Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 05/24 – Does Apple REALLY Want You To Repair Your Own iPhone?

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Google Research says to Open AI: “Hold my beer.” They’ve announced a new AI-based text-to-image generator to rival DALL-E 2. Is the shocking earnings warning from Snap a result of Apple’s ATT changes or is this indicative of the broader tech slowdown? Google’s street view turns 15 with some new bells and whistles. And does Apple REALLY want you to repair your own iPhone, or no? Sponsors: CreditKarma.com Work Check Podcast Links: OpenAI: Look at our awesome image generator! Google: Hold my Shiba Inu (TechCrunch) Zoom pops 16% on first-quarter earnings beat and strong guidance (CNBC) Snap plunges 30% after CEO warns company will miss revenue and earnings estimates, slow hiring (CNBC) Google is testing a smaller, modular Street View camera system (Engadget) APPLE SHIPPED ME A 79-POUND IPHONE REPAIR KIT TO FIX A 1.1-OUNCE BATTERY (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 Tech Meme right home for Tuesday, May 24th, 2022. I'm Brian McCalla today. Google Research says to open AI, hold my beer. They've announced a new AI-based text to image generator to rival Doll E2. Is the shocking earnings warning from Snap a result of Apple's ATT changes finally catching up with them, or is this indicative of the broader tech slowdown? Google's Street View turns 15 with some new bells and whistles, and does Apple really want you to repair your iPhone? on your own or no. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Google research has detailed Imogen or Imagine. It's spelled I-M-A-G-E-N, so I'm assuming Google wants the pronunciation to be

fluid, which is an AI-based text-to-image generator that is a rival to Open A-I's Dahl E2. Google says, however, that it won't release the code or give a public demo at this time, quoting TechCrunch. Imagine, get it, is a text-to-image diffusion-based generator built on large transformer language models that, okay, let's slow down and unpack that real quick. Text-to-image models take text inputs like a dog on a bike and produce a corresponding image, something that has been done for years, but recently has seen huge jumps in quality and accessibility. Part of that is using diffusion techniques, which basically start with a pure noise image and slowly refine it bit by bit until the model thinks it can make it look any more like a dog

on a bike than it already does. This was an improvement over top-to-bottom generators that could get it hilariously wrong at first guess, and others that could be easily led astray. The other part is improved language understanding through large language models using the transformer approach, the technical aspects of which I won't and can't get into here, but it and a few other recent advances have led to convincing language models like GPT3 and others. Imagine starts by generating a small 64-64 pixels image and then does two super-rescentrales. passes to bring it up to 1024 by 1024. This isn't like normal upscaling, though, as AI super resolution creates new details in harmony with the smaller image using the original as a basis. Say,

for instance, you have a dog on a bike and the dog's eye is three pixels across in the first image. Not a lot of room for expression, but on the second image, it's 12 pixels across. Where does the detail needed for this come from? Well, the AI knows what a dog's eye looks like, so it generates more detail as it draws. Then this happens again when the eye is done again, but at 48 pixels across. But at no point did the AI have to just pull 48 by whatever pixels of a dog's eye out of its, let's say, magic bag. Like many artists, it started with the equivalent of a rough sketch, filled it out in a study then really went to town on the final canvas. The advances Google's researchers claim with Imagine are several. They say that existing text models can be used for the

text encoding portion and that their quality is more important than simply increase visual fidelity. That makes sense intuitively since a detailed picture of nonsense is definitely worse than a slightly less detailed picture of exactly what you ask for. For instance, in the paper describing, imagine they compare results for it and Dolly 2 doing a panda-making latte art. In all of the latter's images, it's latte art of a panda. In most of imagines, it's a panda making the art. Neither was able to render a horse riding an astronaut showing the opposite in all attempts. it's a work in progress. In Google's tests, Imagine came out ahead in tests of human evaluation, both on accuracy and fidelity. This is quite subjective, obviously, but to even match the perceived

quality of Dolly 2, which until today was considered a huge leap ahead of everything else, is pretty impressive. I'll only add that while it's pretty good, none of these images from any generator, really, will withstand more than a cursory scrutiny before people notice they're generated or have serious suspicions. Open AI is a step or two ahead of Google in a couple of ways, though. is more than a research paper. It's a private beta with people using it, just as they use its predecessor and GPT 2 and 3. Ironically, the company with Open in its name has focused on productizing its text-to-image research, while the fabulously profitable internet giant has yet to attempt it, end quote. From the Everything Everywhere All at Once department, Zoom, the emblematic COVID-Times

tech company announced earnings that were really pretty good. They narrowly beat top line estimates and earnings handily beat earnings estimates. They also raise their expected forecast for both Q2 and the entire fiscal year. Of course, even though the company reported five straight quarters of triple-digit revenue growth during the pandemic, Zoom shares have lost about 85% of their value since peaking back in October 2020. Meanwhile, will it turn out that 15-minute delivery is an idea that has been tried twice now, once in the dot-com bubble, and once in recent years, and failed each time. It's not looking good. Delivery startup guerrillas has laid off half of its global office workforce, around 300 people, and will reassess its operations in Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Belgium. Again, half of the workforce is laid off. We're not counting the delivery workers in that stat. And considering pulling back from markets to retrench to only those places where it's got the best chance of making money, again, not ideal. But the worst news comes from Snap, quoting CNBC. Snap shares plunged 35% in Tuesday morning trading after CEO Evan Spiegel

warned in a note to employees that the company will miss its own targets for revenue and adjusted earnings in the current quarter. The social media company will also slow hiring through the end of the year as it looks to manage expenses. Spiegel wrote, part of the letter was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, quote, today we filed in 8K sharing that the macro environment has deteriorated further and faster than we anticipated when we issued our quarterly guidance last month, Spiegel wrote in the note. As a result, while our revenue continues to grow year over year, it is growing more slowly than we expected at this time, end quote. In April, Snap reported first quarter earnings that missed Wall Street expectations for sales and

profit. At the time, the company said it expected between 20 and 25 percent year-over-year growth in revenue. It forecasted adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of between zero and $50 million. We believe it is now likely that we will report revenue and adjusted EBITDA below the low end of the guidance range we provided for this quarter, Spiegel wrote, and Monday's update. The news hit the online advertising market hard, sending many of SNAP's peers tumbling after hours. Shares of Facebook parent meta dropped 7% in after hours trading. Twitter fell almost 4% while Pinterest slid 12%. Outside social media, shares of advertising companies also fell after hours. Google Parent Alphabet was off more than

3% while the trade desk fell more than 8%, end quote. So again, this wasn't even earnings. Business for SNAP has turned south so quickly that they had to preemptively announce halfway between earnings reports that, yeah, next quarter earnings are going to be a disaster. And remember, we had lauded SNAP on here, what, three, six months ago as having been emblematic as a turnaround success story. And again, they just reported earnings a mere four weeks ago. So things got so bad in just a few weeks that they had to pull the emergency ripcord. The progression of SNAP's revenue growth just from the beginning of the year was 44% growth between January 1st and February 23rd, from February 24th to March 31st,

that inch down to 32%, then March 31st to April 21st, down to 30%, and now they're reporting, or at least estimating that from April 21 to June 30th, revenue is only, going to grow 17%. So their earnings estimate growth numbers have been cut at least in half a little bit more. Oh, and one more thing. You know what company is the closest comparable business to Snap? Twitter. Quoting Terro Quentininan on Twitter, quote, Snap down now more than 29 percent, revising revenue projections after four weeks, has that August 2000 vibe. Twitter is likely to miss sales estimates by a mile. Oh, Elon, your timing, end quote.

Hey, happy 15th birthday Google Street View. In honor of the occasion, Google has announced several updates, including the addition of historical imagery on iOS and Android, and a smaller camera system for its cars, quoting in gadget. The one change most people can immediately enjoy, though, is the ability to go back in time on Street View using Google Maps for Android or iOS. This feature has been available on the web for a while now, but it's being added to the Maps app for the first time.

Accessing this historical data is pretty straightforward. Just get into street view and tap anywhere on the image to pull up details about the location. After that you'll find a Seymour dates option that pulls in all other street view captures for the location. Obviously, this will only work for locations where Google has a lot of historical street view data, so what you'll be able to find will vary widely by location. Google says that how often it scans areas for street view depends on factors like how frequently the area changes, how popular it is and how difficult it is to get to. Street View first launched in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver, so those places will have the oldest historical data for the curious. For those interested in the hardware Google uses to get Street View data,

the company is announcing a big update to its camera system. Google says that the new camera has all the resolution and processing capabilities that are in the full Street View car, but it's a 15-pound device that is, quote, roughly the size of a house cat. The company hopes this will make it easier to get data from under mapped areas of the world. One example of such a place Google gave was the Amazon Jungle. A camera system this small, relatively speaking, will be a lot easier for Google to deploy in more areas. It can be shipped anywhere and mounted to any type of vehicle. As long as it has a roof rack, Google says it'll be good to go. Google says that historically, it had to create totally new camera systems to fit whatever area they wanted to capture, but the new

camera is modular and customizable. It'll serve as the base system that can be added to should these circumstances require it. For example, Google notes that the new camera doesn't have the LiDar scanners typically found on Street View cars that operate in cities, but they can be added on when they're needed. Google says that the new camera system is being tested now and expects it to fully roll out in 2023. Finally, Google is adding four new collections of Street View imagery for some pretty noteworthy locales, the pyramids of Merro in Sudan, the Duomo in Milan, Les Invalids in Paris, and the Sydney Ferrys in Australia. The last one is coming later this year.

The Duomo in particular shows off the inside of the largest cathedral in Italy, as well as the exterior, while there's a virtual tour available of Les Invalids in Paris, end quote. Finally today, remember how Apple bowed to pressure and said, okay, we're going to let folks order a repair kit so you can do things like replace, say, your iPhone's battery, on your own, in your home. How, however, does that actually work out in practice? Well, quoting the verge. I expected Apple would send me a small box of screwdrivers, spudgers, and pliers. I own a mini iPhone, after all. Instead, I found two giant Pelican cases, 79 pounds of tools on my front porch. I couldn't believe just how big and heavy they were, considering Apple's paying to ship them both ways. I slipped my phone in a perfectly sized heating pocket that clans. I clipped my phone in a perfectly sized heating pocket that clans.

a ring of copper around the iPhone's band to evenly distribute the heat and melt the seal around the screen, realize in horror that I've invited the Hot Pockets jingle to live in my head rent-free, then spin a dial to raise the arm that separates the iPhone screen from its body. Or that's how it's supposed to work, anyhow. The heating machine through an error code partway through my first attempt, and Apple's manual didn't explain what to do if that happens after you've stuck your phone inside. So I wound up heating it twice in a row, and yet it still wasn't quite enough for my screen to immediately pop up when the suction cup arm

began to lift the glass. The manual did cover that situation, making me spin a second hidden knob to put more pressure on the suction cup, but I started freaking out when I saw what looked like cracks, spider cracks across the screen. Turned out it was just suction cup residue, end quote. By the way, I'm skipping around a lot here. This is a long piece, and the piece goes into the whole details of the process in order, but I'm going to skip around and pick and choose my quotes, quoting again, the single most frustrating part of this process after using Apple's genuine parts and Apple's genuine tools was that my iPhone didn't recognize the genuine battery as genuine. Unknown part, flashed a warning. Apparently, that's the case for almost all of these parts. You're expected to dial up Apple's third-party logistics company after the repair so they can validate the part for you.

That's a process that involves having an entirely separate computer and a Wi-Fi connection since you have to reboot your iPhone into diagnostics mode and give the company remote control, which, of course, defeats a bunch of the reasons you'd repair your own device at home. Yeah, none of that surprised me. What surprised me was the price tag, $69 for a new battery, the same price the Apple store charges for a battery replacement, except here I get to do the work and assume all the risk, $49 to rent Apple's tools for a week, more than wiping out any refund I might get for returning the old used part, and a $1,200 credit card hold for the toolkit, which I would forfeit if the tools weren't returned

within seven days of delivery. Let's be clear, this is a ridiculous amount of risk for the average person who wants to just put a new battery in their phone, and it's frankly weird for Apple to insist on you covering the full value of the tools. It's not like when you rent a car, they make you put down $20,000 as a safety deposit, my colleague Mitchell Clark points out. I should also mention the Pelican cases landed on my door two days before the battery arrived, So I only had five days to do the job before that $1,200 deadline. The more I think about it, the more I realize Apple's self-service repair program is the perfect way to make it look like the company supports right-to-repair policies without actually encouraging them at all. Apple can say it's giving consumers access to everything, even the same tools its technicians use, while scaring them away with high prices, complexity, and the risk of losing a $1,200 deposit.

This way, Apple gets credit for walking you through an 80-page repair. instead of building phones where, say, you don't need to remove the phone's most delicate components and two different types of security screws just to replace a battery. I don't think Apple expects anyone to seriously take it up on the offer of self-service repair kits. It stacked the deck in favor of taking your phone to an Apple store where it can tempt you to buy something new instead. The real victory will come months or years down the road, though. That's when Apple can tell legislators it tried to give right to repair advocates what they wanted, but that consumers overwhelmingly decided Apple knows best, end quote.

Speaking of Apple, I said on Twitter, I had gotten to the point of waiting for my Mac Studio to ship that I was vainly refreshing my Apple account every morning to see if anything had changed. Yesterday, suddenly the status shifted to preparing to ship, and overnight, it has apparently shipped. Well, it's kind of still in Hong Kong, but it says it will deliver on Thursday. So if you're keeping track, I placed the order on March 14th, and they originally gave me a shipping estimate of May 31st to June 15th, so if this works out, if I do get the studio on Thursday, they did manage to beat their window. Legitimately could not be more excited to have a Memorial Day weekend to set up this new machine that I hope will last me maybe

a decade. I'm doing the thing where I'm starting from scratch. I'm not going to restore from a time machine backup of my iMac, but the only problem with this is my wife has an account on this iMac where she has like 300 gigabytes of files backed up to an account on there, and she has inexplicably forgotten the password to that account. I assume with the administrative account on this iMac, I can log into her account or at least reset her password or something. Does anybody have a walkthrough on how to do that? I've Googled a bit, but found it confusing. If anyone can help, I need to log in to my wife's account on this IMAX so I can extract the files before I recycle this old one. Anyone that can help, please email me or DM me on Twitter.

Thanks in advance. Talk to you tomorrow.