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’s Clips app offers promising & fun editing features, but confusing & difficult UI – 9to5Mac (Apr 6, 2017)
Apple announced the Clips app a couple of weeks ago along with the new iPad and other announcements, and when I commented on that announcement I said the proof would be in the pudding with regard to how well the app performed. We now have reviews (and the app itself is out now too), and it looks like a bit of a mixed bag. The app looks clever, with some nifty new features, but it looks like it may suffer from the same problem as some other Cook-era Apple product releases, in that it seems like it may try to do too much, and therefore can be confusing to use. Here, as with the Apple Watch, Apple Music, and other recent efforts from Apple, it looks like it may have been better served by starting simpler and adding functionality over time. The real test will be whether we start seeing Clips-generated videos showing up in a big way on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, because since this app lacks its own social features the output needs to be shared elsewhere. I still suspect, as I said in my first comment, that this is a better fit for the older Facebook generations than the Snapchat and Instagram generation, but we’ll see.
via 9to5Mac
Comcast Introduces Its Mobile Service (Apr 6, 2017)
Comcast today finally unveiled the wireless service it’s been working on for years off the back of a long-standing agreement to use the Verizon Wireless network as the underlying carrier. It should be a compelling offering for at least some customers, especially the premium 25% or so of its base to whom Comcast will offer preferential pricing. However, the unlimited offering caps out at 20GB per month before throttling kicks in, whereas the traditional carriers’ throttling kicks in at higher points and only in times of congestion, making Comcast’s unlimited in name only. WiFi is a major selling point from Comcast’s perspective, but I’m very skeptical that it’ll be a big part of users’ experience, given how few hotspots Comcast actually has in places where people spend time out of residential neighborhoods, and the fact that WiFi is often now slower rather than faster than LTE. Comcast is going to keep costs down by selling online and in its existing stores and marketing through existing channels, as well as keeping bad debt expense down by marketing to existing customers who pay their bills on time and offering only auto-billing on credit cards. Comcast will likely sell this service to up to 10% of its base in the next couple of years, which will be a nice boost to its revenues and profits, but will make only a tiny dent in the overall US wireless market – 10% penetration of its broadband base would be just 2.5 million customers, which is less than the number of new customers the big four carriers added last quarter alone.
via Comcast
Sprint Ditches 50% Off Promotion and Focuses Exclusively on Unlimited (Apr 6, 2017)
There were reports earlier this week that Sprint was ditching its 50% off promotion, which has run since 2015, and it has now confirmed that news. Instead, Sprint is now focusing exclusively on unlimited services, ditching its tiered plans as well, and offering a $10 per line discount through June 2018 on new plans, making them in some cases 30-40% cheaper than equivalent Verizon or AT&T plans. Sprint’s 50% off plan became untenable when the two larger carriers reintroduced unlimited plans, because in practice under the promotion Sprint had seen most customers keep their spend at the same level as at their previous carrier while moving to a higher speed tier, which isn’t possible when switching from unlimited, meaning Sprint really would be charging 50% less for the same service. Instead, then, it’s competing on price in a less dramatic way going forward, but it’s worth remembering that price discounts in wireless have a direct correlation to perceptions of network quality. As such, these ongoing price discounts are a recognition that Sprint can’t be competitive unless it’s charging quite a bit less than competitors, because of poor perceptions of its network, perceptions that are unlikely to change at its current historically low network investment levels.
via Sprint
Twitter Introduces Twitter Lite, a Progressive Web App for Emerging Markets (Apr 6, 2017)
A little while back, Facebook announced that it had 200 million users for its Facebook Lite product, which provides a more streamlined experience for those on limited wireless data connections, representing over 10% of its total monthly active users. Emerging markets have been really important for Facebook over the last few years, driving a good chunk of its user growth. Twitter, meanwhile, hasn’t had a product optimized for those markets, and has struggled to grow its base much at all. Today, it’s announcing its own Lite product, which is actually a progressive web app designed in partnership with Google, which has been pushing this format as one of several approaches to hybrid web/native apps. As a PWA, Twitter Lite offers some features historically reserved for native apps, like local storage and notifications, and Twitter seems to be promoting it as the option for users in emerging markets, touting the circumvention of app stores as a feature. All this should help Twitter do better with growth in emerging markets, as it’s been a long time coming and there should be at least some pent-up demand there. But it’s also a great validation for the PWA approach at Google, with a big name app out there for the first time to promote the concept. It’ll be well worth watching Google’s I/O this year for signs that it’s continuing to move the concept forward.
via Twitter Blogs
Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone ‘bricking’ – Reuters (Apr 6, 2017)
This piece is sadly short on details and on comment from Apple, so we have to read between the lines a little bit to see what’s happening here. My guess is that this lawsuit from the Australian competition commission concerns Apple’s practice of disabling phones which have had their screens tampered with when that process involves the Touch ID sensor and its associated secure enclave. Apple does this in order to preserve the security of that system, but to an end user or repair shop it just looks like Apple is trying to keep the repair business to itself. Some US states have been pushing right-to-repair laws to deal with this kind of situation, and Apple has been pushing back, arguing that there are security issues at stake. The problem is that Apple often charges a lot more for either AppleCare or the repair itself than third parties, so the optics are bad even if the reasoning is sound. I suspect Apple is going to be dealing with a lot more of this kind of thing, and this Australian case will be an important test of how effectively Apple is able to fight its corner.
via Reuters
Apple fans, Android world scramble to patch Broadcom’s nasty drive-by Wi-Fi security hole – The Register (Apr 6, 2017)
There are two interesting things here, both worth discussing briefly. Firstly, Broadcom, which provides chips for many popular smartphones including the iPhone, has a vulnerability in its WiFi element which can be hacked, allowing a way into the device. Apple issued a patch this week to deal with the issue, and Android vendors will be working to close the vulnerability too, though there’s no specific timeframe yet, highlighting yet another challenge with Android’s fragmented ecosystem. The second thing that’s interesting here is that the vulnerability was discovered by Google’s Project Zero team, which is set up to discover and fix vulnerabilities like this, and has been doing great work lately doing just that, including on non-Google devices like the iPhone. Vulnerabilities like this are always worrying, and it’s great to have Google out there with what seems like a strong team detecting these and notifying vulnerable vendors so they can patch the issues.
via The Register
Spotify Finally Readies an IPO…That’s Not an IPO – WSJ (Apr 6, 2017)
It looks like Spotify may be planning on a direct listing rather than an IPO, which could happen by the end of the year. What that means is that it would simply start listing its shares on the public markets without a formal public offering or opening up new shares for sale. That would presumably meet the IPO requirements in its latest debt agreements without the expense or other overhead associated with a traditional IPO. That, in turn, makes it look like Spotify really doesn’t want to list in traditional fashion but now has little choice but to work towards that goal, with this route as a compromise of sorts. It would presumably provide the needed liquidity for investors who wanted to sell out as well, though without the normal process there would potentially be a lot more uncertain and instability in the share price.
via WSJ
No one is using Facebook stories, so it turned your friends into ghosts – The Verge (Apr 5, 2017)
If Facebook had to choose between a huge backlash against the way a feature was rolled out and general ambivalence towards it, I’d guess it would choose the latter. That seems to be happening now with the version of the Stories feature in the core Facebook app, despite the massive popularity of the equivalent feature in Instagram, and in contrast to the negative response to the versions Facebook launched in Messenger and WhatsApp. The good news here is that Facebook rolled the feature out much more carefully and subtly, though this new wrinkle of showing faded versions of the profile pictures of friends who haven’t used the feature is a sign that Facebook may be starting to turn up the dial a little on promotion, though it’s an odd way to go about that. Hopefully Facebook will be smart enough not to force the issue by over-promoting it in obnoxious ways as it did with live video in the core Facebook app or with My Day in Messenger. Again, far better to have a feature fall a little flat than turn users off entirely.
via The Verge
Apple Pay Promised to Make Plastic Obsolete. Then Came Wary Shoppers, Confused Clerks – WSJ (Apr 5, 2017)
It’s been clear from the very beginning that Apple Pay was only going to get so far as long as most retailers didn’t support the technology. Mobile payments are a tough habit to get going when it only works occasionally, and when there’s significant uncertainty about whether it will work at a given retailer, and both are certainly the case right now. As such, I would guess that many iPhone owners have either never tried it or tried it once or twice only to stop using it because it’s rarely available as a payment mechanism. Compounding the problem is the fact that, though the EMV liability shift drove adoption of new payment terminals, and many of those terminals have NFC capability, but Apple Pay support is switched off because retailers favor other methods of payment. As such, even the widely-recognized contactless payment symbol present on many terminals is no guarantee of availability. Ultimately, unless acceptance rates at retailers rise considerably, adoption by users it going to continue to be a long, slow slog.
via WSJ
Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving – The Economist (Apr 5, 2017)
This isn’t a particularly new idea, and in fact it’s one that ride sharing companies have used for some time now in trying to convince regulators to allow them to operate. But it’s always good to see real data behind an idea, and in this case it seems to back it up pretty well, at least in New York City. The data isn’t consistent across the boroughs, but there’s certainly a clear trend suggesting the introduction of Uber in the City did indeed reduce drink driving, which is obviously a good thing. That’s a nice counterpoint to all the negative news stories recently about Uber in particular and ride sharing in general (including the one I just shared about driver vetting).
via The Economist
8,000 Uber, Lyft, ride-hailing drivers fail new background checks in Massachusetts – The Boston Globe (Apr 5, 2017)
Massachusetts put in place a new law requiring drivers for ride sharing services to acquire a license, which in turn requires passing an extensive background check. Of the 71,000 existing drivers who applied, a little over 11% failed these background checks, in many cases because of issues with driver’s licenses, at least some of which should have been caught by Uber and Lyft. Those companies, in turn, countered that they either don’t have access to longer criminal histories or that they have deliberately ignored older offenses as a way to help people with troubled pasts move on. Though there’s some truth to the former point, the latter is at least partly spin. Sex offenders, of whom 51 were rejected by Massachusetts, have to register, and presumably blocking them from becoming drivers would be both easy and desirable, no matter how long ago the offenses. The Massachusetts law is stricter than in other states and as such helps highlight how the background checks the companies themselves conduct can miss potentially serious issues in drivers’ histories.
via Boston Globe
Google Shares Performance Characteristics for its Machine Learning Chip (Apr 5, 2017)
It’s time to roll out that old Alan Kay maxim again: “those who are serious about software should make their own hardware”. Google started working on its own machine learning chip, which it calls a Tensor Processing Unit or TPU, a few years back, and has now shared some performance characteristics, suggesting that it’s more efficient and faster than CPUs and GPUs on the market today for machine learning tasks. While Nvidia and others have done very well out of selling GPU lines originally designed for computer graphics to companies doing machine learning work, Google is doing impressive work here too, and open sourcing the software framework it uses for machine learning. As I’ve said before, it’s extremely hard to definitively answer the question of who’s ahead in AI and machine learning, but Google consistently churns out evidence that it’s moving fast and doing very interesting things in the space.
via Google Cloud Platform Blog
YouTube TV Reviews Suggest Nice User Interface, Features, Limited Content (Apr 5, 2017)
It looks like the embargo on reviews of YouTube TV lifted this morning and a slew of those reviews have now emerged. On balance, the reviews seem positive about the user interface and features (notably the DVR), but note limitations across content, including the complete absence of Turner and Viacom channels, geographies (the service is only available in five cities to start, due to local broadcast rights), and devices (only Chromecast and Google Cast-enabled TVs, no Apple TV or Roku). I’ll link back here to my first take on YouTube TV following the launch event, because my overall sense of this service hasn’t changed. But it does seem as though the app does better on some key concepts than the other offerings already out there, notably that DVR feature and the way it taps into favorite shows and sports teams. As you’d expect from a brand that’s always stood for ease of use and discovery in video consumption, it’s good at those things. But those limitations are going to mean it’s not a viable competitor in the vast majority of the country for now. The limitations are, in fact, probably a good thing in that they’ll allow YouTube TV to avoid some of the scaling issues suffered by DirecTV Now when it launched last fall, but it’s going to need to find a way to go national sooner rather than later, which means working out those complicated local affiliate rights which have bedeviled everyone else in this business too.
via Business Insider (more reviews on Techmeme)
FCC and FTC Heads Outline Policy on Internet Privacy (Apr 5, 2017)
In an op-ed in the Post this morning, the chair of the FCC and acting chair of the FTC write up their views on the internet privacy debate that’s been roaring in online tech publications over the last few weeks. As I’ve said previously (and discussed in depth in last week’s News Roundup podcast), the reaction on this topic has been overblown, and understanding poor, though the major players on the other side haven’t really helped themselves. The major ISPs only began communicating on the topic after the congressional vote was over, and only now are the FCC and FTC chairs communicating clearly about the issue. But the reality is that this issue of internet privacy can only really be resolved by new regulation from the FTC, which will end up once again having responsibility for online privacy as it did until 2015.
via FCC and FTC Chairs’ Editorial in The Washington Post
Facebook will use photo matching to stop revenge porn from being shared – The Verge (Apr 5, 2017)
This is probably about as much as Facebook can be expected to do on an issue such as this – there’s no easy definition for revenge porn as such, and therefore no way to train a computer to look for it, so the only way Facebook can police it is to match images being shared with ones it’s been told about in the past. That’s obviously far from solving the issue, but it’s a start and should help with cases where the same images are being shared over and over.
via The Verge
LG G6 review: LG’s “personal best” still can’t compare to Samsung – Ars Technica (Apr 5, 2017)
The Ars Technica view I’m linking to here is fairly negative on LG’s new flagship, while the Verge review also linked below is a little more positive. Both note that this is really the first widely available flagship phone to go down the “much smaller bezels” route, but while the Verge review focuses on that fact, the Ars review suggests that it will quickly be overshadowed by the Samsung Galaxy S8. The fact that this phone is launching to the public a week after the Samsung event certainly doesn’t help – almost anyone considering it has to at least be thinking about the S8 as an alternative – but until reviews are out, writing off the G6 so quickly feels premature. At least some early indications suggest that there may be one or two concerns with the S8, though I’ll withhold judgment until more thorough reviews are out. Both of these G6 reviews, though, highlight some flaws, notably some odd design choices in the hardware (poorly rounded display corners, tricky home button/sensor placement and size) and counter-productive software customizations on top of stock Android. This definitely looks like a better phone than last year’s G5, but I’m not convinced it’s going to help LG have a much better year this year than last as a result. One more thing worth noting – it seems LG has a version it’s selling in Korea with an integrated DAC which dramatically improves audio quality, but that won’t be available in the US, an odd decision.
via Ars Technica (see also the Verge review)
Google Plots New Hardware to Take on Echo — The Information (Apr 5, 2017)
What do you do if you have two separate hardware products for the home which are selling modestly but not fantastically and have some common elements? You combine them, of course, and so Google is apparently considering a future device which would bring the features of its Home and WiFi devices together in a single unit. That would lower the combined cost and depending on the price potentially also increase the attractiveness relative to either the standalone Home or WiFi devices as they exist today. Given that a single unit of either item today costs $129, it’s entirely feasible that Google could combine the two in a new unit that would still be price competitive with the Amazon Echo while offering a lot more functionality, so this is an interesting angle. But Google Home’s main challenges continue to be less about price and more about name recognition and distribution – the Echo captured the early interest in this space and quickly became the market, heavily leveraging Amazon’s retail distribution channel, while Google continues to struggle to get adoption for its version. Though this move may help spur sales, I don’t think it’s going to lead to the kind of step change Google needs to be a more meaningful competitor.
via The Information
AT&T Is Bundling HBO for Free With Unlimited Wireless Plan – Variety (Apr 5, 2017)
AT&T hasn’t bought Time Warner yet, but that’s not stopping it from doing deals involving Time Warner properties, including this new promotion with HBO. AT&T had already been using HBO as a lure for driving DirecTV Now subscriptions, as it’s bundled the channel first at a discounted rate and then free for subscribers. But now AT&T is also giving away HBO for free to its higher-tier unlimited wireless data customers. Though the merger hasn’t closed yet, there’s a good chance that future prospect has been part of the companies’ closer relationship on this side recently, and it’s easy to imagine more of this kind of thing should the deal go through. It’s never made sense that AT&T would seek to limit distribution of Time Warner content following the merger because that would be counter-productive for the content business even if it benefited wireless subscriber numbers. But zero rating and bundle discounts make a lot more sense, as they lock customers into a much higher total spend and likely lower churn at a fairly low customer acquisition cost, and of course once TW is part of AT&T the cash cost of deals like this will be minimal. And AT&T’s real goal with the merger isn’t so much synergies from owning content and distribution as it is simply owning content, because that’s where the real value is long term.
via Variety
In tech, the wage gender gap worsens for women over time, and it’s worst for black women – TechCrunch (Apr 5, 2017)
I covered a similar story a while back, but this one has more detail, and focuses more on gender in addition to racial disparities in tech salaries. It turns out that being a member both of an underrepresented gender and race increases your odds of being underpaid significantly, such that black and Latina women earn 79 cents for every dollar equivalently qualified men do. In part, as with that earlier study, this is because women often ask for lower salaries than men, though apparently only after their first few years in a career (in their first four years, they actually tend to ask for more). That, in turn, may reflect both conditioning in terms of what to expect and lower previous salaries. Regardless of the reasons, this is yet another sign of systemic problems in the tech industry when it comes to hiring women and racial minorities and paying them at the same rates as white men.
via TechCrunch
NFL and Amazon Reach One-Year Streaming Deal for About $50 Million – WSJ (Apr 4, 2017)
This is an interesting outcome to this bidding process, with perhaps the most interesting part being the price to be paid by Amazon, which is five times what Twitter paid for the equivalent rights last year. I had wondered if the NFL was going to let the winning broadcaster sell more of its own ads, which would have justified a higher price, but as that doesn’t seem to be the case it looks more likely that the higher price was the result of a bidding war. If I recall correctly, Twitter was said not to have been the highest bidder last time around, so it’s possible both that Amazon (and possibly others) bid more and that the NFL decided to go with the higher bidder this time. From Amazon’s perspective, the deal certainly fits with two existing initiatives: its increasing focus on TV and in particular live TV, and its slow but steady push into advertising. The big issue Amazon has with TV at this point is that its efforts are spread over two very different brands and channels, namely Twitch and Prime. At some point, the aggregation strategy that’s served its Channels business well will likely make sense in live TV too. But broadcasting live TV is a great opportunity to market Amazon hardware products to a captive video audience as well.
via WSJ