Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 10/13 – Supply Chain Woes Come For The iPhone

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Apple is forced to cut iPhone 13 production due to lack of parts. Are health features coming to the AirPods? NFT’s are coming to Coinbase. Stripe is hiring for a big push into crypto. Would you like a laptop with a 3D screen? And G4 TV is back, everybody, to remind you how you fell in love with tech in the first place. Sponsors: Postie.com/techmeme UrbanCatalyst.com/techmeme Links: Apple Set to Cut iPhone Production Goals Due to Chip Crunch (Bloomberg) Apple Studying Potential of AirPods as Health Device (WSJ) Sony to join TSMC on new $7bn chip plant in Japan (Nikkei Asia) G4 TV returns November 16th with Attack of the Show, Xplay and more (The Verge) Coinbase Follows FTX.US Into NFT Trading (CoinDesk) Stripe Is Hiring a Crypto Team 3 Years After Ending Bitcoin Support (CoinDesk) Acer’s new ConceptD 7 SpatialLabs Edition laptop uses eye-tracking cameras for a glasses-free 3D display (The Verge) APPLE WATCH SERIES 7 REVIEW: TIME AND TIME AGAIN (The Verge) Samsung announces Unpacked 2 event for Wednesday Oct 20th, right after Apple and Google (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 Wednesday, October 13th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple is forced to cut iPhone 13 production due to lack of parts. Our health features coming to the AirPods. NFTs are coming to Coinbase. Stripe is hiring for a big push into crypto. Would you like a laptop with a 3D screen and G4 TV is back, everybody, to remind you how you fell in love with tech in the first place?

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. sources are telling Debbie Wu that Apple will likely have to cut its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by around 10 million units due to a shortage of Broadcom and Texas Instruments parts. So the supply chain shortage has finally come for Apple too, quote. The company had expected to produce 90 million new iPhone models in the last three months of the year, but it's now telling manufacturing partners that the total will be lower because Broadcom and Texas Texas instruments are struggling to deliver enough components, said the people who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple gets display parts from Texas instruments, while Broadcom is its longtime supplier of wireless components. One TI chip in short supply

for the latest iPhones is related to powering the OLED display. Apple also is facing component shortages from other suppliers. The shortages have already weighed on Apple's ability to ship new models to customers. The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone. iPhone 13 Pro Max, went on sale in September, but orders won't be delivered from Apple's website for about a month, and the new devices are listed as currently unavailable for pickup at several of the company's retail stores. Apple's carrier partners are also seeing similar shipment delays. Current orders are slated to ship around mid-November, so Apple could still get the new iPhones to consumers in time for the crucial holiday season, end quote. Meanwhile, sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Apple is exploring

adding health-related features to AirPods, including features that could enhance hearing, read body temperature, and monitor posture. Quote, it isn't clear if Apple is developing specific new hearing aid features for AirPods or wants to market the earbuds' existing hearing improvement features as hearing aids. AirPods Pro, Apple's higher-end earbuds, already offer features to improve hearing, including Conversation Boost, launched last week, that increases the volume and clarity of people in front of the wearer. Apple is already developing prototypes for AirPods to take wearer's core body temperature from inside

the ear, according to documents reviewed by the journal. The thermometer would be the second that Apple could add to its devices, including a new wrist temperature sensor Apple may include in next year's version of the Apple Watch, the journal previously reported. As for ergonomics, the AirPods would lean on the motion sensors in the earbuds to alert wearers of slouching and to improve their posture according to the documents and a person familiar with the ID. offering AirPods as hearing aids could significantly expand their reach. Millions of people suffer from hearing loss, including many whose impairment is less severe and choose not to treat it, experts say. New regulations, expected to be completed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration next year,

would permit the sale of a new class of cheaper hearing aids direct to consumers to treat mild to moderate hearing loss. About 28 million Americans suffer from mild hearing loss, yet only 5% use a hearing aid, estimates the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins. Another 12 million suffer from moderate hearing loss, though only 37% of this group use a hearing aid, end quote. And sources are telling Niki Asia that TSM and Sony are planning a semiconductor factory in Japan, slated to open in 2024 and costing around $7 billion, half of which will come from the Japanese government. something something strategic silicon capacity is the new strategic access to oil geopolitically speaking quote japan's top auto parts maker denso is also looking to participate through such steps as setting up

equipment at the site the Toyota motor group member seeks stable supplies of chips used in its auto parts Sony may also take a minority stake in a new company that will manage the factory which will be located in Kumamoto prefecture on land owned by Sony and in an area adjacent to the latter's image sensor factory, according to people familiar with the matter. The factory will make semiconductors used in camera image sensors, as well as chips for automobiles and other products, and is slated to go into operation by 2024, the people said. Japanese chipmakers had dropped out of the race for large-scale chip development by the 2010s, and instead contracted out the production of cutting-edge semiconductors to companies like TSMC.

By accepting direct investment from the Taiwanese company, Japan hopes to revive the production of advanced products in the country. The planned investment comes as major economies like the U.S. and Europe are also racing to bring semiconductor production onshore for national security reasons. Washington, earlier this year, passed a $52 billion bipartisan bill to support the research and development, as well as manufacturing of semiconductors, end quote. Quick programming note, Samsung has announced a Galaxy Unpacked Part 2 event that will be held virtually on October 20th at 7 a.m. Pacific time, 10 a.m. Eastern Time.

This means we've got a jam-packed week next week. We've got the Apple event on Monday with hopefully new MacBook Pros. We've got the Google Pixel event on Tuesday with new pixels. And now this on Wednesday. Please, nobody else schedule an event for next week because there's already too much. Coinbase announced that it will let users buy, sell, and showcase a Ethereum-based NFTs by the end of the year. Now, I know that Coinbase got where it is by being the on-ramp for noobs, the gateway to crypto for a lot of people, but does it strike anyone else that maybe they move pretty slowly sometimes? Like, people that got pilled into NFTs already this year, they're probably now ensconced in their metamask wallets and similar such wallets, right?

And marketplaces like OpenC are already killing it. One thing about marketplaces is if buyers and sellers are already both in the same place, it's extremely hard to get them to move to unseat marketplace incumbents. Kind of late to this game, maybe, Coinbase, quoting CoinDesk. The U.S. Crypto Exchange is launching Coinbase NFT, a marketplace that will allow its users to buy and sell Ethereum-based digital collectibles the company announced Tuesday. Coinbase's NFT platform is expected to launch by the end of the year, sources told CoinDesk. The move comes just a day after rival exchange, FTX.us, announced a marketplace for

Solana-based NFTs with plans to support other blockchains, including Ethereum in the future. If FTX's bet on Solana is a signal that other blockchains are poised to take a slice of Ethereum's hold on the NFT business, Coinbase is sending a different message. Ethereum's NFT dominance has room to grow. Coinbase's product will take a direct swing at Juggernaut Marketplace OpenC, which is currently home to the majority of Ethereum-based NFT trading. OpenC has seen remarkable usage during the NFT market's red-hot run in the past four months, completing as many as 80,000 transactions per day at its peak. For some, however, the experience of navigating a browser-based crypto wallet

remains a challenge. Quote, if you've tried to create or purchase an NFT, you've probably found the user experience lacking, Coinbase said in a blog post. Coinbase NFT will make minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier than ever. We're making NFTs more accessible by building intuitive interfaces that put the complexity behind the scenes, end quote. So that last segment was interesting crypto news, but this is potentially way more interesting, so much so that I almost considered making it today's lead story. Payments and Money Ultracorn Stripe has begun hiring a crypto team to, quote,

build the future of Web3 payments three years after, Strape actually got out of the Bitcoin business. Quoting Coin Desk once again. The team, described in LinkedIn posts and job listings, will be run by Guillaume Pankan, Stripe's former head of engineering for banking and financial products. He is looking to hire at least four staffers to help plot Stripe's crypto strategy. Those engineers, quote, will design and build the core components that we need to support crypto use cases, the job post said.

Crypto is a brand new team at Stripe, end quote. Stripe's relatively modest hiring push, it has 4,000 employees overall, comes amid a surge in crypto payments integrations across online retailers and even social media platforms. Strike, the crypto startup behind Twitter's new Bitcoin tipping feature, is preparing to release its Payments API in an aggressive bid for mass crypto adoption. The team may be new, but Stripe's interest in crypto stretches back years. A payments giant whose API supports millions of digital storefronts, it made headlines in 2014 when it supported Bitcoin in industry first.

Stripe abandoned that service four years later. But a source told CoinDest that Stripe never left crypto. The company continued to watch the digital asset space develop, weighing if and how to participate again. In recent months, it has shown increasing interest in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the source said. One thing on the company's mind is a need to avoid picking favorites, though.

The source said, Stripe already supports an array of more traditional online payment options. it wants to remain tech neutral when it comes to crypto, the source said, end quote. ACER has announced the Concept D7 Spatial Labs Edition, which is a laptop that uses eye tracking for a glasses-free 15.6-inch 3D display. That's right, 3D on a laptop no glasses required, quoting the Verge. Announced earlier this year, Spatial Labs combines a suite of hardware and software features. These features include a special stereo camera with two sensors that track your eyes and head, an optical lens on the display that refracts the two slightly different images to your eyes, and rendering software that adjusts the 3D images in real time as you move.

As part of its concept D lineup of products for designers and developers, Acer's pitch here is that the 3D display will allow for users to see 3D projects for CAD designs, 3D printing, architecture or animation in three dimensions instead of trying to approximate things on a 2D screen. The Verges Monica Chin got to try out the hardware earlier this year and called it quite impressive even if the actual usefulness of the technology still remains to be seen. Of course, a 3D display is nothing without 3D content, and Acer is providing a few tools out of the box, like the Spatial Labs model viewer, which allows you to import 3D files from apps like Autodesk Fusion 360, rhinoceros, and Zbrush. It also says that it's working.

with developers on more integrated solutions for the future, although the limited availability of the tech to this single laptop so far means that rollout will likely be slow. The company is also offering a Spatial Labs Go app with AI enhancements that ACER says will allow you to convert 2D content, including videos, images, simple games, and the webcam feed of participants during a video conference or video call to stereoscopic 3D. Acer says that the concept D7, Spatial Labs Edition, will launch in December in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa starting at an eye-watering $3,59.59 or about $4,160 bucks. It'll also be available in North America sometime in 2022, but the exact price and release date haven't been announced yet, end quote.

The Apple Watch Series 7 reviews are out. Bigger display, dust resistance, and multiple timers, but still only one day of battery life, and no third-party party. watch faces or Chi charging is a disappointment, and it's not the redesign that we were hoping for. That all seems to be the consensus of the reviews. Yeah, instead of a bigger screen, what if they just gave us more battery life? I think that's what most people would want. And I think most of the reviews can be summed up by Dieter's concluding paragraph from his review in The Verge. If you have one of those older Apple watches, I don't think there's anything here that should compel an upgrade. All the new features are very nice, but not necessary. If there is something that's

bothering you about your current watch, though, then by all means go for it if you can afford it. Also, while the Series 3 is still kicking around for cheap, I don't think it's a great buy anymore. The Apple Watch SE is a better value. There's no reason that we should have an expectation of major year-on-year updates for the Apple Watch. These smaller iterations might not be what we've been hoping for, a big redesign with much more battery. But that doesn't make it. the Series 7 bad on its own merits. It's a great watch. Again, the best smart watch. If it's time for you to replace your watch or buy your first one, you'll love it. If it's not time to replace your watch, it's not time to replace your watch, end quote. Yes, I actually am upgrading from a Series 3,

because it is time to upgrade. The wrist sensor on my watch busted a couple months ago, so it's messed with my notifications and my ability to use Apple Pay without entering the passcode every single time. So definitely time for me to upgrade for sure. Finally today, I consider doing a segment on William Shatner going to space on Blue Origin, but that's happening right now as I type this, and I don't know, there's not much really to add. Captain Kirk is going to space in real life. Although I did not know that William Shatner was 90. Like, he's doing really, really well for 90 years old. But what I will leave you with today is news that G4. TV is back. You heard me, the tech TV of your youth is back, including the return of

Attack of the show, Xplay, and more, quoting The Verge. So far, the channel is confirmed to appear on Comcast, Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Cox, and Philo. Since announcing its return last year, G4 has put out some reunion content, plus occasional streams on Twitch, where the network will maintain a multi-year promotional and commercial partnership. Though the original G4 faded out when it got rebranded as the Esquire channel about eight years ago, the network's new mantra is that we never stopped playing. Network President Russell Arons writes in a statement that G4, quote, can't wait to have our fans join us in our hilarious and fairly preposterous sandbox, end quote. When G4 comes back next month, some of the programming and hosts should be very

familiar. Attack of the Show is back with host Kevin Parira, while Xplay is again in the review business under the auspices of Adam Sessler. Along with some e-sports-focused series, G4 has also obtained U.S. streaming rights to Sasuki, aka Ninja Warrior for old school fans who watch the original Japanese version on its cable channel. A new highlight is G4's Dungeons and Dragons Limited series, a follow-up to D&D Live 2021, created in a partnership with Wizards of the Coast. Expect the show to feature a mix of G4 talent, veteran D&D players, and celebrities as the they proceed through four campaigns, end quote. Real quick, Chris and I are doing a Twitter space

this afternoon, not this evening. This afternoon, we're going to be going live on Twitter at 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time. So, not a lot of warning, I know, if you didn't listen to this episode as soon as it came out, but Europeans, if you've missed out on our Twitter spaces in the past for time zone reasons, now's your chance. Also, I know Chris and I say we'll open the floor. to any questions a lot, and then we don't really do that. But we do not have much of an agenda today. We're just going to wing it. So come and raise your hand. Ask us to talk about something tech-related that we've not talked about before. Set the agenda for us. See you in a couple of hours. Again, 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time. And now, Hivemind, I've got to ask you to help me out.

Have you ever heard of this happening? I can't play video on my iPhone. Yes, I have an iPhone 13 Pro. I have it all updated to all the recent software updates. And yesterday I went to watch the two final episodes of Squid Game that I had downloaded to my phone, and they wouldn't play. I got an error message. I figured that the downloads had failed somehow or gotten corrupted, but nope, when I tried to just stream the videos over Wi-Fi, I got an error message too. The error message is CM42765. So then I tried to play any Netflix videos. Anything, not just Squid Game, and I got the same error message.

Then I tried other video apps, Hulu, Paramount Plus, same thing. The videos do not play. The Paramount Plus error message said fatal error due to licensing restrictions. This video isn't available in your location. 5409 was the error code. So it's all video services on my phone. Nothing that works via the TV app or a standalone video app works. YouTube still works on the web and videos I have taken myself still play, but nothing else.

Anyone know what's up with this? Yes, I googled around and I seemed to be alone in suffering this. Yes, I have turned the phone on and off, fully rebooted. Yes, I even took out and put back in the SIM card. I know video worked days ago because I was watching episode seven of Squid Game on my phone. I don't know, like Thursday, Friday of last week. So any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Talk to you in a few hours or tomorrow.