Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 01/21 – Mark Gurman Dishes On The Apple VR Headset

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Apple’s first foray into VR is coming next year, says Mark Gurman, but the real game is in AR and that’s a ways down the road. Amazon wants to help roll out the vaccines. Are laptops getting taller? One chat app to unify them all? And everybody wants a dark mode, even the White House. Sponsors: NewYorker.com/techmeme promocode: techmeme Tovala.com/ride Links: Apple’s First Headset to Be Niche Precursor to Eventual AR Glasses (Bloomberg) LG considers exiting smartphones in 2021 (The Verge) Amazon sends letter to President Biden, says it is ‘ready to assist’ with U.S. vaccination efforts (GeekWire) Facebook refers Trump ban to independent Oversight Board for review (Axios) Goodbye and good riddance to the 16:9 aspect ratio (The Verge) Pebble founder promises iMessage on Android and Windows with universal chat app (The Verge) WhiteHouse.gov now has dark mode (The Verge) 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 ride home for Thursday, January 21, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Apple's first foray into VR is coming next year, according to Mark German, but the real game will be in AR, and that's a ways down the road. Amazon wants to help roll out the vaccines, our laptops getting taller, one chap at to unify them all,

and everybody wants a dark mode, even the White House. Here's what you miss today. in the world of tech. It's a Mark German Apple Scoop Thursday. This time, Mark has a whole mess of details about the rumored upcoming Apple headset. Mark says it's planned for a 20-22 launch. We'll focus on VR gaming, but also video and communications. And it will only have, at least at this point, limited AR features. Also, it's not been easy to make. And if you're expecting the low-cost surprise of the first iPad, say? Maybe think again, quoting Bloomberg. The initial device has confronted several development hurdles, and the company has conservative sales expectations illustrating how challenging it will be to bring this nascent consumer technology

to the masses. Apple's typical playbook involves taking emerging consumer technology such as music players, smartphones, tablets, and smart watches, and making it reliable and easy to use for everyone. This time, though, Apple isn't looking to create an iPhone-like hit for its first headset. Instead, the company is building a high-end niche product that will prepare outside developers and consumers for its eventual more mainstream AR glasses. The plan suggests that Apple's first headset will be far more expensive than those from rivals, which cost about $300 to $900. Some Apple Insiders believe the company may sell only one headset per day per retail store. Apple has roughly 500 stores.

So in that scenario, annual sales would be just over 180,000 units, excluding other sales channels. That would put it on par with other pricey Apple products such as the $6,000 Mac Pro desktop computer. And Apple spokesman declined to comment. Apple is aiming to include some of its most advanced and powerful chips in the headset along with displays that are much higher resolution than those in existing VR products. Some of the chips tested in the device beat the performance of Apple's M1 Mac processors. The company has also designed the headset with a fan,

something the company usually tries to avoid on mobile products, the people said. The headset, codenamed N301, is in a late prototype stage, but is not yet finalized so the company's plans could change or be scrapped entirely before launch. The AR glasses, codenamed N421, are in an early stage known as architecture, meaning Apple is still working on underlying technologies. This product is several years away, according to the people, though Apple has previously targeted as early as 2023 to unveil it. The powerful processors and the inclusion of a fan initially led to a device that was too large and heavy, with some concern about neck strain in early testing. Apple removed the space VR gadgets usually reserved for users who want to wear eyeglasses, which brought the headset closer to the face and helped shrink the size. And to address consumers

with poorer eyesight, it developed a system where custom prescription lenses can be inserted into the headset over the VR screens, the people said. Apple originally planned to include less powerful processors and offload much of the work to a hub in a user's home that would wirelessly beam content to the headset. But that idea was squashed by Johnny Ive, Apple's design chief at the time, Bloomberg News reported last year. The headset is designed to work as a standalone device, meaning it can operate on a battery rather than be plugged into a wall or a Mac. That's similar to Facebook's latest VR product, while Sony's requires a PlayStation gaming console. To further reduce the device's weight, Apple is planning to use a fabric exterior. That's a departure

from the metal designs Apple uses for most products, though it has used plastic for devices like AirPods that need to be light and fabrics for the home pod speaker to improve acoustics. Prototypes of the headset, some of which are about the size of an Oculus Quest, include external cameras to enable some AR features. The company is testing using the cameras for hand tracking and is working on a feature where a user can type virtually in the air to input text. It's unclear if that function will be ready for the first version of the device or if it will ever leave the exploratory stage, end quote. German hints that had COVID-19 not delayed development, we might have seen the headset this year. But he also stresses that the AR glasses are the

ultimate end goal here as Apple sees that as a more mainstream product, something that could sell in numbers that could eventually rival the iPad, Apple Watch, or even iPhone sales in the long run. Since we're doing scoops and rumors today, I thought it was worth noting that rumors are making the rounds that suggest LG might pull the plug on its entire smartphone business this year, quoting Tom Warren in The Verge. The Korea Herald reports that Kwan Ban Sok sent out an internal memo to staff on Wednesday, hinting at a change in direction for LG's phone business, since the competition in the global market for mobile devices is getting fiercer, it is about time for LG to make a cold judgment and the best choice, says an LG official in a statement to the Korea Herald. The company is considering all possible measures including sale, withdrawal, and downsizing of the smartphone business, end quote.

LG confirmed the internal memo was genuine in a statement to the verge, noting that nothing has been decided yet. quote, LG Electronics Management is committed to making whatever decision is necessary to resolve its mobile business challenges in 2021, says an LG spokesperson. As of today, nothing has been finalized, end quote. I feel like there was this brief window in time where LG clearly made the best Android smartphones out there, but that was a window of time, and since then their sales have badly lagged Samsung and Huawei. So might this mean we never get a look at that promise rollable phone that I told you about from CES just a few weeks ago. There were also rumors floating around last week that Apple might announce making its Apple stores available as vaccination centers.

That never actually panned out. But Amazon has announced that it wants to help the Biden administration's vaccination efforts, which, you know, who knows logistics better than Amazon? Quoting Geekwire. In a letter address, to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Amazon executive Dave Clark, said the Seattle tech giant wants to help the Biden administration reach its goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the next 100 days. Clark, the CEO of the company's consumer business, said Amazon has an agreement with a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to administer COVID-19 vaccines at its facilities. Quote, we are prepared to move quickly once vaccinations are available,

Clark wrote. Additionally, we are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration's vaccination efforts. Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort, end quote. Clark said, Amazon employees who can't work from home, such as those at fulfillment centers, Amazon Web Services, Data Centers, or Whole Food Stores, should be vaccinated. quote, at the earliest appropriate time. We will assist them in that effort, Clark wrote, end quote. So if you follow my Twitter account, you'll know I've been tearing my hair out about the vaccine

rollout and how it's not been going so well thus far. I mean, what would be the downside of taking Amazon up on this offer? Shoot, I'd be in favor of using the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to deliver doses on bicycles if I thought that would help speed things up. But for those wondering why, Amazon waited until yesterday to make this offer to the government. Apparently they made a similar offer to the Trump administration last month, but, well, you know, speaking of, here's a little late breaking news that interrupted my lunch. Facebook is referring its decision to indefinitely suspend former President Trump's Facebook account to that Facebook oversight board, which Facebook founded to great fanfare but never really did anything with.

If the board decides the ban is permanent, then not even Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to override their decision and Trump's account will remain suspended in the meantime, quoting from Axios. While Trump critics largely praise the company's decision to remove the then-presidents account for potential incitement of violence, many world leaders and free speech advocates push back on the decision, arguing it sets a dangerous precedent for free speech moving forward. The Oversight Board said Thursday that a five-member panel will take up the case in the coming days and share its findings with the full board. Majority approval is necessary for a decision to be issued, and it must be made within 90 days. Members must decide whether the content violated

Facebook's community standards and values, and whether the platform's removal of the content, quote, respected international human rights standards, including on freedom of expression and other human rights, end quote. Trump, through his designated page administrators, will have the ability to submit a user statement to the board explaining why he believes Facebook's content moderation decisions should be overturned, the board said. Public comments will be permitted, end quote. So small correction, the oversight board did take its first six cases back in December. But really, this is a sort of clever arrangement for Facebook. Going forward, if world leaders or other prominent personalities become too troublesome for them, they can always refer those people to the board

and maybe see those people banned without Facebook's fingerprints on the deed. Facebook vice president, Nick Clegg acknowledged that there's an argument to be made whether private companies like Facebook should make such decisions on their own. Quote, we agree. Every day Facebook makes decisions about whether content is harmful and these decisions are made according to community standards we have developed over many years, he said. It would be better if these decisions were made according to frameworks agreed by democratically accountable lawmakers. But in the absence of such laws, there are decisions we cannot duck, end quote. Although, as I just said, they are actually ducking making this decision by referring it to this board. As friend of the show, CNBC's Jay Yarrow tweeted,

pretty brilliant punt, end quote. A bit of trend spotting here. The verge has noticed that a large number of the flagship laptops announced thus far this year have been shipping with displays with aspect ratios of 16 to 10 or 3 to 2, all in an effort to stand out as new and top of the line. So, Is this the beginning of an industry-wide shift to taller aspect ratios on laptops? Is the good old 16-9 aspect ratio yesterday's news? Quoting the verge. If you have a modern Windows laptop, there's a good chance your screen is 16 by 9. If you have a gaming laptop, its panel is almost certainly 16 to 9.

It's unusual to find high refresh rate panels with other proportions. There are some notable exceptions. Microsoft's Surface products have been 3 to 2 for quite some time, while Dell's last few XPS13 models and Apple's MacBooks were already 16 to 10, but traditionally, Windows laptops like these have been few and far between. It's significant that a large number of flagships will be seeing in the first half of 2021 will be either 16 to 10 or 3 to 2. In fact, when you include MSI's 16 to 10 Summit E-13 Flip and Razors, 16 to 10, Razorbook 13, both of which were announced prior to CES. I can't think of a mainstream

consumer laptop that isn't now selling at a non-16-9 flagship level machine. It's clear that companies across the board are moving toward laptops with taller aspect ratios, and I fully expect to see more of them in the years to come, end quote. This next segment reminds me of that brief period of time when there was a fad for universal chat apps. So, that you could talk to anyone you wanted, whether they were on AIM or Yahoo Messenger or MSN or what have you. A new app called Beeper is promising just that for the modern era, universal chatting that could unify 15 different chat platforms into a single interface. But there's quite a big catch, i.e., it's not going to be cheap, and also, well, quoting the verge.

The app is the work of a team that includes Eric Mijikovsky, the CEO and founder, of former smartwatch manufacturer Pebble, who announced its launch on Twitter. Beeper's site notes that the project was previously known as Nova Chat and requires a $10 per month subscription. Although Beeper integrates with the world's most popular messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, telegram, Slack, Twitter, Discord, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, it's the support for Apple's iMessage. That's perhaps the most interesting. iMessage is only officially available on Apple devices, and it's often cited by users as something that prevents them from switching to Android.

Mijikovsky says Beeper should allow iMessage to work on Android, Windows, and Linux, but admits that it's, quote, using some trickery in doing so. An FAQ on Beeper's website gives a more in-depth explanation of exactly what this trickery involves. If you've got an always-online Mac, then you can install the... the Beeper Mac app to act as a bridge, similar to the approach Air Message uses. But things get really wild if you don't have access to a Mac, at which point Beeper says it'll literally send each of its users a jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed in order to act as a bridge. At this point, we should probably mention that using Beeper involves paying

a $10 a month subscription, which may or may not include the cost of the iPhone. Just in case you thought Beeper was joking, in a follow-up tweet, Mijikovsky said that he currently has 50 old iPhone 4Ss at his desk ready to be upcycled for use with Beeper. If the workaround works, as Beeper claims, then the result should be a universal chat app that works across MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, offering a unified inbox and the ability to search across messages from each of the 15 services. It's built on the open source matrix messaging protocol. Mijikovsky previously described Nova Chats' relationship to Matrix as akin to Gmail's relationship with email.

And although the client app itself isn't open source, the bridges connecting it to other chat services are, end quote. As Tom Warren noted on Twitter, Beeper sounds interesting, but the reality is that it's $10 a month and you have to have a Mac running 24-7 to get iMessage support. there are also other universal chat apps that aren't subscription-based, end quote. For his part, Mijikovsky says his end goal is to eventually push everyone in the world to the Matrix platform itself instead of those various fragmented chat platforms. In the meantime, he's busy working on bringing a dark mode to Beeper's next update, as you do these days, of course. Speaking of dark modes, the new Biden administration,

yesterday updated the Whitehouse.gov website with several new accessibility features, including a large text mode and a dark mode. Thereby triggering a bunch of Twitter jokes along the lines of, In one day, the Biden administration has done what it took Apple years to do, quoting the verge. Both options show up along the left rail as big, easy to click or tap buttons, and that's the way you'll need to toggle them. Even if your device has a system-wide dark mode,

the White House website won't switch over automatically. That's because it's really there to serve as an accessibility feature meant to help anyone who would have trouble reading or looking at a bright white screen with black text. With dark mode being very popular among heavy computer users as well, people online were understandably excited to see the change. Acting as a recruiting tool for anyone who's looking, into the site's code, the HTML header also makes a call-out to the U.S. Digital Service.

That group led by a former Google engineer is tasked with making sure U.S. government websites are as good as any of the other ones we visit on a daily basis, end quote. Yeah, when you view the source code right now on Whitehouse.com, as I just did, right there in the header among the meta tags, there is this message. If you are reading this, we need your help building back better. H-T-TPS, colon forward-slash forward-slash-U-SDS.gov forward-slash apply. I once did an internet history podcast interview with the great Matt Cuts, once the search guru at Google, but later a member of the U.S. Digital Service himself.

And he waxed poetic about the idea of software engineers using their talents in service of their country and society. Look that episode up if you're curious. And you know, if you're looking for a change of pace, why not give back? Again, nothing really interesting to ramble to you about today, busy working on a bunch of things. So I'll just talk to you tomorrow.