Tech

supreme-court-denies-epic-v.-apple-petitions,-opening-up-ios-payment-options

Supreme Court denies Epic v. Apple petitions, opening up iOS payment options

App Store, Apple, Apple v Epic, epic, fortnite, gaming, Google, Policy, Supreme Court, Tech / /

Epic v. Apple —

Most of Epic’s arguments are moot now, but one point will change the App Store.

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Fortnite characters looking across the many islands and vast realm of the game.

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of iOS developers after today’s Supreme Court ruling, surveying a new landscape of payment options and subscription signaling.

Epic Games

The Supreme Court declined to hear either of the petitions resulting from the multi-year, multi-court Epic v. Apple antitrust dispute. That leaves most of Epic’s complaints about Apple’s practices unanswered, but the gaming company achieved one victory on pricing notices.

It all started in August 2020, when Epic sought to work around Apple and Google’s app stores and implemented virtual currency purchases directly inside Fortnite. The matter quickly escalated to the courts, with firms like Spotify and Microsoft backing Epic’s claim that Apple’s App Store being the only way to load apps onto an iPhone violated antitrust laws.

The matter reached trial in May 2021. The precise definitions of “games” and “marketplace” were fervently debated. Epic scored a seemingly huge victory in September 2021 when a Northern California judge demanded that Apple allow developers to offer their own payment buttons and communicate with app customers about alternate payment options. An appeals court upheld that Apple’s App Store itself wasn’t a “walled garden” that violated antitrust laws but kept the ruling that Apple had to open up its payments and messaging.

Today’s denial of petitions for certiorari means that Apple has mostly run out of legal options to prevent changes to its App Store policies now that multiple courts have found its “anti-steering” language anticompetitive. Links and messaging from developers should soon be able to send users to alternative payment options for apps rather than forcing them to stay entirely inside Apple’s App Store, resulting in a notable commission for Apple.

Epic’s goals to see Fortnite restored to the App Store or see third-party stores or sideloading on iPhones remain unfulfilled. This is not the case with Epic’s antitrust suit against Google, which in mid-December went strongly in Epic’s favor. With a unanimous jury verdict against Google, a judge this month will determine how to address Google’s violations—potentially including Epic’s request that it and other developers be allowed to issue their own app stores and payment systems on Android devices.

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, wrote in a thread on X (formerly Twitter) that the Supreme Court’s denial means the “battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States” and that it was a “sad outcome for all developers.” Sweeney noted that as of today, developers on Apple’s platforms can “tell US customers about better prices on the web.” And he noted that regulatory and policy actions around the world, including the upcoming EU Digital Markets Act, may have further impact.

Apple has yet to comment on today’s Supreme Court decision.

Supreme Court denies Epic v. Apple petitions, opening up iOS payment options Read More »

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YouTube appears to be reducing video and site performance for ad-block users

ad blockers, Google, Tech, youtube / /

Surely this is an accident —

Latest consensus is that YouTube performance issues seem to be Adblock Plus’ fault.

– Updated

YouTube appears to be reducing video and site performance for ad-block users

Future Publishing | Getty Images

YouTube appeared to be continuing its war on ad blockers, with users complaining that the company was slowing down the site for users it catches running an ad blocker. 9to5Google spotted this Reddit thread filled with users seeing poor loading performance with ad blockers enabled.

A video at the top of the Reddit post shows what some users are seeing: A video with an ad blocker on can’t load quickly enough to keep up with the playback speed (which isn’t on normal; it’s maybe 2x) and has to pause at around 30 seconds. Turning off the ad blocker immediately improves loading performance, with the white line on YouTube’s progress bar showing significantly more buffering runway. Users report that the ad-block detection causes strange issues, like “lag” that makes full screen or comments not work or Chrome being unable to load other webpages while YouTube is open.

YouTube has used all sorts of tactics to get people to turn off ad blockers and subscribe to YouTube Premium. The company previously has been showing pop-up messages saying ad blockers violate YouTube terms of service. Earlier, the company was caught adding a five-second delay to the initial site load for ad blockers. The changes have kicked off a cat-and-mouse game between Google/YouTube and the ad blocker community.

But the slowdowns may be a big accident from ad blockers altering YouTube’s code: Adblock Plus has published a bug report covering “performance issues” introduced by version 3.22 and says things should be fixed in version 3.22.1. uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill says the issue is limited to AdBlock Plus and its spinoffs and that blaming YouTube is “an incorrect diagnosis.”

Regardless of whether this is due to the updated Adblock code, it’s not the first time this has happened with YouTube. The straightforward thing would be to show more of these pop-ups and not send people on a wild goose chase after fake technical issues. Users in the thread certainly seem confused about why YouTube suddenly stopped working. The top comment says, “I thought there was something wrong with my internet connection,” while another high-ranking user’s comment was to plan to reinstall Chrome.

This post was updated on January 15 at 4: 20 pm ET with Adblock Plus’ bug report information and developer Raymond Hill’s statement.

YouTube appears to be reducing video and site performance for ad-block users Read More »

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First streaming-only NFL Playoff game breaks records with 23 million viewers

Tech / /

Still a ratings juggernaut —

Despite griping from fans, the Peacock-exclusive game did NFL-class numbers.

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JANUARY 13: NFL Wild Card signage on field prior to an NFL Super Wild Card Weekend playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on January 13, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Enlarge / JANUARY 13: NFL Wild Card signage on field prior to an NFL Super Wild Card Weekend playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on January 13, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Kara Durrette/Getty Images

The NFL playoffs started this past weekend, and with it came the first streaming-only playoff game. Usually, premium NFL games like the playoffs are on one of the major TV networks nationwide, but the Dolphin/Chiefs wildcard game was exclusively available on Comcast/NBC’s Peacock streaming service outside. NFL fans weren’t particularly happy about having to sign up for some random streaming service to watch a playoff game, but that didn’t stop many people from actually signing up, with Nielsen logging 23 million average streaming viewers for the game.

NBC says that 23 million viewers make the game “the most streamed event ever in US history” and “a milestone moment in media and sports history.” Nationally, the game was exclusively on Peacock, but local TV broadcasts were still available in the Miami and Kansas City metro areas, so 27.6 million people watched the game. The NFL hasn’t announced the ratings for the other playoff games yet, but last year, the wildcard round averaged 28.4 million viewers per game, so this got in range of that. On paper, this was one of the better games of the weekend, featuring the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the high-flying Dolphins’ offense, and it was in prime time, so with a traditional broadcast, this was probably due for above-average ratings. Peacock exclusivity reduced the audience somewhat, but it still attained NFL-class numbers.

Surprisingly, Peacock managed to survive pretty well. There aren’t widespread reports out there of major problems. Previously, the service had an exclusive regular-season game, a Bills-Chargers week 16 matchup on December 23 that drew 7.2 million viewers. That game helped work out the growing pains for Peacock, with users complaining of poor streaming quality and muted colors.

The NFL is basically the only institution keeping traditional broadcast TV alive. Of the top 100 highest-rated US TV broadcasts in 2023, a staggering 93 of them were NFL games. Lucrative TV contracts will keep most games on broadcast TV for the foreseeable future, but even the NFL is slowly transitioning to streaming. The weekly Thursday Night Football game is now exclusive to Amazon Prime; ESPN+ gets one exclusive game per season, and Peacock has these two games this year. The biggest NFL package, NFL Sunday Ticket, which gives fans about 13 out-of-market games every Sunday, moved from DirecTV to YouTube TV this season. The NFL even has its own streaming platform, NFL+, though it takes a backseat to partner services.

Fans looking to watch the game on Peacock this weekend were forced to fork over $5.99 for “one month” of the service. With the numbers the game turned in, it doesn’t seem like the NFL streaming transition will be slowing down any time soon.

First streaming-only NFL Playoff game breaks records with 23 million viewers Read More »

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The 5 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2024

ASUS, CES, dell, Features, lg, Monitors, msi, oled, Tech / /
Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U4025QW)

Enlarge / Dell’s upcoming UltraSharp U4025QW.

Scharon Harding

Each year, the Consumer Electronics show brings a ton of new computer monitor announcements, and it’s often difficult to figure out what’s worth paying attention to. When it comes to the most interesting models this year, there were two noteworthy themes.

First of all, my complaint in 2022 about there not being enough OLED monitors was largely addressed this year. CES revealed many plans for OLED monitors in 2024, with a good number of those screens set to be appropriately sized for desktops. That includes the introduction of 32-inch, non-curved QD-OLED options and other smaller screens for people who have been waiting for OLED monitors in more varied form factors.

Secondly, with more people blending their work and home lives these days, CES brought hints that the line between gaming monitors and premium monitors used for general or even professional purposes will be blurring more in the future. We’re not at the point where the best productivity monitor and ideal gaming monitor perfectly align in a single product. But this week’s announcements have me imagining ways that future monitors could better serve users with serious work and play interests.

For now, here are the most intriguing monitors from CES 2024.

Dell UltraSharps hit 120 Hz

  • Dell started adding 120 Hz models to its UltraSharp series.

    Scharon Harding

  • This monitor is VESA DisplayHDR 600-certified.

    Dell

  • Ports include Thunderbolt 4 with 140 W power delivery. There’s also a pop-out box of ports by the monitor’s chin.

    Dell

Dell UltraSharp monitors have long attracted workers and creatives and, with their USB-C connectivity, even Mac users. The last few CES shows have shown Dell attempting to improve its lineup, with the most landmark innovation being the introduction of IPS Black. With CES 2024, though, Dell focused on improved video resolution.

Dell’s UltraSharp 40 Curved Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U4025QW), pictured above, is a 39.7-inch ultrawide with a 5120×2160 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. As most monitors are aimed at workers still using 60 Hz, this is a big step up for people with systems capable of supporting 11,059,200 pixels at 120 frames per second. Such speeds have been relegated to gaming monitors for a while, but with TVs moving to higher refresh rates (with encouragement from gaming consoles), more people are becoming accustomed to faster screens. And with other attributes, like a 2500R curve, we wouldn’t blame workers for doing some light gaming on the U4025QW, too.

But Dell says the refresh rate boost is about increasing eye comfort. The UltraSharp U4025QW is one of two monitors with 5-star certification from TÜV Rheinland’s new Eye Comfort program, which Dell helped create, a Dell spokesperson told me last month at a press event.

According to TÜV, the certification program “is no longer limited to the old low-blue-light or flicker-free labels” and now “covers a broader range of safety indicators, such as ambient brightness, color temperature adjustment and regulation, and brightness.” New requirements include brightness and color temperature control for different ambient lighting. Dell’s ultrawide covers this with an integrated ambient light sensor.

The certification also requires a minimum 120 Hz refresh rate, which is probably where Dell got the number from. A Dell spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the use of IPS Black didn’t impact the monitor’s ability to get TÜV certifications and that it could have theoretically earned five stars with another panel type, like VA.

Dell announced bringing 120 Hz to the UltraSharp lineup in November when it debuted two 24-inch and two 27-inch UltraSharp monitors with 120 Hz refresh rates. At CES, Dell proved this upgrade wasn’t a fluke relegated to its smaller UltraSharps and went all in, bringing the refresh rate to a top-line ultrawide 5K Thunderbolt 4 monitor.

The U4025QW has an updated version of ComfortView Plus, which uses hardware to lower blue light levels. I’ve seen it function without making colors turn yellowish, as some other blue-light-fighting techniques do. After not significantly updating ComfortView Plus since its 2020 release, Dell now says it’s using a “more advanced LED backlight” to reduce blue light exposure from 50 percent to under 35 percent.

The effects are minimal, though. Dell-provided numbers claim the reduced blue light exposure could reduce eye fatigue by 8 percent after 50 minutes, but we should take that with a grain of salt. It’s nearly impossible to quantify how well blue light reduction techniques work from person to person.

The UltraSharp U4025QW releases on February 27, starting at $2,400.

The 5 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2024 Read More »

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Would Luddites find the gig economy familiar?

Amazon, Tech, technology, Uber / /

Machine Breakers Unite! —

Luddites were hardly the anti-tech dullards historians have painted them to be.

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Woman about to swing a hammer at a laptop.

The term Luddite is usually used as an insult. It suggests someone who is backward-looking, averse to progress, afraid of new technology, and frankly, not that bright. But Brian Merchant claims that that is not who the Luddites were at all. They were organized, articulate in their demands, very much understood how factory owners were using machinery to supplant them, and highly targeted in their destruction of that machinery.

Their pitiable reputation is the result of a deliberate smear campaign by elites in their own time who (successfully, as it turned out) tried to discredit their coherent and justified movement. In his book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, Merchant memorializes the Luddites not as the hapless dolts with their heads in the sand that they’ve become synonymous with, but rather as the first labor organizers. Longing for the halcyon days of yore when we were more in touch with nature isn’t Luddism, Merchant writes; that’s pastoralism—totally different thing.

OG Luddites

Weavers used to work at home, using hand-powered looms (i.e., machines). The whole family pitched in to make cloth; they worked on their own schedules and spent their leisure time and meals together. Master weavers apprenticed for seven years to learn their trade. It worked this way in the north of England for hundreds of years.

In 1786 Edmund Cartwright invented the power-loom. Now, instead of a master weaver being required to make cloth, an unschooled child could work a loom. Anyone who could afford these “automated” looms (they did still need some human supervision) could cram a bunch of them into a factory and bring in orphans from the poorhouse to oversee them all day long. The orphans could churn out a lot more cloth much faster than before, and owners didn’t have to pay the 7-year-olds what they had been paying the master weavers. By the beginning of the 19th century, that is exactly what the factory owners did.

The weavers, centered in Nottinghamshire—Robin Hood country—obviously did not appreciate factory owners using these automated looms to obviate their jobs, their training—their entire way of life, really. They tried to negotiate with the factory owners for fair wages and to get protective legislation enacted to limit the impacts of the automated looms and protect their rights and products. But Parliament was having none of it; instead, Parliament—somewhat freaked out by the French Revolution—passed the Combination Acts in 1801, which made unionizing illegal. So, the workers took what they saw as their only remaining avenue of recourse; they started smashing the automated looms.

The aristocrats in the House of Lords told them they didn’t understand, that this automation would make things better for everyone. But it wasn’t improving things for anyone the Luddites knew or saw. They watched factory owners get richer and richer, their own families get thinner and thinner, and markets get flooded with inferior cloth made by child slaves working in unsafe conditions. So they continued breaking the machines, even after the House of Lords made it a capital crime in 1812.

Merchant tells his story through the experience of selected individuals. One is Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose memoir of mistreatment in his 10 years of factory work is thought to have inspired Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Another is Lord Byron, who, like other Romantic poets, sympathized with the Luddites and who spoke (beautifully but futilely) in the House of Lords on their behalf. George Mellor, another figure Merchant spends time with, is one of the primary candidates for a real-life General Ludd.

Edward Ludd himself doesn’t qualify, as he was mythical. Supposedly an apprentice in the cloth trade who smashed his master’s device with a hammer in 1799, he became the movement’s figurehead, with the disparate raiders breaking machines all over northern England, leaving notes signed with his name. George Mellor, by contrast, was one of the best writers and organizers the Luddites had. He’d spent the requisite seven years to learn his cloth finishing job and in 1811 was ready to get to work. The West Riding of York, where he lived, had been home to wool weavers for centuries. But now greedy factory owners were using machines and children to do the work he had spent his adolescence mastering. After over a year of pleading with the owners and the government, and then resorting to machine breaking, there was no change and no hope in sight.

Finally, Mellor led a raid in which a friend was killed, and he snapped. He murdered a factory owner and was hanged, along with 14 of his fellows (only four were involved in the murder; the rest were killed for other Luddite activities).

Even as their bodies were still practically swinging on the gallows, the aristocracy and press were already undermining and reshaping the Luddite story, depicting them as deluded and small-minded men who smashed machines they couldn’t understand—not the strategic, grassroots labor activists they were. That misrepresentation is largely how they are still remembered.

Would Luddites find the gig economy familiar? Read More »

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Android 15 might bring back lock screen widgets

Android 15, Google, Tech, widgets / /

A copy of a copy —

After iOS 16 reintroduced lock screen widgets, Google is dusting off its old code.

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Jelly Bean is back!

Enlarge / Jelly Bean is back!

Andrew Cunningham

It sure looks like Android 15 is going to have lock screen widgets. The Android 14 QPR2 beta landed the other day, and Mishaal Rahman over at Android Authority found a hidden unfinished feature that brings back lock screen widgets. We’ve expected this to happen since Apple’s big lock screen widget release with iOS 16.

Rahman found a new “communal” space feature that resembles lock screen widgets. After enabling the feature and swiping in from the right of the lock screen, a pencil icon will pop up. Tapping the icon opens up a widget list, allowing you to move some widgets to the lock screen. Right now, in this unfinished state, the default lock screen clock and notification panel UI don’t know how to get out of the way yet, so you get a pile of widgets with the usual lock screen UI on top. It’s a mess.

Lock screen widgets... sort of. It's early.

Enlarge / Lock screen widgets… sort of. It’s early.

Any time one smartphone operating system does something, the other tends to copy it, and iOS added lock screen widgets in 2022. Two years later is plenty of time for Google to adjust and copy the feature. The thing is, Android added lock screen widgets in 2012 with Android 4.2. Google removed the feature two years later in Android 5.0, so really, this is Android copying iOS copying Android. Some of this code is apparently making a comeback, as all the widgets available to the lock screen were ones that still had the 10-year-old “keyguard” flag set for Android 4.2.

The widget lock screen has strangely been named the “communal” space, and Rahman speculates this might be because this particular UI experiment was meant for tablets in a dock mode. “Communal” would mean that everyone in your house could see them, and maybe it would be good to limit the amount of personal data displayed without needing to pass the lock screen. This is just one of the feature experiments that happened to slip out the door, though, and it’s hard to imagine Google not letting phones do this, too, when iOS already does it.

Android 15 might bring back lock screen widgets Read More »

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Compression Attached Memory Modules may make upgradable laptops a thing again

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https://img.global.news.samsung.com/global/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/LPCAMM-Module_PR_main1.jpg

Enlarge / Samsung shared this rendering of a CAMM ahead of the publishing of the CAMM2 standard in September.

Of all the PC-related things to come out of CES this year, my favorite wasn’t Nvidia’s graphics cards or AMD’s newest Ryzens or Intel’s iterative processor refreshes or any one of the oddball PC concept designs or anything to do with the mad dash to cram generative AI into everything.

No, of all things, the thing that I liked the most was this Crucial-branded memory module spotted by Tom’s Hardware. If it looks a little strange to you, it’s because it uses the Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) standard—rather than being a standard stick of RAM that you insert into a slot on your motherboard, it lies flat against the board where metal contacts on the board and the CAMM module can make contact with one another.

CAMM memory has been on my radar for a while, since it first cropped up in a handful of Dell laptops. Mistakenly identified at the time as a proprietary type of RAM that would give Dell an excuse to charge more for it, Dell has been pushing for the standardization of CAMM modules for a couple of years now, and JEDEC (the organization that handles all current computer memory standards) formally finalized the spec last month.

Something about seeing an actual in-the-wild CAMM module with a Crucial sticker on it, the same kind of sticker you’d see on any old memory module from Amazon or Newegg, made me more excited about the standard’s future. I had a similar feeling when I started digging into USB-C or when I began seeing M.2 modules show up in actual computers (though CAMM would probably be a bit less transformative than either). Here’s a thing that solves some real problems with the current technology, and it has the industry backing to actually become a viable replacement.

From upgradable to soldered (and back again?)

SO-DIMM memory slots in the Framework Laptop 13. RAM slots used to be the norm in laptop motherboards, though now you need to do a bit of work to seek out laptops that feature them.

Enlarge / SO-DIMM memory slots in the Framework Laptop 13. RAM slots used to be the norm in laptop motherboards, though now you need to do a bit of work to seek out laptops that feature them.

Andrew Cunningham

It used to be easy to save some money on a new PC by buying a version without much RAM and performing an upgrade yourself, using third-party RAM sticks that cost a fraction of what manufacturers would charge. But most laptops no longer afford you the luxury.

Most PC makers and laptop PC buyers made an unspoken bargain in the early- to mid-2010s, around when the MacBook Air and the Ultrabook stopped being special thin-and-light outliers and became the standard template for the mainstream laptop: We would jettison nearly any port or internal component in the interest of making a laptop that was thinner, sleeker, and lighter.

The CD/DVD drive was one of the most immediate casualties, though its demise had already been foreshadowed thanks to cheap USB drives, cloud storage, and streaming music and video services. But as laptops got thinner, it also gradually became harder to find Ethernet and most other non-USB ports (and, eventually, even traditional USB-A ports), space for hard drives (not entirely a bad thing, now that M.2 SSDs are cheap and plentiful), socketed laptop CPUs, and room for other easily replaceable or upgradable components. Early Microsoft Surface tablets were some of the worst examples of this era of computer design—thin sandwiches of glass, metal, and glue that were difficult or impossible to open without totally destroying them.

Another casualty of this shift was memory modules, specifically Dual In-line Memory Modules (DIMMs) that could be plugged into a socket on the motherboard and easily swapped out. Most laptops had a pair of SO-DIMM slots, either stacked on top of each other (adding thickness) or placed side by side (taking up valuable horizontal space that could have been used for more battery).

Eventually, these began to go away in favor of soldered-down memory, saving space and making it easier for manufacturers to build the kinds of MacBook Air-alikes that people wanted to buy, but also adding a point of failure to the motherboard and possibly shortening its useful life by setting its maximum memory capacity at the outset.

Compression Attached Memory Modules may make upgradable laptops a thing again Read More »

google-lays-off-“hundreds”-more-employees,-strips-google-assistant-features

Google lays off “hundreds” more employees, strips Google Assistant features

Google Assistant, layoffs, Tech / /

Hey Google, it’s been nice knowing you —

Google’s layoffs hit hardware, the Google Assistant, and even the AR division.

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Google is looking pretty dilapidated these days.

Enlarge / Google is looking pretty dilapidated these days.

Aurich Lawson

Google’s cost-cutters are still working overtime, with more layoffs this week and cuts to Google Assistant functionality.

First up, The New York Times reports Google laid off “hundreds” of workers in “several divisions” on Wednesday. Core engineering, the Google Assistant, and the hardware division all lost people. The report says that “Google said that most of the hardware cuts affected a team working on augmented reality.” AR cuts are eyebrow-raising since that’s quickly going to be one of the highest-profile teams at the company this year, as Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm team up to battle the Apple Vision Pro. FitBit was apparently also a big loser, with 9to5Google reporting that Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman and “other Fitbit leaders” have left Google.

Over the years, Google has rarely laid off workers, but since January of last year, a new focus on cost-cutting has made layoffs a regular occurrence at Google. The purge started with an announcement of 12,000 layoffs in January, which took until at least March to complete. Then there were more layoffs at Alphabet companies Waymo and Everyday Robots in March, Waze layoffs in June, recruiting layoffs in September, Google News cuts in October, and now these layoffs in January. There are rumors of more layoffs happening this month, too, focusing on the ad sales division.

Next up is a Google blog post titled “Changes we’re making to Google Assistant,” which details 17 features that are being removed from Google’s struggling voice assistant. Google says these “underutilized” features will be “no longer supported” at some point in the future, with shutdown warnings coming on January 26.

The Google Search bar, which (depending on your local anti-trust laws) is contractually obligated to be on the front of an Android phone, will no longer bring up the Google Assistant.

The Google Search bar, which (depending on your local anti-trust laws) is contractually obligated to be on the front of an Android phone, will no longer bring up the Google Assistant.

Ron Amadeo

The full list of cut features—it’s a big list—is here. The biggest and most ominous news is that the Google Assistant is losing its premium, default spot on the homepage of all Android devices. The microphone button in the Google Search bar used to bring up the Assistant, but now it will only send your voice input directly to Google Search. You’ll still be able to bring up the Assistant using what are basically secret, invisible shortcuts, like saying “Hey Google” or long-pressing on the home button (if you have gesture navigation turned off), but this is a massive change that means the Assistant will no longer be front-and-center on Android phones.

The Assistant is from the Google Search division and was once considered the future of the company and the future of Google Search. If the Assistant couldn’t answer a question, it would just forward you to Google Search, so this change makes the microphone button a lot less useful. It also highlights the ongoing death of the Google Assistant, which has fallen out of favor at the company. (Android users unhappy about this should download the Google Assistant shortcut app.) Here are some of the features being removed:

  • The Google Assistant’s messaging feature, where voice messages would be sent to any phones and tablets in your family group, is dead. Audio messages will still play on local network speakers, but Google is no longer sending notifications across the Internet to Android and iOS.
  • Google Play Books voice support sounds like it will be totally gone. You can still use generic audio-cast features from another device, but you can’t ask the Assistant to play an audiobook anymore.
  • Setting music alarms—not regular alarms—is dead. Controlling a stopwatch—not normal timer support—is also gone.
  • The death of Fitbit under Google continues with the removal of voice-control activities for the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3. A wrist-based Google Assistant is exclusive to the Pixel Watch in Google’s lineup, though that probably won’t last long either.

One problem with all voice assistants is that there’s no good way to communicate the hundreds of possible voice commands to users, so there’s a good chance you didn’t know most of these exist. Figuring out whether any given Google Assistant feature is available on a phone, speaker, smart display, car, TV, or headphones is also an impossible task. Some cut features I have personally never heard of include “managing your cookbook”—apparently there is a “Google Cookbook” of saved recipes available on smart displays and nowhere else. Google says it was somehow previously possible to “send a payment, make a reservation, or post to social media” by voice on some platforms. When I ask the Google Assistant to do any of those things right now, it says “I don’t know, but I found these results on search.” I’m not even sure where you would enter payment details for the Assistant to have access to (was this some iteration of Google Pay?), or how you would connect social media accounts.

It increasingly sounds like it’s time to pick out a nice plot of land in the Google Graveyard for the Assistant. On one hand, Google seems to want to shut this one down in exchange for “Pixie,” a voice assistant that will be exclusive to Pixel devices, starting with the Pixel 9. On the other hand, just in October, Google promised the Assistant would be getting Bard generative-AI integration, so none of this lines up perfectly. It’s odd to be removing the Assistant from Android home screens, stripping it of features, planning a big revamp, and also planning a direct competitor.

Google lays off “hundreds” more employees, strips Google Assistant features Read More »

detachable-lenovo-laptop-is-two-separate-computers,-runs-windows-and-android

Detachable Lenovo laptop is two separate computers, runs Windows and Android

Tech / /

ARM Windows and x86 Android would have been really funny —

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid combines the best (?) of both worlds.

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  • The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid. It has two CPUs, two operating systems, and six speakers, and it generally sounds deeply complicated.

    Lenovo

  • In the previous image, the device was running Android, but click the halves together, and now it runs Windows.

    Lenovo

  • Here’s a closer look at that interface. There’s a proprietary connector in the middle and what looks like some support towers on either side. Note that the hinge is actually on the tablet side.

    Lenovo

  • Ports! We have a bottom USB-C port. but that’s not the connection interface. We’re also covering the bottom power button when connected. Also there’s a pen.

    Lenovo

  • The back. Sometimes these touch laptops have a 360-degree hinge action, but that’s not going to work here.

    Lenovo

Have you ever used a Windows laptop and thought, “Gee, I really wish this was also an Android tablet”? Does Lenovo have a product for you!

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid laptop at CES 2024 is both a Windows laptop and an Android tablet. The bottom half contains all the usual Intel laptop parts, while the top half packs a Qualcomm chip and a whole duplicate set of computing components. A detachable screen lets both halves come apart and operate separately, and you’ll be spending your life riding the line between the Windows and Android ecosystems. Because you’re getting two entirely separate computers, you’ll also have to pay for two entirely separate computers—the device costs $2,000.

Because the device houses two entirely separate computers, you can separate them and run them at the same time. Of course, the tablet acts as an Android tablet when it’s detached, but you can also plug the headless laptop base into a monitor and use Windows. Lenovo calls the tablet the “Hybrid Tab” while the bottom is the “Hybrid Station,” and the whole thing voltroned together forms the “ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid.” The laptop base runs Windows 11 and has an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, Intel graphics, and a 75 Whr battery. The tablet runs Android 13 on a Snapdragon 8+ gen 1 SoC, along with 12GB of RAM, 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, and a 38 Whr battery.

Peripherals are all over the place. The tablet has four 1 W speakers, while the laptop base has two 2 W speakers. The laptop has a fingerprint reader and the tablet doesn’t, but the tablet has infrared face biometrics and the laptop doesn’t. The tablet has an unspecified front camera and two rear cameras: 13 MP and 5 MP.

The laptop has two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports—one on either side—and a headphone jack, while the tablet just has one USB-C port. The tablet’s USB-C port is on the bottom, but that’s not used for connectivity between the two halves; instead, there’s some kind of proprietary port. Interestingly, the laptop hinges are on the tablet half, making the tablet a bit heavier in tablet mode than it needs to be. Speaking of weight, the whole contraption weighs 1755 g (3.8 lbs). The laptop bottom measures 9.4 mm thick, with a weight of 970 g, and the tablet is 6.6 mm thick with a weight of 785 g.

The two halves are so separate that you can just run them separately.

Enlarge / The two halves are so separate that you can just run them separately.

Lenovo

The idea is a strange one, given how heavy, expensive, and complicated this device will be. And Windows already has a full touch interface that works fine in a tablet form factor. Something like the Microsoft Surface Book built a whole PC into the top half of a detachable laptop, which powered the Windows laptop and Windows tablet parts without needing a whole extra computer in the other half. Windows can also run Android apps now, if for some reason you’re in love with the idea of tablet Android apps.

The only reason to have the whole extra Android computer is if you really like the Android tablet OS and Google’s tablet apps, which is hard for even most die-hard Android users to say. With an official build of Android, you’ll get the Google apps, which wouldn’t be available through the Windows Android store. Google has to individually approve your device to get those apps, so it’s interesting that the company is apparently OK with this wacky hybrid device.

The inevitable problem with having two totally separate computers in one device is that at some point, there will be data on one device that you want to access on the other. Lenovo says the Windows computer has a “Hybrid Stream” feature that will enable the “streaming” of Android apps from the tablet via a “Picture-in-Picture window.” That sounds a bit like Stadia, where inputs were sent to a remote device for processing and a video stream was sent back. Here, though, the “remote” device is just the top half of your laptop. There is also a “Tablet with Keyboard” mode, indicating that you can use the laptop’s keyboard and mouse with the Android tablet somehow.

Many questions remain. Lenovo doesn’t actually say how you switch OSes. The Android tablet supports pen input, but Lenovo doesn’t say the pen will work with Windows. It also doesn’t say that Windows can use the tablet’s cameras (though that would be possible over USB). Another thing that would be possible over USB but isn’t mentioned is mass storage access of the other device—both Windows and Android could be host devices.

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid will be ready for all your mixed computing tasks in Q2.

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Portable monitors could make foldable-screen gadgets finally make sense

ASUS, CES, foldable, Monitors, oled, Tech / /

  • Asus plans to release this foldable OLED monitor in 2024. Electronics retailer Abt Electronics captured footage of it on display at CES.

  • The monitor has a metal chassis and glossy coating.

  • The monitor could help workers quickly add more screen space to setups.

  • In its video, Abt Electronics showed off different angled views of the monitor.

  • Like other foldables, the crease can seemingly catch reflections and glare when the device is bent.

  • Port selection.

  • The portable monitor will come with a sleeve.

Foldable screens have been bending their way into consumer gadgets over the last few years. But with skepticism about durability, pricing, image quality, and the necessity of such devices, foldable screens aren’t mainstream. With those concerns in mind, I haven’t had much interest in owning a foldable-screen gadget, even after using a foldable laptop for a month. However, the foldable portable monitor that Asus is showing at CES in Las Vegas this week is an application of foldable OLED that makes more sense to me than others.

Asus’ ZenScreen Fold OLED MQ17QH announced on Tuesday is a 17.3-inch portable monitor that can fold to a 12.5-inch size. The monitor has 2560×1920 pixels for a pixel density of 184.97 pixels per inch. Other specs include a 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage claim and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification.

When I think of the ways I use portable monitors, foldability makes more sense than it does with other device types. For example, I love working outside when possible, and an extra 17.3-inch screen that’s easy to carry would make long work sessions with an ultraportable laptop more feasible. The Fold OLED’s 17.3 inches is near the larger size for a portable monitor, but the fold and comparatively light weight should make it feel more transportable than similarly sized monitors that don’t fold in half.

Regarding dimensions and weight, Asus compares the monitor to a 13-inch thin-and-light laptop. The monitor weighs 2.58 lbs—that’s notable heft for something meant to be lugged around (the smaller Lenovo ThinkVision M14 weighs 1.3 pounds, for comparison). But 2.58 lbs is still on the lighter side for a 17-inch-class monitor (Asus’ 17-inch ROG Strix XG17AHP is 3.88 lbs), and Asus’ foldable is similarly thin.

Asus credits a “waterdrop-style hinge” for the monitor’s thin size. It’s 0.38 inches (9.7 mm) thick when unfolded, which should translate to about 0.76 inches (19.4 mm) when the monitor is folded shut.

It feels more natural for a portable monitor to add a fold for easy transport, since portability is right in the device category’s name.

Plus, a portable monitor doesn’t have the same types of component and cooling concerns as computing devices like laptops and phones do.

Crease concerns

I haven’t seen Asus’ foldable monitor in person, so I can only speculate on image quality. The monitor is still being finalized, but based on images and video from people who’ve seen the ZenScreen Fold OLED in person at CES and my experience using foldables, I expect the display to show a crease that picks up reflections and/or glare when bent. But considering that a portable monitor will typically be open flat, this doesn’t matter the same way it would with other types of foldable devices.

However, what matters is whether that crease is still visible when the monitor’s flat. A portable monitor is likely to be viewed from different angles, which could make even a slight crease pop. For what it’s worth, The Verge reported that the Asus monitor’s crease seemed to “disappear” when flat, but I remain highly cautious.

Asus’ monitor announcement showed confidence that “you’ll hardly be able to tell that there’s a hinge behind the display” when it’s open because of the waterdrop-style hinge, which is the same hinge type that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 uses, as pointed out by The Verge. The hinge type reportedly makes for a looser feel when the device is closed. Samsung Display has claimed that this puts less stress on the display and minimizes the gap seen when the foldable is shut. Asus’ announcement noted that the foldable monitor’s hinge uses “hundreds of parts,” which “all but eliminat[e] the gap.”

A close-up of the hinge, shown on-video by Abt Electronics.

Enlarge / A close-up of the hinge, shown on-video by Abt Electronics.

Like with any other foldable, though, durability remains a concern. A portable monitor may be moved around frequently, and Ars has seen firsthand how fragile a foldable screen can be, including with those small-gap designs.

Speaking of different viewing angles and visibility outdoors (and in bright rooms), the use of OLED suggests that this monitor won’t be as bright as some LCD portable monitors. That could limit visibility, depending on your use case.  Asus hasn’t shared a brightness spec for the ZenScreen Fold.

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Nvidia’s G-Sync Pulsar is anti-blur monitor tech aimed squarely at your eyeball

g-sync, gaming, gaming monitors, Monitors, NVIDIA, Tech, variable refresh rate, VRR / /

What will they sync of next? —

Branded monitors can sync pixels to backlighting, refresh rate, and GPU frames.

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Motion blur demonstration of G-Sync Pulsar, with

Enlarge / None of this would be necessary if it weren’t for your inferior eyes, which retain the colors of pixels for fractions of a second longer than is optimal for shooting dudes.

Nvidia

Gaming hardware has done a lot in the last decade to push a lot of pixels very quickly across screens. But one piece of hardware has always led to complications: the eyeball. Nvidia is targeting that last part of the visual quality chain with its newest G-Sync offering, Pulsar.

Motion blur, when it’s not caused by slow LCD pixel transitions, is caused by “the persistence of an image on the retina, as our eyes track movement on-screen,” as Nvidia explains it. Prior improvements in display tech, like variable rate refresh, Ultra Low Motion Blur, and Variable Overdrive have helped with the hardware causes of this deficiency. The eyes and their object permanence, however, can only be addressed by strobing a monitor’s backlight.

You can’t just set that light blinking, however. Variable strobing frequencies causes flicker, and timing the strobe to the monitor refresh rate—itself also tied to the graphics card output—was tricky. Nvidia says it has solved that issue with its G-Sync Pulsar tech, employing “a novel algorithm” in “synergizing” its variable refresh smoothing and monitor pulsing. The result is that pixels are transitioned from one color to another at a rate that reduces motion blur and pixel ghosting.

Nvidia also claims that Pulsar can help with the visual discomfort caused by some strobing effects, as the feature “intelligently controls the pulse’s brightness and duration.”

  • The featureless axis labels make my brain hurt, but I believe this chart suggests that G-Sync Pulsar does the work of timing out exactly when to refresh screen pixels at 360 Hz.

    Nvidia

  • The same, but this time at 200 Hz.

    Nvidia

  • And again, this time at 100 Hz. Rapidly changing pixels are weird, huh?

    Nvidia

To accommodate this “radical rethinking of display technology,” a monitor will need Nvidia’s own chips built in. There are none yet, but the Asus ROG Swift PG27 Series G-Sync and its 360 Hz refresh rate is coming “later this year.” No price for that monitor is available yet.

It’s hard to verify how this looks and feels without hands-on time. PC Gamer checked out Pulsar at CES this week and verified that, yes, it’s easier to read the name of the guy you’re going to shoot while you’re strafing left and right at an incredibly high refresh rate. Nvidia also provided a video, captured at 1,000 frames per second, for those curious.

Nvidia’s demonstration of G-Sync Pulsar, using Counter-Strike 2 filmed at 1000 fps, on a 360 Hz monitor, with Pulsar on and off, played back at 1/24 speed.

Pulsar signals Nvidia’s desire to once again create an exclusive G-Sync monitor feature designed to encourage a wraparound Nvidia presence on the modern gaming PC. It’s a move that has sometimes backfired on the firm before. The company relented to market pressures in 2019 and enabled G-Sync in various variable refresh rate monitors powered by VESA’s Display port Adaptive-Sync tech (more commonly known by its use in AMD’s FreeSync monitors). G-Sync monitors were selling for typically hundreds of dollars more than their FreeSync counterparts, and while they technically had some exclusive additional features, the higher price points likely hurt Nvidia’s appeal when a gamer was looking at the full cost of new or upgraded system.

There will not be any such cross-standard compatibility with G-Sync Pulsar, which will only be offered on monitors with a G-Sync Ultimate badge, and then further support Pulsar, specifically. There’s always a chance that another group will develop its own synced-strobe technology that could work across GPUs, but nothing is happening as of yet.

In related frame-rate news, Nvidia also announced this week that its GeForce Now game streaming service will offer G-Sync capabilities to those on Ultimate or Priority memberships and playing on capable screens. Nvidia claims that, paired with its Reflex offering on GeForce Now, the two “make cloud gaming experiences nearly indistinguishable from local ones.” I’ll emphasize here that those are Nvidia’s words, not the author’s.

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iPhone survives 16,000-foot fall after door plug blows off Alaska Air flight 1282

airplane accident, airplanes, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, Apple, Boeing, Boeing Co. 737 Max 9, drop test, IPhone, ntsb, Seanathan Bates, Tech / /

the ultimate drop test —

Still-working iPhone is one of two discovered after the airline accident, says NTSB.

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The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282, discovered by Seanathan Bates under a bush on the side of the road.

Enlarge / The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282, discovered by Seanathan Bates under a bush on the side of the road.

On Sunday, game developer Seanathan Bates discovered a working iPhone that fell 16,000 from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday. Flight 1282 suffered an explosive decompression event when a door plug blew off the plane. No one was injured during the incident. The iPhone wasn’t injured, either—still unlocked and with a torn charging cable connector plugged in, it appeared largely undamaged and displayed information that matched the flight.

“Found an iPhone on the side of the road,” wrote Bates in a post on X. “Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!”

The discovery location of the iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282.

Enlarge / The discovery location of the iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282.

After the discovery, Bates contacted the NTSB, who took possession of the device and told him the iPhone was actually the second phone that had been found from the flight. During a press conference on Sunday, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that two people had discovered cell phones that fell from flight 1281. The other cell phone was discovered in someone’s yard.

The decompression event started when a door plug used to cover an unused exit door on the Boeing 737 Max 9 unexpectedly detached from the plane. Rapid decompression can suck passengers and objects violently out of an aircraft due to air pressure differences. While no people fell out of the plane, the loose iPhone apparently got ripped away while charging. “In case you didn’t see it, there was a broken-off charger plug still inside it! Thing got *yankedout the door,” wrote Bates in his X post.

The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had a ripped charging connector still plugged into it.

Enlarge / The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had a ripped charging connector still plugged into it.

iPhones surviving harrowing drops from sky-heights aren’t unheard of. In May, AppleInsider reported on a skydiver’s iPhone that survived a 14,000 fall from a plane. Given air resistance that limits an object’s descent speed and landings in a soft spot like moist dirt or mud, the survivals aren’t entirely surprising. Landing on a hard surface would likely be a different story, however.

At the time of the iPhone’s discovery, the search was still on for the missing door plug, but the plug has since been found. Compared to the apparent ease of discovering two small cell phones first, a Hacker News commenter quipped, “Boeing needs ‘Find My Door.'”

No word yet on whether the iPhone has been reunited with its owner.

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