Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 04/22 – Cloud Based Cellular Networking?

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Dish partners with AWS to build the first public cloud-based 5G network. iPadOS 15 might let you go full widget on the home screen. Some of those stolen schematics suggest we will be getting the MacBook Pros we deserve. I’ve got an interesting raise for a product every Product Manager should know about. And the first reviews of the Apple Air Tags are in. Sponsors: PingIdentity.com NewYorker.com/techmeme, promocode techmeme Links: US satellite company Dish taps Amazon for 5G launch (Financial Times) Apple Plans Notifications, iPad Home Screen Upgrades for iOS 15 (Bloomberg) Stolen MacBook Pro Schematics Confirm Apple's Plans to Add More Ports and Remove Touch Bar (Mac Rumors) Software product planning platform Productboard raises $72M (Venture Beat) AIRTAG LOCATION TRACKERS ARE SMART, CAPABLE, AND VERY APPLE (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 Techman. right home for Thursday, April 22nd, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, DISH partners with AWS to build the first public cloud-based 5G network. iPadOS 15 might let you go full widget on the

home screen. Some of those stolen schematics suggests we will be getting the MacBook pros we deserve. I've got an interesting raise for a product every product manager should know about, and the first reviews of the Apple Air Tags are in. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. DISH Network has announced it has partnered with AWS to build the first public cloud-based 5G network, which DISH plans to launch initially in Las Vegas as soon as the third quarter of this year. This is a first step, but think of how this could be disruptive to sell networking generally, quoting the Financial Times. The DISH network will be a crucial test for a sector that has been reticent to move critical network functions

to the public cloud from dedicated data centers. through this collaboration with AWS, we will operate not just as a communications services provider, but as a digital services provider harnessing the combined power of 5G connectivity and the cloud, said Charlie Ergen, Dish co-founder and chairman. Ergan said the move toward the public cloud and the use of smaller suppliers, known as OpenRAND, are crucial to the U.S. and UK attempts to regain a footing in the global telecoms market in the wake of crackdowns on the use of Huawei equipment in markets, including the U.S. and the UK. DISH is the fourth largest participant in the U.S. wireless market, but it uses

capacity on T-Mobile's network for 4G services. The company intends to spend between $8 billion and $10 billion to build its own 5G network and has spent $25 billion on spectrum. Its licenses require the company to connect 20% of the U.S. population to that network by June of next year, end quote. Remember, DISH was basically propped up as a fourth network in the U.S. to allow the Sprint T-Mobile merger to go through. But traditionally, it's always been hard to be a successful outside player in mobile networking in North America because often you're just piggybacking on someone else's stack. Could moving things to the cloud suddenly eliminate part of the competitive moat that keeps cellular networking so uncompetitive, at least in North America. Not only that, this could

open up things in a much broader way. Imagine developing apps to be deployed directly on networks. Maybe it's the cloud that's eating the world. or at least world networking, quoting Silicon Angle. An ORAN network is one that's based on new standards for radio access network interfaces that support interoperation between networking vendors' equipment. RAN interfaces are the software and hardware that enable mobile telephony operators to provide wireless connectivity services to the public. The ORAN Alliance, which is an organization pushing the concept forward,

is basically trying to transform networking standards in the same way that the open day. Data Center Alliance changed the way modern data centers are built. O-RAN networks are most beneficial for network operators as it allows them to avoid being stuck with just one company's proprietary hardware and software. DISH said that running its 5G O-RAN network in the cloud provides a number of benefits. One of the most important is being able to use AWS machine learning services to predict things such as network congestion and discover any anomalous network functionality. Also, the company said cloud infrastructure will make it easier for DISH to implement hardware

and software upgrades. Further, by using Amazon's cloud, DISH will be able to tap into an ecosystem of cloud partners that can help with essential tasks such as automating network slicing. There will be benefits for developers building new 5G applications to DISH said. For example, they'll be able to use standard APIs to access DISH's network services and attributes such as user equipment latency and bit rates. Using that information, developers can then leverage other AWS services such as machine learning and analytics to help build their apps. One idea Dish suggested was a developer that builds a low-latency game that's optimized for some users' slower devices, end quote. Mark German, Apple Scoop Thursday, because now that

the spring Apple event is out of the way, it's time to start thinking ahead to WWDC and the launch of OS-15s. German's sources say iOS 15 and iPad OS-15 will include upgrades to notifications, lock screen and iMessage, a redesigned iPad home screen, and more privacy protections. Quote, the company is planning a new feature that will allow users to set different notification preferences, such as if the phone makes a sound or not, depending on their current status. The enhancement will come in the form of a new menu that lets users select if they are driving, working, sleeping, or custom categories of their choosing. The menu will be shown on the updated lock screen and in control center, the iPhone and iPads'

menu for quickly accessing settings. There will also be an option to set automatic replies to messages depending on their status. That will be an improvement over the current auto reply feature, which is only currently available while driving. Apple has added some unique notifications features such as Do Not Disturb and Sleep Mode, but this will mark the first time the company offers a system-wide feature for changing notifications depending on a user status. The company is also working on upgrades to iMessage with the eventual goal of acting as more of a social network. and better competing with Facebook's WhatsApp. Those changes are still early in development and could come later, the people said, end quote.

As for the iPads, German says the changes to the home screen will be the most significant since the iPad first launched in 2010. Basically, you'll be able to place widgets wherever you want on the home screen, even replace the entire grid with only widgets. And on the privacy front, one new feature mentioned is a new menu item that will show which apps are actively collecting. data on you. So remember that story from yesterday about that ransomware group that was attempting to extort Apple to pay it money, or they would release schematics of upcoming Apple products? Well, look, I feel somewhat ethically conflicted about this, but some of those schematics have leaked. This is stolen data, which is why I'm a bit conflicted about talking about it, but I'm not the one that reported on the data originally or leaked it. Other outlets already have reported and

analyzed, so I'm reporting on them reporting on questionably sourced information. But also, I'm going to share this because it seems to be, if accurate, that we are finally going to get the MacBook Pros we have all wanted and probably deserve. Quoting Mac Rumors. Mac Rumors saw the schematics after they were leaked online, and some of them feature the logic board of the next generation MacBook Pro. On the right side of the machine, there's a visible HDMI port accompanied by a USBC slash Thunderbolt port, and followed by an SD card reader. The left side features two additional USBC Thunderbolt ports and a mag-safe charging slot for a total of three USB-slash-Thunderbolt ports instead of four as we have today. Rumors from Apple analysts Ming Chi-Quo and Bloomberg have previously said that all of these ports will be coming back to the 2021 MacBook Pro models,

but the schematics both confirm the addition of the new ports and give us insight into their positioning. The code name for the Mac is J-316, which suggests that the logic board that we've seen is for the 16-inch MacBook Pro. There's also a J-314 model that likely correlates to the 14-inch MacBook Pro that Apple is also rumored to be working on. Both machines are expected to feature the new ports, MagSafe charging option, and upgraded Apple Silicon Chips. This information, which was also shared by 9-5 Mac, comes from a ransomware group called Revol, R-E-Vol, which claims to have access the internal computers of Apple supplier Quanta computer, end quote. Other leaked images on Twitter seem to suggest that the touchbar is gone as well. So again, finally, the MacBook of my dreams

seems like it's on the horizon. And if there is some sort of next generation Apple Silicon in there as well, an M2 chip, if you will, even better. Interesting raise. That is also from the News You Can Use file, at least if you're a product manager. Product Board helps PMs prioritize what to build next. And it's just raised a $72 million Series C round to do that, led by Tiger Global, quoting Venture Beat. An estimated 19 to 23% of software development projects fail, with that statistic holding steady for the past couple of decades, according to data compiled by Ask Wonder.

Product board was founded in 2014 by Hubert Pallon and Daniel Heigel, who sought to build a service that could tackle some of the most common DevOps challenges. The platform enables companies to create single product feedback repositories and prioritize what to build next, ostensibly helping to mitigate bottlenecks in the creation process. Product teams often use an assortment of PowerPoint, email, Post-it notes, Slack, and other generic task management and engineering tools, Palin told Venture Beat via email,

while a lot of these tools are free, they fall short when it comes to delivering the structure, best practices, and flexibility provided by tools built specifically for product management, end quote. With product board, companies can consolidate support tickets, Slack messages, and sales conversations in a single, dashboard. Moreover, they can categorize product ideas, requests, and feedback to route back to product teams for resurfacing down the road. Insights can be highlighted in each piece of user research or feedback and linked to a related feature idea. Once approved by a manager,

developers can indicate the importance of these features rating them on a zero to three scale. Product board also lets teams share product roadmaps to which they can add features and custom filters. Each roadmap can be tailored to different audiences with leadership, company, delivery, and customer-focused views. And roadmaps can be integrated with existing workflows in Trello, GitHub, Jira, and other DevOps platforms. Product Board's other headlining feature is its Product Portal, which lets companies show which features are planned, what's been launched, and get user feedback. Product Boards hosted by Product Board can surface top-requested features and update customers about features they have requested or serve as an internal brainstorming board for developers.

Product board, which employs over 200 people, has indirect competition in a number of startups vying for a slice of the more than $3.42 billion DevOps tools market. For example, there's Task Top, which recently nabbed $100 million to turn DevOps metrics into visualizations at scale. Meanwhile, Harness coordinates DevOps and cloud spending across multiple platforms. But product board claims to have over 4,000 customers, including Zoom, Microsoft, UiPath, and 1-800 contacts, end quote. And that's kind of why I'm sharing this story with you today. If you're a PM and you didn't know this category of tool was out there, now you do, and now you know you have a range of options to choose from. P.S., if you enjoy hearing about interesting

raises as competitive intelligence, right-home plus subscribers, we've got an interesting raise episode with nine other raises coming at you tomorrow. At the risk of this episode becoming Apple heavy, folks have already gotten hands-on with those Apple air tags, and the early reviews are seemingly very positive. Airtag seem to be a thoughtfully designed system. They are apparently cool-looking and feeling in hand with a plastic body that serves as a speaker. If there's a downside, it seems to be that they tend to scuff really easily. But otherwise, this is some clever stuff, quoting the verge. Apple air tags weren't designed for elaborate games of hide-and-seek. They can help you locate anything they're attached to, and most of the time you'll be listening for their little chirps as you hunt down the keys that you inexplicably left sitting on top of the fridge instead of on the

hook where they belong. For that purpose, they work incredibly well, right, on down to a little arrow on the iPhone screen pointing in the direction and a little haptic tap as encouragement that you're getting warmer. From the app, you can set the air tags to chirp, mark them as lost, which enables some different features, or just tap the button that lets you locate them in space. If you have an iPhone with ultra-wideband, it can locate the air tag in physical space and point a little arrow at it when you get within four feet or so. It all works very well and is very satisfying. From a design perspective, an air tag is classic Apple. It's a white and shiny silver little button, and you can have custom emoji or letters

printed on the plastic. They are as cute as the buttons they resemble. However, you'll soon find the plastic is scuffed and the chrome on the back is scratched. Sincerely, do not expect these to stay looking pristine for long, not since the weird early days of the iPod Nano has an Apple product gotten scuffed this easily. One clever touch is that the plastic body itself serves as the speaker. It's what vibrates to make the chirping noise. It gets plenty loud, though my old ears had a bit of a difficult time using just that sound to locate one. Also, if for whatever reason the air tag is squeezed or compromised,

press. That will dampen how loud it can get. There's also no hole on them for a lanyard loop. If you want to actually attach one to anything, instead of dropping it in a pocket, you'll need to buy an accessory. That increasingly also feels like a classic Apple move. The one un-appled part of the design is that the battery is actually user-replaceable. A little twist of the bottom reveals a standard CR 2032 cell, which Apple claims should be good for a year of battery life, end quote. Okay, that's cool for around the house use, but what about out in the world? This is where it gets wild. Apple is leveraging all of the millions of iPhones out in the world to make all of this work. Quoting Fast Company. Air tags don't rely on an internet connection of their own. Instead, they piggyback off of a network of almost a billion iOS devices and Macs already out in the world.

Each air tag sends a unique encrypted Bluetooth identifier. Other Apple devices can detect it and relay the location. of the air tag directly to an owner's Apple ID account. This entire process is end-to-end encrypted so that no one but the owner of the air tag, not the owners of the crowdsource devices picking up the air tag's location or even Apple itself, ever has access to the air tag's current or past location. Airtags also have a unique security feature called pairing lock, which protects against people who may find your lost item and snatch the air tag from it to use as their own.

Huang likens pairing lock to the iPhone's activation lock. It means that if you lose your air tag, somebody can't just pick up your air tag, repair it with their phone, and continue using it, he says. This has been really impactful for the iPhone, and we think it'll be for air tag as well. Not only can people who gain hold of an air tag not use it for themselves, but they also can't find out the identity of who owns it. Every air tag has a unique serial number printed on it, but the identity of the owner cannot be derived from that number unless that owner activated. the Airtag's lost mode. That's a toggle in the Find My app that marks your air tag as lost. Once you've toggled that option on, someone who finds your lost air tag can then

scan it with any NFC equipped device, such as an iPhone or Android phone, to display a web URL prompt on that device. Tapping on the prompt will take the finder of your Airtag to an Apple's support page featuring the Airtag's unique serial number, and if the air tag owner so chooses, the phone number of the air tags owner so the finder can call or text, end quote. See, all of that is pretty wild and pretty thought out. But what about security? What about stalkers? What about somebody slipping an air tag surreptitiously into your bag to track you? Apple has thought of this too, quoting Fast Company again. If you're an iPhone owner running iOS 14.5 or later and someone slips an air tag into your possession in secret in order to track your movements, your iPhone will warn you

this has happened by sending you an air tag found moving with you notification. This notification will appear only when an air tag is following you that is not paired with your Apple ID or another iPhone that is in your vicinity. That distinction is critical so that your iPhone won't be notified of air tags that, for instance, belong to other people on the same bus you're writing. The notification will appear courtesy of the Find by app when the user arrives home as defined by the address in their contacts me card or if using significant locations. tapping the notification will take you to the Find My app where you can tell the air tag that it has been slipped into your possession to emit a sound so that you can locate it and presumably turn it off end quote and the overall conclusion of the overall air tag's experience quoting from the verge one last time really the air tag is the most apple product i've seen in a while it's just a little more expensive than the competition it's beautifully designed but its hardware still somehow fails to actually take the practical realities of our

dirty, messy world into account. It's very privacy focused. It really only works with Apple devices. It offers features that no third-party device can really match, thanks to Apple's tight integration or tight grip on its APIs, depending on your point of view. And since there's no Android version of FindMy, it's another piece of the Apple ecosystem that's going to keep you from switching. An air tag is a very appelly thing for Apple users who already live in Apple's ecosystem. They work great and will be great at keeping you in Apple's world, end quote. That's all for for today. Talk to you tomorrow.