Tech Brew Ride Home - 06/03 - All the WWDC News

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

All the news and headlines from WWDC, the anti-trust brigade might be coming for Google in the US, a big chip acquisition, big news on the payments front, and a dispatch from the frontlines of the streaming wars… but, c’mon, we know what you’re here to hear about. Tiny.website Tech.FidelityCareers.com Links: Mac Pro (The Verge) Pro Display XDR (The Verge) iPadOS and Files app (The Verge) Sign in with Apple (9To5Mac) Dark Mode (The Verge) The Justice Department is preparing a potential antitrust investigation of Google (Washington Post) Infineon Will Buy Cypress Semi in Latest Chip Mega-Deal (Bloomberg) PayPal opens up access to e-commerce platform that’s already used by Instagram and Facebook (CNBC) Stripe Launches Chargeback Protection Service (Pymnts.com) An HBO Question Is Giving AT&T Executives a Headache (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home from Monday, June 3rd, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. All the news and headlines from WWDC. The Antitrust Brigade might be coming for Google in the U.S. A big chip acquisition, big news on the payments front, and a dispatch from the front lines of the streaming wars.

But come on, we know what you're here to hear about. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. So we're going to do something a little bit different right now. Today, of all days, I had a commitment in the afternoon that I couldn't get out of. So Chris Higgins is going to give you all of the WWDC news, and then I'll be back after that to fill you in on the rest of the day's news. Take it away, Chris. Today in San Jose, Tim Cook took the stage at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. The stakes were unusually high as he faced a room full of developers and other professionals who have been waiting for six years for a new Mac Pro. Well, WDC is normally a software-only event, these developers would have burned the building down

if there weren't some mention of new pro hardware, along with the expected updates to all the operating systems and all that other stuff. So let's talk about what they got, and, spoiler, the building is not on fire. So the headline news here is the new Mac Pro. Apple had promised what they called a modular computer, and, amazingly enough, that's actually what they made.

The form factor is very similar to a typical tower PC with a serious dose of Apple's style industrial design and some kind of weird stuff going on inside. So the MacPro continues to be an Intel-based workstation. It brings back PCI Express expansion slots, thank you Apple, and there are a ton of them. Specifically, there are eight PCIE slots. Four of them are double width, three are single width, and one is half length and half length. populated by an I.O. card that has two external Thunderbolt 3 ports plus two USBA ports and a 3.5-inch mini jack for audio. There are also two 10-gibit Ethernet ports built in and some extra USB ports elsewhere on the case. So basically, you know, this is a Mac Pro Tower, something we have not seen

from Apple in a painfully long time. But that is not nearly all. What can you put in those 8 PCIE slots? Well, Apple showed off several unusual pieces of hardware. The most interesting is the MPX, or Mac Pro expansion module. This thing is essentially a fanless heat sink container that can be configured with multiple beefy graphics cards inside. Apple mentioned that it can draw 500 watts just by itself. So, for instance, the base model of the Mac Pro comes with just one Radion Pro 580X.

but you can get an MPX with two Radion Pro Vega 2 cards inside, each with 32 gigs of RAM. Oh yeah, and actually, if you want, you can configure the Mac Pro with two MPX modules, each crammed full of multiple Radion Pro Vega 2 cards for a total of 128 gigs of RAM across the four GPU boards. And we are just getting started. There is at least one more specialty board as well. Apple showed off an ASIC card they called the Afterburner, which is a hardware accelerator for video processing. With this thing installed, you can work with super high bitrate pro-res raw video, specifically up to three streams of 8K ProRes Raw running simultaneously at full resolution,

or 12 streams of 4K ProRes Raw. Apple also mentioned they're working with the usual suspects, Adobe, Red, Blackmagic, Avid, Pixar, Foundry, Maxon, Otoi, Side Effects, Epic, and so on. Although we didn't get demos of what those folks are doing, it is very encouraging that they are on board. Oh yeah, and I guess I should mention the CPU. Apple didn't tell us the exact model we're getting, but it is a new Zeon that starts at eight cores for the base model and goes up to 28 cores. There are two threads per core, as usual, and they've specced the system to allow the CPU

to draw a sustained 300 watts. The system has 12 dim slots for RAM with a six-channel RAM bus supporting up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM, which is not bad. All right, so given all the stuff I just mentioned, the power and cooling requirements for the top-end versions of this machine are insane. So Apple includes a 1.4 kilowatt power supply in every new Mac Pro. Similarly, there are three giant fans on the front and a blower in the back left, which appears to spread heat around the various heat sinks in the tower.

Apple claims that under normal workloads, this thing is as quiet as an iMac Pro. They also sell wheels for it in case you want to wheel it around in your office. Now, to demo the machine, Apple showed some very impressive audio and video projects. I will just summarize that by saying they managed to get 1,000 actual audio tracks plus 1,000 software instrument tracks running simultaneously in a new version of logic and showed us that there was still CPU headroom to spare.

They also showed off the ProRes Raw support. They even showed adding live effects, titles, and color correction over top of ProRes Raw 8K footage, by the way, three streams of it, all at the same time. Oh yeah, and there's also a version of the Mac Pro designed to be rack-mounted. Alongside the new Mac Pro-Ur, Apple unveiled its new Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch 6K Retina display driven over a single Thunderbolt 3 cable. Without getting way too deep into the weeds on this thing, it has a fancy LED backlight with a bunch of extra

fancy tech that enables 1,000 nits of sustained brightness or 1,600 nits at peak. That means you can actually edit HDR video or images continuously using this display. There is a version with a typical anti-glare coding and a special matte version as well. There's a fancy stand that allows for very nice tilt control, easy unmounting, fast Vesa adapter mounting, and even a portrait mode. Apple said that a MacBook Pro can drive two of these displays, and a fully specced Mac Pro can drive six of them. So, how much does this all cost?

Well, the base model Mac Pro with an 8-core Zon, 32 gigs of RAM, Radion Pro 580X, and a 256-gig SSD is $6,000. I am rounding that up just so I don't have to say 9-99 a ton of times. The Mac Pro ships in the fall, and yeah, if you add more stuff, it's going to cost a ton more. Now, the display pricing is kind of odd. you can buy the display itself with no stand for either $5,000 for the regular one with the regular anti-glare coating, or $6,000 for the one with the magical nanotexture matte glass stuff.

Here's the weird thing. The stand is sold separately. So if you want a stand for your display, that is another $1,000. Or if you just want a vase amount, that's $200 and, I guess, bring your own arm. That's also shipping this fall. All right, so Apple also announced a gazillion other things, and it took several hours at top speed for them to run through it all. I'm going to run through what I think is the most important stuff right now,

though boy, Brian has got his work cut out for him in getting the rest to you tomorrow. First up, the iPad now has its own fork of iOS called iPadOS. It has some new productivity features related to window management, plus the Files app in iPadOS 13 will support external storage. We're talking SD cards, thumb drives, and external hard drives. We didn't see much of a demo there, but Apple did confirm on stage that third-party apps like Adobe Lightroom will finally be able to access things like SD cards directly.

Also, zip and unzip are now core features of the Files app. And here's a grab bag of other new features coming to iPadOS 13. You can pin widgets on your actual home screen. Yes, the actual home screen, not the lock screen. You can launch multiple instances of the same app and tile them on the screen. There is an app expose feature that's much like the Mac version. Safari has a download manager now. There are a bunch of new text editing gestures.

Basically, the whole text editing system is revamped. There is a better undo gesture that does not require you to shake the entire iPad, although they say you still can if you want to. Safari now requests the desktop versions of websites for you and adapts them on the fly for touch input, and Apple pencil latency has been reduced somehow from 20 milliseconds to just nine. All right, so what about iOS 13 for iPhone? Well, Face ID is now 30% faster. App downloads are much smaller, and launch times are apparently 2x faster.

There is also a dark mode, and oh yeah, that's coming to the iPad as well. there is also a new swipe keyboard that they call QuickPath, and that is coming to the iPad too. Many of the built-in apps across both iPhone and iPad have gotten major upgrades, including a massive update to reminders of all things, that actually looks like it might be able to handle GTD-style project contexts and nesting. The Maps app now has a feature very much like Google Street View, though it's unclear how many areas have this kind of view right now, and Apple has mapped a ton of the US using LIDAR,

from both the ground and the air to give you 3D representations of buildings, which does help a lot when navigating. In the new OS version, you can now grant an app one-time access to your location and force it to ask you again the next time it wants it.

Good move. This should address most of that creepy background location snooping stuff. There is also a new app called Find My. Yeah, just Find My. There's no, like, noun at the end of that. Anyway, find my can find my my iPhone, iPad, or Mac, along with an interesting peer-to-peer encrypted Bluetooth system that allows you to find, for instance, a MacBook that is currently asleep

by having it occasionally send out low-power Bluetooth pings to other devices around it. Okay, I'm already running long, but I still have a full page of highlights. Let's keep running. Apple TV will support controllers from the Xbox 1S and the PlayStation Dual Shock 4. There is now handoff between your AirPods and HomePod, meaning when you get near a HomePod, you can wave your phone at it, and it will pick up whatever you're playing on the AirPods on the HomePod.

This works with music and podcasts, but also with phone calls. There's a new feature to allow you to use an iPad as a second display, either wired or wireless, with Apple Pencil Support. You can now pair two sets of AirPods to the same device allowing you to share audio with a friend. The iPhone gets new features to fight spam calls, including the ability to send all unknown callers to voicemail. I'm liking that one.

There's a bunch of new stuff with emojis and the ability to share your photo or your emoji with other people you're talking to over iMessage. There's some new Apple Watch stuff coming, of course, including streaming audio APIs, and the ability for Apple Watch apps to be fully independent with no iOS app as their host on the iPhone. Also, coming soon, App Store on Apple Watch.

Also, new faces and stuff like that. There's now a full voice control system on MacOS and iOS that allows users to control the system entirely by voice. This is a radical accessibility improvement, and I love this. In MacOS 10.15 Catalina, oh, that's the new name, by the way, it's Catalina, iTunes is finally gone. Now, device syncing is handled by the finder, and three apps, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV,

take over the remaining functions previously managed by iTunes. There is also now a single sign-on feature using your Apple ID. This is called Sign In with Apple, and it promises to be very similar to those sign-in with Facebook or sign-in with Twitter features, but with way better security and anonymity. Okay, and finally, the biggest thing, for developers, Marzapan. That was the code name for a way to port iPad apps over to the Mac. That is now

called Catalyst. It will be available on MacOS Catalina. Get it? Catalyst? Catalina. Anyway, it appears to be somewhat improved from the previous version, which by the way was not available to regular developers, and allows for more Mac-like apps. To get started, you literally open your iPadOS project and Xcode, check a box to target MacOS, recompile, and boom, you've got yourself a basic Mac app. There are also a bunch of new controls to improve things like menu bars, shortcut keys, and so on, specifically for the Mac version. There is also a giant grab bag of AR and VR stuff,

plus a big surprise, Swift UI. This appears to be essentially a sibling to Apple's UI Kit framework for making apps. It can generate apps across all of Apple's current hardware platforms as long as you're coding using Swift inside Xcode. Aside from the Mac Pro, that is the single thing that got the biggest reaction from developers, and you better believe there is more to dig into that in the WWDC State of the Union later today. I'm back, everybody, because there was, of course, other news today, and especially over the weekend, late on Friday.

Tony Rahm in the Washington Post reported that the Department of Justice has begun work on a possible Google antitrust investigation. Quote, the move thrust Google back under the regulatory microscope in the United States roughly six years after another federal agency probed the search and advertising behemoth on grounds that its business practices threatened competitors, though the government spared the company from major punishment at the time. The exact focus of the Justice Department's investigation is unclear. The department began work on the matter after brokering an agreement with the government's other antitrust agency, the Federal Trade Commission, to take the lead

on antitrust oversight of Google, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are confidential, end quote. Indeed, later in the weekend, Rom was also reporting that the Federal Trade Commission and the DOJ have reached a sort of agreement to divvy up antitrust oversight of both Google and Amazon, putting Amazon under the FTC's watch and Google under the DOJ's, quoting Rom again. The FTC's plans for Amazon and the Justice Department's interest. and Google are not immediately clear, but the kind of arrangement brokered between the Justice Department and the FTC typically presages more serious antitrust scrutiny, the likes of which

many Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought out of fear that tech companies have become too big and powerful. The early moves from the government's twin antitrust agencies mark the latest attempts by U.S. regulators to better supervise tech giants. Earlier this year, the FTC established a special task force, it said, would monitor tech and competition, including, quote, investigating any potential anti-competitive conduct in those markets and taking enforcement actions when warranted, end quote. So the headline here is that Google might now be facing competition scrutiny in the U.S. in addition to what it is already facing in the EU, but also that tech companies more broadly might have to prepare for their time in the woodshed as well

as seemingly the regulatory mood seems to have definitely shifted against some. Silicon Valley. Infineon is acquiring Cyprus semiconductor for $23.85 per share, valuing the company at $8.7 billion or about a 33% premium, two Cypress semiconductors closing price of $17.82 per share on Friday. Quoting Bloomberg, the combined entity would have sales that would place it among the top 10 of chipmakers globally, according to Citibank. Buying Cyprus will hand Infinion a memory chipmaker repositioning itself as a provider to automobiles and other connected devices. The semiconductor industry has been reshaped over the past five years as companies combine

to gain scale while fighting rising costs and shrinking customer bases. NXP semiconductors recently announced a $1.76 billion deal for Marvel Technology Group's Wi-Fi connectivity business, while Nvidia agreed to buy chipmaker Melanox technologies for $6.9 billion in March. End quote. PayPal has rolled out a new e-commerce program, which it is calling the PayPal Commerce platform to anyone who wants to use it. The platform is already used by Instagram, checkout, and Facebook Marketplace. PayPal Commerce is an e-commerce system that will allow buying and selling, of course, but also facilitate a whole slew of behind-the-scenes services and functions like fraud protection, compliance, and account authentication, things which would be, quote,

almost impossible for a small startup to build on its own PayPal C.O. Bill Reddy said, this is a huge and rapidly growing market and we're looking to go enable much more of that. Reddy told CNBC in a phone interview. Sellers are trying to figure out how they can go compete with the very largest online retailers. This is a huge opportunity for them, end quote. The new commerce platform includes other back-end processes like onboarding, payouts, and disputes management, AI and machine learning powered fraud protection. The product will first be available across the United States, UK, and Europe, but over time, Reddy said PayPal plans to expand to all other markets where they operate, end quote.

And, this is more in the weeds, but Stripe has launched a new feature called chargeback protection based on its fraud prevention tool radar, which will automatically reimburse businesses for the cost of a disputed charge, quoting payments.com. Stripe said, with chargeback protection, in addition to getting reimbursed the disputed amount, plus chargeback fees, Stripe customers get to skip evidence collection. There's no need to submit any evidence in the event of a dispute. The reimbursement from Stripe comes automatically, it said in the press release, end quote.

Again, I acknowledge this is in the weed stuff, but if you have ever been an online merchant, no longer having to deal with chargeback disputes is a huge deal. Trust me. Finally today, another dispatch from the streaming wars. I kind of want to start doing a joke thing where I play old and timely music over my streaming wars dispatches, kind of how they do in that Ken Burns Civil War documentary, but probably I won't. Anyway, I gave you a weekend long read last Friday about AT&T and how with its acquisition of Time Warner.

It believes it can position itself to have an over-the-top platform that can serve up the likes of Friends and Game of Thrones and Batman and Harry Potter. Pretty compelling as a service offering. but as Edmund Lee points out in the New York Times, there's one small or actually big problem they're facing. Quote, the source of the problem is HBO, which has 7 million online customers. The premium cable network costs $15 a month, a price that's practically locked in because of contracts with distributors like Comcast and Dish. That price is higher than the amounts charged by any of AT&T's future streaming rivals, which has frustrated executives as they try to set a competitive point.

price, according to three people familiar with the company's digital strategy. Netflix's standard plan costs $13. Hulu's commercial free version goes for 12, and Amazon offers video with its prime subscription at $119 a year or just under $10 a month. Apple has considered making its streaming product scheduled for the fall rollout free to Apple customers, and the Walt Disney company will charge $7 a month with a discount for customers paying a year in advance, end quote. So yeah, the problem is that for decades now, HBO has been able to command a premium price, $15 a month, because it was HBO. It was premium content. But now others look just as premium, or even more so, but at lower price points. And it's not just a question of giving up revenue you've been guaranteed for years. The question also is, if you devalue HBO in the marketplace, what does that do to HBO's premium brand. Lee says AT&T slash WarnerMedia plans to deal with this by offering several tiers. So maybe the really choice stuff, the Game of Thrones, the Friends episodes, that might be at the highest or at least

higher tier that could justify a higher price point. But then the question becomes, how much does that confuse the product in the marketplace? For $7 a month, you can get everything Disney's got, no questions asked. That is all for a jam-packed My thanks to Chris Higgins for helping me write and also produce the show today. Remember, Chris has his own daily show, The Primary Ride Home, which covers all the news from the presidential campaign trail. Search that out in your podcast app of choice, The Primary Ride Home. Talk to you tomorrow.