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.
Airbnb, Lyft, and 56 other tech companies file brief opposing Trump’s revised travel ban – The Verge (Mar 15, 2017)
Lots of big tech companies and some smaller ones filed an amicus brief opposing the original Trump executive orders on immigration back in January. This time around, it looks like it’s almost exclusively the smaller companies doing the same with the revised order issued this month – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and lots of other large companies are missing this time. I haven’t yet seen comment from any of these companies as to why, and it may simply be either a matter of timing, but it’s interesting to see this shift after the opposition to the order was so high profile the first time around. That could signify that the companies are in fact not opposed to this version of the order, or it could simply be a sign that they’re choosing to pick their battles and, having made their broad objections known earlier, are now lying low.
via The Verge
Want to use Google, kid? Now there’s an app for that – Mashable (Mar 15, 2017)
If you’re a parent of kids under 13, you’ve likely encountered the COPPA law, even if you might not know it by that name, because your kids will have found it impossible to sign up for an online service or account without either lying about their age or going through a very involved process. As a result, I suspect many kids either do lie about their age (perhaps with their parents’ support) or piggyback off a parent’s account, neither of which is ideal. Google now has a service that lets kids legitimately sign up for their own account even if they’re under 13, as part of a family account tightly controlled and supervised by parents. That feels like a great solution, and it looks like these accounts can effectively graduate when the kids reach an appropriate age. I wish more companies would think about how to help parents help their kids use technology, and this feels like a good step. Of course, this does mean that Google is now capturing information about your kids for a future profile, even if that data collection is limited in unspecified ways.
via Mashable
Apple could kill almost 200,000 apps with iOS 11, report says – Mashable (Mar 15, 2017)
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a claim like this – Apple has been hinting at dropping apps that haven’t made the switch to 64-bit from the App Store for quite some time. While it’s good to get some sense of how many apps might be affected – Sensor Tower says 8% or 187,000 apps – what’s missing from this analysis is whether any of those apps are actually ones people care about or use today. My guess is that there are very few apps in the App Store which haven’t been updated in years and still see significant usage – I can only think of one app I use today which would fall into this category, and that’s because it’s been superseded by a new version which dropped some features I use. So even though the number here sounds dramatic, my guess is that dropping these apps in iOS 11 – if that is indeed what’s going to happen – will have minimal negative impact on users, and potentially remove some dead wood from the App Store in the process.
via Mashable
Facebook’s new ‘Town Hall’ feature helps you find and contact your government reps – TechCrunch (Mar 15, 2017)
This Town Hall feature from Facebook feels like a natural outgrowth of some of the things Mark Zuckerberg talked about in his recent manifesto. My big worry about that manifesto was that, while it acknowledged some of the problems that had grown out of Facebook’s increasing power over our lives, it seemed to think the solution was more Facebook, not less of it. This tool, for now, looks like a positive step, in that it merely helps connect people in the US with their local and federal representatives – so far, so good. But in the context of some of the things in Zuckerberg’s manifesto about Facebook facilitating new forms of local democracy, I worry that the company has bigger plans for the platform which would insert Facebook more directly into the democratic process. Definitely worth watching closely.
via TechCrunch
With Project Torino, Microsoft creates a physical programming language inclusive of visually impaired children (Mar 15, 2017)
Technology has enormous power to provide opportunities to children and adults with disabilities which otherwise wouldn’t be open to them, but it can also exclude students in educational settings where tools are designed for those without disabilities or visual or other impairments. This Microsoft project is a great example of using technology to reinvent a concept – coding – in such a way that both those with normal vision and the visually impaired can participate together. It’s just a beta project on a very limited scale for now, but hopefully it will expand into something broader down the road. Even better, of course, is building accessibility technology into the devices and services we use every day, something Microsoft has long been committed to as well.
via Microsoft
Amazon Plans Air Cargo Service for Chinese Customers – WSJ (Mar 15, 2017)
There have been lots of stories about Amazon expanding in logistics over the last couple of months – see here (chartering planes), here (ocean freight), and here (an air cargo hub in the US), for example. Now it seems it’s investing in both sea and air cargo for Chinese sellers. That should allow Chinese companies to sell more easily and potentially cheaply to US buyers, but another interesting angle would be US sellers who source their goods from China – I know of several businesses which basically scan Amazon’s top seller lists for arbitrage opportunities and then have goods made in and shipped from China. So those would be other potential users of these new services. Overall, though, this is just another investment in unique logistics infrastructure and more of a competitive moat versus other retailers.
via WSJ
Netflix Tries to Outdo Theaters With Films a Studio Can Envy – Bloomberg (Mar 14, 2017)
Netflix is seriously ramping up its original content investment, something it’s been talking about for some time. And recent flops notwithstanding, it’s had some really good content over the past couple of years. Now it’s shifting its focus to commissioning and acquiring more and bigger budget movies, and plans to release around 30 in 2017 including some starring big names like Will Smith, Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton. That number is impressive – none of the major traditional studios or distributors had more than 24 movies in market in 2016 and Disney, for example, will have only eight movies on its slate in 2017. Now, Netflix’s productions are generally smaller budget affairs – it’s acquired movies at Sundance and other film festivals, where the average acquisition price has risen from $2 to $5 million over the past few years but it’s also commissioning some bigger budget films, though nothing in the multi-hundred million range just yet. But this is yet another way for Netflix to set itself apart from Amazon, HBO, and other big names in the subscription video business. As of right now, Netflix has 119 originals slated for future release listed on its website, and 28 of those are films, so its main focus is still on series (each of which will obviously provide far greater total viewing time than a single feature), but movies are going to be increasingly important going forward as part of that mix.
via Bloomberg
The Apple Watch is still the best designed smartwatch – The Verge (Mar 14, 2017)
This is a good follow-up to this morning’s item about the new Android Wear watch from Huawei, and argues much as I did that other smartwatch makers are largely failing to learn the lessons of or compete effectively with the Apple Watch. It frames the discussion in terms of the compromises and tradeoffs watchmakers choose to make, which seems a smart way to think about it, and has arguably always been one of Apple’s strengths.
via The Verge
Facebook’s livestreaming strategy looks a lot like Twitter’s livestreaming strategy – Recode (Mar 14, 2017)
In my Techpinions Insiders post last week, I wrote about Facebook and Twitter’s respective live video strategies, and argued that this is one area where Twitter might actually be executing on the better strategy, namely focusing on existing high quality live video rather than trying to force user-generated content. This piece today confirms the conclusion of my piece in which I said Facebook should probably be doing more of this kind of thing. However, I also said that it was still unclear how well Twitter was monetizing the video it was licensing, given that most of the ads had already been sold by the original owners. The other challenge, as this piece makes clear, is that the video owners willing to partner with Twitter in this way are mostly those either with small audiences they’re keen to grow, or whose distribution isn’t the primary way they monetize, which tends to mean it isn’t the best or most exciting live content available. Meanwhile, the most compelling live video – major sports – remains largely off limits to online-only broadcasters. That’s not to say Facebook couldn’t bid for NFL rights as Twitter did last year, but those Thursday night games are such a tiny slice of the overall sports schedule in the US that it’s hard to see how it could be a central plank of an overall live video strategy.
via Recode
Google, Facebook Increase Their Grip on Digital Ad Market – eMarketer (Mar 14, 2017)
The timing of this new data from eMarketer is perfect, because I just wrote a piece for Techpinions subscribers today about the battle for third place in online advertising. The reality is that Facebook and Google have been dominant for some time in this space and that shows very little sign of changing. As I argued in my piece this morning, some of the big Chinese names are actually the strongest contenders for third place on a global basis, but they mostly operate only in China, so it’s largely other US companies which are competing in the rest of the world, and they’re all pretty small in comparison to the big two. Between them, Google and Facebook appear to have search and display advertising pretty well sown up, with only the crumbs left for other players, who largely have to compete among themselves rather than having any prospect of taking meaningful share from the big two. As I also pointed out this morning, though Snapchat gets lots of attention, it’s currently behind even Amazon, let alone other bigger names like Microsoft and Yahoo, and will have to wait years to break into the top five. Meanwhile, Twitter is a cautionary tale about even once promising companies stalling before they reach their perceived potential.
via eMarketer
Apple Joins Group of Companies Supporting Google in Foreign Email Privacy Case – Mac Rumors (Mar 14, 2017)
Given the way other big tech companies had weighed in on the related Microsoft case over the past few years, it was a little odd that more hadn’t sprung to Google’s defense in this one, but it’s good to see that they are now doing so. These cases have far-reaching consequences not just for user privacy but for the ability of US companies to do business in overseas markets, and those companies need to defend themselves vigorously. The final outcome of both cases is therefore worth watching closely.
via Mac Rumors
Google’s Allo app can reveal to your friends what you’ve searched – Recode (Mar 14, 2017)
Now that I’ve finally got around to writing this up, it appears Google has patched the specific issue highlighted in this piece, but it’s still worth talking about for a couple of different reasons. For one, anytime you bring a virtual assistant into an existing conversation between two or more human beings, there’s a tension between the bot knowing as much as possible about each participant and using that to be helpful on the one hand, and avoiding exposing personal information about the participants on the other. Google appears to have screwed that up here in a way that could have been damaging or embarrassing for users, though it has now been patched. Secondly, this kind of thing can only happen when you collect and keep enormous amounts of data on your users in the first place – a company that neither collects nor retains such data in a profile could never expose it. It’s clear that Google didn’t intentionally do so here, but it was able to do so anyway because of its business model. Competitors such as Apple might argue that not collecting such data, or keeping it secured on a device rather than in the cloud, would make it impossible for a cloud service to share it with others. We’re going to have to work through lots more of these scenarios in the years to come, and the competition between companies that strictly preserve privacy and those that use personal data to improve services will be a critical facet of that evolution.
via Recode
Microsoft Teams goes live with new email integration, enterprise bots – ZDNet (Mar 14, 2017)
Last week Google announced its Slack competitor, and this week Microsoft is announcing the availability of its previously announced entry in this space: Teams. One big difference versus Slack is that Teams will be baked into every Office 365 enterprise subscription rather than being a paid standalone product, which should almost immediately make it available to many more people than Slack. In addition, it will be integrated into other parts of Office more fully than Slack itself. The big question then becomes whose implementation of the concept is better, and also to some extent whether people keen to use something other than email to collaborate will look to a startup or the company that actually runs their email – Microsoft is making the argument that it isn’t actually trying to replace email but instead offer another way to collaborate when email doesn’t make sense. To some extent, that actually has more credibility to me than replacing email entirely, which has always seemed a slightly unrealistic goal for Slack.
via ZDNet
Huawei Watch 2 review: No time for this half-baked sequel – Android Central (Mar 14, 2017)
I linked to reviews of Android Wear 2.0 and the LG watches that launched at the same time a few weeks ago, and those were pretty negative. Now, here we have another entry from a major Android vendor and it seems to be at least as bad as LG’s. At this point, it feels like some Android vendors have given up on the platform entirely, while others seem to have given up trying to make a smartwatch competitive with the Apple Watch but are still putting what they do have out into the market. None of this is going to help Android Wear or smartwatches in general. I’ve said before that I think it will take a Pixel-style first party entry from Google to give this platform the boost it needs, because for now Android Wear continues to be more or less irrelevant in the smartwatch and broader wearable market. Even if Google does get into this market directly, however, it continues to be far smaller and narrower than many people originally thought, and it’s currently dominated by Apple.
via Android Central
Apple hires Jonathan Zdziarski, an active forensics consultant & security researcher in the iOS community – 9to5Mac (Mar 14, 2017)
Zdziarski was in the news a lot a year ago, when Apple was fighting the FBI over the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter, because he was frequently quoted and cited as an expert who backed Apple’s stance. As such, it’s not altogether surprising that he should end up at Apple – he’s been both one of its staunchest supporters around some security and privacy issues and someone who has discovered vulnerabilities in its code. On the one hand, that makes him a useful person to have inside the company – this hire feels a lot like Apple’s hire of Anand Shimpi, another prominent outside expert who was brought inside – but Apple will lose the benefit of having a vocal independent advocate on these issues. It’s also interesting to note Zdziarski’s comments about his hiring and why he’s joining Apple – he cites its privacy stance, which is of course closely tied to security concerns, as a strong motivating factor.
via 9to5Mac
1 million NYC homes can’t get Verizon FiOS, so the city just sued Verizon – Ars Technica (Mar 14, 2017)
This is a long-running dispute between Verizon and the city of New York over whether or not Verizon has lived up to a 2008 agreement that required it to “pass” all the households in NYC by 2014. Verizon says it has done so, because the definition of passing a building is to run fiber close enough that it could be hooked up to homes if building owners give permission, while the city is arguing that passing means actually hooking up the homes. The disconnect here is that most of New York is made up of apartment buildings where landlords and not tenants get to determine whether or not a telco or cable company can run fiber into the building to connect individual apartments. In many cases, landlords have existing exclusive agreements with another provider or simply don’t want the disruption of a new fiber build, so they resist. Verizon says it can’t be held responsible for not providing fiber in those situations and has asked the city to help persuade landlords to open up their buildings. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle – yes, Verizon has struggled to get landlords to agree to Fios installations, but it probably also hasn’t tried as hard as it might and likely also has some other buildings where it could hook up service but hasn’t. This is the flip side of the AT&T story I covered the other day – either cities don’t require any specific commitment to connect households and then there are complaints about favoring wealthier neighborhoods, or they do extract those commitments and then end up fighting over whether they’ve been met.
via Ars Technica
Documents reveal ‘AmazonFresh Pickup’ as the tech giant’s next physical retail concept – GeekWire (Mar 14, 2017)
The concept here isn’t new, either for Amazon or in general. With regard to Amazon, it was one of several physical retail concepts discussed in an article last year, and looks like it’s now coming to fruition. But the concept of ordering groceries online and picking them up outside a store isn’t new either – my local Smith’s grocery store (part of the Kroger company) does this today. The big difference will be that this AmazonFresh Pickup store won’t be a regular grocery store, but just that pickup experience. This would fill a gap in the current AmazonFresh service for those who won’t be home (or don’t know when they’ll be home) when groceries might be delivered, but can schedule a stop at a grocery store on their way home. I think we’re going to continue to see Amazon experimenting with lots of physical retail models until they get the right mix to complement their online presence.
via GeekWire
Apple Watch Series 2 Satisfaction & Usage Survey – Wristly (Mar 13, 2017)
Wristly is one of the only organizations out there which does regular Apple Watch user surveys, and as such provides some very useful insights into how users feel about their Watches and how they use them. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll call out two points in particular: user satisfaction has risen over the past year as the number of users has grown significantly, and the drivers are the new hardware and new software Apple has released in the past year. That both have driven increased satisfaction is obviously good for Apple, but the fact that the new software improved the experience has possibly also worked against bigger hardware sales – I know my first generation Watch performs well enough running the new software that I don’t feel the need to run out and buy a Series 2 device, and I’m guessing the same is true for others. But of course the Watch has sold reasonably well regardless, and so the user base continues to expand, albeit still at a fairly small scale relative to massive mainstream categories like smartphones.
via Wristly
New LG 5K UltraFine Display models work properly near wireless access points including routers – 9to5Mac (Mar 13, 2017)
Just a short update on this earlier story about Apple’s LG monitor partnership, which I’ve covered here. It’s obviously good news that LG has produced a monitor that’s now unaffected by nearby wireless routers, but still bad news that its first version had this fundamental flaw. That speaks both to LG’s lack of quality and Apple’s lack of quality control as a partner, especially for the first monitor from this partnership after years of Apple making its own monitors. Hopefully this is a one-off for both companies, but future monitors from these two will be subject to that much more scrutiny as a result.
via 9to5Mac
Uptime is a goofy video sharing app from Google’s Area 120 startup incubator – The Verge (Mar 13, 2017)
Google was once famous for the 20% time it gave its employees to work on passion projects, but then word started to spread that this wasn’t really happening anymore. And then last year Google announced the creation of an incubator for employees’ projects, which seemed to be trying to resurrect the spirit of 20% time if not the details. The first app from that incubator just launched, and it’s a co-watching app for YouTube videos. On the one hand, there’s an obvious fit with an existing product at Google, which is a good thing, and on the other it’s not clear why the YouTube team didn’t build this. I’m not sure what value is added by having this be a separate app that doesn’t carry any Google branding (even in the App Store, it’s listed as being offered by Area 120, the name of Google’s incubator). If the main purpose of Area 120 is to keep entrepreneurial employees onboard, then perhaps this will serve its purpose, but on the evidence of this first app, I’m not sure it’s going to lead to anything all that compelling. Having tested the app briefly, the overwhelming impression I was left with was that it was incredibly privacy-invasive – it kept prompting or reminding me that everything I was doing would be shared with friends and/or publicly available.
via The Verge