Important Note
Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.
Apple Announces Cumulative $70bn Paid to Developers, Over $20bn in Past Year (Jun 1, 2017)
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★ Uber Loses Slightly Less Money on an Adjusted Basis in Q1 2017 (Jun 1, 2017)
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★ Apple Starts Manufacturing Its Siri Speaker (May 31, 2017)
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Uber Pool Burned Through Cash for Months in San Francisco (May 31, 2017)
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Samsung’s Bixby Further Delayed in US to End of June (May 31, 2017)
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Waze Expands Carpool Service to All of California, May Start Showing Ads (May 31, 2017)
One of the best recent examples of the fragmentation that still exists within Alphabet and even within Google specifically is the fact that Waze, the navigation app acquired by Google a couple of years ago, has been working on what’s effectively a ride sharing service, and that it’s been doing so entirely independently of any other part of Alphabet or Google that’s working on related services and technology. It grew entirely out of Waze engineers’ desire to do something interesting rather than out of any strategic imperative from Alphabet management, which means that Alphabet’s Waymo has launched a test of a self-driving ride sharing service while Waze is expanding its Carpool service and the two have nothing to do with each other. To focus on Waze for a minute, it had previously launched its Carpool service in the Bay Area, and now is expanding it to the rest of California. But it’s still more of a true ride sharing service than most of the other services that get painted with that label – this is intended purely as a way for people to literally share rides to places one of them is already driving to, and to help split the driver’s gas money. As such, it also hasn’t generated revenue for Waze, which has merely passed along the entire IRS mileage rate to the driver, so it needs to find some other way to make money, and it looks like that might at least in part be showing ads to users of its app. It’s ironic, then, that even though the interesting disruptive transportation technology has no connection to the rest of Google or Alphabet, but its business model might end up borrowing quite a bit from its parent.
via Recode
IDC Predicts Slightly Faster But Still Modest Growth in Smartphones in 2017 (May 31, 2017)
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Microsoft Announces Dell, Asus, and Lenovo VR Headsets (May 31, 2017)
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Microsoft Announces Some ARM PC Partners But Downplays the ARM Element (May 31, 2017)
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Nest Launches Smarter Security Camera for Inside Homes (May 31, 2017)
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★ Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski for Refusal to Cooperate in Lawsuit (May 30, 2017)
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Samsung Announces Windows Convertible With S Pen Stylus (May 30, 2017)
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★ Andy Rubin’s Essential Announces Yet Another Phone Claiming to Change the Market (May 30, 2017)
The Verge seems to have secured the first of two exclusive looks at Android founder Andy Rubin’s new phone, from his company Essential (Recode’s Code Conference will have an interview with Rubin tonight where I’d expect him to share more). So far, there’s nothing about the software, beyond the assumption that it’ll run Android. So the focus is entirely on the hardware design, including the materials, connectors, and a theoretical ecosystem of modular add-ons (for now, there’s just one: a 360° camera). The reporting on this is all a little breathless – Andy Rubin has quite a reputation and anything he launches will be accorded a fair measure of respect. But the pitch here feels so much like almost every other new entrant in the market, a mix of straw man arguments about the current state of the market, grandiose claims about how all that will change, ambitions to build an ecosystem without any evidence that any other player is interested, and nothing at all about distribution, which continues to be the key question in the US smartphone market. We’ll hopefully know a little more by tonight, but I’m extremely skeptical that this phone will do any better than any other recent attempt to change the smartphone market. In the meantime, that won’t stop this project from getting tons of positive media attention in the run-up to an actual launch sometime later this year. It’s worth noting that beyond the phone there are some other bits and pieces too, including a smart home OS and speaker with a screen, but again the details are so short and claims so grand that I’m inclined to ignore them until we actually know something specific about them.
via The Verge
ARM Updates Main Processor Lines, Includes AI Optimizations (May 29, 2017)
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More Fraudulent Comments Submitted to FCC on Net Neutrality (May 29, 2017)
I had an earlier comment on a report that many fraudulent comments had been submitted to the FCC over its proposed net neutrality action, though the vast majority of those were against the policy proposals. Now, it’s emerged that there have also been some number of identical comments submitted in support of the proposals, at least some of which are being submitted in the names of individuals who have publicly opposed them. Those individuals have quite reasonably asked that those fraudulent comments be removed from the site, and also that the FCC investigate the fraud (something which, as far as I am aware, the FCC isn’t planning to do with the earlier comments either). There’s also an accusation – completely unsubstantiated as far as I can tell – that Comcast is somehow behind these comments. This FCC process has been dogged from the start by “astroturfing” – the process of either faking or at least dramatically magnifying apparent public comments on a controversial topic, through a combination of legitimate streamlining methods like form letters and online submission forms and illegitimate ones like these fake comments. That, in turn, seriously muddies the water in terms of what real people actually believe about all this – the only survey I’ve seen on this was sponsored by the industry and predictably showed that people broadly oppose regulation on the Internet but without being very specific about net neutrality. As I’ve said from the start, though, this FCC doesn’t seem particularly likely to bend even in the fact of significant (real) public opposition.
via Ars Technica
Apple Hires Senior Qualcomm Engineer as Wireless SoC Lead (May 29, 2017)
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Weekly Narrative Video – Disrupting TV (May 27, 2017)
This week’s Narrative Video covers the Disrupting TV narrative, or as I’d call it if these things could have slightly longer names: “Disrupting TV is Hard”. I talk through all the ways in which various entities are trying to disrupt traditional TV business and consumption models, and the barriers to their success. I also talk about the ways in which TV is being successfully disrupted, and argue that we’ll eventually reach a tipping point at which the legacy providers currently trying to resist and hold back disruption come to enable and even embrace it. As usual, you can find the Weekly Narrative Video on the relevant narrative page here if you’re a subscriber. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you can sign up on this page, starting with a 30-day free trial.
Google Launches an AI Investment Program Separate from GV and CapitalG (May 26, 2017)
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Google Fiber Raising TV Prices Significantly Due to Content Costs (May 26, 2017)
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Tidal Loses Third CEO in Less Than Three Years (May 26, 2017)
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