Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 11/10 – The Apple Silicon Macs Are Here

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

Apple’s One More Thing Mac Event. The EU sues Amazon for antitrust. The Slingbox is no more. And, apparently, the MagSafe Duo charger is no good. Sponsors: TinyCapital.com Wipers123.com, promocode: ride Links: EU accuses Amazon of breaching antitrust rules (FT) Slingbox discontinued, services sunsetting (SlashGear) Walmart and Cruise launch pilot to deliver orders via self-driving cars (Venture Beat) Apple MagSafe Duo Charger Review: Useful, but expensive and underwhelming (TechCrunch) 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 ride home for Tuesday, November 10th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple's One More Thing Mac Event.

The EU sues Amazon for antitrust. The Slingbox is no more. And apparently, the MagSafe Duo Charger is no good. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The One More Thing event came to us this afternoon from the Apple Campus, which we got to see a lot more of, by the way. That looked to you like the empty cafeteria right at the top of the show, right? Have we seen that before?

It looks kind of creepy, empty. One more thing was about the Mac, of course, and specifically Macs with Apple Silicon inside. Say hello to the M1, the first chip designed by Apple for its Macs. Though, note that John Ternis, VP of Hardware Engineering, mentioned a family of chips eventually, so expect this to be the first of several versions. The M1 chip is a system on a chip, unifying memory architecture, an integrated GPU, and a neural engine. It uses 5-nanometer architecture, has 16 billion transistors. It's 8-core, with four high-performance single-thread cores,

and four high-efficiency cores as well. Those four high-efficiency cores, quoting Apple, on their own, deliver similar performance as current dual-core MacBook Airs. Apple says this allows them to deliver the best performance per watt in the industry. On the 8-core GPU, Apple says it can get two times the performance at one-third the power. It can deliver up to 128 execution units, up to 24,576 concurrent threads, and 2.6 terraflops. And it's also got a 16-core neural engine. Also, if you were wondering, there's a Thunderbolt slash USB4 controller built in, so even though we're transitioning away from Intel, it's not losing that.

Of course, Apple always wants you to know it is hardware and software integrated, right? So they wanted you to know that macOS Big Sur has been designed to maximize for the M1. What does that mean? Well, it will allow Macs to now wake instantly from sleep. Also, 1.5 times speedier JavaScript. Apps get more graphics memory than ever, and security. The new secure enclave in the M1 allows for hardware-verified secure boot and automatic encryption. Apple promised a bunch of universal apps are coming that can run either on these chips or the old Intel ones. They mentioned that Lightroom will have a universal app as soon as next month. Photoshop will be coming early next year.

Super. But what computers will be the first to get these M1s? Well, the first is the MacBook Air. They're calling it, I think, the MacBook Air with M1, although I haven't been able to check the story yet to confirm that. It's got the same chassis as the existing MacBook Air. But Apple says it can deliver up to three times faster performance and five times faster graphics than any previous MacBook Air model. It can handle multiple streams of ProRes 4K, for example. Even the storage gets a boost.

The M1 chip apparently allows for two times faster SSD performance. And get ready for this. The new MacBook Air does not have a fan. So I guess they're not kidding about the performance improvements from these new chips. no fan and up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing and 18 hours of video playback on a single battery charge. Overall, Apple is saying you'll get twice the battery life of previous MacBook airs. The air still starts at $999, so that's a pretty decent performance upgrade just by swapping out the chips, so long as you're willing to play Russian roulette with apps that may not work on it yet.

The second Mac to get the M1 is the Mac Mini. Yes, the Mac Mini lives. Again, they're going with the same overall design as the previous Mac Mini, but again, Apple says it now gets three times the performance of previous Quad Core Mac Minis with this new Apple Silicon inside, six times the graphics performance. It does appear to have a fan and a headphone jack, oddly, and it starts at $699, which is $100 less than the previous Mac Mini. And the third in line for the M1 is a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Let's go. go through the performance gains once again. 2.8 times faster performance.

Graphics are 5 times faster. Machine learning is 11 times faster. Again, it does have a fan. I guess that fan allows the MacBook Pro to run a little hotter than the air and thus the better performance. Get ready for the battery stats. Apple claims 17 hours of web battery life and 20 hours of video playback, saying that this is the longest battery life they've ever been able to achieve

in a Mac. It's also got those studio quality mics and speakers that the bigger MacBook Pros have, and the same old touchbar, which sort of makes me wonder what sort of battery life they could have gotten if they just threw in the towel on the dumb touchbar. The new MacBook Crow starts at $1,29 as per usual, and all three of these new Macs are available for pre-order today, shipping next week, which means you'll get them by Friday. Big Sur is coming out this Thursday, November 12. And if you wanted a one more thing to the one more thing event right at the end there, my park slope neighbor John Hodgman was back to reprise his role as the I'm the PC guy. Fun to see John back. Maybe we'll get him in some commercials again.

The antitrust chickens are really coming home to roost now. The European Union has filed antitrust charges against Amazon over what it says is its dual role as a marketplace for third-party vendors and a competitor selling its own goods on the same platform, quoting the Financial Times. The European Commission's Margief Vestager said that after a year-long probe, the European Commission had reached the preliminary view that Amazon had breached EU competition rules by using non-public data that it gathers on sales on its website to inform its own label products and services. Separately, she said the EU had opened a second formal antitrust investigation into whether Amazon gave preferential treatment on its site to its own products and those of sellers

who paid extra for Amazon's logistics and delivery services. Quote, we must ensure that dual-role platforms with market powers such as Amazon do not distort competition, said Ms. Vestager. Data on the activity of third-party sellers should not be used to the benefit of Amazon when it acts as a competitor to the sellers, end quote. The EU said its investigation had revealed that Amazon takes private business data about the sellers in its vast marketplace to compete with those sellers. quote, for example, the data allows Amazon to focus its offers in the best-selling products

across product categories and to adjust its offers in view of non-public data of competing sellers, the statement said. As a result, Amazon can, quote, avoid the normal risks of retail competition and leverage its dominance in France and Germany, the biggest markets for Amazon in the EU. The German competition authorities have been investigating Amazon's use of data for two years, but have yet to bring charges. Amazon said it disagreed with the findings. Amazon said it disagreed with the findings and would, quote, continue to make every effort to ensure the European Commission has an accurate understanding of the facts, end quote. So some stray observations from folks on Twitter. At KV-61-416 wants to know, quote, is this really that much different from supermarkets and other

normally brick-and-mortar stores having their own store brands to compete with the vendors that sell in their stores? They also use their internal data for those store brands, and quote, though Paul Tang, who I believe is a member of the EU Parliament, tweeted this, quote, Monopolis no longer raise prices, they steal data. Good that at Vestager fights this abuse and launches antitrust investigation into Amazon, end quote. And here's Der Abysanjo's summary, quote, Amazon has 25% of e-commerce market share in Europe, which is about 12% of total retail. EU is after them for using sales data to influence what store brands to create just like grocery stores do.

This isn't a monopoly, but they do have a near insurmountable competitive advantage. Just like the DOJ going after Google for paying Apple for search defaults on iOS, this seems more like going after companies for being so successful that barriers to entry for competition are too high versus acting maliciously to abuse their power. This is a new wave, end quote. Pour one out for a true OG. Sling Media, a subsidiary of DISH, says it is closing down to, today, and thus all Slingbox devices and services will become inoperable one year from now,

November 2022. Yes, in the smartphone and streaming era, it might seem hard to grasp, but the slingbox was truly revolutionary at one time. The idea of being able to access your home TV lineup or your home media library from anywhere in the world was a godsend for those often on the road. But like TiVo, sometimes the leaders end up with arrows in their back, face down on the battlefield for their troubles, the slingbox never really caught on beyond the early adopter crowd and couldn't find a compelling niche in the era of all the content you want to watch just living inside various apps. Quoting slash gear. Per the announcement, Slings said, most slingbox models will continue to work normally, but the number of supported devices for viewing will steadily

decrease as versions of the Sling player apps become outdated and or lose compatibility. That goes for every single Sling device you've ever owned, or barring madness, will ever own in the the future. In a general Q&A session posted by Sling Media, the sunsetting of services was explained, quote, we've had to make room for new innovative products so that we can continue to serve our customers in the best way possible, end quote. That might seem like an absolutely goofy way of saying there will be different sorts of Sling products in the future, but the company went on to say that they will not be releasing any new products point blank. Sling Media's Slingbox products will be discontinued. Sling Media is owned by DISH. It's entirely possible that some of the functionality

included in Sling products in the past will be moved to dish products in the future, but don't hold your breath. If you somehow manage to purchase a Slingbox product anytime recently, Sling suggested that, quote, the Slingbox warranty is for one year and that if you purchased your Slingbox from an authorized dealer in the United States or Canada and have a copy of the receipt, your warranty will be covered under the original terms and conditions, end quote. Slingbox will not be shipping any product from this point forward. Per the release this week, most authorized resellers have been out of stock for a couple of years, end quote. If you do have a sling product right now, most experts would recommend that you

stop using it right now, or sooner than the date of the product sunset itself, because this is the nether realm period between the point where a company basically abanded is a product and when it officially shuts down support for that product. This is the period of time when lots of hackers tend to descend because they know no one is really minding the store. Okay, so what if we just adjusted the wager to be self-driving cars in a meaningful way by the end of 2021, or maybe 2022. Walmart and Cruise have announced a pilot program partnership to deliver orders from a Scottsdale, Arizona Walmart store using self-driving cars, and they're going to start doing this next year, quoting Venture Beat. Cruise and Walmart shared few details about the pilot, which

will involve an undisclosed number of cars and at least one safety driver behind the wheel. But a cruise spokesperson said that if the tests go well, the company will consider launching on-demand programs with other merchants in the future. Earlier this year, Cruz announced a deal with DoorDash to test food and grocery delivery in San Francisco for select customers. Rather than putting all its eggs in one basket, Walmart has formed a number of driverless vehicle delivery partnerships with startups and automakers. In November, the retailer teamed up with Postmates and Ford to deliver food, personal

care items, and other goods from Walmart stores in Miami-Dade County, Florida, using prototype self-driving cars. Walmart stores in Surprise, Arizona, briefly trialed U-Delves, self-driving vans for deliveries, Nuro, which this week raised $500 million, collaborated with Walmart to deliver groceries to customers in Houston, Texas, following a pilot in Scottsdale. And Walmart is working with Gaddick, two ferry customer orders between select store locations in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Beyond a program to make drop-offs to food banks in San Francisco, Cruz hasn't invested heavily in delivery thus far. The company is testing its cars in Scottsdale and the Metropolitan Detroit area with the bulk of deployment concentrated in San Francisco. Cruise has scaled up rapidly, having grown, its initial fleet of 30 driverless vehicles to about 130 by June 2017. The company hasn't disclosed an exact total, but it has 180 self-driving cars registered with California's DMV. And three years ago, documents obtained by I-TripleE Spectrum suggested Cruise plan to deploy as many as 300 test cars

around the country. In October, Cruz obtained a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that will allow it to test autonomous vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. While Cruz has had state authority to pilot driverless cars with safety drivers since 2015. The new license enables it to test five autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel on specified city streets, end quote. That's why I'm saying I want to adjust the goalposts a bit for our wager. Walmart getting serious about delivery and crews finally getting on the road in a major way after Waymo's clearly previously successful pilot programs. There's just a whole bunch of successes that are finally getting notched in this space all the sudden. At the risk,

of getting a little too Apple heavy today or to get too review happy lately, let's end the day nonetheless with another product review. Matthew Panzerino at TechCrunch says that Apple's MagSafe duo is a bit of a bust, and I'm glad I read this before plunking down my money. He says that the magsafe duo is useful, yes, but its underwhelming build quality combined with its expensive nature coming in at $129, makes it something not recommended for most people. Apparently it's doesn't even come with a power adapter. Quote, does it work? Yep, works exactly as advertised. Your iPhone will rest comfortably on the MagSafe side of the charger, aligning using the internal magnets. The Apple Watch side pops up and

out to allow easy access for closed loop bands. The whole unit folds over to make it easier to travel with and even fold over backwards if you don't need one side or the other. It works for sure. But that folding is where we start to get the iffy stuff. For context, you have to understand that this thing is $129, but feels like it should be $70. When you realize that it is a charger that doesn't come with a power adapter, I would not be shocked if you mentally downgraded it to $40. The charger does come with a lightning-to-USBC cable in the box. That cable assumes, which I don't think is at all universally true yet,

that you'll have a USBC power brick. But the lightning port on the charger itself does ensure that you can use this with any existing lightning charging cables. The hinge and casing are coated in soft-touch rubber that is sort of press-molded on. While the hinge works fine, it is wobbly and immediately creases. The rubber is thick enough that it doesn't give the impression that it will rip immediately or anything, but it's not exactly confidence-inducing. This is an inexpensive hinge solution that you would expect to see from a price-conscious third-party accessory,

not from Apple. I'm sorry to say that I find the whole thing a bit underwhelming after the hype of air power and its eventual demise. Apple may very well have had this thing planned the whole time that it was trying to make air power happen, but the arc of that story landing on this device is sad trombone indeed, end quote. Nothing for you today as ever when there's an event. I'm just focused on getting this out the door to you as soon as possible. Talk to you tomorrow.