Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 01/28 - Gruber's iPad Disappointment

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

The UK government will allow Huawei to build SOME 5G components, the coronavirus is testing the Great Firewall of China, Product Hunt has a social network, Gruber is critical of the iPad at 10, and would you stay at an Atari Hotel? Sponsors: Metalab.co Wealthfront.com/techmeme Links: UK Huawei decision appears to avert row with US (The Guardian) As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media (NYTimes) iPhone 11's new multicam app lets you shoot video with two cameras at once (CNET) Product Hunt Has Released YourStack, A Social Network Where People Talk About Products (BuzzFeed News) The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 (Daring Fireball) Facebook will now show you exactly how it stalks you — even when you’re not using Facebook (The Washington Post) Google will shut down App Maker on January 19, 2021 (Venture Beat) Atari is opening eight video game hotels across the U.S. (Input Magazine) 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 Tuesday, January 28th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. The UK government will allow Huawei to build some 5G components.

The coronavirus is testing the great firewall of China. Product Hunt has a social network. Gruber is critical of the iPad at 10. And would you stay at an Atari hotel? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. In a major blow to the U.S. government's efforts to freeze out Huawei, at least among its erstwhile allies, the British government has announced that it will allow Huawei to build non-core elements of Britain's 5G network, although the government will still ban Huawei from

operating at sensitive sites, quoting from The Guardian. The Chinese tech firm, Huawei, has been designated a high-risk vendor, but will be given the opportunity to build non-core elements of Britain's 5G network the government has announced. The company will be banned from the core of the 5G network, and from operating at sensitive sites such as nuclear and military facilities, and its share of the market will be capped at 35%. We are clear-eyed about the challenge posed by Huawei, which we today confirm as a high-risk vendor, said a Whitehall source. But the source insisted a, quote, market failure meant there was little alternative in the short term. Officials feared banning the provider could have delayed 5G rollout by two to three years, increased the cost

to consumers and dented economic growth. Our world-leading cybersecurity experts know more about Huawei than any country in the world, and they are satisfied that with our tough approach and regulatory regime, any risks can be mitigated, the Whitehall source insisted. The 35% cap will be applied to the 5G and full fiber network, and telecoms providers will be given three years to ensure they comply by ensuring they are not overly dependent on Huawei, end quote. For over a year, the U.S. has intensely lobbied the British government not to allow Huawei anywhere near the 5G network. Britain is a member of the so-called Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Group that also includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with the Australians joining the U.S. in being strongly inimical to Huawei.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday. As China attempts to contain the so-called Wuhan coronavirus, it is interesting to watch the strains that this crisis is causing in the so-called Chinese firewall. The sheer volume of criticism of the government's response has seemingly been overwhelming sensors and is strongly testing China's ability to control the narrative around the event. Quoting the New York Times, in recent days, critics have pounced when officials in the city of Wuhan, the center of the operation. wore their protective masks incorrectly. They have heaped scorn upon stumbling pronouncements. When Wuhan's mayor spoke to official media on Monday, one commenter responded, If the virus is fair, then please don't spare this useless person.

The condemnations stand as a rare direct challenge to the Communist Party, which brooks no dissent in the way it runs China. In some cases, Chinese leaders appear to be acknowledging people's fear, anger, and other all-to-human reactions to the crisis, showing how the party can move dramatically, if sometimes belatedly, to mollify the public. Chinese officials seem to recognize that social media can be a useful tool for feeling out public opinion in times of crisis. WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging platform, said over the weekend that it would crack

down hard on rumors about the virus, but it also created a tool for users to report tips and information about the disease and the response. Internet backlash may already have caused one local government in China to change course on its virus-fighting policies. The southern city of Shantau announced on Sunday that it was stopping cars, ships, and people from entering the city in a policy that echoed ones in Wuhan. But then the word went around that the decision had led people to panic by food and by the afternoon the order had been rescinded, end quote. Interestingly, one of the social platforms that Chinese users have been flocking to,

to at least obliquely air criticism, is the social platform Dubon, which suddenly got flooded with user reviews for the TV series Chernobyl, which of course showed a bumbling communist government response to a public crisis. Quote, in any era, any country, it's the same. Cover everything up, one reviewer wrote on Monday. That's socialism, wrote another. Remember that demo during the iPhone 11 event last year where an app showed off the ability to film video using two of the iPhone cameras simultaneously?

Well, Filmix's double-take iPhone app is finally here. It's free, and it can simultaneously record two 1080p videos at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second. Of course, you do need an iPhone 10S, 10S max, or the iPhone 11 models to make this work. Quoting CNET, Filming's new standalone app launching this week, double-take, is a taste of those possibilities, but it's not the entire package yet. Filmic sees this free app as a test drive, a beta of sorts, that will help inform how the company incorporates multi-camera simultaneous recording into its paid Filmic Pro app later this year. The Double Take app can record two 1080p recordings at once at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second. The video recordings can't be digitally zoomed and the extra features are pretty paired down, but the recordings can be simultaneously stored separately or combined in a split view or picture-in-picture recording. Think a Twitch-like narration of an experiential tour somewhere seen through the rear camera as you talk to the front camera or a two-person interview setup talking to rear and front cameras at once, end quote.

Yeah, that would seem immediately useful for interviews. You could just take a two-person video just by holding your phone between you and your subject. Filming is working to make three or even four or even more cameras work at once. They haven't revealed when multi-camera recording could come. to Android, but, you know, Android phones seemingly are willing to just shove multiple cameras into all their phone chassis quicker than Apple is willing to do with the iPhone. So one would expect an Android version of the app coming pretty, pretty soon. Perhaps of special interest to listeners of this podcast, Product Hunt has released your stack, a social network where people

can talk about products. The idea is maybe to create a Yelp for products, but also some kind of version of maybe wirecutter with trusted people telling you what the best for each product category is maybe. Quote, called Your Stack, the site is open to a wide array of products, including apps, books, and cookware, no matter when they were released. It's also social. You can follow people if you like their taste in certain things. Your Stack is going to be about following your friends, people you like or experts in certain

areas. Ryan Hoover, the founder of Your Stack and Product Hunt told BuzzFeed News, it's a network, end quote. Owned by Angelist, which bought Product Hunt in 2016, the new site feels like a traditional social network with profiles, a central running feed of updates from people you follow. But it's all products. No political rants, selfies, or job updates, end quote. Just reviews of stuff. Follow the people whose taste in stuff you like. See what other people think about stuff. I think I need to get on this. I can keep my tally of the books I read this year, for example, or maybe I even need to set up a podcast account. The iPad is turning 10 years old, and to mark the occasion, John Gruber has

posted an essay that people have been chattering about all day because in it, Gruber argues that the iPad has not come close to being the revolutionary device. It promised to be, or even living up to its basic potential, largely because of the inconsistent, multitasking interface. Quote, by the time the Mac turned 10, it had redefined multiple industries. In 1984, almost no graphic designers or illustrators were using computers for work. By 1994, almost all graphic designers and illustrators were using computers for work. The Mac was a revolution. The iPad has been a spectacular success, and to tens of millions, it is a beloved part of their daily lives, but it has, to date, fallen short of revolutionary. Software is where the iPad

has gotten lost. iPad OS's multitasking model is far more capable than the iPhones, yes, but somehow Apple has painted itself into a corner in which it is far less consistent and coherent than the Macs while also being far less capable. iPad multitasking. More complex, less powerful. That's quite a combination, end quote. Rubber goes on to describe in detail the basic user confusion about multitasking on the iPad. I know when I suddenly get an app into split screen mode on my iPad. Not only do I not know how I got there, but I also have a hard time figuring out how to get out. Guber concludes by saying this, quote, the iPad at 10 is to me a grave disappointment, not because it's bad, because it's not bad, it's great even, but because

great though it is in so many ways, overall it has fallen far short of the grand potential it showed on day one. To reach that potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite, that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down a blind alley, end quote. As Craig Mod tweeted, this is the harshest, I've seen Gruber on Apple, but it's all true. The app use multitasking paradigms on the iPad are a mess, and to be honest, I can't imagine how they'd be fixed at this point, end quote. Yesterday, Facebook finally made its long-delayed tool available to allow you to see how Facebook

is tracking you for the first time. It's called the off-Facebook activity tool, and among other things, it will allow you to clear the data Facebook has on you, quoting the Washington Post. The off-Facebook activity tracker will show you 180 days worth of the data. Facebook collects about you from the many organizations and advertisers it's in cahoots with. This page, buried behind lots of settings menus, is the product of a promise CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made during the height of the 2018 Cambridge Analytical scandal to provide ways we can, quote, clear the history in our accounts. Facebook's new tool isn't nearly as useful as your web browser's clear history button. It doesn't let you reset your

entire relationship with Facebook, but along with the transparency, it does give you a way to unlink some of its surveillance from your Facebook account. end quote. If the tool is already live for you, here's how you find it, according to 9 to 5 Mac. On your Facebook smartphone app, go to the hamburger menu on the bottom right, then settings and privacy, then settings, then scroll down to the your Facebook information heading, and tap off Facebook activity. This is a better, late than never sort of thing, but also I looked into my own stuff inside Facebook, and I got to say the tool was pretty transparent and easy to understand. Like, nobody else has a tool like this. At least not this easy to use. Not Google,

not anybody. Speaking of Google, something something, never depend on a Google product for anything mission critical. Google says it will be shutting down App Maker. G Suite's low code environment for building custom business apps a year from now. Sunsetting on January 19th, 2021, quoting Venture Beat. Google App Maker will be turned down gradually. this year and officially shut down on January 19, 2021. Google cited low usage as an explanation for the move. If your business was using App Maker or considering moving to App Maker, you'll need to find another tool. Indeed, Google is making today's announcement not even two weeks after acquiring no-code app development platform app sheet. Google first launched App Maker as part of an early

adopter program in November 2016. At the time, we described it as a service that lets users drag and drop widgets around on a user interface that complies with Google's material design principles to create apps that can be customized further with scripts as well as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and J-Quary content. Once apps are live, usage can be monitored through Google Analytics. App Maker hit general availability for all G Suite business, enterprise, and education customers in June 2018, a year and a half later, and it's already headed to the grave, end quote. Yeah, when we talked about Appsheets acquisition by Google recently. Didn't I say something exactly like this? Like, what's the over-under for how long Appsheet will actually survive? Well, based on that timeline,

we just read out. Check back with me in 2024, 2025, I guess. Finally, today, Atari is in talks to build eight video game-themed hotels across the U.S. The hotels would be developed with a company called GSD Group and a real estate company called True North Studio. The hotels are planned for Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Jose, with groundbreaking scheduled for summer of this year. What's this now? Quoting Input magazine, at first glance, a video game-themed hotel might sound too gimmicky to be anything other than an old company's pipe dream, but there's reason to believe that if executed well, the Atari Hotel could actually work. As the company reports in its press release,

more than $152 billion was spent on games last year alone, and games love to get together and compete. A hotel with this focus could be a huge draw for serious gamers and even families, end quote. Indeed. Look, why have I been so interested in e-sports all the sudden? It's because I think e-sports have the potential to be the 21st century global pastime. It might sound crazy now, a games hotel, but given the growth of the e-sports industry,

why wouldn't this work? Atari isn't being very heavy on the details right now, but they mentioned state-of-the-art venues and studios for e-sports and other competitions, throw in some virtual and augmented reality gaming arenas, and heck, maybe even a fully stocked 1980-style old-school arcade filled with Pac-Man and Frogger machines. Atari is also talking restaurants, movie theaters, gyms,

even co-working spaces. I'm telling you, this might sound dumb, but it's probably not. That is all for today. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Tip me stories to use on the show, on the show subreddit at R slash Ride Home. And I actually haven't mentioned this in a while,

but did you know you can post a podcast classified ad to tell other listeners about your projects? More info at ridehome.com. So, classifies. Talk to you tomorrow.