 Coming up on DTNS, Huawei throws a Hail Mary. Google makes a play to win at pay in India and Bob Iger's dream. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 19th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Feline. I'm Sarah Lane from the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. I'm Justin. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. We were just having a lovely chat on Good Day Internet, the wider show surrounding Daily Tech News show. If you're like, hey, you know what, Daily Tech News show is great. But I would like more of Sarah and Justin and Tom and Roger. Well, become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Pocket Cast slightly altered the terms of the new plan we told you about yesterday to offer its app for free, but charged for a premium service. Now, yesterday, the company announced that users who had paid for the desktop and web versions of the app would get Pocket Cast plus premium service for free for three years. But some users were upset because they had been promised lifetime access when they originally bought the apps. The company has changed that to give lifetime access to Pocket Cast plus to anybody who bought the web or desktop version of the apps. The journal Scientific Reports has published a correction to an article on the increase in enlarged, external, occupational vertebrates found in the back of the head. This was because it was widely reported that smartphones caused horns since the paper determined posture caused the protuberances and speculated the usage of mobile devices could be the cause. The correction removes references to smartphones and tablets and makes it clear that there is no evidence of a connection between device use and the formation of the bony bumps. So get off the horns of that dilemma. Tuesday, the High Court of Paris, the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris ruled that European consumers are legally free to resale digital games bought on Steam. French consumer group UFC K. Croissier filed the lawsuit four years ago. The court rejected Steam's argument that Steam is a subscription service, noting that Steam sells games in perpetuity, not as part of a subscription. EU law allows all goods, including software, to be sold used. However, Valve told Polygonet will appeal the decision and the decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal. Apple moved up both iOS 3.1 and iPadOS release dates to September 24th, which is six days ahead of the original September 30th release date. iOS 13.1 includes automated series shortcut actions, a new share ETA feature in Apple Maps, data separation for enterprise devices and bug fixes for iOS 13. Have you heard of those? There are quite a few, according to many reports. Airpod sharing and new home kit features, which were announced originally for iOS 13 aren't going to roll out until sometime later this fall. Yeah, I mean, I'm not having any bugs with mine, but you know, with any OS update, there's going to be bugs. If you're worried, don't upgrade until September 24th and you get all the patches and everything all at the same time. All right, let's talk about the big announcement from Amazon. Justin, indeed, Tom, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Thursday that Amazon has signed on to the climate pledge, which promises to become a carbon neutral company by the year 2040. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change called the Paris Agreement aims to make the world carbon neutral by 2050. Amazon wants 80% of its energy to be reusable by 2024 and 100% reusable by 2030 toward this goal. Bezos says Amazon is placed in order for 100,000 electric vans from Rivian to start hitting the road in 2021. 15,500 Amazon employees previously pledged to walk out of work on September 20th in protest of Amazon's support of fossil fuel companies. Similar pledges have been made by Google and Microsoft employees and a letter was sent by Microsoft employees Thursday protesting a Microsoft partnership with Chevron. To be clear, the big problem Amazon employees had with Amazon was the support of fossil fuel companies. Amazon's Jeff Bezos did not announce any change in the deals with fossil fuel companies with Amazon. He did address it. He said, like, wow, you've got to give him better tools first before you can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But really what this is about is I think it's significant that we have seen one of these tech companies for the first time react. There's been a lot of these kinds of walkouts, protests, letters, petitions happening for a while. But until I was seeing an company actually react, I wasn't sure whether that was actually doing anything or we as consumers would feel any effect. I'm not sure this will affect us as consumers yet or if it will how, because it's a lot of we're going to do things, not we have done things. But I think it's significant that we actually saw Jeff Bezos get up on stage and say, OK, here's what I plan to do. Yeah, I mean, 100,000 electric vans are not going to make Amazon carbon neutral anytime soon. That's for sure. But OK, it's a start. It's it's this is a lofty goal. I mean, he's undercutting the Paris Agreement by a decade. And I don't I don't think this is entirely lip service. I think that if Amazon can do this and not, you know, eat into their bottom line too much, there's there's no reason not to. But it's also it's Amazon. I mean, to think of the carbon footprint that this company is currently emitting and how it would emit 0 percent of that at any point in our lifetime is that's a tough one. Especially if you believe that they are moving out into more of controlling their own distribution chain by, you know, possibly having their own airline or shipping company or something like that, like they're building airfields for. So that that will be a question to me. It's a press release. Look, don't tell me about the labor show me the baby. And I hate to be, you know, a negative on something like this, but it just kind of seems like a announcement that was made. So there wasn't any further a sturm and drawing amongst the employees at bottom of decade. Congratulations. Let's just see if he follows through on it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I agree with Sarah. I think it's more than just a press release. I think they really do plan to try to do this stuff. But I also think a press release is significant in this case because we hadn't even had that before. And those Rivian vans are new. Rivian, the SMR podcast guys were talking about the Rivian SUV and the Rivian pickup truck, which both look really nice. Who knows who knew they had vans until Amazon decided to order 100,000 of them, but apparently they have vans. So there you go. Roku released updates to its express and ultra streaming boxes. The Roku Express can now be entirely powered by your TV's USB port. They even give you an adhesive strip, so you can just stick it on the back. And remember, this isn't the streaming stick Roku. This is the one where you still have to use an HDMI cable to connect it. But it might as well be a stick at this point. It streams an HD is now 10 percent smaller than the outgoing model, which means it's about half the size of the Roku remote. And it costs 30 bucks. The Roku Ultra has been upgraded with a faster quad core processor, more RAM. They claim it's 17 percent faster at launching channels and 30 percent faster at app launches. The Ultra remote also includes two programmable shortcut buttons that can perform any function available through voice commands from launching a specific channel to adjusting TV settings. And that costs a hundred dollars for all you Roku users. Roku also announced Roku OS 9.2. We'll start rolling out to streaming devices with TVs to follow. The new OS adds something called Roku Zones, which when you go into search will aggregate a content by genre before you even start searching. It also adds sleep timers, new search options, the ability to control multiple Roku's with your voice through Google Assistant or Amazon voice services. So, you know, some nice to haves, but I'll be honest, I want some real solid performance updates with OS 9.2, especially interface updates. And I'm not seeing that here. Roku owns the. So your friend, family member, co-worker doesn't have a streaming box. They want to cut the cord and you are just giving them a stocking stuffer or office Christmas gift or something like that. It is twenty nine ninety nine. That's a slam dunk for something that's beyond a stick. The Amazon fire stick, at least as of now, who knows if they'll discount it for the holiday season is thirty nine ninety nine. So they are at a very competitive spot price wise with that. But I'm with you, Tom. Look, it's all the Roku's I've had are great. But at the end of the day, you can see the difference between a polished user interface like Apple has or even Amazon has with their devices. I don't know. The Roku Ultra 17 percent faster channel launches, guys. I mean, that's not the OS upgrade, though. That's not going to prove my existing Roku any. So I mean, that's also it's something. But I've gotten faster channel launches every time Roku's upgraded their hardware. I'm ready for something else. Like, I know everybody hates the Apple remote, but man, can you zoom through menus with that thing? It is butter smooth and it's fast. I'm sitting there with my Roku going chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. Yeah, sometimes the Apple is the Apple remote is too fast, too fast. Yeah, totally. And how to use it. But you're right. Like anybody who's owned a Roku is very familiar with that. Like, I'll just wait until I've scrolled through all that. Yeah. But meanwhile, look, the Ultra is nineteen ninety nine or ninety nine ninety nine. So this is more somebody that you actually like. This is a substantial Christmas present, but compared to the Apple TV, which is at a buck fifty, at least now of that is again, it's very competitive. This is where Roku lives right now is the budget version of it can do the same thing. Amazon's Fire TV, I think, has the best balance between good interface and affordability. But then you're in the Amazon universe, you know, so they just recently got YouTube back. Roku does have still the advantage of being like, hey, we don't we don't stop people from using our platform. Yeah. Yeah, Roku, I think it was well, Roku was first in many ways. And it used to be the the the only way that I could watch HBO content, for example, before I came to the old Netflix player. Yeah. And and it's still I still have it. It's in fact, it's also it adhused to the back of my TV, but I did that myself so you can't see it. But it's it's my backup box all the time. It's there. I don't use it unless I have to. But it still works. But I get what you're saying, that the interface has almost surprisingly changed very little over the years. So it's cutesy and everything. And if I think it's the first kind of cord cutting experience you have, great, fine. But then when you see other interfaces, it's it's it can be hard to go back. So what's Bob Iger dreaming about these days? I'm glad you asked, Tom, an excerpt from Disney CEO Bob Iger's memoir titled The Ride of a Lifetime. Lessons learned from 15 years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company was published by Vanity Fair, making all the headlines as the following line regarding Apple CEO Steve Jobs, quote, I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies or at least discuss the possibility very seriously, end quote. The context of this is a much longer chapter about Iger getting to know jobs and convincing him to sell Pixar to Disney and then working with jobs as a board member and then becoming friends. Yeah, I mean, this line comes very far into this chapter. And the chapter is is just a love story of Steve and Bob becoming friends and how Steve hated Disney when Bob took over. But somehow they gained a mutual respect and had and loved each other's bold ideas until finally they agreed to sell Pixar. And Steve was like, yo, softy. And Bob was like, ah, come here, give me a hug. And then he gets to this line of like, you know, I believe that if he were alive, we would have just we would have just been such good friends. We would have combined our companies. So to me, this line feels like a throwaway, maybe a very calculated throwaway that he knew would grab headlines. Don't get me wrong. But it's it's not saying we definitely had plans to merge these. No, it's like we I think we would have combined companies. Or maybe we would have just thought about it because because we were pretty close and hugged these sorts of these sorts of things. And maybe this is all completely factual and nostalgic and all of that. But I believe they were friends. Sure. Sure. Exactly. But it's very easy to say something like that about somebody who can't be like, well, that's not what happened. I mean, look, this is a CEO memoir. This is not here to accurately report the facts. Although I don't necessarily know that there's anything inaccurate here. This is a cementing of the mythology of the man that is Bob Iger. Bob Iger's legacy, aside from being somebody who definitely made the Disney corporation far more powerful than it was when he found it, is the genius whisperer. And the first genius he successfully whispered to was Steve Jobs. He convinced Disney to buy Pixar. I believe everything in there about how much the board was against it. And the way he talks about it, much in the same way that you've heard him talk about how we talked to George Lucas, how we talked to how he got Marvel, how he negotiated to buy most of Fox, basically. This is what he does. He is the Nick Fury and Steve Jobs is his Iron Man. And so you would look at this as, hey, before Iron Man died, we were really thinking about him taking over shield. Well, this is this is even saying, I believe that if Iron Man were still alive, we would have done this other thing, or maybe at least talked about it. Like that literally is the quote. Look, this is something that I do believe in, though. I mean, I do think that Steve Jobs had a fundamentally different view of what content curation was that I don't know if Tim Cook does. I think Tim Cook's strength, obviously, is as a supply chain guy. And he has led Apple faithfully in that regard, although it means we get a few more skews these days than we probably would if Steve Jobs was still here. But like, I do think that this is a this is a thing. I do think that this is and look, oh, yeah, I think that Iger believes it. But that's far from saying it was going to happen or would have happened. I don't know. Folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, we got a couple of big stuff to talk about before we're done here. Huawei launched the 6.53 inch Hail Mary. I'm sorry, Mate 30 Pro with a 2400 by 1176 display that curves over the edge of the device. That screen serves as a speaker, just like it does on the P30 Pro. Inside is the powerful new Kirin 990 system on a chip, a 4500 milliamp hour battery, at least eight gigabytes of RAM, and either 128 or 256 gigabytes of storage. There are three rear cameras on the back to 40 megapixel sensors with wide, ultra wide lenses, an eight megapixel zoom, as well as depth sensing and time of flight sensors. The camera can shoot 4K 60 frames per second video, a super slow mo function with 720p video at 7680 frames per second. There's also a 32 megapixel camera on the front that supports augmented reality, photos and videos, as well as gesture control for scrolling and eye position detection for screen orientation. It knows, oh, your eyes are there and your screen should be there. The phone can do 3D face unlock, but also has an in-screen fingerprint reader supports 40 watt fast charging and 27 watt wireless charging runs Huawei's EMUI 10 over Android 10 open source. Oh, here's where the specs aren't so great because it doesn't come preloaded with Google Apps or Google Play services because of the trade restrictions in the US. This is the first big phone from Huawei that doesn't. But Huawei says, forget that. We're going to spend a billion dollars on incentives to promote our Huawei mobile services app ecosystem. There's even a vegan leather backed model with an IP68 water and dust rating. Pricing for the Mate 30 Pro will start at 1,099 euros for the 4G version, 1,199 euros for the 5G version. That's pretty affordable for those kinds of versions. There's also a pro Porsche design RS model that starts at 2,095 euros and includes 12 gigabytes of RAM, 512 gigabytes of storage with a Porsche designed red and black leather back. When will it arrive in Europe? I don't know. Huawei didn't say. All right, just for completeness sake, Huawei also showed off its GT2 smartwatch, its earbuds, three wireless noise cancelling headphones and several smart TVs. The poor smart TVs. You're like, come on, we were really good too. Stupid Mate 30 Pro. Yeah, this is can you imagine? I mean, the prices are staggeringly low. Can you imagine really any large competitor that would be capable of making a phone with these specs being able to price it like that? Wouldn't happen. There are a few specs as Tom alluded to that we can go through now that in fourth and 20 it can throw the ball at least 50 yards and have any laterals and rugby to try and get it in the end zone. Folks, Huawei has a problem. They are a company under siege and yet specifically in Europe and in China, they are a prestige smartphone maker. This is probably the only thing that they do know now they can count on. So yes, they need a big phone. Yes, they do need it to be a success and they'd prefer for you to buy the Porsche Virgin. Yeah, I mean, granted, it's tempting to think like, oh, they knew their backs were up against the wall with the trade restrictions. So they pulled out all the stops, but features like this are put into a phone months and months and months ahead of time. So they kind of had an inkling that this might be in the offing from the trade restrictions, but these specs were were nailed down for the most part before that. Huawei would have come out with the same phone had there never been any trade restrictions on them from the United States. They're just a really good maker of phones. And thank goodness for them that they are because at least they have a fighting chance of selling some of these. But even with all of these specs, it's going to be hard for people to get over even the perception that like, well, but it doesn't have real Android, even though it's Android, it's not the Android that comes from Google. It's not the Android that gets the security updates from Google. And it certainly doesn't going to have the Google Play Store on it. Well, so that's that's the big question, right? Some people are going to say that is everybody going to say that. How many? Yeah, I mean, it's Android, right? Yes, Android. It's just like a Huawei different kind of Android. I don't think that. Well, I was about to say, I don't think that many people care. I think a lot of people care. I think the company may still sell a lot of phones to people who say, Android is Android. Don't really know the difference as long as it mostly functions the same way. Look, can your phone do the thing that's all people care about? And if part of that thing is something that they're used to doing in the Google Play Store or with that Google presented OS, then it will be a friction point and we'll see how much they have to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the well, it says Android, I guess that's still Android or that Android is not the Android logo I'm used to. Where's the Google Play Store? Which one will go out? Yeah, I don't know. Well, Google wants a new platform within the Google Pay app, not Play, but Pay app in India, the spot platform lets merchants create many stores called spots inside Google Pay. The spots will surface at relevant times for users like your cab spot might show up in the morning or your favorite restaurant might show up at lunchtime. Existing apps and websites can become spots with just a few lines of JavaScript. Google Pay also gets support for tokenized cards that can use NFC to pay with a phone. Visa cards from four banks are already now with MasterCard and RuPay and a few other banks promised to be on the way within months. Google Pay has 67 million monthly active users right now in India, putting it right alongside Amazon Pay, Paytm and Flipkart's phone P or Pay. WhatsApp is going to add peer to peer payments by the end of the year. So everybody wants to be the WeChat of India in this crowd. And today was Google's pitch to become that. Also at Google India, the Vodafone Idea phone line launched. That's where if you're in India, you can call a number toll free and ask a Google Assistant questions in English or Hindi. No, no charge. There's no charge to use it. There's no charge to make the call. It's just Google Assistant available by phone. Additionally, Google Lens now supports Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu translations. And finally, Google Research India will open in Bangalore led by Dr. Manish Gupta, an ACM fellow and Infosys Foundation chair, professor at Triple I.T. Bangalore. The center will work on machine learning, computer vision, languages, speech systems and other related areas. Well, this is Google. Yeah, Google. If so, if everybody wants to be WeChat, Google is getting pretty close if folks in the country actually take on a lot of these features, really cool. The spots feature is really cool. The phone line idea is extremely smart and obviously very calculated. I mean, imagine how many how how many people for free might have a question and just get used to saying like, just call Google, Google will know. Yeah, which means you can use Google Assistant from your feature phone, right? Yeah. And then you get used to that. And when you're going and finally upgrading to a mid range smartphone, they say, well, this one has Google Assistant built right on the phone. You don't even have to call a number. It's like, you remember when I used to people used to do Google via text message, like Google search via text message. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'd forgotten all about that. Like that was a thing. I mean, that's how Twitter launched was being like, we're going to let you post by text message. Exactly. Right. Like that was just a fascinating element of like Google's built for this. They've always been built for like, let's scale down our product to make it worth it. India, obviously a tremendous growth market that has taken on to these kinds of pay systems like much of the developing world as I think it's smart. I mean, and also I just think any way that we can continue to bring innovate innovations to merchants and sellers, you will be rewarded for it. Yeah, this this market could be the thing that saves Huawei. If Huawei were able to sell its mid range phones well in India, I don't think a Mate P 30 Pro is going to save it in India. But if they could make some headway in India, that could be the hedge they need. I don't see any evidence of that. And when you're kicked out of the Google Play Store and suddenly everybody in India is like, I might be using Google Pay. But even if they're not, they're using something from, you know, Flipkart or Paytm, which also they're probably getting from the Google Play Store and can you get those companies to develop something for your Huawei mobile store? I don't know. I don't know if you have the cash aid for that or not. A lot of questions. But this to me is it's, you know, it's not the only market. There's a lot of markets in Africa that are up and coming and important. Certainly, China is not done being an important market in the US and Europe. Of course, they're all they're all important markets, as is the Middle East. But but man, India seems to be the one where if you want to get ahead of your competitor, it's a really good chance to do that. Also interesting how many not only how many monthly active users Google Pay has in India, but how long the company must know that folks are already within the app, like, OK, let's add spots to give give more incentives to merchants to become part of this program. When was the last time I was in any pay app on my phone? I don't do like I don't even know how to launch it really. I just got my phone. Sometimes it works or sometimes I forget to do it. Venmo is popular here in America. It doesn't even compare, though. This this is North Americans as North Americans. We have no idea what this is about because this is not about being in your pay app. This is about your pay app having become the platform in which you do everything in China. In China, WeChat is your everything. You don't go out without your phone with WeChat on it. And that's what Google Pay is trying to be here. Nobody's been able to do that in North America because I don't know. I guess we're too set in our ways or something. Well, I think we also have a far more built out system where like we all have solutions for the little things that a lot of these are able to kind of be born fully featured with, you know, like we have a chat that we've been using. We have text messages. It's going enough. And I think it for a lot for a lot of folks or go ahead, Justin. Yeah, all I'm saying is that like there were a lot of we piecemeal put together our digital lives and then we're like, oh, cool, we can do pay here too. We're in a lot of these countries based on a lot of the apps that we had. They're like, cool, we'll just put all these features in and you're also paying with it. So it's totally something that you need every single day. Yeah, I think I think my experience with a company that tries to do all in one is people going, stop trying to do all in one stuff. You know, stop it. You're a social network. It's really annoying. I don't want to pay people within Facebook. Why would I want to do that? Which is funny because it's like, OK, if if it was a WeChat or something that was it made sense and was completely accepted, then that that actually is the more convenient way to do things. But it gives one company a lot of control. So there's two ways to look at it. Totally. Thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You have complete control over us. Well, OK, you have partial control, but we'll take it. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We're also on Facebook. Join our group Facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News Show. And we'd love to get your emails and talk about them on the show like right now. Yes, exactly. Vince actually wrote it and said, I got some of our five year anniversary DTS merch in the mail today and it totally made my week. Thank you so much. And you know what, Vince, it made our day to get your email that it made your week. Yeah, if you're a patron for three months at the master or and visor levels, the top two levels, you either get a mug at the master level after three months or a poster at the advisor level. So thank you, Vince, and congratulations and thank you. Also, a faithful listener wrote in because we were salivating over that huge HP curve monitor that can handle two devices at once yesterday. And this faithful listener said, you guys are really doing a great job on the show. So treat yourself to that monitor if you get the chance. You heard it here, faithful listener, monitors for all. You too, Justin. We're going to need more vences for that to happen. But yeah, monitors for all, small American flags for others. Thanks, everybody, who gives us feedback every day. And some days they're just warm and fuzzy like today. So keep them coming, questions, comments, all the good stuff. And thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today. Justin, what's been going on since last week? Well, of course, for friends, you can follow me at the politics, politics, politics podcast, you can find that wherever you download podcasts. Just search for politics and then either my name or politics, politics, politics. This week, I think we had a great week of content. You on Tuesday got a interview about gerrymandering, if that's something that's interesting to you, including the fact that Sarah, do you know where the name gerrymandering comes from? I don't. And I would love to know. It's the combination of the man who drew the first weird looking district or one of the famous weird looking districts in Boston and a salamander. His name was Jerry, the district looked like a salamander. And so that's where we get the very serious topic. Yeah, gerrymandering. Wow. I was so happy to hear you talk about that on that show because as a kid, I had a little like scholastic book of political cartoons and they had the gerrymander cartoon in that book. And it's always been one of my favorite political cartoons because I think the cartoon is really what popularized it because governor Jerry's district drawing it like a salamander. Yeah, that was so great. So go ahead and do that. And then, of course, on the PX3 Prime episode, which came out yesterday, we talked all about why Kamala Harris's rise in the polls during the summer has not lasted and Bernie Sanders becoming the giving tree to Elizabeth. So it was a good good analogy about the giving tree. Hey, folks, we are in our last month of the classic DTNS Patreon rewards. You've got to become a patriot right now to get the last wave of the classic rewards before we get you all new and improved awards starting October 1st. And if you want to find out what those awards are ahead of time, we had some great feedback from people and we have nailed down what we're doing at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash Patreon. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com is where to send those emails. And if you'd like to join us live Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern, that's 20 30 UTC, put it on your calendar and see you tomorrow and find out more at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live back tomorrow with Lamar Wilson and Len Peralta. 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