Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 11/17 – Apple Will Let You Do At-Home iPhone Repairs, Yourself

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Hell freezes slightly over. Apple is gonna let you repair your own devices, at home, yourself. The Staples Center goes crypto. Meta wants to bring touch to VR. Netflix now WANTS you to know which shows have been watched the most. And Miramax is suing Quentin Tarantino over NFT’s.  Sponsors: Wealthfront.com/techmeme Tovala.com/ride Links: Beginning next year, Apple will send you parts and tools to fix your iPhone and Mac at home (TechCrunch) Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant (WSJ) Goodbye, Staples Center. Hello, Crypto.com Arena (LATimes) Meta’s sci-fi haptic glove prototype lets you feel VR objects using air pockets (The Verge) Microsoft states that x64 emulation is only available on Windows 11 on ARM PCs (Windows Central) Netflix’s Expanded Viewing Data Move Is Mainly a Flex (Variety) Miramax Sues Quentin Tarantino Over ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFT Auction (Variety) 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, November 17th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Hell freezes slightly over.

Apple is going to let you repair your own devices at home, yourself. The Staples Center goes crypto. Meta wants to bring touch to VR. Netflix now wants you to know which shows have been watched the most, and Miramax is suing Quentin Tarantino over NFTs. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Starting next year, Apple will let you do at home. repairs of your Apple devices by sending you parts and tools to fix your device all by your

lonesome. This is kind of out of left field, but you can now be your own genius bar, I guess, quoting TechCrunch. The company will also be offering up online repair manuals, text, not video, accessible through the new Apple self-service repair online store. The system is similar to the one the company rolled out for independent repair providers, of which there are currently 2,800 in the U.S. plus 5,000 Apple authorized service providers, beginning with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 focused on display, battery, and camera fixes. A similar service for M1 Max will be launching soon after. Creating greater access to Apple genuine parts gives our customers even more choice if a repair is needed,

C.O. Jeff Williams said in a release tied to the announcement, in the past three years, Apple has nearly doubled the number of service locations with access to Apple genuine parts and training, and now we're providing an option for those who wish to complete their own repairs, end quote. Apple hasn't listed specific prices yet, but customers will get a credit toward the final fee if they mail in the damaged components for recycling. When it launches in the U.S. in early 2022, the store will offer some 200 parts and tools to consumers. Performing these tasks at home won't void the device's warranty, though you might if you manage to further damage the product in the process of repairing it, so hew closely to those manuals. After reviewing that, you can purchase parts from the Apple Self Service Repair Online Store,

end quote. This looks like it's probably in response to the recent right to repair pressure being put on the tech industry right, but also, maybe this is one of those we learned some things from COVID times experiences, that sort of thing. Maybe you don't have to make people schlep to the genius bar for every little thing. We got to do a catch-up story now because this is one of those stories that has been percolating in the background, but I haven't really touched on it that much. Activision Blizzard, I believe I once told you back in the summer about the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, suing Activision Blizzard for sexual harassment of and

discrimination against its female staff. There was some controversy about how executives responded to that lawsuit. There were staff walkouts. There were executive departures. Some in alleged disgrace, some in alleged disgust about things that had been alleged. Apparently yesterday, over 100 Activision Blizzard employees staged another walkout, the second in four months demanding CEO Bobby Kotick step down after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Activision CEO failed to inform the Activision Board of Directors about allegations an employee had been raped by her supervisor in 2016 and 2017 even after a settlement, quote. A lawyer for a former employee at Sledgehammer Games, an Activision-owned studio alleged in the email that her client had been raped in 2016 and

2017 by her male supervisor after she had been pressured to consume too much alcohol in the office and at work events. The female employee reported the incidents to Sledgehammer's Human Resources Department and other supervisors, but nothing happened, according to the email, which threatened a lawsuit against the company. Within months of receiving the email said people familiar with the situation, Activision reached an out-of-court settlement with the woman, who also had reported one of the incidents to the police. Mr. Kotik didn't inform the company's board of directors about the alleged rapes or the settlement said people with knowledge of the board. Mr. Kotik has told directors and other executives. He wasn't aware of many of the allegations of misconduct, and he has played down

others, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents. Those documents, which include memos, emails, and regulatory requests, and interviews with former employees and others familiar with the company, however, cast Mr. Cotick's response in a different light. They show that he knew about allegations of employee misconduct in many parts of the company. He didn't inform the board of directors about everything he knew. The interviews and documents show, even after regulators began investigating the incidents in 2018. Some departing employees who were accused of misconduct were praised on the way out, while their co-workers were asked to remain silent about the matters.

Mr. Kotik has been subpoenaed in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into how the company handled reports of misconduct and disclosed them to the public, the Wall Street Journal reported in September. What Mr. Kotick knew about the alleged incidents and what he told other employees, the board of directors and investors, is part of that probe, end quote. Meta has detailed a haptic glove prototype that uses air pockets to simulate touching objects in VR. This is something that has apparently been in development for seven years, quoting the verge. While Meta's not letting the glove out of its Reality Lab's research division, the company is showing it off for the first time today,

and it sees the device alongside other wearable tech as the future of VR and AR interaction. At a simplified level, meta's haptic's prototype is a glove lined with, around 15 ridged and inflatable plastic pads known as actuators. The pads are arranged to fit along the wearer's palm, the underside of their fingers, and their fingertips. The glove also acts as a VR controller. The back features small white markers that let cameras track how the fingers move through space, and it's got internal sensors that capture how the wearer's fingers are bending. When you put on the glove and enter a VR or AR experience,

a sophisticated control system adjusts the level of inflation, creating pressure on different parts of your hand. If you're touching a virtual object with your fingertips, you'll feel the sensation of that object pressing into your skin. If you're gripping a virtual item, the long finger actuators will stiffen, creating a sensation of resistance. These sensations work alongside visual and audio cues

to produce the illusion of physical touch. The tech draws on the relatively new field of soft robotics, replacing bulky motors with tiny air valves. Meta has been working on it nearly since it acquired the Oculus VR startup in 2014. It developed its first prototype, one finger with a single actuator in 2015. One of the first experiences that Reality Labs head, Michael Abrush, recalls, was looking at a virtual plate from inside a VR headset, where a single actuator combined with the visual image and the sound of rubbing the rough ceramic was incredibly convincing.

I saw the plate, and I saw my finger on the plate, and I heard the sound, that kind of scraping sound across it and I felt the vibration, he says. And I will tell you, I was running my finger over a ceramic plate, end quote. Microsoft is shifting Windows 10 from getting two major updates per year to only one per year, and it is announced that only Windows 11 will support emulating X-64 apps on armed devices, quoting Windows Central. Microsoft added that people that want to experience X-64 emulation will need to upgrade to Windows 11 on Arm. Microsoft's phrasing suggests that X-64 emulation will not roll out to Windows 10 on Arm PCs at any point in the future. Microsoft tested X-64 emulation on Windows 10 on Arm for around one year, but the feature will not ship to the older OS.

Windows 10 on Arm will receive support and security updates until October 14, 2025. After that date, it will fall out of support. While many big-name apps, including Microsoft Teams, can natively run on Windows on-arm hardware, there are some programs that require emulation. Many video and photo editors are X-64 apps. Several games are also X-64, though even with emulation devices like the Surface Pro X-X won't compete with the best gaming laptops. The ability to run X-64 apps may be more important for devices that run Qualcomm's upcoming arm processors built on the Nuvia team.

These processors could rival Apple's M-Series chips, which would be a big win for Windows 11 on ARM PCs, end quote. Angeles' iconic Staples Center is going to be renamed as Crypto.com Arena. Sources say the deal to bring this to pass was worth more than $700 million over the course of 20 years, quoting the Los Angeles Times. The arena's new logo will debut December 25th when the Lakers host the Brooklyn Nets, and all of Staples Center signage will be replaced with the new name by June 2022. Crypto.com's chief executive Chris Marzeleck hopes that the new name will come to be seen as a sign of the times. Quote, in the next few years, people will look back

at this moment as the moment when crypto crossed the chasm into the mainstream. Marsalek said when reached at his home in Hong Kong, Aeg and Crypto.com are still working out exactly how far the partnership will go beyond the name, but integrating cryptocurrency payments into the arena and online purchases may be on the horizon. Visitors will see one clear change at the entrance to the arena from LA Live, adjacent to the Statue of Magic Johnson, where 3,300 square feet will become a dedicated crypto.com activation space featuring cryptocentric interactive experiences for sports or music fans. Crypto.com has also signed with the Lakers and Kings as their official crypto partner, end quote. Quoting this tweet from Joe Pompilano, that's the largest naming rights deal in history.

The wild part? Their token, CRO, has already added about $2 billion. in market cap value since the announcement, end quote. The days when Netflix didn't let you know what anybody was watching on Netflix are definitely over. Netflix has expanded its top 10 lists to now display the most viewed shows and movies for English and non-English titles ranked by aggregate viewing hours, quoting variety. Netflix says it's heard the complaints about how it cherry picks, the self-reported data it releases about content viewed on its platform. So the company has announced a major expansion of its top 10 lists with weekly reports at top 10.netflix.com detailing the most viewed TV shows and

movies globally for both English and non-English titles and in more than 90 countries. It has also enlisted professional services firm EY to audit its metrics with those results to be released in 2022. It's more viewing data than Netflix has ever provided publicly. And to its credit, as previously announced the company has abandoned its previous metric, which counted the number of Netflix accounts that watched a title for at least two minutes, in favor of aggregate viewing hours. Under the previous approach, it was unclear, for example, how many of the 142 million Netflix subscribers who streamed a minimum of 120 seconds of Squid Game were just looky-lose trying to see what the fuss was all about as opposed to truly engaged viewers. But let's be clear,

Netflix's bigger bucket of top 10 lists, even if they're independently verified, is ultimately self-serving, designed to promote its most popular titles. The release of the additional info is aimed at giving Netflix subscribers new ways to find what to watch next, because the more content individual accounts stream, the less likely they are to cancel, end quote. Let's end today by staying in Hollywood, but moving back to the crypto world in a sentence that feels to me like it's coming straight out of a 2021 headline-generating AI bot. Miramax is suing Quentin Tarantino over copyright infringement for selling NFTs based on Pulp Fiction screenplay excerpts. Merrimack says it owns the rights to the screenplay, quoting Variety again.

Tarantino announced the sale of the NFTs at a recent crypto art convention in New York. I'm excited to be presenting these exclusive scenes from Pulp Fiction to Fans, Tarantino said, in a November 2 press release. The plan is to auction off NFT based on excerpts from Tarantino's original handwritten script for the film, accompanied by commentary. The NFT is pitched as secret, meaning that its contents will be viewable exclusively by the owner. But according to the suit, Tarantino did not consult beforehand with Miramax, which still owns the rights to the director's 1994 classic. Miramax's attorneys have sent a cease and desist letter seeking to block the sale, but that has not stopped Tarantino and his team from moving forward. Miramax alleges that Tarantino's actions have interfered with the studio's own plans to enter the market for Pulp Fiction NFTs. In a statement, Miramac's attorney Bart Williams accused Tarantino's team of a, quote, deliberate premeditated short-term money grab, end quote.

The suit appears to turn on the question of whether selling NFTs based on excerpts of a screenplay qualify qualify as a publication of the screenplay. According to the suit, Tarantino's lawyer has told Miramax that Tarantino retained the right to publish his screenplay in the Miramax contract and that he is exercising that right through the NFT sale. Miramax argues that NFTs are a one-time sale and are not equivalent to publication of a screenplay and that therefore Miramax owns the NFT rights, end quote. So if you want to get all Dushampi about NFTs at this point, or maybe the term would more accurately be, if you want to get more John Cagey with your NFTs, then the thing for someone, with some super impressive intellectual property to do at this point would be to announce that they are not going to mint an NFT of their IP and then mint an NFT of that action. In other words, mint an NFT of not minting an NFT. I'm not kidding. It's the logical next step, if you think about it. We are not doing a Twitter space tonight because we're going to record our next Twitter space

this weekend during the afternoon either on Saturday or Sunday. We haven't decided which one yet. But when we do nail down the time, I will let you know. Talk to you tomorrow.