Hey readers!
Welcome back.
Yesterday we saw Apple's second online only event. And we've a full summary of it.
There was Ubisoft's Forward event and announcements of some more events.
TikTok has finally decided on it's master. Facebook has gone back to where it's world domination began. YouTube faces major lawsuit. Google launches (weirdly named) Fundo. YouTube wants to be TikTok too and more, summarised in this week's newsletter.
Let's get going...
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ALL MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM
Apple's Time Flies Event
Two thoughts on the event:
- Apple was super focused on health and fitness atleast for the first half of the event.
- Apple is making its products *cheaper*, hoping to cover up costs with subscriptions.
Apple Watch Series 6
- It has sensors to monitor your Blood O2 levels in just 15s.
- Apple announced 3 new studies in partnership with Universities and organisations to see how monitoring blood O2 levels and other metrics benefit us.
- A dual core S5 processor makes it 20% faster than previous ones.
- The display's 2½ times brighter when outdoors.
- It now continuously tracks your elevation if you're climbing.
- There's some fancy new watchfaces too.
- Probably the biggest upgrade is — Solo Loop. It's unbreakable wristband without buckles or strap adjustments.
Priced at $399
Control the kids
- There's also a new sort of Kids mode for Apple Watches, which lets parents set who they can contact and where they go.
- Available on Series 4 or later.
Apple Watch SE
- 30% larger screen than Series' 3
- Same processor as Series 6 (No Blood O2 tracking though)
- There's a cellular model too.
Priced at $279. Or $12/month
(Just so you know, Series 3 is still available at $199)
Apple's Environment Promise
- Apple runs entirely on 100% renewable energy now.
- It promises to be 100% carbon neutral by 2030, including supply chains and products.
- But it does come with a cost to YOU — to prevent wasting of USB chargers, Apple will no more include them with Apple Watches.
- But (1) with Apple Watch SE, a lot of new consumers will join who'll have to buy the charger separately and (2) it's highly likely that the same will happen to iPhones, launching next month.
Apple Fitness+ Subscription
- It's a catalogue of workout videos you can exercise with on your iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
- It synces with your Apple Watch as you start a workout and show you key metrics on the screen, in real time.
- After you end a workout, you'll see a detailed summary stating your blood pressure levels and other metrics.
- There are workouts on Yoga, dance, treadmill walk or run and more.
- You can listen to exercise playlist and save them to your Apple Music accounts.
- Your health data will be processed on your device not at a server.
- You'll get 3 months free if you buy an Apple Watch.
Priced at $9.99
Apple One
- With so many subscriptions, you know Apple's plans… bundled subscriptions.
- The 3 plans Apple One bundle different subscriptions like this:
- Individual ($14.95) / Family ($19.95): Music, TV+, Arcade, and iCloud.
- Premier ($29.95): Music, TV+, Arcade, iCloud, News+, and Fitness+.
iPad (8th Generation)
- It's 10 years of the iPad with 500M units sold.
- Powered by A12 bionic, it's now 40% faster and 2 times better in graphics
- There's a neural engine that powers machine learning on the device.
- Works with keyboard (Apple and third-party) and Apple Pencil.
Starts at $199
(Apple's going cheaper, told you)
iPad Air
- Brand new look (i love it)
- Available in 5 colours.
- Retina display
- There's a Touch ID sensor in the power button.
- Powered by A14 bionic.
- Now supports USB-C, making data transfers 10% faster.
- 7MP front camera (1080p video)
- 12MP rear camera (4k 60fps video)
Priced at $599.
Well that was all for the less-than-two-hour event. But there should be another event for iPhone launches next month.
* * *
📰
Week's News.
🎵 Oracle overtakes Microsoft to buy TikTok
- TikTok has confirmed that it has submitted a deal to the US Treasury.
- Reportedly, Oracle will buy TikTok's US, Cananda, New Zealand and Australia business, including the algorithm that supports TikTok's For You page.
- But thanks to newly formed Chinese tech export laws, ByteDance reportedly denied selling that algorithm. (This kinda makes sense because Algorithms like these are hard to make)
- In that case, it's likely that Oracle will just be a technology partner that will provide cloud data storage. And ByteDance will still have some controls.
- Microsoft announced that deals with ByteDance failed, earlier this week.
- Regardless of whoever buys it, Trump will be signing the deal before the 20th September deadline. And he has close ties to Oracle. Oracle's chief executive once held a fundraiser for Trump.
(Axios)
🖨️ Amazon launches Alexa Print, a way to print lists, recipes, games and educational content using your voice
- It'll work for you if you've any second generation Echo device or newer and a printer (not any printer, though)
(Say, "Alexa discover my printer" to test)
- Alexa will also remind you to buy ink when supplies are low, via voice and email.
- Alternatively, you can setup smart reoders to get supplies delivered automatically with a 10% discount.
📲 Android 11 is here but not only for the Pixels.
- It's available to download on the Pixel 2, 3, 3A, 4, and 4A.
- And is also coming faster than it used to on: OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme.
- OnePlus has also confirmed that its 8 and 8 Pro will be getting earlier this week in North America, Europe, and India
- Google also promises to expect more partner brands getting the update over the coming months.
🏫 Facebook's Campus gets it back where it all began.
- Campus is a section of the fb app specifically for college students.
- Here they can
- interact only with peers at their school
- access a Campus-only News Feed
- join Groups, events, and group chat rooms, called Campus Chats.
🔖 Apple's Tile Competitor is rumoured to be in production
- Rumours say these will work with Apple's Find My app to locate things you attach it to. (maybe even when being offline)
- Probably, they will be called AirTags and might launch this October. But since Apple didn't include it in it's 15 September event, I don't expect it launching this year.
🏷️ Tile will refund $1000 if you lost something
- Tile, the company that makes trackers to monitor your stuff, is offering a new premium subscription plan called "Premium Protect".
- If you buy this $99.99 a year subscription and you lose any of your products you used Tile's trackers with, you'll get a refund of upto $1000 in products.
- All perks of Tile's original subscription (@ $29.99) are also included, like free battery replacements and a 30-day location history.
🕹️ Epic warned Apple will stop 'Sign in with Apple' on Fortnite. But Apple will extend it indefinitely for now.
[Read: Epic vs Apple, explained in 5 minutes]
- Epic Games tweeted, asking users to make sure their email addresses and passwords are up-to-date because Apple might disable 'Sign in with Apple' by 11 September.
- But 2 days after, Epic tweeted that Apple has now extended the timeline indefinitely. But you should still be prepared.
📱 Huawei’s HarmonyOS 2.0 is coming to smartphones
- It's currently available only for smartwatches, car head units and TVs.
- Huawei is also making the OS open source within its OpenHarmony project. So other device makers can use it too.
- Plans for HarmonyOS first surfaced when Trump blacklisted Huawei.
(BGR)
📺 Google launched weirdly named Fundo
- Google's Fundo lets creators host paid, ticketed virtual meet-and-greet events.
- Creators can host workshops and Q&A sessions and 1:1 chats with fans.
- There's also group meet and greet with 30 person video conferencing.
- Google takes a 20% cut from the revenue of creators.
- Originally, Fundo was a virtual photo booth-style service.
- Then, fans could wait in a digital line, chat briefly with the celebrity or creator, and get “photos” with them, just like a real-life meet-and-greet.
🛃 US Customs seize OnePlus Buds, mistaking them for “counterfeit” AirPods
(The "fake" AirPods)
- They tweeted about the seize of 2,000 "counterfeit" AirPods saying "That's not an 🍎"
- If they were genuine, it's market value would've been $398,000.
- The box, however, didn't have any Apple branding.
- Rather it were 2000 legitimate OnePlus Buds worth $158,000
- In an comment to Ars Technica, they say:
"the subject earbuds appeared to violate Apple's configuration trademark"
"A company does not have to put an 'Apple' wordmark or design on their products to violate these trademark"
YouTube faces $3.2B lawsuit for kids' privacy violations
- Filed in the UK, it says thats YouTube processes data of every child — even kids under 13 — who uses the service to profit from ad targeting.
- And they do all this without getting explicit consent from the children’s parents.
- The GDPR and UK law prevents companies from processing any data of kids under 13 without explicit permission from parents.
YouTube too wants to be TikTok with 'Shorts'
- YouTube Shorts is a short-form video experience for creators to shoot short videos using mobile phones.
- The interface of Shorts will let creators set timer, adjust video speed, and add music.
- You can shoot up to 15 seconds long video and share it on the app.
(Digit.in)
Go enable Two Factor Authentication on Zoom’s mobile and desktop apps
That's it for the week.
Cheers
The Wire Mail
PS — We launched out newsfeed. And no you don't need to click open any article to read it's summarises. It's all in one place. ;)
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