemed like a product that Apple iterated on fairly quickly, right? The HomePod mini is kind of their answer to a lot of the smart assistant speakers that are out there at very affordable price points. And the idea that they could be rethinking this, supposedly the pricing is going to be a little bit more reasonable. My question is what is going to be the sales pitch? Because clearly like beam formed audio, like straight to your ears that accounts for how your room is set up and it delivered laudable sound quality was not a selling point for this. And it seems like it's always a challenge to market a device with just as sound quality as your kind of differentiator, right? So is this, the HomePod mini is really equipped to work with the Matter of Smart Home Standard when that gets released in the fall, that may be a good point to release your HomePod that has some extensive smart home functionality that can really integrate with all of those new matter devices that are going to be out on the market. I mean, I'm certain it will, if the mini includes the Threads radio, obviously the HomePod will be able to serve as kind of your, what is it, your edge router for that much like the mini can. So will they really push the smart home functionality on that? I feel like that's an easier sell than audio quality because it seems like we're going headlong into the unified smart home at this point. Yeah, yeah. Well, moving gears, going back up into space for a second, Rich, the Raspberry Pi Zero was used as a flight computer on a satellite re-entering Earth's atmosphere back in May, which also completed a record 117 days in space. The satellite was the get away special passive altitude control satellite, I guess you could call it gas cast for short CubeSat, which was deployed from the International Space Station back in January. It was developed at Utah State University by students with the main objective being to test the experimental inflatable stabilization system called Aeroboom, which was designed to demonstrate small spacecraft can self-stabilize and orbit, which it in fact can. This is so like, I love all Raspberry Pi projects, but this is like a $7 stick gum size computer that can be used as a flight computer in these. What I want to see next is, I want to see like a space hardened version of this so they can use it in like really long range satellites that are really getting hit by cosmic rays and stuff like that, because I'm sure this is just an off the shelf Raspberry Pi that they're using for this. But that is the really exciting thing, right, is this is consumer level stuff. And hey, once you get up in that space station, that solves obviously all of the launch problems with your tiny little satellite for your college students or for your college researchers to develop. And again, when you expand that playing field, you make that hardware cost so inconsiderable for a capable little machine, that's all the right Raspberry Pi notes for me. And indeed, and shout out to all y'all over at Utah State University for developing this. It's good stuff. Speaking of things that are affordable, let's move over to the mail bag. Got one from Tim. Tim, this one is dear to my heart because I am a left handed person. I am a southpaw and so is Tim. Why do I know this? Well, here's Tim's email. He says, I have to share something recently I think should be addressed at some point. Left handed technology. As a lefty, I've used the Apple mouse. I know people hate it and the design is stupid. Who puts a charging port on the bottom, et cetera. But my mouse went to tech heaven. I didn't have $80 to buy a new one. I didn't think my search would take longer but there's so many new mice designed for right handed people. The left handed mice were at a higher premium than regular mice. There used to be a time where you could just use them with any hand and pretty much were interchangeable but it's starting to focus on right handed because there's buttons on the side of the mouse and other designs that can't be translated to a left handed person. If you try to find a higher end mouse that it's ergonomically designed, minimal selection. Logitech makes left handed mice but not in the whole color gamut of the newest. Perfect example is the new M650 mouse. Comes in five colors. The left handed is only available in black though. Tim says, we face different issues with tech and I don't think it's a series but I hope you do a show on left handed tech at some point in the future. I know there are many out there who face slimmer issues. Apologize for the rant but I had to share with the fantastic tech people you are. Thank you, Tim. First of all, for the compliment and Tom Merritt who's not on the show with us today but saw Tim's email earlier said this is why I use a Logitech B100 wired mouse. I mouse left, I just gave up trying to find usable ergonomic mice. Yeah, that does think- Or mouses, whatever they are. But mice is allowable. I have to click some. I feel like that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it does stink though because as awesome as it is, we're seeing the vertical mouse is a trend for that super ergonomic feel. I have the, what is it? The MX Master 3 Logitech mouse but that's like, is sculpted to a right hand, right? And the fact that, hey, we're having all these new comfortable ways to use a variety of computer inputs across the board. I don't wanna necessarily, like it's not an accessibility issue but I feel like Microsoft is doing such cool stuff with accessibility tech that I'm surprised that they are not more on the forefront with left-handed friendly or supported, just left-handed supported peripherals like that. We're always overlooked, Rich. We're always overlooked. Although if we play baseball, it's kind of works in our favor. Perhaps overvalued. Exactly. Yeah, it's been years since I used a mouse and I think honestly, I think the last time I really used a mouse regularly was when I was in hotelling stations in corporate offices where sometimes you're just sitting at a computer and you're working with what's in front of you. And I went the trackpad route on laptops some time ago. I've got my trackpad, super trackpad, whatever the Apple trackpad is here. So I can, magic trackpad, thank you. And so I can put that wherever I wanted to. And I kind of go back and forth between the two hands, but I realized that for a lot of folks, this is a real issue, it is an accessibility issue. Or if you've got a hand that's not working all that well and you got to use the other hand type thing, there are a lot of reasons that I think Tim, points that Tim has brought up that I think, I think, yeah, we should do a left-handed show at some point, I don't know how many people will care. But the South paws out there, you know who you are. Be quite sinister. Indeed. We also, we've got good news today, everybody. We had kind of a slow week on the Patreon front last week, but guess what we got today? We have a brand new boss and that boss's name is Jeff. Jeff just started backing us on Patreon. So a big, big thank you to you, Jeff. This could be you tomorrow. You want your name on the show? Start backing us on Patreon. Speaking of the show, there is a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet, which we roll into right after DNS. DTNS wraps up. Patreon.com slash DTNS is where you can find out more about that. And just a reminder, we do this show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 20 hundred UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Lamara Wilson joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Hehehehe.