Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/10 – Amazon to Turn Malls Into Fulfillment Centers?

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Monday, August 10th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Amazon wants to literally take over malls. How exposed to China is Apple at the moment. Apple is literally doing legal battle with a pair, an app to help guide you on your psychedelic trips,

Starting point is 00:00:53 and why I would personally be in the market for a foldable e-ink notebook. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Simon Property, the biggest owner of malls in the United States, has explored turning anchor stores previously occupied by department stores into fulfillment centers for Amazon. Quote, the talks have focused on converting stores formerly or currently occupied by J.C. Penny and Sears, the people said. The department store chains have both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and as part of their plans have been closing dozens of stores across the country. Simon Malls have 63 penny and 11 Sears stores, according to its most recent public filing in May. For Amazon, a deal with Simon would be consistent with its efforts to add more distribution hubs near residential areas to speed up the crucial last mile of delivery. But for Simon, any deal to surrender prime space to Amazon would signal a break from a longtime business model for malls,

Starting point is 00:01:53 reliance on a large department store to draw foot traffic to neighboring shops and restaurants. Amazon fulfillment centers wouldn't draw much additional foot traffic to the mall, though some employees could eat and shop at the mall. That's why landlords have preferred to replace department stores with other retailers, gyms, theaters, or entertainment operators. Yet many of these tenants are struggling to survive during the pandemic and aren't in expansion mode, end quote. Well, why not turn them into hybrid fulfillment center slash pickup center slash showroom spaces? Although, as at Epicurean Deal said on Twitter, quote,

Starting point is 00:02:32 interesting thought, but making malls originally designed to accommodate large inbound freight flows, but outsource last mile collection to consumers, will require substantial costly outbound logistics infrastructure redesign. For example, malls have the parking lot real estate, but they don't have adequate outbound loading facilities. Most, maybe all mall architecture is designed to capture and retain consumers. distribution centers are designed to maximize throughput velocity and minimize goods dwell time. These design objectives are, in a word, incompatible, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Where are we with the whole TikTok, we chat, U.S. government, China situation? Apparently, TikTok will be suing the Trump administration as soon as Tuesday over the executive order barring its service. TikTok basically has no choice. In several pieces over the weekend, I heard several details that were similar to this, quoting NPR. The president's executive order stands to cut off American advertisers on its app and force Apple and Google to remove it from mobile app stores. TikTok's more than 1,000 U.S.-based employees could have their paychecks indefinitely frozen. It could force landlords housing TikTok operations to evict them, and Trump's order could make it impossible for American lawyers to represent TikTok in any U.S. legal proceedings.

Starting point is 00:03:55 The source familiar with TikTok's internal discussions on the matter said the president's order appeared rushed and did not include carve-outs or exceptions for TikTok to maintain any legal representation, which the company plans to argue is a violation of its due process rights, end quote. In other words, the way the law is written, TikTok can't even hire lawyers because literally, as the order is written, no one could do business with them or take money from them or transact with them in any way. Cities couldn't even find TikTok vehicles if they parked illegally. So that is sort of a glaring error in drafting that one would think would call for immediate legal redress. Also over the weekend, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Twitter

Starting point is 00:04:36 has held preliminary talks with TikTok about combining with TikTok's U.S. operations, expecting that it would face less antitrust scrutiny than another suitor. And yes, one could see some serious product synergies between TikTok and Twitter. That would be ironic, though, because the only reason TikTok is in the lane it's in is because Twitter killed Vine all those years ago. But at the same time, a big question would be, could Twitter afford it? Quote, it isn't clear what the valuation of TikTok's U.S. operations would be, but estimates run into the tens of billions of dollars, which raises questions about how Twitter would finance any deal. Twitter's market capitalization is about $29 billion, and Microsoft is more than $1.6 trillion.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Because it is much smaller, Twitter has reason that it would be unlikely to face the same level of antitrust scrutiny as Microsoft or other potential bidders, said people familiar with the discussions. But Twitter would almost certainly need help from other investors if it does buy TikTok. The company has far less financial firepower than other major tech players, though it does have high-powered investors such as private equity firm Silver Lake. Twitter started making a consistent profit in the past couple of years, but reported a $1.23 billion loss in the latest quarter. Twitter reported $7.8 billion in cash in short-term investments as of June compared with more than

Starting point is 00:05:55 136 billion for Microsoft, end quote. And onto the we chat angle, people continue to whisper that Apple's business is the most endangered by this geopolitical tech war, and it might be endangered almost immediately. Put simply, none of the big tech companies are as exposed to China as Apple is, but they're exposed for basically everything, from manufacturing to sales contributing to their bottom line, because China's such a big market for them. So the nuclear problem for Apple is, of course, if China retaliates and Apple can't manufacture their stuff in mainland China,

Starting point is 00:06:31 but that would only come after rounds of retaliation. Apple faces a more immediate problem with the whole Wii chat banning, which could be mere weeks away. We chat will be an Apple problem if the U.S. government doesn't change its stance soon. quoting Hyam Gartenberg in The Verge. An iPhone without WeChat is effectively not a phone at all for the hundreds of millions of Chinese users that rely on the service, customers on which Apple's entire iPhone business model relies. If Apple can't offer WeChat on the iPhone due to Trump's ban, then much of its Chinese

Starting point is 00:07:00 business will almost certainly evaporate overnight. Respected analyst Ming Chi Kuo says Apple's annual iPhone shipments in China could be reduced by 25 to 30% if it's required to remove WeChat from its app stores around the world. sales of other related Apple hardware like Apple watches, iPads, AirPods, and Macs could be reduced by 15 to 25%. Apple is caught in a trap of its own making here thanks to its lockdown platform. A more open system, similar to Google's Android, would let users install WiiChat without Apple's explicit approval. It wouldn't be ideal for Apple, but at least millions of Chinese customers could still use their iPhones. Meanwhile, Apple physically can't outsource its manufacturing

Starting point is 00:07:38 anywhere else in the world, and certainly not in the U.S. Then-C-O-Tim Cook led a 2005 shift to just-in-time manufacturing that cuts down on excess inventory and constantly pumps out new products. The result is that Apple today is almost exclusively reliant on Chinese manufacturers like Foxcon. While recent developments in India have attempted to lessen Apple's need to exclusively build all of its hardware in China, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what Apple builds in and therefore would have to export from China, end quote. Weird little Apple legal story here. Apple has filed a notice of opposition with the U.S. trademark office against a startup that is trying to trademark a logo which resembles a pair. You'll have to check the article I'm linking to in the show notes to get a sense of this.

Starting point is 00:08:29 But in my opinion, if you look at the two logos side by side, the Apple logo and this pair logo, they really don't look that similar unless you're allowing for the fact that they're both representing fruit. Quoting iPhone and Canada, pre-pair is a meal planner and grocery list app that helps people discover recipes and more. It's a spin-off from the founders of super healthy kids, and right now they're saying its logo is under legal attack from Apple. According to the founders, Apple, quote, has opposed the trademark application for our small business prepair, demanding that we change our obviously pear-shaped logo used to represent our brand in the recipe management and meal planning business,

Starting point is 00:09:09 end quote. In a petition on change.org, prepair goes on to say, quote, before attacking us, Apple has opposed dozens of other trademark applications filed by small businesses with fruit-related logos. Many of those logos were changed or abandoned. Most small businesses cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to fight Apple, end quote. Pre-Pair says they are a small company with only five staff and legal costs may have already cost them many thousands of dollars plus laying off one team member in their legal fight against the iPhone maker. Quote, it's a very terrifying experience to be legally attacked by one of the largest companies in the world, even when we have clearly done. nothing wrong, and we understand why most companies just give in and change their logos, ads prepare in its plea for support, end quote.

Starting point is 00:09:58 Google has significantly expanded its developer tools for Android TV to now include things like Instant Apps, Speech to Text Support, and predictive typing. Quoting Venture Beat. Google Play Instant refers to Android apps and games that can be launched immediately without being installed first. Google has been working on the concept for years. The company unveiled Android Instant Apps in May 20,000. 2016 and renamed it to Google Play Instant while adding support for games in March 2018. Google Play Instant was finally made available to all Android developers in May of that same year.

Starting point is 00:10:30 More than two years later, Android TV developers are finally getting it too. What developers will also find especially useful is PlayStorf support in the Android TV emulator. This will make it easier to test Android TV projects and features like subscriptions in the emulator without having to deploy anything on a real device. Google has also added pin code purchasing an attempt to, to ease the friction of buying content on Android TV, but it's not much of an improvement. Instead of typing your password on Google Play, you can now type a pin code instead, big whoop. Speaking of typing with a remote, that's easily one of the most infuriating experiences with

Starting point is 00:11:05 smart TVs, and Google has finally replaced the A to Z layout with a QWERTY layout. The new Gboard TV also includes speech-to-text predictive typing, different alignments, center, left or right, and optimizations for over 30 countries. Speech-to-text and predictive text and predictive typing will be particularly useful as alternative input options in apps. Google has also improved gaming on Android TV with an auto-low latency mode. The mode lets developers disable Android TV post-processing and minimize latency whenever a game is shown in full screen, end quote. Along with those bells and whistles, by the way, Google also announced that active Android TV devices have grown by more than 80% year-over year, and Android TV now works with seven of the top 10 Smart TV OEMs.

Starting point is 00:11:50 From the interesting app file, field trip is an app that sort of looks like your run-of-the-mill guided meditation app when you open it up. But Field Trip wants to guide you on a deeper sort of mental journey, a psychedelic journey, because Field Trip pairs with supervised in-clinic drug experiences, quoting Wired. It's a capital T trip because the app belongs to Field Trip Health, a Toronto-based venture focusing on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The Trip app, which begins a soft launch this week, is a digital companion to fieldtrip's clinics in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, where patients settle into rooms filled with Svago Zero Gravity Leather recliners and weighted blankets and take an ego-quieting

Starting point is 00:12:43 psychedelic substance under the supervision of a field-trip trained therapist. Field trip belongs to a new and growing class of for-profit companies using psychedelic drugs, namely MDMA, ketamine, and psilocybin, the alkaloid that makes magic mushrooms magical, to treat depression, anxiety, and other obstinate mental illnesses. Unlike most players in that for-profit cohort, Field trip is open for business. Field trip isn't dosing patients with MDMA or psilocybin because both are still listed by the government as Schedule I substances.

Starting point is 00:13:15 But it's also not waiting for legalization to find its customers. Instead, in New York and Toronto, field trip is treating select patients with ketamine, a dissociative drug that has FDA approval for off-label use right now. The Los Angeles Clinic opens later this month. But for those sheltering in place in the safety of their homes, Fieldtrip's new app handily distills its consciousness-expanding protocols, making a guide, or at least a facsimile of one, accessible whether you can visit a clinic or not, end quote. And an interesting demo. E-ink. is demoing a folding e-reader that can also use a stylus to take notes.

Starting point is 00:14:01 The E-Inc Corporation, you might remember, is the company behind the technology used in most digital paper products, most e-readers. This demo, quote, shows a foldable e-reader prototype developed by E-ink. An earlier version came out in June, but the latest hardware adds a sturdier hinge, five dedicated buttons down the right-hand side of the device, and two light bars positioned at the top of the screen for illumination. There's also integrated WACOM technology for taking notes, making annotations, and highlighting passages with a stylus.

Starting point is 00:14:32 The overall concept is intriguing. As with folding smartphones, a foldable e-reader promises more screen real estate in a smaller package. There's also the pleasing familiarity of the folding format, making the device more like a book or a notepad. Add in the capacity to take notes and sync reading material, and you'd have an extremely useful bit of kit. But it seems the technology is not quite there yet. The bezels on this prototype are huge.

Starting point is 00:14:57 The flip-up light bars are reminiscent of gadgets from the 1990s, while note-taking on e-readers generally is still constrained by low latency. Using e-readers to take notes is certainly a growing market, but it's not yet a seamless enough experience to overtake old-fashioned pen and paper. Still, we'll be watching the development of this tech with interest, end quote. Yeah, I've never understood why Amazon hasn't gone harder at the whole tablet note-taking route with their Kindle e-readers. I still love my Kindle. It's absolutely one of my favorite devices of all time, carried around with me every day. So if I could also scratch out

Starting point is 00:15:33 some notes on it, annotate PDFs, etc., I feel like that would be super useful. I actually took a hard, hard look at maybe buying one of those remarkable two paper tablets, but the remarkables are super expensive, and the thing that killed it for me is that apparently they don't integrate well with any other note-taking apps. So basically any notes that you make on a remarkable tablet kind of have to stay on the tablet. There's no linking out to other services or devices, which seems really dumb to me. I do use my Apple pencil with my iPad now and again, but it's, I don't know. It's not like writing on scratch paper at all. So somebody out there listening, my dream product is waiting to be developed. By the way, I did end up doing my voice training on

Starting point is 00:16:23 Descript this weekend. So we'll have a fully automated segment sometime this week to see how that sounds. I did a half an hour of training and it's pretty impressive, but I want to do maybe at least a half an hour more, maybe an hour more to see if I can really get the thing as close to studio quality as possible. I wish Descript would let me upload past episodes because Lord knows I have a huge corpus of my voice that they could train on if they'd let me. We shall see. you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/10 – Amazon to Turn Malls Into Fulfillment Centers?

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