Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 7/24 - Laptops Are Too Thin and Too Light!

Episode Date: July 24, 2018

Alphabet earnings, Google’s Translation app takes over the world, potentially two new Xbox consoles, Verizon wants to deliver TV over 5G and the thin-and-light laptop revolution has gone too far! Links:Alphabet surges to all-time high as Wall Street says internet giant’s big bets are ‘paying off’ (CNBC)Alphabet’s experimental investments in the future continue to cost it a fortune (The Verge)Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed a jaw-dropping fact about its translation app that shows how much money is still sitting on the table (Business Insider)Miles is an app that tracks your every move in exchange for deals and discounts (The Verge)A Few More Details About Microsoft’s Xbox Scarlett Game Streaming Service (Thurrott.com)Verizon Is Seeking Google or Apple as 5G TV Provider (Bloomberg)Thinner and Lighter Laptops Have Screwed Us All (Motherboard) 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 ride home for Tuesday, July 24th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Alphabet Earnings, Google's translation app takes over the world,

potentially two new Xbox consoles, Verizon wants to deliver TV over 5G, and the thin and light laptop revolution has gone too far, people. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Alphabet shares opened up nearly 5% this morning. That came after the company announced Q2 earnings last night, reporting revenue of $32.7 billion, up 26% year-over-year, and net income of $3.2 billion. And that's where this gets a little interesting, because remember, Google recently got slapped with that $5 billion fine from the European Union, and Alphabet was obliged to report that, even though the company is appealing the fine. So minus the EU fine, net income would have been $8.3 billion. Business Insiders Alexei Osterkovich noted on Twitter that even if you back out those EU fines, though,

Google's operating margins were down slightly year over year from 26% to 24%. But what about those other bets, as Alphabet likes to call them? Those other bets, including Waymo and the newly graduated Loon and Wing, had Q2 revenue of $145 million. That was up 33%. But operating losses were also up, coming in at $732 million. On the conference call,

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said it was, quote, too early to assess the impact of GDPR on Google's advertising business since the changes to the law only came into effect halfway through the quarter. So expect more of a lot. an analysis of that little wrinkle to Google and Alphabet's business in about three months' time. Wall Street, though, was generally upbeat about Alphabet's prospects.

RBC Capital Mark Mahaney said, quote, the largest ad revenue-based net business now has averaged 23% growth for 34, count them, 34 straight quarters, and shows no signs of slowing. This is despite a $120 billion revenue run rate. and we would argue that Google still accounts for at most 10% of global ad spend. The company's investments in cloud, internet-connected homes, and autonomous vehicles potentially set the company up for more years of premium growth and profits. There is regulatory risk, though we have yet to find evidence that regulations will adversely impact the usefulness of Google for consumers or advertisers, end quote.

And J.P. Morgan's analysis was only looking forward, quote, Alphabet delivered strong top line results, again proving that its increased investments are paying off. Investments in machine learning and AI are driving innovation throughout Alphabet's businesses, including mobile search, cloud, Google Home, Assistant, Waymo, etc. We continue to believe there is meaningful runway across search and YouTube as ROI improvements and TV dollars shift more online. Google segments, other businesses such as cloud play and hardware, have strong momentum. end quote. As the Verges Nick Statt put it, quote, Alphabet continues to put chips down, and it looks like it will have to wait a while to see which bets will pay off. Speaking of room for growth, or, as Business Insider characterized it,

money still sitting on the table that Google can pick up any time at once. There was an interesting little nugget in the Alphabet conference call when Google CEO Sunder Pichai spoke about the surge in usage of its Google Translate mobile app, during the recent World Cup. We spoke about Google Translate yesterday, of course, but if you've never used it, it's really amazing on mobile. You can get real-time translation

just by talking into your phone, and if you hold the phone up to signs, its camera will magically change the sign into whatever language you want. I actually read a lot of stories around the World Cup that that tournament was something of a breakthrough for usage of the app, just as the most recent Olympics were as well.

but in the conference call, Pachai revealed that the app now translates 143 billion words every single day. Quote, I was extremely proud to see the positive feedback on how useful Google Translate was for people who traveled to Russia, Pachai said on the call. He's referring to the World Cup, which was in Russia. Quote, in these simple moments when you're in an unfamiliar place or you don't know the language, Google is there to help with the right information at the right time, end quote. Business Insider notes that currently the app is completely ad-free, but given the scale of its usage that Pachai has just revealed, it's not hard to see how to monetize this.

Quoting from Business Insider, given that a lot of people most likely use the translation app while traveling, it's not a stretch to imagine ads for local hotels, restaurants, and other traveler-oriented attractions. Even if a Google Translate user isn't traveling, the app could offer pitches for travel guides and language schools. Sure, Google would have to be careful to create ads that aren't, disruptive. The last thing you want when you're trying to ask for directions to the

bathroom is to have to sit through a 15-second video ad. But Google has experienced developing useful ads. Somewhat similar concept here, Miles is a new app that tracks your every move and a sort of twist on frequent flyer programs. Miles, the iOS app, there's an Android version coming soon, lets you rack up, well, miles based on the different ways that you get around. You get one mile for every mile traveled in a car. One mile on a ride share is worth two miles. One mile of biking is worth five miles and one mile of walking or running is worth ten. B.T. Dubbs, a mile on a plane is only worth a tenth of a mile. So it's gamifying getting people

to travel greener right, sort of how frequent flyer miles have always gamified traveling. And by gamifying, I mean you get actual rewards and deals that you can cash in as you accumulate. As you accumulate your Miles. You can cash in for, say, a gift card at Starbucks or Target or discounts at a whole bunch of other places like Bath and Body Works, etc. What do the brands get out of this? Well, remember, I said at the top, the Miles app tracks your every move all day long in real time. Miles CEO, Gigar Shah, swears that it's all anonymized and only aggregate data, yada, yada, of the whole nine yards, and that it doesn't share any of your information with the brand, but just like as Business Insider is imagining for Google Translate,

Miles, since it knows where you are, how you got there, etc., will match users with location-based deals and ads. Here's how CEO Shaw describes it. Quote, once you earn Miles and we understand some of this data, then we start predicting some of the near-future demand. Once we understand that, we share some of the, of this aggregated information anonymously. Nothing of users' data leaves the system.

Demand simply means there are 14 people in Palo Alto who are going to drink coffee in the next four hours. And that's the information that acts as a triggering point for Starbucks to make a reward, end quote. In other words, once it knows which Starbucks you've gone to for coffee in the past, where you tend to go, what time of day you tend to do it, if Miles knows that you're outside of that particular Starbucks, it can target. you when it feels like you're ready to pop in for a latte. Miles has been running in closed beta for

two years now and, well, people do like deals, but do you like them enough to willingly allow an app to track your daily movements in order for brands to market to you better? I guess Miles is going to find that out. If you'll remember some months ago during E3, Microsoft confirmed that it was working on a new Xbox gaming console, Well, Brad Sams at Therat.com has some more info about that, and according to his sources, it's not going to be just one Xbox, but two. One version of the next generation Xbox will be the high-end one, the one that you would expect to be the next generation. And the other will be a low-powered device for streaming games over the cloud.

This will all be to service a new streaming game service being developed at Xbox, and Microsoft currently codenamed Scarlet Cloud. Sam says that sources tell him that Microsoft, thinks it has figured out how to handle the latency issues inherent in cloud and streaming gaming. Quote, Scarlet Cloud, as one person calls it, is the game streaming service that we have all been envisioning ever since Microsoft showed off a demo game streaming at its all-employee meeting back in 2013. But this time, Microsoft has a path to bring it to market. The cloud console will have a limited amount of computing locally for specific tasks like controller input,

image processing, and importantly collision detection. The downside of this is that, Since more hardware is needed locally, it will raise the price of the streaming box, but it will still cost significantly less than what we are accustomed to paying for for a new-generation console, which should help expand the platform's reach. Quoting more from a bit later in the piece, the portion of the game that runs locally, some have referred to it as a slice or a splice, meaning that the game is running in two locations at the same time

and utilizing Microsoft's cloud to stitch it altogether. The benefit here is that Microsoft's cloud performance reaches around the globe with data centers in every major market. This makes streaming the games available globally, but this also likely means that it can run on any type of device. Of course, Microsoft would love you to buy their hardware, but the company's end goal is that you can access Xbox from any device, anywhere, and Scarlet Cloud is looking to deliver on this idea. Remember the story we did yesterday about the final pieces. of the puzzle coming together to make 5G finally a reality. I mentioned that 5G speeds will be so fast that you could potentially no longer need a wired connection

from your cable company or teleco to provide you with home internet access. But heck, if speeds are that good, why would you need wired connections for anything other than, I guess, electricity? And this includes TV. And Bloomberg has a piece up that speaks to exactly this possibility. According to sources Scott Moritz spoke to,

Verizon wants to launch a TV service when it launches 5G in homes in L.A. and Sacramento later this year. In order to make the television service happen, it is in discussions with Apple and Google for some sort of a co-branded TV offering. Quoting from the Bloomberg piece, using new fifth-generation wireless technology Verizon plans to beam online services to home receivers delivering speeds that match or exceed landline connections. The company will eventually use 5G to sell consumers' internet and online TV packages. to compete nationally against cable and landline services from AT&T and Comcast Corp. But in addition to that, quote, the debut of 5G online TV with either Google's YouTube TV or Apple TV will be used to showcase the technology and mark Verizon's first competitive live TV venture outside its predominantly East Coast service area.

But the live TV partnership might not be permanent. Verizon is opting for outside help until it gets, quote, comfortable with its own internet-based video. service, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said in May at an investor conference. Finally today, remember those shiny new updated MacBook pros that Apple announced not too long ago? Well, prominent creators and professionals, especially on YouTube, have been complaining loudly that the CPU performance in these new machines was apparently being heavily throttled because of heat issues. The problems came when doing serious heavy. lifting like encoding 4K video. But then that's what these machines are supposed to be capable of,

right? Their MacBook pros? Well, Apple today said, don't worry. We found the problem. It was all a bug in software, and it has released a Mac OS High Sierra update that it says will solve the problem. But I don't want to focus on that simple story of a bug getting fixed. I want instead to focus on this piece by Owen Williams. You know Owen, I quote him quite a bit because he does a daily newsletter that I find really insightful in its analysis on the tech industry. Well, inspired by the outrage over this MacBook Pro throttling thing, he has a piece up in motherboard, that's a manifesto, really, and I think you should read it even if this specific overheating throttling issue on MacBook Pro's blows over.

The piece is titled, Thinner and lighter laptops have screwed us all, and I could not be personally more on board with the sentiment. A couple of quick quotes from the piece, because I really want to be. want you to read the whole thing. Apple's insatiable thirst for thinner, which we can see across the iPhone and Mac appears to have finally caught up with the company. Its new hardware is the most powerful yet, but the form factor betrays that on-paper performance because the laptop's form factor means it's thermally constrained, end quote. Apple has even admitted this back in 2017, saying that the top end of Mac Pro was stagnant because, quote, we designed ourselves into a bit of a

thermal corner, if you will, end quote. Owen concludes by saying, quote, thinner and lighter is great, and if we're honest, we're all sucked in by the allure. The unfortunate reality for those of us that need these machines for work is that it's just not good enough, and we'd welcome thicker machines in exchange for hardware that isn't constrained by heat. Apple insists these new MacBooks are for pro users, and while it has some of the best-in-class hardware design out there today, it's a lot of the best-class hardware design out there today, it's

simply doesn't hold up if you push them hard enough. The MacBook Pro isn't designed for pro users at all. It's a slick marketing machine designed to sell to the wealthy prosumer that wouldn't notice anyway. That much has been clear since the introduction of the touch bar and the death of the SD slot. And it's making a ton of money anyway. Speaking of laptop issues, so this podcast had its first near-death experience yesterday. I have a I have my MacBook Pro, the last model with actual ports, by the way, not these newfangled MacBook Pros. I have the MacBook Pro hooked up to an external monitor in my office, and it started doing

this thing where if I unplug the external monitor from the laptop, the laptop suddenly shows a black screen because I think it thinks its main monitor has been disconnected. It's pretty hard to use a computer when the screen is blank. yesterday about 4 p.m. The screen went blank and I couldn't get it to come back. The show at that point was 90% done so I somehow managed to get the external monitor to come back enough for me to just get the show as it was out by five. Later on I got the whole thing to come back and I finished the editing of the last segments. So some of you heard a truncated show yesterday with no ending and the rest of you wouldn't know the difference because you got the edited version.

The problem is I moved this laptop back and forth between my studio setup and my office setup because I record on one table and I edit on the other. So this screen going blank problem could happen at any time. I've brought my wife's computer into the office as a backstop and I'll just be airdropping files back and forth all day so that if worse comes to worse I could finish editing on that machine. Anyway, computers, huh? Some of you, and I thank you, were helping me triage this over Twitter last night, but maybe

listener Gilrogstad got it right. When I asked how I can possibly stop an external monitor from taking over my internal display, he joked, you need an old priest and a young priest. Yes, demonic possession. Wish me luck. I'm sure someday I'll do the thing where I lose a show file to corruption or something, but today is not that day. Get behind me, Satan.

Talk to you again tomorrow, I hope.