Tech News: Apple Announces New iPhones and More

done is it has ditched the physical SIM card. SIM stands for Subscriber Identification Module, and it's that little micro trip that's typically embedded into a little piece of plastic that you have to insert into a new phone in order to port your phone number over to a device. Or you might go and get a SIM card if you're traveling to a foreign country, and this way you can operate on that country cellular network without ramping up

those massive roaming charges. Well, Apple already had incorporated digital sims into iPhones, but had kept the physical ones as well. Now that's no longer the case. The physical ones are out, so transferring your phone number from one phone to another requires a slightly different process, and we'll actually a very different process because there's no move of physical components anymore.

But it's you know, digital rather than physical. And if you are an international traveler, you might have a harder time getting an e SIM so that you can operate on the native cellular network, so that's kind of a bummer. On the flip side, digital sims can let you support more than one phone number on a single device, so you could potentially have like a business line and a personal line both going to the same device but using different phone numbers. So there are pros and there are

cons to this approach. Another new feature is the addition of satellite connectivity in the event of an emergency. So let's say you're a teenager and you've stumbled into one of those ding dang darn slasher movies. You're at a remote camp ground, maybe it's even Crystal Lake, and there's no cellular service, and you need to get an emergency message out to authorities or first responders to come and

rescue you. With the satellite connectivity feature, you can use an iPhone four team to locate the satellite overhead and then connect to it to send essentially an S O S signal so that first responders will know where you are and they can come help you. The feature does require you to have a clear view of the sky, so if there's cover overhead, you might not be able to connect, or it might take significantly longer to connect and send a message through. Still, this is a great

addition to the iPhone. It's the sort of thing that you hope you will never need, but you're happy to have it available. Apple introduced four models of the iPhone fourteen at this event, and the base model, which has a six point one inch screen and still runs on the last generation A fifteen microchip, comes in at seven bucks. The iPhone fourteen Plus is a larger version of the base model, is six point seven inches with the screen, It has a longer battery life, and it costs eight

hundred nine bucks. It also runs on the A fifteen microchip. I think these models are a modest upgrade to the base iPhone thirteen model. The phones that I think are are much more interesting are the iPhone fourteen Pro and the iPhone fourteen Pro Max. So the Pro is six point one inches, the Max is six point seven. Uh. That mostly is the difference between the two. Also, the difference that involves the price, and the you know, pro is going to be based at Bucks, the max at

one thousand bucks. So yeah, both of those phones come with a forty eight megapixel rear facing camera. That's four times greater than the Base and Plus models, which have twelve megapixel cameras. Now, just as a reminder, the megapixels refer to the pixel density of an image, right the resolution. In other words, that's just one component that determines the

quality of a picture. But generally speaking, higher resolution tends to be better, at least if you want to do things like, you know, blow up the photo to a much larger size, if you want to do digital zoom in and that kind of stuff, having higher resolution is important anyway. They also have several other features that set them apart from the base models, not the least of which is that they run on the A six team microchip,

so Apple's latest microchip. Uh. And for all four of these models, you can start pre orders tomorrow September nine, and the phones will start to ship on September. These are not quite enough to convince me to abandon my Android phone and switch over to iPhone, But then I'm so deep in the Google ecosystem that it's hard for me to make the move, which, believe me, is all part of the strategy for companies like Google and Apple.

The Apple Watch models that the company showed off we're interesting, but I've only ever owned one smart watch, and that was the Pebble back before Pebble got acquired and then subsequently dismantled, so I am not the best person to

hype up wearables. Still, one feature I liked was the inclusion of accelerometers that can detect if someone has been involved in an accident like a car crash, and it activates a feature that lets you call for help right away if in fact you were involved in in an accident. And I love seeing safety features like this become standard in devices. Again, you hope you never have to use it,

but you are thankful that it's there. Apple also unveiled an Ultra Watch, which is meant for folks who are hard on their gear, like those who are into extreme sports, so it's more rugged than other models. It also costs a pretty penny, starting at seven bucks. Then you've got the new Air pods, which reportedly have better noise cancelation capabilities than earlier models. They also have a speaker that lets you find out where the heck you put your

darn air pods. You can use the find my app and look for your air pods and it will make a little noise and you can track them down. And that's a feature I could definitely use because I have a feeling that whenever it comes time for me to move house, when I start packing stuff up, I'm gonna come across at least seventy pairs of earbuds that I've misplaced at one time or another. So this is definitely

one of those features I could use in my earbuds. Still, I'm not likely to drop two fifty bucks on a air of earbuds. And also I'm not an iPhone user, so I'm not ready to make the leap just yet. SIMI. Related to this is a little tidbit from the twenty twenty two Code Conference. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, was asked by a journalist if Apple would address issues when it comes to messaging between Apple and Android devices a k a. The Green bubble issue in I message,

where messages from non iOS devices pop up as green bubbles. Uh, and there are certain features that I message supports that don't work across platforms. This incompatibility means that certain functions like sending videos from one device to another aren't always supported. Cook's response was essentially, whomever has an Android device in this communication chain should just buy an iPhone and that

will solve the problem. Like, rather than solve the compatibility issues, you should just jump on the iPhone bandwagon, and that Apple customers haven't really pressed Apple to address this issue, so the company hasn't. Now Google has been pushing Apple to adopt the Rich Communications Service or r CS standard, but Apple has um declined to acquiesce to Google's request. Why. Well, again, it's about convincing folks that they need to stay within

the Apple ecosystem. I Message is another feature that reinforces lock in fun times. Oh and uh a different take on Apple and lock in. Let's talk about Apple's iCloud data center in China. That's where employees have been locked into a closed loop system within the facility for the last week. They are not allowed to go home, they're not allowed to see their families. And yes, this has

to do with another COVID nineteen issue in China. So China has a zero tolerance approach to any kind of outbreak of COVID nineteen, no matter are how small, and requires regions to lock down whenever a case arises in order to avoid downtime. Some facilities like this iCloud data center will force employees to live at the data center for the duration of the lockdown and continue working. We've

covered similar situations with Tesla, and this is brutal. Now, arguably you could say it's an effective way to limit the spread of COVID nineteen, but it's you know, a massive trade off here. Anyway, Apple hasn't had much of an option when this comes down to it, because as long as the company wants to operate in China, it has to play by China's rules. And part of that is that, you know, China requires all companies that have that deal with with the private data of Chinese citizens

to operate solely on Chinese soil. Apple cannot operate a data center that handle is Chinese citizen private data outside of China. In fact, the government required Apple to partner with a company called cloud Big Data, which the Chinese government owns, so Apple really had no other options when it comes to this. I don't want to cast too many aspersions. I do think it is a brutal policy and inhumane to employees, but uh, at least at least

did this part. I mean, I can't fully blame Apple, although you could argue the company could just choose not to operate in China. Hard to do that because China it represents such a huge market. But which is You know, it's kind of hard to tell investors, Hey, we're not going to operate in the most populous country in the world. But um, yeah, it's ah, there's some real tough ethical issues here. All right, We've got a lot more news to cover, some of which doesn't even involve Apple, But first,

let's take a quick break. We're back and we're starting to hear about what happened during a court hearing back in March of this year when two longtime meta engineers folks who had been working with Facebook had to sit down and answer some questions stemming from an investigation that relates all the way back to the Cambridge analytic affair, you know, the thing that was going on in and the court has recently unsealed the transcript of that hearing,

which is why we're now hearing about what happened. And boy howdy, it sounds like the court appointed special master guy named Daniel Gary was really getting frustrated the deeper he tried to go into Facebook's labyrinthian systems. So Gary was asking the engineers fairly straightforward questions, such as, air

is a person's data stored within Facebook's subsystems. We know Facebook is combing everybody for their data, collecting huge amounts of data, including generating data from inferences about what people like based upon their behaviors, but the engineers answers were

unsettling because the engineers admitted they didn't know the answer. Further, they said that it's likely no one knows that answer because the amount of data collected and the different ways that it's collected, and the different ways that Facebook uses personal information are involving multiple subsystems that are collecting and storing this information, and it's hard to know who is collecting what and for what purpose and how frequently they're

using it. So they said, it's essentially impossible for us to answer these questions in a meaningful way, like there's no way for me to answer your question. And now in a way I can at least understand how this happened. Because Facebook is a company that grew very rapidly. It incorporated new systems at an incredible pace, and you had lots of different teams working on different projects all at

the same time. These teams were sometimes operating more or less independently of each other, so there's likely overlap between projects as well as unique approaches used by specific subsystems. And Facebook never adopted a culture that, you know, documented things. It just didn't. It didn't create documents about these systems to explain what they were, how they work, and what

information they actually use. So there are no official documents that detail these subsystems or the types of data that flow into them. Instead, according to the engineers, the code itself is about as close as you can get to actual documentation. Now, this raises some very trouble ling questions. For example, how can Facebook assure that it is complying with various data privacy laws around the world if no one at the company actually knows where all the data

is going. And the answer is it can't. It's impossible unless you make the ludicrous argument that there's security through obscurity. In other words, the system is so complex that no one is going to be able to find their way through it, so you don't have to worry about people abusing it. But that is not a really good answer, and so it looks like there is no way for Facebook to actually be transparent because no one at the

company even knows how to make that happen. That transparency is impossible due to the way these various subsystems were designed and no one documented in anything. So this transcript, this court transcript, is available to read, but I warn you it's like a descent into madness if you you are at all concerned about data security and privacy. Not long ago, the US government passed a bill that will provide federal money to companies that are building out semiconductor

manufacturing facilities in the United States budded. Order to get hands on that cold, hard cash, the companies are going to have to agree to some firm rules, and one big one is that the companies will not be allowed to build quote advanced technology facilities end quote in China for ten years now. The purpose for that restriction is to protect national security. According to Gina Romundo, the U

S Commerce Secretary, and that's definitely a massive concern. I've talked in previous episodes about how China allegedly has a very long history of industrial espionage stealing technology from other companies. To curb China's technological advancement, the US is looking to make the States more self reliant when it comes to semiconductor tech as well as cut off or at least reduce the chance of Chinese spies stealing US design technology.

That also includes a moratorium on companies sending advanced technology to China, so they're not supposed to build facilities in China, they're not supposed to ship advanced tech to China. And really there are other related rules that are meant to cut off this flow of technology, and I p to the Chinese. Now, I have a habit of criticizing Tesla

pretty harshly for lots of things. You know, I I acknowledge I go hard against Tesla pretty frequently, But I do want to give the company its props when they are deserved and over in Europe, Tesla's model why ranked first in a European safety test of driver assist systems. Now, I want to be clear here, the systems like autopilot and full self driving mode are meant to be driver assist features in order to improve safety. They are not

meant to be autonomous driving modes. So if you are using the systems the way they are meant to be used,

then they are incredibly effective. They work very well, well enough so that Tesla took first place in these tests, But that doesn't erase the fact that some Tesla owners use these features irresponsibly, nor does it push aside the problem with Tesla's marketing of these features, which at least I feel implies that the tech can do more than it's actually capable of doing, or that it's meant to perform a job other than what it's actually designed to do. Hey,

do you remember Travis Killenic, co founder of Uber. He's the guy who has a truly terrible reputation as far as how he treats other human beings, and he was ultimately forced to vacate his position of CEO of Uber and two thousands venteen and to surrender his seat on the board of directors in two thousand nineteen when he cashed out of Uber entirely. And a lot of folks point at Kala Nick when they talk about the toxic work culture that was in the spotlight back in two

thousand seventeen. That was a very, very tough year for Uber, at least on the pr front. Kalin Nick has kept a relatively low profile in the public eye since then, but he's been working on something else that just got a big influx of cash thanks to Microsoft. That thing is called Cloud Kitchen. Kala Nick has used the money that he made from cashing out an Uber, which amounted to like two and a half billion dollars, to initially

fund this project. He has received investments from other parties as well, and he purchased steak in an existing company that was called City Storage Systems before converting that over, and City Storage Systems was buying up warehouse space in various cities. He converted that to Cloud Kitchen, which is a company that offers restaurants the chance to operate water called dark kitchens, which sounds you know, scary and stuff,

but it's not really. A dark kitchen in this sense is a facility where a restaurant can produce it's dishes, specifically for delivery services like door dash. So the idea here is that the home restaurant can really focus on serving customers at that location, whether it's people who are dining in or picking up or whatever. And the dark kitchens will make the same dishes, but in facilities that are inside these warehouses that are dedicated just to producing

meals meant for delivery services. So you can order a delivery of that delicious pia from your favorite Spanish restaurant, but it could be that the dishes actually made in a warehouse somewhere, not in that restaurant's dedicated kitchen. Anyway.

Microsoft is reportedly the first US based company that had previously invested in Uber to then go and invest in Cloud Kitchen, and according to FT dot com, some folks who were at least at one time associated with Cloud Kitchen are saying that the culture there is just as toxic or perhaps even worse as the bad old days at Uber, saying there's this massive issue with turnover due to that terrible culture. So I guess some thing's never change, all right. We've got a few more stories that we

need to cover before we get to that. Let's take another quick break over at Google. The company is cutting way back on expenses and we've seen a lot of tech companies in particular cut back on things like hiring, and some are going much further by being off employees at least in certain divisions, all in an effort to reduce expenses during our current economic turmoil. Now, I want to say recession, but economists are still divided about whether

or not we're actually in one. I say, if it walks like a recession and quacks like a recession, it's a recession. But anyway, since there's not consensus, I'm just gonna say economic uncertainty or economic turmoil or whatever. Anyway, these cutbacks now include company travel at Google, so the company is stressing that all but the most critical company travel should be considered off the table, and that if employees have an option to say, attend a virtual event

rather than a physical one, they should choose the virtual option. Now, if other companies follow suit, that is going to be a super tough situation for the airline industry, which heavily counts on regular business travel. And you know, it was just starting to get back into the swing of things after the pandemic effectively eliminated nearly all travel, particularly business travel, for a long while. So we'll have to keep our eyes on this see if this trend expands beyond Google

and what effects that might cause down the line. Now that being said, United is reportedly investing fifteen million dollars into a startup air taxi company. As the name implies, an air taxi is a vehicle that flies from point A to point B, and the idea here is that this flying vehicle will take passengers from crowded city areas to nearby airports, skipping all the terrestrial traffic, all for the low low price of a hundred bucks a seat. On the low end, it could be much higher than that.

United has conditionally agreed to purchase two hundred air taxis, with the option to buy two hundred more. The startup is called Eve air Mobility, and we should see its aircraft in operation sometime around at the earliest. These are going to be v T o L aircraft that's vertical takeoff and landing, so similar to how a helicopter operates, but not an actual helicopter, maybe more like a quad copter,

but you know, vehicle sized. That's kind of that flying car concept we've been hearing about for a while now, and the hope is that United will find enough customers who are willing to pony up the cash to skip out on having to navigate through tough traffic in places like New York City and Chicago. By the way, there are already helicopter taxi services in New York that can take you from say, Manhattan to JFK. There's a company called Blade that does that for the low, low price

of a bucks per person. And yeah, this is expensive, right, That's a lot of money to pay for a one way trip to an airport. But y'all, let me tell you. I have been in situations in New York where I was convinced I was going to miss my flight the as I was in a taxi that was stuck in stand still traffic. And if taking this option means I can avoid a nervous breakdown, I might be willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks, especially if I could expense it. But then we get back to that story

about companies cutting back on travel expenses and shucks. Also, finally, I somehow missed the news last week that Twitter announced it was going to allow users to edit tweets. This is a feature that Twitter users have been asking for for years, but now we've learned a little bit more about how that's going to work. So the edit option is only active for thirty minutes from the point when you post a tweet, and users will only be able

to edit it up to five times. So if you've edited it five times, or if thirty minutes have passed, that's it. You can't touch that tweet again. Moreover, this option is only going to go to a sub of Twitter Blue users. Twitter Blue is a subscription tier of Twitter service, so that means these folks who are accessing it are essentially paying to have access to that feature. It's initially launching in New Zealand, and Twitter will monitor how people use it and whether or not folks start

to abuse the feature. You can imagine someone using Twitter to post something really controversial or terrible, then waiting a bit and then go back in and edit the tweet to make it appear innocent. Instigators and trolls would likely use that feature to do just that kind of thing, right. I mean, you might assume that a posted tweet is most seen within that thirty minutes of posting, because otherwise

it tends to get buried below other tweets. So a troll might just decide to post something really awful weight twenty nine minutes and then go in and edit the tweet, and then you've got your plausible deniability while your followers all saw the terrible things you said and maybe take action base upon it. That's something Twitter is going to

have to be on the lookout for. And you know, once upon a time, I was one of those folks who really felt there needed to be an edit feature on Twitter, specifically so you can fix innocent stuff like typos, particularly if you made a typo when you were typing out an at reply to someone and your message would

otherwise go to the wrong person. But as we've seen folks weaponize their Twitter accounts in order to target vulnerable people or to spread misinformation, I have grown more concerned than an edit feature will really just help bad actors cover their tracks. Anyway, Twitter has plans to extend the rollout to countries like Australia, Canada, and the US after

seeing how folks use it in New Zealand. My guess is that Twitter is going to pay very close attention to this and make tweaks on the system as they see problems arise. Because I'm certain the people at Twitter are aware of the potential abuse scenarios. That's it for the news for Thursday, September eight, twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff, please reach out to me. One way to do that

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