Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 10/01 – New Surface Laptop Go: Smaller Display, $549

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

New Surface Laptop Go and Surface Pro X from Microsoft. Google is going to pay $1 billion dollars to support journalism. Google has a Photos update, but why is Stadia already looking shaky? And a textbook example of a developer’s dream of overnight success that was actually years in the making. Sponsors: MasterWorks.io: Promocode RIDE to skip the waiting list! Metalab.co Links: Microsoft’s new $549 Surface Laptop Go aims to compete with Chromebooks (The Verge) Microsoft updates the Surface Pro X with a new processor option (Engadget) Google will spend $1 billion to pay publishers for news showcase (Axios) Improved Google Photos editor is rolling out now on Android (The Verge) The new Chromecast with Google TV won’t officially support Stadia at launch (The Verge) Palantir closes below first trade after NYSE debut (CNBC) Six Figures in 6 days (tr.af) 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 Tech meme right home for Thursday, October 1st, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. New Surface Laptop Go and Surface Pro X from Microsoft. Google is going to pay $1 billion to support journalism globally. Google has a photos update, but why is Stadia already looking shaky? And a textbook example of a

developer's dream of overnight success that was actually years in the making. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Microsoft this morning took the wrapping off. a new Surface laptop Go with a smaller 12.4 inch display, 10th gen Intel Core I-5 processors, and actually there are three different models here, but they're available for pre-order today and shipping October 13th. The headline here is that the Go starts at just $549, thereby making this one of the lowest cost surface devices yet, only bested in cheapness by the $399 Surface Go2. The target here is people who are maybe Chromebook Curious, quoting The Verge. The Surface laptop Go, as the name implies, is mostly the same

surface you've seen before, but smaller and lighter. Microsoft is using a smaller 12.4 inch display than the 13.5 inch one found on the Surface laptop 3, but it's also running just 1536 by 1024 resolution. That's still more than standard 720 PhD, thanks to the 3x2 aspect ratio. But even the Surface Go2 managed to hit 1920 by 1280 on a smaller 10.5 inch display. This smaller frame makes the Surface laptop go the lightest Surface laptop ever at just 2.45 pounds. That's lighter than Apple's MacBook Air and many Chromebooks or Windows laptops at this price point. Microsoft is still including a full-size keyboard with 1.3 millimeters of travel and a large Windows precision trackpad. Unlike the Surface Go tablet, Microsoft is shipping what I'd call

a real processor inside the laptop Go. Microsoft has opted for a 10th-gen Intel Core I-5 rather than the Intel Pentium Gold processor found on the base Surface Go. It's not the latest 11th-gen Intel processors we're starting to see in other laptops, but the quad-core chip should be sufficient for this type of device. Unfortunately, the base model of the Surface Go laptop includes just 4 gigabytes of RAM and 64-gigabytes of EMMC storage. Both are serious drawbacks for a Windows laptop in 2020, especially when you can pick up something like Acer's Aspire 3 with the same processor, 8 gigabytes of RAM, 512 gigabytes of SSD storage, and a bigger 15-inch

1080P display for just $549, end quote. Microsoft also unveiled an updated Surface Pro X with a faster SQ2 processor and a new silvery platinum color starting at $1,500. You might remember the Surface Pro X as Microsoft's laptop with an arm processor, quoting in gadget. According to the company, the new SQ2 processor is the fastest processor in its class, though the big caveat is that this class is limited to existing arm-based PCs that are largely powered by Qualcomm. Microsoft hasn't shared many details about this chip set, and in the past only described the older SQ1 chip as sharing DNA with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors. But it's likely that the SQ2 is a customized version of the recently announced

Snapdragon 8cX Gen 2, which itself isn't actually speedier than the original 8CX. In addition to configurations with the new SQ2 processor, the Surface ProX, is also available today in a new silvery platinum finish. There are also three new colors for the matching signature keyboard, platinum, poppy red, and that same pretty ice blue from the laptop go. Very little else about the new Surface Pro X is new. Microsoft is promising longer battery life up to 15 hours across both configurations, up from 13 hours, and continues to call this the thinnest surface yet. That sleek profile might explain why there isn't a 5G version available, by the way. The ProX will only work on 4G and support gigabit LTE networks for connectivity, and that's going

to still offer decent speeds even as 5G rolls out more widely in the next two years, end quote. However, the big sticking point I will point out with this device last year is app-compatency. or lack thereof because remember arm chip. We'll have to wait for the reviews to find out if this is a problem that has been improved upon or not. Google is planning to spend more than one billion through 2023 to actually pay publishers to create high-quality journalism through what it is calling the Google News Showcase, quoting Axios. This is Google's biggest ever financial commitment to the news industry. In 2018, it pledged $300 million to efforts support. the news industry, this announcement builds on that effort and its existing news licensing program

where it pays select publishers to feature their stories in Google News and search. Our approach with Google News Showcase is a very different approach for Google from a product standpoint. It's a new way for us to connect users to stories that matter. It's a new way for us to work with publishers, but to also make money from their content beyond search and news. And of course, it's a new way for Google to support the future of quality journalism. That quote came from Brad Bender, Google's VP of Product Management for News. The Google News Showcase, launching first in Brazil and Germany, includes a new set of features

that Google hopes will help guide readers to higher quality information and boost traffic to participating publishers' websites. The biggest feature in the showcase is panels, which allow publishers to package stories with greater contexts than they can provide now when their stories appear on Google. Publishers can include elements like timelines, bullets, and related articles within one-story panel. Eventually, they'll be able to embed video, audio, and daily briefings. The showcase, initially launching on Android and soon on iOS, will first appear within Google News and eventually also in Discover and Search.

As part of this effort, Google says it will offer free access to select paywalled articles on some participating publisher's sites, with the idea being that the extra exposure will one day help publishers convert those visitors to subscribers. The new Showcase product is different from Google Search or News because it relies more heavily on the editorial choices of individual publishers. Panels will still be surfaced by the same algorithms used to rank content in Google News or search, but within them, publishers will be curating what's featured. Bender says it's selecting publishers on a country-by-country basis, quote,

we need to have enough of a critical mass of publisher content to be able to launch in a country, he says. From there, it will prioritize publishers that have established audiences and serve a community like local news publishers and print newspapers, end quote. One thing I missed yesterday in the scrum of Google News announcements, Google also rolled out and updated Google Photos on Android with a new editor feature that a lot of people were pretty jazzed about because it will actually recommend edits for you. Basically, this is an editor powered by machine learning, quoting the verge.

The biggest change is a new suggestions tab in the photo editing menu, which will offer recommendations for edits for the specific photo you're currently looking at, automatically adjusting things like brightness, contrast, and portrait effects. The broad edits are also just a starting point. Google will show you what edits it's made and let you tweak them further. To start, Google is offering some basic options for suggestions like enhance and color pop, but the company promises it'll continue to expand its lineup of options optimized around specific types of images like portraits, landscapes, or sunsets in the coming months, starting with pixel phones. Google is also rolling out a new interface for its general editing tools for things.

like brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, white point, blur, and more, making it easier for users to scroll through these options and adjust them for the image in question, end quote. While this apparently began rolling out on Android yesterday, no word on when or even if it might appear on iOS. But also, I miss this. You know that new Google Chromecast with Google TV that got pride of place in yesterday's Google announcements? Yeah, well, it turns out that device will not support Stadia, Google's game streaming service at launch, and in fact won't support Stadia until sometime in the first half of 2021, maybe. It also won't support Apple TV Plus either, but it's the Stadia support or lack thereof that is really, really raising eyebrows. Here's the Verges stab at an

explanation, quote. Right now, Stadia is supported on the current Chromecast Ultra, which is based on Google's original Chromecast platform. It doesn't have an interface on its own. It only takes streaming video from the internet as directed by your phone or your stadia controller. The new Chromecast for Google TV by comparison has several layers. At the base is Android TV, the operating system for the new Chromecast. It's what allows the new system to have a user interface. You can navigate and over 6,500 apps. On top of Android TV is the new Google TV interface, a Google-centric skin that preties up Android TV. Finally, at the very top, there's cast. You can still cast videos to Android TV devices, just not Stadia games.

If we had to guess, and we kind of do, we'd say that there are problems for Stadia in two of those three layers. Stadia does have an Android app for phones, but apparently an Android app for TVs is a different beast. You likely expect higher frame rates, higher resolutions, and lower latency on your TV than your phone. Currently, Stadia does work on Android TV, but only in a very weird tacked-on way. It's, quote, still a shoehorned version of the phone UI that really isn't great for non-touchscreens,

as 9 to 5 Google aptly put it. Latency might also be the reason that Stadia can't simply be cast to the new Chromecast at launch. Since it runs on Android TV instead of the simpler OS and the Chromecast Ultra, the new Chromecast with Google TV may introduce more latency into the game stream, end quote. So by saying support is coming, Google clearly thinks that this is a solvable problem. And yet, this is not stopping folks from assuming this is the worst of Google being Google doing what Google does best, which is losing interest or not having focus on their myriad projects.

Some tweets. Here's Alex Hearn. Google is already launching new products that don't support Stadia less than a year after it launched Stadia. Support will come sometime in the first half of 2021, end quote. Jason Howell. If Google really cared about Stadia, I mean really cared about seeing it thrive and succeed, it would be sure that it runs on their latest living room device at launch full stop. I just don't understand, end quote.

And most pessimistically, here's Ralph Barbaragolo. This is usually an indicator that Google is subsetting a platform. Remember when the Pixel 4 came out and silently didn't support Daydream? Google Stadia's death is imminent, end quote. I did want to make note of the fact that Palantir did do its direct listing yesterday, debuting on the New York Stock Exchange at $10 a share before closing the day at $9.50. cents. So they did not blow the doors off the place a la snowflake. We might have more on Palantir for the weekend long reads tomorrow, but for now, quoting CNBC, the initial price gives Palantir a

market cap of $16.5 billion based on $1.65 billion shares outstanding, which excludes various restricted stock units or RSU's options and unvested stock. The fully diluted share count is $2.17 billion, so Palantir's stock market value will rise significantly, as options RSUs. and unvested units convert to common stock. Shares of Palantir founded in 2003 have been widely traded on the private market for years, though the company has struggled to maintain the $20.4 billion valuation from a 2015 financing round. The stock at that time was valued at $11.38 and traded this year for between $4.17 and $11.50, end quote. And finally today, this is the stuff of developer dreams,

A developer who I've only been able to identify as at TRAF on Twitter shared a blog post outlining how he generated more than $100,000 in just six days. So as the title of the piece notes, six figures in six days, merely by selling custom app icon sets as the iPhone home screen customization craze has exploded with the release of iOS 14. Quoting from his post, which has lots of lessons for anyone hoping something similar happens to them, quote. As soon as I noticed the hype, I put together some icons in my own style, downloaded some widgets, and tried it all out. I thought it looked cool, so I shared a screenshot of it on

Twitter. Right away, people started asking about the icons in the screenshot. So I quickly packaged them, uploaded them to Gumroad, and embedded them on a Notion site using Super. All of this took about two hours, end quote. And then all it took was the tweet getting a ton of likes, and then getting picked up by places like I'more, and then an MKBiBi. H.D. mention in one of his videos, and boom. But what Traff wants you to know is that this wasn't an overnight success. He had been tinkering around with iOS customization in the jailbreak community for years. And as he points out quite rightly in this post, sure, sometimes you get lucky and lightning strikes you. But more often than not, you have to be prepared in order to be

fortunate. Read the piece. He recommends always be publishing. He mentions having the pieces in place to strike immediately when the iron is hot, end quote. In the same way that creating icon sets seven years ago prepared me for last week, this whole experiment has likely prepared me for what's to come years from now. The best part about this is the freedom it's bought me to keep building things that will create even more freedom. Spending time on things that will buy you time is always a good use of it. When people buy into whatever it is you're selling, they're not only giving you money, but they're contributing to your future freedom. The market will decide. A huge part of what comes after sharing something. So continually increase your odds by building, publishing, then repeating.

Try many things once to figure out what you want to do twice. Figure out what you've got stored in your brain that can be a value to others, and then share it with the world. You might be surprised by what comes of it, end quote. This podcast just had a record month last month in September. We were just shy of a million downloads last month, which I know it's just an arbitrary round number. But I so wanted to hit a million downloads in a month for the first time, the way the calendar actually shakes out. Next month, we'll have extra shows.

So since I haven't asked you to do it in a long time, and I really want to hit that million download in a month number for whatever reason, just jollies for me, please spread the word about this podcast. If we could pick up even 500 to 1,000 new listeners in the next few weeks, we should break the million download barrier next month easily. So anyone you know who likes podcasts, tell them about this show. Anyone you know who likes tech or works in tech, tell them about this show. Just tell a friend.

And thanks for being a loyal listener. Talk to you tomorrow.