Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 05/06 - Headlines From Microsoft's Build Conference

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

All the announcements from Microsoft’s Build 2019, Mozilla fixes the Firefox snafu, we think, a grab-bag of Apple rumors and why Netflix’s competitive resiliency might be here to stay. Sponsors: Legacybox.com/ride Metalab.co Links Microsoft's IntelliCode for AI-assisted coding comes out of preview (TechCrunch) Microsoft aims to modernize and secure voting with ElectionGuard (TechCrunch) Add-ons disabled or failing to install in Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons Blog) Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population within a day, this map shows (CNBC) Brussels poised to probe Apple over Spotify’s fees complaint (Financial Times) Netflix's Competitive Resiliency Is Here to Stay (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 7) (Redef) 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 TechMeme right home for Monday, May 6th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. All of the announcements from Microsoft's Build of 2019 conference,

Mozilla fixes the Firefox snafu, we think. A grab bag of Apple rumors and why Netflix's competitive resiliency might be here to stay. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. This is going to be a busy week. Everyone, so buckle in. Microsoft Build kicked off today. Google I.O. begins tomorrow. Uber's IPO is probably happening on Friday, but Microsoft Build 2019 is first,

so let me run through the headlines, starting with the developer-centric ones. Microsoft announced Fluid Frameworks, a new web-based modular platform for document creation available later this year. Microsoft said it plans to open source its Q compiler and simulators, part of its quantum development kit. There's also Visual Studio Online, an online code editor based on Visual Studio Code that supports existing extensions in Telecode and more. Microsoft also rolled out Internet of Things mapping databases, storage, and analytics updates across Azure services, and said that Azure IoT Edge now integrates with Kubernetes. Azure Speech Service Conversation transcription is coming as a preview release, and there is a limited preview of a new Azure-based platform for building autonomous robots

based on its recent acquisition of the AI startup bonsai. I feel like maybe the biggest news was the announcement that Intelicode, Microsoft's tool for AI-assisted coding, is now generally available and supports C, Zammel, Java, JavaScript, type script, and Python, quoting TechCrunch. Intellicode is essentially the next generation of Intelisense, Microsoft's extremely popular code completion tool. What makes Intellicode different is that the company trained it by feeding it the code of thousands of open source projects from GitHub that have at least 100 stars. Using this data, the tool can then make smarter code completion suggestions. It also takes the current code and

context into account as it makes its recommendations. It's worth noting that startups like Kite offer similar smart code completion tools that work across development environments, though Kite currently only supports Python. The promise of tools like Kite and Intellicode is to make a developer's life easier, increase productivity, and reduce the likelihood of bugs. As these tools get smarter, they'll likely be able to look ahead even further and maybe even suggest to auto-complete larger parts of a program's code based on the context of what you're trying to achieve

and its knowledge of how others have solved similar problems, end quote. And then for a few consumer-ish-facing announcements, Microsoft wants you to know about Election Guard, an open-source platform for securely handling voting data, which will be available this summer with a pilot running for the 2020 elections, quoting from TechCrunch again. Election Guard is not a complete voting machine, but rather a platform for handling voting data that can either empower existing systems or have new ones built on top of it. It's part of the Defending Democracy Program and sister product to the similarly named NewsGuard and Account Guard, which appeared last year. The basic idea is to lead voters track their votes securely and privately while also allowing authorities to tabulate store and, if necessary, audit them. As Microsoft puts it, Election Guard provides a complete implementation of end-to-end verifiable elections.

It is designed to work with systems that use paper ballots, supplementing today's tabulation process, by providing a means of public verification of the accuracy of reported results, end quote. And exclusively for you, recalcitrant businesses that are stubbornly clinging on to your old outstableness. Internet Explorers. There is now a new IE mode for the modern Edge browser, which you should be using in place of Internet Explorer anyway. Now, inside Edge, you can load old sites using the Internet Explorer rendering engine, quoting the Verge. Microsoft is building IE directly into Edge for this purpose so businesses aren't forced to directly use IE for ancient internal sites. What we're trying to do is make this totally seamless, explains Microsoft's Joe Belfiore,

in an interview with The Verge. Currently, the existing version of Edge will open Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10, which has a separate interface, favorites, and doesn't work well on modern websites. This new IE mode literally loads the content within Edge so you'll never be able to tell the difference, apart from a small IE logo on the tab

that indicates that this mode has been enabled, end quote. You might have heard over the weekend that extensions to Firefox were borked because of an expired digital certificate. Yeah, I know. Sounds really basic. But on May 4th, 12 a.m. UTC, the digital certificate Mozilla uses to sign Firefox add-ons expired. Thus, Firefox browsers couldn't verify the authenticity of any extensions you might have had installed. You couldn't even reenable the extensions or install new ones. So basically, all 100 million-plus users of Firefox were extensionless. A temporary patch was rushed out over the weekend, but even that had issues because if you had hadn't previously agreed to allow Firefox to send reports and telemetry back to the mothership, you couldn't get the patch. However, quoting Kev Needham, a member of the Firefox ad-ons team on the official Firefox blog yesterday, a Firefox release has been pushed, version 66.0.4 on desktop and Android, and version 60.6.2 for ESR. This release repairs the certificate chain to

reenable web extensions, themes, search engines, and language packages. that had been disabled. There are remaining issues that we are actively working to resolve, but we wanted to get this fix out before Monday to lessen the impact of disabled add-ons before the start of the week, end quote. Remember when Amazon made headlines by announcing it would make next-day delivery standard for all prime customers? Well, quoting CNBC, it was basically just announcing something that had already been baked into the cake.

Quote, Amazon is already capable of offering same day and next-day delivery to to 72% of the total U.S. population, including almost all of the households, 95% or more, in 16 of the wealthiest and most populated states in Washington, D.C., according to a report published in March by RBC Capital Markets. The vast delivery network is the result of significant investments over the past four years, a period during which Amazon built out fulfillment centers across the country nearly tripling its U.S. logistics infrastructure, RBC said. Amazon has added roughly double the amount of distribution space

Home Depot currently owns, end quote. Still, that doesn't mean filling in that remaining 28% of the first day delivery cracks will come cheaply. RBC notes that 15 states still don't have access to Amazon's same-day delivery or next-day delivery options. So, since Amazon is planning to spend $800 million just next quarter to make one-day delivery for prime orders a reality, it certainly seems like that last logistical hurdle is quite a doozy.

Whole bunch of varied Apple headlines and rumors bubbled up this morning, so let me jam them all together into one segment here. First, probably the most interesting one. The Financial Times is reporting that sources are saying the EU has decided to launch an antitrust probe into Apple's conduct vis-a-vis the App Store. This is in response to Spotify's recent antitrust complaint, you might recall. quote, Spotify's complaint centers on Apple's policy of charging digital content providers a 30% fee for using its payment system for subscriptions sold in the app store. The policy applies to Spotify and other music subscription services, but not to apps such as Uber. EU enforcers can require companies to change business practices they deem unlawful and levy fines of up to 10% of a company's

global turnover. The investigations have no set deadlines and can take years to resolve. However, the companies can speed up the process and avoid fines by offering to settle the probes with binding promises of behavioral change, end quote. But that's sort of an interesting new wrinkle to the matter here, according to some analysis I'm reading. It's not just that Apple has a music service and Spotify has a disadvantage on Apple's platform because it doesn't have to pay a tax that Apple doesn't charge itself. Obviously, that was the first thing that the EU was looking into. But apparently it's also considering this larger question. Why does, say, Uber not have to fork over 30% to 15% to Apple for doing business on Apple's platform? Why do games with in-app purchases or in-app subscriptions have to pay the tax? But Airbnb doesn't? Why can you order physical goods on the Amazon app, but you can't order digital books on the Kindle app? It seems like the EU is poking at the question of, is it absurd for Apple to charge a tax for the sale of digital goods, but not for physical goods and services.

Next, right on time as a week of Microsoft Build and Google I.O. kicks off a bunch of timely, as it were, Apple rumors. Mark German and Ming Chi Quo have some details about what to expect from Apple this year. First, Ming Chi Quo says the 2019 iPhones will have a redesigned antenna that will make for improved indoor navigation, which cool. Mark German says that at WWDC we can expect updated maps, reminders, and messages apps, which, yeah, no kidding. But one notable new addition, something called Sleep Mode, quoting from Macworld, sleep mode will be, quote, in addition to the clock app. When enabled, sleep mode will automatically turn on, do not disturb, darken the lock screen, and mute all notifications so you're not disturbed by buzzing and beeping during the night. German also says that bedtime, which currently tracks time that you spend in bed, but not how much you've slept or moved, will offer more extensive sleep tracking, possibly pretending the arrival of a Fitbit-like sleep tracker on the Apple Watch, end quote. And speaking of the Apple Watch, German also says we can expect a slew of new apps coming to it, which will make it more independent of its iPhone mothership, including an app store directly on the watch, plus new health apps, and a calculator.

and a Books app for the watch itself, but the Books app would be for audiobooks. Finally, the Verge is reporting that Apple is, quote, considering revealing its long-awaited Mac Pro redesign at WWDC. The redesign has apparently been in the works for two years and would tie in with the rumors that Apple might finally be getting back into the standalone display business. But as Michael Gartenberg tweeted, that would be six years from the time the current model was introduced with a famous statement about innovation, end quote. Finally today, this is a long read, but it's absolutely vital. So read it today. I've told you before. I've tried to get Matthew Ball,

the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, to come on the weekend episodes because I'd talk to him for three hours, if I could. He's been doing this long multi-part series looking at Netflix's overall strategy for the last couple years. And part seven, of his series is out. Again, it is a long read, but it's so vital, this can't wait for the weekend. This time in Part 7, Matthew makes a compelling case that Netflix, sure, they should be worried about the new entrance to their turf, but their business might be so resilient at this point. Maybe they shouldn't worry overly. Matthew says that, sure, over the last few years, everyone has invaded Microsoft's turf, and those everybody's that are invading tend to be content,

owners, and those content owners have been pulling their content in order to create their own over-the-top streaming services, thus forcing Netflix's overall catalog to shrink by more than two-thirds. At the same time, Netflix has raised its monthly price by 46%. So Netflix actually has less content than it did six years ago and is almost 50% more expensive. And at the same time, as we've been talking about recently, Netflix has basically, Netflix has basically saturated key markets like North America. However, quoting Ball, in short, Netflix has spent more than six years becoming more expensive and reducing its content offering, all the while facing a barrage of new competitors, which competed traditionally, orthogonally, and in new categories,

and needing to convince increasingly hard to acquire customers to subscribe. But what happened? Only the rate of growth has slowed. In nearly every year-over-year quarter since 2012, Netflix has added the same number of subscribers as in the years prior, and even engagement has remained stable at two hours per subscription per day, even though later adopters should have dragged down averages, end quote. In other words, for all of the doom and gloom and for all of the competition, Netflix is basically standing pat, and they're standing pat from a position of serious strength. The argument is probably too complex to summarize here. please read the whole article. But the bottom line is this. In the same way that Amazon Bulls have been arguing that even if e-commerce growth is slowing,

because Amazon has captured 45% of the e-commerce market, it's going to slow at some point. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked as we talked about and was even discussed in the most recent quarter. Amazon still only has around 5 to 7% of overall commerce spend. 5 to 7%. So there's a huge piece of the pie still for the taking. Similarly, Ball points out that Netflix has only seized 10% of total U.S. TV viewing time. So maybe we're focusing on the wrong numbers when we're focusing on just additional subscribers. Since the approximately five hours on average that Americans watch of TV all day is enormous, when you think of that, don't worry about.

things like content libraries, like prestige shows like Game of Thrones, don't think of appointment television at all. Instead, think of just having TV in your life for five hours a day, having it on at the gym, in the background while you do the dishes, just barely watching some reality TV show like pawn stars or something while you're doing other things. Netflix can still capture that remaining 90% of TV time that it doesn't already own, and fracturing of the TV landscape might actually help it achieve that. In short, don't worry about the prestige content library everyone else will have because all of us are focusing on the wrong things, the quality of the content. Meanwhile, what might really matter is just the volume of

content. And that doesn't even take into account that Netflix doesn't yet dabble in really important things like live sports. I think this concluding paragraph in Matthew's piece is key food for thought. Quote, audiences will only leave Netflix and add a new subscription when they can't already find more to watch on Netflix, or the other subscriptions they already have. And Netflix is already the default subscription with more content and usage than any other provider. Furthermore, believing these competitors will harm Netflix requires one to perform some

mathematical acrobatics. I'm bullish on Disney Plus, but the service will simply not have the subscriber volume or content volume to meaningfully dent Netflix's consumption. There are more than twice as many hours of House of Cards on Netflix today than exists in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, much of which is on Netflix anyhow for years to come. These new services are more likely to further hasten the decline of pay TV than to eat away Netflix's existing share. This doesn't mean they won't hamper further pricing growth or subscriber ads, but even then, history shows that it's much easier to theorize than to see, end quote. That's all for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough.

Hey, it's been a while since I reminded you of my side podcast, the internet history podcast, but if you've never checked that out, now would be a good week to do so. This past weekend, I interviewed current Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott for an hour and a half. His whole call. career at Google, LinkedIn, and now Microsoft where things are going on with AR and VR and VR and AI and Kevin's at the forefront of all that. It's a cool episode and Microsoft chief technology officer, the highest ranking currently serving person at a major tech company I've ever spoken to on that podcast. Give it a listen. Talk to you tomorrow.