Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 02/10 – Code Hints Of Apple’s “realityOS”

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Not just rumors of an Apple AR headset, but actual code mentions of a “realityOS” are showing up now. Microsoft hopes to head off the regulators with some app store rules. Now Flash storage chips might be in for a supply crunch. And why static video memes are all over Instagram all of the sudden. Sponsors: Workable.com Links: Is ‘realityOS’ Apple’s newest operating system? (The Verge) In a bid to appease regulators, Microsoft announces new app store principles (The Washington Post) Western Digital, Kioxia Lose 'At Least' 6.5 Exabytes of 3D NAND Due to Contamination (Updated) (Tom's Hardware) Why Static Video Memes Are All Over Instagram (The Information) Gopuff stocks its warehouses with items purchased from Instacart, spending tens of thousands per month on the service (Insider) 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 Thursday, February 10th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Not just rumors of an Apple AR headset, but actual code mentions of a reality OS are showing up now. Microsoft hopes to head off the regulators with some app store rules. Now flash storage chips might be in for a supply crunch and why static video memes are all over Instagram all of the sudden.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. References to a reality OS are starting. to show up in Apple Code. It's apparently happened a couple times already, but this time it showed up in a GitHub repo. Now, we've known that an AR headset has been coming from Apple. It's pretty much nailed on at this point. What is interesting is the idea of doing a whole new OS for it, which would point to the ambitions Apple would have for this category, quoting the verge. Apple's long-rumored virtual or augmented reality headset might not launch until 2023, but developers have spotted additional mentions of a new RealityOS that could power it. First referenced as ROS in 2017 by Bloomberg News,

Reality OS was also spotted as part of some pre-release iOS 13 builds. 9 to 5 Mac reports that developers have now found references to RealityOS in GitHub repos and in App Store upload logs. What is Apple's RealityOS doing in the App Store upload logs? asks iOS developer Renz Verhoeven. fellow developer Steve Troughton Smith says a GitHub repo referencing reality OS confirms it, quote, has its own OS and binaries and has a reality OS simulator. He also speculates this could simply be, quote, a remnant of somebody's pool request from a fake account, end quote. The original Bloomberg report that referenced ROS in 2017 noted that the operating system is based on iOS. Apple is a fan of using the OS shorthand for its operating systems including iOS, watchOS, TVOS, iPadOS, and MacOS. Jeff Stahl, an Apple veteran, was reportedly one of the directors in charge of the Reality OS

software group in 2017. The new references to RealityOS come months after analyst Ming Chi Quo claimed Apple's first AR headset would arrive later this year with, quote, the same level of computing power as an M1 Mac. Quo also suggests the headset will be a standalone platform which would further explain the need for a dedicated operating system. RealityOS could be a codename Apple. has been using for five years, but Bloomberg reporter Mark German says the code name for the OS is

actually Oak, so Reality OS could be the final name. Either way, the continued references suggest it's a project that's key to its headset. Bloomberg has since reported that Apple's headset may not release until 2023 and that the company had planned to reveal it at this year's WWDC. Apple is reportedly facing challenges with overheating, cameras and software that could push back the headset reveal. But it's also possible Apple might want to get the software development kits for Reality OS in the hands of developers ahead of its debut, end quote. In what is, I guess, a bid to appease lawmakers and regulators, Microsoft has outlined 11 App Store principles, including equal treatment and allowing third-party payment processing

that it intends to abide by going forward. This is important because, well, you know, Microsoft just saw the Nvidia Arm deal go down in flames, and they want to make sure that this Activision deal stands a better change. chance with regulators, so these are signals it is sending for how it doesn't want to wall off what it buys, at least in the world of games, quoting the Washington Post. Microsoft on Wednesday announced principles intended to promote competition in its app stores as the company tries to stay a step ahead of policymakers around the world weighing new regulations to prevent large tech companies from abusing their smaller rivals.

Microsoft CEO Sachin Nadella, President Brad Smith, and other company executives at a Washington News Conference outlined 11 new principles that would apply to the company's app stores. The rules paralleled the proposals in the Open App Markets Act, a bill that Senate lawmakers recently advanced. The company committed to treat apps equally in its store without ranking its own programs over those of others. It also said it would allow developers to use their own payment processors in its app stores, a major point of contention with developers who have criticized the large fees tech giants charge for app subscriptions and payments. Microsoft is trying to win regulatory approval for the largest deal in the company's history, the $68.7 billion

purchase of Video Game Publisher Activision Blizzard. The Federal Trade Commission, led by Lena Kahn, is handling the deal. According to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly, the deal could also face opposition from regulators abroad, with Smith noting that sign-off is required from 17 regulators around the world. The executives are convening with members of Congress and think tanks while in Washington, part of an offensive designed to get ahead of regulatory action, he said. We recognize that there will be more scrutiny of any large acquisition that is being made by a large tech company, Smith said. It really behooves us to step forward quickly and proactively

and be very transparent about how we will manage this business toward competition, law issues, and responsibilities we have, end quote. Microsoft stands to benefit from legislation regulating app stores, which other tech giants, including Apple and Google, have strongly opposed. With the purchase of Activision, the company is moving more aggressively into gaming subscriptions. If legislation such as the Open App Markets Act were to become law, Microsoft would be able to bring its subscription gaming service and even its own gaming store to more devices, including those running Apple operating systems. Smith said Microsoft plans to adapt the Xbox App Store to embrace all of the competition principles, though it will take time to do so because of technical

limitations. Sarah Bond, corporate vice president of game ecosystem for Xbox, said that the company wants to enable, quote, store within a store experiences, but that it requires tech and business model innovation, end quote. Bad news, if you hoped supply chain issues might be getting better in a soonish time frame. Kyocha and WD report contamination at two NAND production factories, impacting about 6.5 exabytes of storage. Trendforce says that NAND prices could rise between 5 and 10% in Q2 of this year as a result. Quoting Tom's hardware. Kyocha, formerly Toshiba, and Western Digital have reported that unspecified contamination issues have impacted several of their joint NAND production factories. Western Digital says the problem impacts up to 6.5 exabytes of flash memory,

but Kyosha has yet to give an estimate of the impact there. Given the severity of the disruptions, trend force predicts a 5 to 10% price increase for Flash in the second quarter of this year, ultimately impacting SSD and NAND flash-based products. However, this prediction only accounts for Western Digital's lost production capacity and could increase when Kyosha releases firm estimates of the impact on its own production. Keosha and Western Digital operates several NAND production factories as part of their 20-year-old joint venture. However, two of those plants, the Yokachi and Kiyakami factories in Japan, have apparently ceased production due to the contamination. Keosha's statement says the issue impacts the production of its 3D by CS flash, a product used in a wide range of SSDs and other products.

The company hopes for, end quote, early recovery to normal operation, indicating that production has been halted. However, Kyosha did not indicate how much of its production capacity has been impacted. Western Digital statement provides a bit more detail, saying that the issue will reduce its production by at least 6.5 exabytes. Unfortunately, neither company has given a firm timeline of when production will be fully restored. However, given the long cycle times for 3D NAND flash, it can take two to three months to manufacture a 3D flash chip, any disruption will have an impact for several months after production restarts.

According to Trendforce, Western Digital and Kyocha account for 32 and a half percent of the overall NAND flash market output, and this incident impacts 13 percent of the Q1 output. Western Digital is the leading supplier of both SSDs and EMMC products, so we can expect those to be the most impacted. The Kyosha and Western Digital shutdowns come on the heels of Samsung's recent plant shutdowns due to COVID restrictions, all of which could ultimately lead to price hikes for NAND-based products like SSDs and other flash memory devices, end quote. Have you happened to notice that static video posts are all over Instagram all the sudden? You know how when people have a longer message to post on Twitter, they sometimes post a picture of the text? Well, this is like that, but instead of pictures,

it's short snips of texts that are nonetheless posted as video on Instagram of only a couple seconds in length. In other words, you could post these things as regular picks if you wanted, so why are people doing video? Well, quoting the information. A quirky form of video posts has taken over Instagram, the consequence of meta-platform's recent push to prioritize reels and other videos on its Facebook and Instagram apps as it counters the rise of rival TikTok. I'm dubbing this creator growth hack, the static video meme. Here's how it works. Creators who run photo-focused accounts such as meme pages have realized they're likely to get more views of their post by turning them into ultra-short videos because

the app's algorithm seems to be prioritizing videos over still images. So instead of just publishing a typical photo meme, such as a screenshot of a tweet or an image overlaid with some words, the creators take a video of that same image that lasts about a second. To the user, the experience is akin to looking at a static image. But to the app, it seems to as a video. Riley Bell, co-founder of a meme account on Instagram called At Mem Queen with 5.6 million followers, says posting more meme videos has led to increased impressions, or the number of times content is shown to users by an average of 50% over the past few weeks. As of Monday morning, nine of the account's 10 most recent posts were static video memes, while one meme included an actual

video snippet of a cartoon. Instagram has made it increasingly more difficult to be seen in the feed by our followers, so we look for every possible advantage to increase engagement with our community, she told the information. Still, she hopes posting still memes as videos will someday become less necessary. We are hoping Instagram sees that people still like static posts in the feed, and not everything is about video, end quote. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has been saying for months that video is a top priority. Then last week, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives mentioned reels and short-form video repeatedly, both in answers to analyst questions and in prepared remarks. That focus seems to

have translated into the Instagram algorithm prioritizing videos in user's feeds, according to creators. An Instagram spokesperson declined to comment, except to reiterate that short-form video was a priority for the app. Creators say turning photos into videos can also pay off because the videos generate higher engagement metrics such as views, which they can potentially parlay into better sponsorship deals. It looks much more impressive, for example, to report one. million views of a video compared to 50,000 likes of an image. Everyone watches the video in their feed and reads it like a regular meme, but by the time they've read it, it's already played two or three times. People are watching it over and over without realizing it. Ira Williams, who runs the

Instagram meme account at Memzar with 23 million followers said. He also co-founded Puppity Group, which owns about 15 meme-focused accounts, end quote. And finally, one of the mysteries of the universe is how a New York City diner, the size of a closet, can nonetheless have a 10-page menu with hundreds of different food items available, ranging from waffles to sirloin steak. Well, maybe you wonder how a lot of these instant grocery delivery apps have inventory for basically anything you want at the snap of your fingers. Is it because of insane logistics mastery, next-gen inventory systems? Well, quoting Insider,

during the pandemic, Instacart became an essential grocery delivery service. One of its most loyal customers has turned out to be another delivery service, GoPuff. This unlikely alliance is partly due to a go-puff policy that its warehouses should have some staple items that are, quote, never out of stock, known internally as knows. But that guarantee has often run up against GoPuff's unreliable supply chain. Current and former employees say sending managers and employees scrambling to grocery stores to make sure certain items are in stock for customers who will sometimes pay less for the item than GoPuff spent getting it from Instacart or a local supermarket. The monthly bills for the grocery store trips run in the tens of thousands. In one busy East Coast region, GoPuff employees have spent

$12,000 or more a month ordering on Instacart, according to two people familiar with the matter. One former manager told Insider, his Instacart budget often topped $1,000 a day, buying pounds of bacon and gallons of milk and juice by the dozen. Multiple current and former GoPuff employees say they've spent so much on the service that Instacart has locked out their credit cards. Managers have GoPuff credit cards with $10,000 limits, and they were maxing them out. Other managers would call me saying, my credit card is maxed out too, one former manager told Insider. GoPuff acknowledged to Insider that the company does spend a portion of its supply chain budget on Instacart and shopping at grocery stores, saying that made up about 1% of its monthly spending. The company argued it was a fringe case

and was more an example of its commitment to customer satisfaction than any issues with its supply chain and inventory management. It also said grocery spending had no meaningful impact on its bottom line. Our customers always come first. In the extremely rare instance, we don't have something our customers really need. Gopuff will go above and beyond to make sure they get it quickly and reliably. A spokesperson said in a statement, Instacart did not respond to a request for comment. How Gopuff ended up getting addicted to Instacart speaks to one of its biggest challenges as it seeks to keep growing its business and potentially go public this year.

The company pitches itself as a next-generation convenience store, and it's asking investors to value it at a premium to standard brick-and-mortar grocers. GoPuff was valued at $15 billion during a funding round last year. But a key part of its operations, its supply chain, can be unpredictable according to multiple current and former Go-Puff employees. Managers say they have little indication about when they're getting shipments of new items. warehouses are sometimes inundated with too much product like ice cream and frozen pizzas that they often have no place to put and go into the dumpster. Likewise, when GoPuff warehouses start running low in key items like

bacon, eggs and orange juice, managers say they often have no idea when the next shipment is going to come in. Rather than risk being out of stock, employees scramble to buy the items themselves, racking up bills in the process. GoPuff employees disagree over the root cause of this situation. Some note that GoPuff is at the mercy of the vendors delivering the goods, despite GoPuff's growth, its revenue more than doubled between 2020 and last year, according to people familiar with the figures. It's still a much smaller outlet than giants like Walmart and Kroger, which means its warehouses are last in line for delivery trucks. Others point to problems with GoPuff's logistical operation and argue the company hasn't done enough to monitor items coming into its warehouses. Some of these employees argue the

company could route more deliveries through a central location, log them, and then parcel it out, to the smaller fulfillment centers as needed. Instead, individual warehouses have to make do with whatever comes off the trucks. The vendors just show up and say, here's your pallets, I'm out of here, said one former manager. Whatever the cause, the result is that GoPuff ends up footing the bill. Multiple former managers say the sheer volume and frequency of GoPuff's spending on Instacart is so great that the app regularly locks out the corporate credit card, assuming fraud, end quote. heavily VC subsidized convenience app, supplying another heavily VC subsidized convenience app,

quite an ecosystem we've got here. A little bit of housekeeping. We're going to record the Twitter space this week tomorrow night, Friday night, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, so we're not recording tonight. Keep that in mind for your calendars. The biggest news in my life came at the Nintendo Direct yesterday. No, not a release date for Breath of the Wild 2. That would be the biggest thing in the life of my kids and me. No, it was the news that 48 new tracks are coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as part of a new paid DLC. I swear to God, if Nintendo did a thing where they released one new track a week, I would easily pay, I don't know, $50, $100 a month for that. You almost cannot charge me enough for new Mario Kart content. That's how important it is for me to regularly

race my high school chemistry lab partner or my college roommate or my brother every weekend. When you see stories about people blowing thousands of dollars on mobile games or World of Warcraft or something like that and you shake your head, well, Mario Kart is that for me. And I realize how dumb that sounds, but I feel about Mario Kart the way that some people feel about playing FIFA online. It's my one true competitive outlet. And I'm not even that good at it. Talk to you tomorrow.