Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/07 - The Disney+ Bundle Is Nuts

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

We have a launch date for Disney+ and we also have confirmation of a wicked compelling bundle, FedEx officially breaks up with Amazon, Amazon trades accusations with CVS and Walgreens, iOS API changes make life difficult for Facebook, and why it might be make or break time for TikTok. Sponsors: Originate.mobi Mealime Links: Disney Announces $12.99 Bundle For Disney+, Hulu, & ESPN+ Available At Launch (The Streamable) FedEx Ends Ground-Delivery Deal With Amazon (Bloomberg) Amazon’s PillPack is battling with CVS and Walgreens over getting patient prescriptions (CNBC) Revealed: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls (Vice) Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature (The Information) Slack unveils new admin security controls (ITPro) The biggest risks to TikTok (The Interface) End of an era? Microsoft’s MSDN Magazine is ending its run after more than three decades (Onmsft.com) https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/join/private Mutant Podcast Army Classic league (Code: rd6c2i) Mutant Podcast Army Head2Head league (Code: bt0y07) 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 Wednesday, August 7th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. We have a launch date for Disney Plus, and we also have confirmation of a wicked, compelling bundle. FedEx officially breaks up with Amazon. Amazon trades accusations with CVS and Walgreens.

iOS API changes will make life difficult for Facebook and why it might be make or break time for TikTok. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. On yesterday's earnings call, Disney CEO, Bob Eiger revealed that the forthcoming Disney Plus video streaming service will also have a bundle. $12.99 a month will get you Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and the ad-supported version of Hulu. So essentially, that is $5 less than if you subscribed to each separately. And the real story here is that this really continues Disney's obvious play to compete on price. $12.99 a month means you would get all of the Disney stuff plus sports, plus essentially a general purpose TV replacement for less than what Netflix charges a month.

Quoting the streamable, Disney Plus will launch their streaming service on November 12th at just $6.99 a month, nearly half the price of Netflix. Starting with the 2019 theatrical slate, all Disney Pixar Marvel Star Wars films will become exclusive to. Disney Plus, meaning movies like the live-action versions of Aladdin, The Lion King, Captain Marvel, and Avengers End Game will only be available to stream on Disney Plus. The company also announced an original slate, including a 10-episode Star Wars series from John Favreau, which will be available at launch in November. The first year will include 25 new original series, 10-plus movies, 7,500 past episodes, 100 recent movies, and 400 library titles, including the entire Disney vault. Previously, many of those new releases and library films would have gone to

Netflix as part of a distribution deal that started in 2016, end quote. Lots of chatter around this, again, like I said, that at this price, this is sort of an insane move, and by insane, I mean, wow, that's competitive. Like, that's a serious Netflix alternative, the value of which would be almost immediately obvious to most consumers. As Andrew Schultz tweeted, movies, TV, sports, game over. Got to respect the chess moves to make this happen. And as Brad Sam's tweeted, and believe me,

this is not the first time I've heard this, quote, now buy Spotify to complete the media trifecta for 1799 a month, end quote. FedEx says it will not renew its ground delivery contract with Amazon when that contract expires at the end of this month. Quoting from Bloomberg, the decision quickens the company's retreat from the largest online retailer just two months after FedEx said its express unit wouldn't extend an agreement to fly Amazon's packages in the U.S. This change is consistent with our strategy to focus on the broader e-commerce market, FedEx said in a statement. Recent moves to bolster service, quote, have positioned us extraordinarily well,

end quote, to handle demand, it said. The courier will still have a contract with Amazon for international deliveries. FedEx is reducing its dependence on Amazon as the online retailer builds out a logistics network with hundreds of fulfillment centers and adds next day air capacity with leased jets. Amazon is also starting a home delivery service modeled after the contractor-based ground unit at FedEx, which flagged the competitive risk in its latest annual report to U.S. shareholders, end quote. As friend of the show and noted, Amazon watcher Jason Delray tweeted, this would be much bigger news if it was UPS or USPS, which are both big Amazon delivery partners, but still noteworthy that FedEx has finally gotten fed up with the W're Not Rivals line coming out of Seattle, end quote. And speaking of that weekend bonus episode with Jason Delray from last week, I still come back to the idea that I can't shake that Amazon feels like it's more willing to throw some bows these days. And another case and point is this. Also, good friend of the pod, Christina Farr, is reporting that CVS and Walgreens are accusing Amazon-owned pill pack of requesting transfers of prescriptions for patients who haven't actually consented.

to having their prescriptions transferred to Pilpac, quoting Christina in CNBC. Amazon bought internet pharmacy pill pack last year, a deal that sent shares of pharmacy companies tumbling. To get people onto its mail delivery service, Pilpack needs patients to switch from their existing pharmacy, which often means transferring prescriptions from CVS or Walgreens, the two largest chains in the U.S. But Pilpac has run into a significant roadblock in getting those transfers approved. CVS and Walgreens are rejecting an increasing number of their requests, claiming that Pilpac isn't getting proper consent from patients. Pilpac says it always gets patient approval before making transfer requests and blames the pharmacy giants for unfairly

refusing to honor them, sometimes hanging up on Pilpac's pharmacist or throwing the request forms in the trash, end quote. Sources are telling Fara that Amazon is document many cases of refused transfers, while the incumbent pharmacies claim they are only looking out for their patients' best interests, as many could be older or unfamiliar with online pharmacy operations, or even may be suffering from dementia. So, this is either a case of the incumbents trying to throw a spanner in the works for Amazon or else, Amazon, as I posited, is increasingly aggressive. Quoting one more time, CBS and Walgreens aren't the only pharmacies concerned about pill PILPAC's actions. Douglas Hoey, chief executive officer of the National Community Pharmacists Association,

which represents U.S. pharmacy owners and is one of the owners of ShurScripps, said his team had heard from 20 to 30 pharmacists who said they were concerned after patients told them they never authorized transfers to pill pack. Pharmacists have also been vocal on internet forum, Reddit, where in several threads, some have admitted that they automatically throw pill-pack faxes, quote, in the shred bin, or call patients to get confirmation, end quote. Well, as we said, it turns out that they all do it. No voice service is immune. Motherboard has sources and documents that it says shows that Microsoft contractors are listening in on some Skype calls, especially those that use the app's translation service, quote, although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio,

of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. The Skype audio obtained by motherboard includes conversations from people talking intimately to loved ones, some chatting about personal issues such as their weight loss, and others seemingly discussing relationship problems. Other files obtained by motherboard show that Microsoft contractors are also listening to voice commands that users speak to Cortana, the company's voice assistant. Quote, the fact that I can even share some of this with you shows how lax things are in terms of protecting user data, a Microsoft contractor who provided the cache of files to motherboard

said, Motherboard granted the source anonymity to speak more candidly about internal Microsoft practices and because the person is under a non-disclosure agreement with the company, end quote. Sources are telling the information that Apple is about to make changes to the iOS API for internet voice calls, which will severely limit the way apps like WhatsApp can function on the platform. Sources say Apple's changes will force Facebook to basically completely redesign their messaging apps. At issue is a feature in these apps that allows them to run in the background even when they're not in use. The pro use case for doing so is that it allows messaging apps to have voice calls connect faster. And WhatsApp specifically,

specifically uses this feature to make its end-to-end encryption work. But, quote, debate about how app makers use the internet calling feature, which relies on a technology called voiceover internet protocol or VoIP, voiceover IP, has been simmering for years. After Facebook split off messaging into a standalone messenger app in 2014, the social media giant tried to keep the technology in its main app. But Apple figured out what Facebook was doing and made it stop, said Philip Shoemaker. who until 2016 was the head of Apple's app review team, but Messenger and WhatsApp, which allow Internet voice calls, still use the feature.

Quote, Messenger can still use VoIP background mode, and does, says Mr. Shoemaker. What they do in the background, whether it be accept calls, listen in all the time, or update the content of the main app, it's all unclear to Apple, but could be happening, end quote. Aside from potentially gathering data, the feature also sucks up, system resources, shortening battery life. The impact on battery life briefly made it into the headlines back in 2015 when it was discovered that the main Facebook app was using the voice-calling feature to run in the background. Other major messaging apps like Snapchat and China's Wii chat have been using the feature to run in the background for a number of reasons unrelated

to voice calling, one of the people familiar with the issue said, end quote. This change by Apple was actually quietly announced at WWDC but didn't make headlines at the time. Apple at the time also said it would be tightening rules around enterprise certificates for its devices. To be clear, we are using the Pushkit VoIP API to deliver a world-class private messaging experience not for the purpose of collecting data. A Facebook spokesperson told the information. Apparently, developers have until April 2020 to update any apps that use the VoIP API in accordance with Apple's new restrictions. Hey, IT admins, I've got some work for you. Slack has announced several new enterprise security features, including secondary identification via face ID and touch ID, as well as domain whitelisting tools. So, you know, get implementing. This news follows on Skype's previously announced Enterprise Grid Service, which was launched last year to provide tighter security, quoting from IT Pro. To start, Slack is introducing new secondary,

authentication controls allowing admins to implement additional layers of security in the form of face ID, touch ID, or generated passcodes. This also comes with a time limit function after which users have to re-authenticate. There are also session management tools to remotely wipe a user's mobile or desktop session in the event their device is lost or stolen. Alongside these, Slack also unveiled data sharing protections. New domain whitelisting tools will be available for admins to control which workplaces can be accessed by its employees. Slack said this not only shores up sensitive company information, but it will also help teams focus on their immediate workloads. Another related feature blocks users from downloading company information to an unmanaged device.

This is just at the beginning, according to Slack. Session management controls will soon be added to the admin dashboards, which will allow them to define the maximum number of devices a single employee can be logged into at one time. What's more, the company is working on a feature where admins can detect if a device has been jailbroken and then block its access to the app, end quote. Interesting analysis from Casey Newton in his internet newsletter, the interface, Casey, talks about the meteoric rise of TikTok. Only a year old, just this last week, as we've been discussing, TikTok, has become a global phenomenon, downloaded more. than a billion times. And in 2018, it was installed more times than either Facebook or Instagram.

Of course, that was, as we've discussed, fueled by nearly $1 billion in advertising spending that TikTok poured into rival social networks to promote itself, rivals like Facebook and Snapchat. So Casey says, obviously, that can't last forever. And if and when the promo push begins to peter out, that's when we're likely to find out if TikTok is a flash in the pan. or if it can hold on to users. Quote, too many people try TikTok, use it a few times, and never return. We saw something happened similar with Twitter years ago. The app developed universal awareness among Americans,

but most who downloaded Twitter abandoned it shortly thereafter. With TikTok spending $3 million a day on ads in the United States, it could become a household name in short order. But if it can't sustain users' interests, it could find itself mired in the same trough of despair that Twitter has been in for most of its life, end quote. Casey also points out that one key to long-term success for modern social networks is to court and keep influencers. A long-term lesson from Vine, of course. One good way to do that would be for TikTok to set up some sort of platform for influencers to make money on TikTok.

But also Casey says, TikTok needs to innovate. Quote, something to watch closely. What new features does TikTok launch in the next 12 months? Both Vine and HQ trivia felt novel at launch, but never meaningfully iterated on their core experience. Snapchat survived by following up its original hit, disappearing messages with something even bigger, ephemeral stories.

If TikTok is going to survive, it has to be less like Vine and more like Snap, end quote. End of an era, question mark. Microsoft is apparently going to stop publishing MSDN magazine, the company published magazine for developers, after more than 30 years, with the last issue of the magazine slated for November. If you happen to be a subscriber, Microsoft says you'll get a pro-rated refund. Quoting on Microsoft, Microsoft Developer Network, MSDN, was launched in 1992 to manage the relationship of the company with the developer ecosystem. MSDN magazine originally started as two separate magazines, Microsoft Systems Journal, MSJ, and Microsoft Internet Developer, M-I-N-D, which consolidated into MSDN magazine in March 2000. The monthly magazine is available as a print magazine in the United States and online in several languages. While the March 2000 issue was entirely devoted to Windows, the MSDN magazine has gone through its evolution over the years as Microsoft products and services,

expanded exponentially, end quote. All right, everybody that's interested. Premier League kicks off this weekend. And as I mentioned, if you want to do some fantasy stuff with me this season, I started two leagues. I'm using the fantasy platform at Premier League.com, where I set up a classic league called Mutant Podcast Army Classic. The code to join that league is RD6C2I.

And there's also a head-to-head league called Mutant Podcast Army Head to Head. Code to join that league is BT0Y-07. Both codes are in the show notes. Don't worry, those of you that aren't interested in soccer, this is not going to turn into a soccer podcast. We're not going to talk about this every week or anything like that. Having said that, up the arsenal.