Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/28 - Is Apple Gonna Give the iPad a Trackpad?

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Are S10 sales in Korea the first indication of the Covid-19 effect? Is the FCC gonna fine the wireless carriers enough for selling location data? Is Apple going to release an iPad Pro with a trackpad? A hybrid scooter/tiny car. And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: TinyCapital.com Netgear.com/bestwifi Links: Amazon bars one million products for false coronavirus claims (Reuters) Initial sales of Galaxy S20 series downbeat amid virus fears (The Korea Herald) FCC to propose $200 million fines for U.S. cellphone carriers over consumer data disclosures (Reuters) Apple Planning iPad Keyboard with Trackpad (The Information) An iPhone with no ports? It could happen in the very near future (Macworld) Second proof of concept of under-display camera, but won’t come to iPhone soon (9to5Mac) Citroën's new EV is a tiny two-seater that only costs $22 a month (Engadget) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: How Monzo brought Silicon Valley’s ‘wild ideas’ to Britain’s staid banking system (CNBC) The bank manager will see you now: is Monzo ready to grow up? (The Guardian) Inside the race to build the best quantum computer on Earth (MIT Technology Review) A parody Twitter account hits a nerve with Silicon Valley VCs (Protocol) How North Korean Hackers Rob Banks Around the World (Wired) YC’s New Guide to Raising a Series A (Y Combinator) Printing’s Not Dead: The $35 Billion Fight Over Ink Cartridges (Bloomberg Businessweek) 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 right home for Friday, February 28th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Our S-10 sales in Korea, the first indication of the COVID-19 effect. Is the FCC going to find the wireless carriers enough for selling location data?

Is Apple going to release an iPad Pro with a track pad, a hybrid scooter slash tiny car? And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Look, we can't escape coronavirus news this week. and we just need to make our peace with that, I guess. Amazon says it has borrowed more than one million products from being sold on its platform in recent weeks because those products had either inaccurately claimed to cure COVID-19

or defend against it. Quote, Amazon also removed tens of thousands of deals from merchants that it said attempted to price gouge customers. The world's largest online retailer had faced scrutiny over the health-related offers on its platform. And earlier this week, Italy launched a probe into surging prices around the internet for sanitizing gels and hygiene masks while it battled the biggest outbreak in Europe. One offer comparison site showed recent examples of higher than usual prices for masks on Amazon,

made by U.S. Industrial Conglomerate 3M. A merchant Thursday offered a 10-pack of N95 masks for $128, a Reuters reporter saw when clicking through the buying options on Amazon. That was up from a recent seller average price of $41.24, according to the tracking website camel camel camel camel.com. The item was no longer available in a check later in the day. A two-pack respirator was offered new at $24.99 earlier this week by a third-party seller up from a recent average of $6.65 when sold by Amazon. The price following site showed, end quote. But on a much more economic tip, these are the sorts of stories that I'm watching out for. The Korean Herald is reporting that Samsung sold an estimate of 70,000 Galaxy S20 phones in Korea

on that phone's launch day. But that represents around a 50% decrease in launch day numbers from last year. Quote, the Galaxy S10 series sold 140,000 units on its first day, while the Galaxy Note 10 smartphones shifted 220,000 units when they were launched in August. Quote, sales were affected by sharp declines and discounts for new phones and the number of visitors to offline stores due to coronavirus infection fears, an official from a local telecom company said, lower than expected subsidies also led to downbeat sales, they said, end quote. Again, it's the potential of stories like this to start popping up on the regs that I think has the stock market dropping a thousand points a day. The FCC is proposing levying fines of at least $200 million in total against AT&T, T-Mobile Sprint,

and Verizon for improperly disclosing the real-time location data of users. Quote, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, confirmed in January that one or more wireless carriers apparently violated federal law. The FCC and the carriers did not immediately comment. The FCC said in May of 2018 it was investigating reports that a website flaw could have allowed the location of mobile phone customers to be tracked. That probe expanded into other uses of consumers' location data by third-party firms. carriers have allowed the use of location data for programs like roadside assistance, logistics, medical emergency, alert services, human trafficking alerts, and fraud prevention, end quote.

Quoting Lindsay Barrett on Twitter, I'm just a simple country privacy lawyer, but it sure seems like if you fine giant conglomerates paltry amounts for flagrantly breaking the law and putting people's lives at risk, they have a pretty good reason to think that breaking the law will work out okay for them next time, end quote. Whole grab bag of Apple rumors now. Sources are telling the information that Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard with a built-in trackpad. This will likely be part of the next version of the iPad Pro coming later this year. Quote, a second person familiar with the matter said Apple has been experimenting with track pads for the iPad for a number of years. Some prototypes had capacitive keys which mimic the response of mechanical keys but with sensors, though it isn't clear whether this feature is in the planned product. Apple has previously filed and won patents for iPad keyboards that have keys with capacitive sensors,

and that can accept trackpad gestures. The first person said the iPad keyboard will be made of materials similar to those in Apple's current smart keyboard folio for the iPad Pro, which makes heavy use of fabric, end quote. And then, Dan Moran at Macworld says that an iPhone with no ports whatsoever might be coming sooner than you would think, quote, one of the biggest reasons given on why Apple can't go entirely portless on the iPhone was the need to fall back to a hardware connection in the eventuality that a device is bricked and needs to be restored.

However, the iOS 13.4 beta released just this week contains references to a hidden OS recovery mode that appears to be designed to work wirelessly. That's not entirely surprising. Max have long had an internet-based recovery mode. After all, we live in an era where computers no longer contain disk drives and Apple doesn't disseminate its software updates on physical media. So why couldn't an iPhone follow that example? The beta code makes it seem as though this OS recovery feature would be available on other

devices as well, such as the iPad, Apple Watch, and HomePod. Given the latter two, which, as already mentioned, don't have any ports, that would seem to be an aid for troubleshooting these products also, end quote. And, of course, if Apple were to push hard to get everyone to adopt wireless charging as their default expectation, then no ports would be necessary at all, right? This is all pushing us toward that imagined platonic ideal of just a giant slab of glass. But that is still problematic technically because of the cameras. In 9-to-5 Mac, Ben Lovejoy writes about the Apex 2020 from Vivo, which has put its 16-mapixel selfie camera inside the display, right under the glass, thus

obviating the need for a notch. But apparently this requires some hardware chicanery to get rid of haze effects caused by the glass overlay. So according to Ben, quote, given the high premium Apple places on camera quality, that's the sort of compromise the company isn't going to accept even in the selfie camera. Plus, we also noted last time Apple's notch doesn't simply contain a camera. Altogether, there are eight pieces of technology in the notch. From left to right, infrared camera, flood illuminator, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, speaker, microphone, front-facing camera, dot projector. All will eventually be solved one way or another,

but we still shouldn't expect a truly notchless iPhone anytime soon, end quote. French carmaker Citrean has launched a new electric vehicle that I can kind of only just describe as a hybrid between a car and an electric scooter. It is a car. It has four wheels. It has a roof. It seats two people. but it has a 5.5 kilowatt-hour battery can run 44 miles on a single charge and you can recharge it by plugging into any standard 220-volt outlet.

It has a max speed of 28 miles per hour. So sort of like e-scooters designed for short urban commutes. And it's so small it doesn't even require a license to operate. Plus, the ownership options sound very e-scootery, quoting in gadget. Citroen has various purchasing options to choose from if you're interested. You can pay 20 euros around $22 per month for a long-term rental of two years if you make an initial payment of $2,644 euros, though you can also buy one outright for $6,000. In case you want to try it out first before buying, you'd also be able to rent one from the free-to-move car sharing service in Europe for around $0.26. or $0.29 per minute. Citroen will start accepting orders for the AMI on March 30th in France, followed by Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Germany a few months later. The first deliveries are expected to arrive to French buyers in June, end quote.

If this were available in the States and I had a garage, I would seriously, seriously consider this, because the only thing that really hampers my e-scooter commute right now is weather. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. And first up, a profile of a fin-te. tech company that I know we've never talked about before. Monzo, whose bright pink cards are becoming ubiquitous among certain millennials in London. Monzo was founded by Tom Bloomfield, a native Brit who caught the startup bug by going through Y Combinator, but also working at a startup called GoCardless,

an online payment processor in the direct debit space. I'm actually, though, going to post two profiles of Bloomfield, one from CNBC and the other from The Guardian. So one from the States and one from Britain, because I thought it was interesting, the contrast and tone between the two pieces. Guess which is which, quote, but before you started Monzo, Bloomfield was in Silicon Valley at the startup accelerator, Y Combinator, setting up a different fintech or financial technology business called Go Cardless with two college friends. I went to Y Combinator through that company and got to know the team there relatively well, Bloomfield recalls in an interview. why Combinator really shaped my experience. The sheer, quote, optimism and ambition that embodied the culture of the valley was, quote, infectious, he says.

Investors there would welcome wild ideas like that of starting a bank from scratch, end quote. And then here's the other piece. Quote, he's just back from his latest trip to Silicon Valley and he wasn't impressed. It's lost its magic, he says. One problem is this myopic bubble culture. You go to a party in San Francisco and everyone's pitching VCs or talking about their cryptocurrencies. It's problematic if you're trying to build a product that works for everyone. And the amount of money that you need to survive in San Francisco is insanity. People are paying

$3,000 to $4,000 a month for a single bedroom apartment now. I was staying at a friend's place and there were homeless people in deep, deep poverty camped outside the apartment. It feels like dystopia, end quote. I don't know. It's interesting to learn more about Monzo if you never have, but also I thought it was an interesting case study in how media sometimes frames startup stories differently. Next, I know I've suggested pieces on this before, but the MIT Technology Review has a 3,500 word deep dive on the race to build a quantum computer, specifically the intense rivalry between teams at IBM and Google. Remember when Google announced quantum supremacy a couple months ago and IBM objected? Yeah, this piece explains what that's all about.

quote, unlike most of the quantum computing world, IBM doesn't think quantum supremacy is the technology's right brother's moment. In fact, it doesn't even believe there will be such a moment. IBM is instead chasing a very different measure of success, something it calls quantum advantage. This isn't a mere difference of words or even of science, but of philosophical stance with roots in IBM's history, culture, and ambitions, and perhaps the fact that for eight years its revenue and profit have been in almost unremitting decline, while Google and its parent company alphabet have only seen their numbers grow. This context and these differing goals could influence which, if either, comes out ahead in the quantum computing race, end quote.

Next, I don't know if you have to be in this world to care about this, but protocol looks at that whole tempest in a teapot that's been going on about those parody Twitter accounts like VCs congratulating themselves and the actual VCs who block these accounts. Quote, the creator of VC. Braggs is mostly amused by VCs taking offense or blocking the account. Quote, these people are wildly successful and influential, yet they block a stupid parody account, they said. Quote, majority of VCs and angels are good sports and lean into the silliness, but some are surprisingly thin-skinned despite all the big talk and thought leadership on social media,

end quote. As the account has grown, plenty of venture capitalists have actually embraced the silliness and are tagging at VC Braggs or even at VC complaints in their. own tweets. Quote, if I saw something mean-spirited in it, it would be different, but all these accounts are doing is retweeting VC, said Kraft Ventures founder David Sacks in an email. Apparently, our industry has a tendency towards self-congratulation or self-flagellation. My feeling is, let's just embrace the absurdity of it, end quote. Next, I think I knew this, but today I for sure learned that North Korean hackers are successfully robbing banks around the world.

because Wired told me this morning exactly how they're doing it. Quote, These North Korean hackers have carried out a systematic effort to target financial institutions all over the world. Their methods are bold, though not always successful. In their most profitable operations, they have manipulated how major financial institutions connect to the international banking system. By duping components of this system into thinking their hackers are legitimate users, they have enabled the transfer of tens of millions of dollars into accounts they control.

They have tampered with log files and bank transaction records, prompting a flurry of security alerts and upgrades in international financial institutions. Most publicly and perhaps by accident, the hackers have disrupted hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in a ham-fisted effort to hold valuable data for ransom. Through their successes and failures, they learn to modify and combine their tricks, evolving their operations to be more effective. Even with a mixed track record, these attempts at manipulating the global financial system have literally paid off. The bounties from North Korean hacking campaigns are huge. The United Nations estimated the total haul at $2 billion, a large sum for a country with a gross domestic product of only about $28 billion, end quote. Next, Y Combinator published their new guide to raising a series A round. This follows on from their previous guides, like their guide to seed fundraising, their pitch deck guide and their deck and term sheet templates.

quoting Y Combinator itself, this guide collects nearly everything we've learned about series A's. It's designed to help founders tactically and strategically plan for fundraisers. We explain every step leading up to a successful raise as well as the steps taken throughout the process. We also explain the logic behind every step. Along the way, we outline the expectations, incentives, and rough thought processes of the investors involved, so founders feel less mystified. For instance, we learned that founders on average have to meet with 30 investors

to produce a single term sheet. Founders who take preemptive offers take 1.4% more dilution for less money than those who run processes. Benchmarks are almost meaningless. We've seen A's for SaaS companies with $200K in annual recurring revenue and with $9 million in ARR. The guide isn't a book of magic. There's no guarantee that following it will lead to a successful raise. However, we have seen that companies that follow the guide have little fear about the process of raising it. They know what they're doing and make fewer mistakes, end quote. And finally, like those stories about all the money still being made from people with old AOL accounts that they've never canceled and still pay for every month. We have from Businessweek a story that is worth returning to every now and again.

Printing is not dead. Businessweek looks at the $35 billion fight between Xerox and HP over ink cartridges. No weekend bonus episodes this weekend. I'm just going to spend the weekend again playing Mario Kart with my kids as much as possible. Though we are hosting a leap day party tomorrow. Happy leap day, everybody. Talk to you on Monday.