Rolandt

The Apple Card has been the subject of a lot of attention and speculation since it was announced at Monday’s Apple event. The US-only card won’t be out until this summer, but Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch’s Editor-in-Chief, has details on exactly how the card will work that weren’t covered during the keynote.

Panzarino sums up the card’s benefits nicely:

Overall the Apple Card has some relatively unique and interesting takes on data transparency for users, who are getting what appears to be an information rich but easy to interpret interface that rivals the best apps (like the AMEX app) out there for consumer cards. It’s also got a solid set of security features that are missing only a couple of small improvements like per-merchant or per-transaction numbers that would make them the best offering in the industry.

The security and financial tracking the card will enable is attractive and the cash benefits are competitive, but there are limitations that may be an issue for some potential customers. For instance, the Apple Card is a single-user card, which means multiple family members cannot use the same account.

Panzarino’s piece clears up misinformation that has spread since the keynote and uncovers other tidbits that make it easier to compare the new card side-by-side with competing offerings. If what you’ve heard about the Apple Card interests you, Panzarino’s article is an excellent one-stop destination to learn more.

→ Source: techcrunch.com

Bercow for America @shawnmicallef
The JWR tapes are of a much higher quality than the Nixon tapes. We have come a long way.

vanderwal posted a photo:

I'm at Empire Stores! 4sq.com/Rlsz6n

I learned about bike-shedding at GDS. I've told a few organisations about it since, I think it's been useful.

I wrote about it for the Marketing Society:

"I was once in a meeting about a software project. It was like meetings I’d been in my whole life - aimless, drifting, pointless. Then suddenly one of the developers said “Hang on we’re bike-shedding”. “Ah yes” said another “we are”. The meeting immediately shifted gear. Decisions were quickly taken or dismissed and we all got back to work. I was a little shellshocked so I went back to my desk and googled “bike-shedding”. Reading that wikipedia entry was one of the things that convinced me that the practises of agile, user-centric software and web development will eventually displace those of most creative industries. “Bike-shedding” comes from a story by C. Northcote Parkinson (he of Parkinson’s Law). He tells the tale of a committee that has to approve the plans for a nuclear power station. Since they know very little about nuclear power stations they talk about it briefly and then just approve the recommendation put in front of them. Next they have to approve the plans for a bike shed. They all know about bike sheds. They’ve all seen one and used one. So they talk about the bike shed for hours, arguing about construction methods and paint choice and everything. This is why bike-shedding is also known as The Law of Triviality: “ members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues”. I’m sure this observation is familiar to you. Most branding conversations seem, to me, to be one long bike-shedding session. It’s not so terrible, it’s human nature. The difference is that software people have identified and named the pattern. That naming is an organisational hack that allows them to break out of it and get on with something more useful. (See also: Fredkin’s Paradox)"

As I say above, it seems to me that most conversations about 'branding' drift into bike-shedding pretty quickly.

Then, the other week, I was preparing for a panel I'm going to be on and I thought I remind myself of some history, so I dug out John Murphy's book about Interbrand and the weekend when he invented brand valuation. It's a great read.

And I was reminded of a story from the beginning of the book, a naming project he did while at Dunlop. He recommended the name Denovo and then recounts the story of his boss telling him about the meeting:

"...He then expanded on how the decision had been taken. He told me that the Dunlop Pirelli Union, which was still nominally in existence, was proving so disastrous that Dunlop was having to write down its huge investment in Pirelli to zero. The extraordinary board meeting had been called to write-off hundreds of millions of pounds, possibly £5 billion or so at current values. He told me that the special board meeting had lasted for two hours and that the board had taken five minutes to write off the hundreds of millions and one hour and fifty-five minutes to approve the choice of the name Denovo.

My business idea was born."

Interbrand, the company that coined the word 'branding' (in a non-cattle context) and invented brand valuation, sprang from a textbook 'brand-shedding' session. Nice. 

 

 

Apple could probably start a massive cycle of MacBook Pro sales by building their Magic Keyboard into the next version. Done.

I’d buy one myself in a heartbeat. The Magic Keyboard is one of my all-time favorites at this point. So much so that I’m considering getting a Studio Neat Canopy so that I can use one with my iPad.

Yes, I know of a few people who prefer or have adapted to the current generation of MacBook keyboards. But, count up the number of people who are holding onto an older laptop and add them to the number of people who have complained vocally about the current generation.

Draw your own conclusions.

Over the last week or so, we’ve been promoting Firefox services on support.mozilla.org.

In this experiment, which we’re running for the next two weeks, we are promoting the free services Sync, Send and Monitor. These services fit perfectly into our mission: to help people create take control of their online lives.

• Firefox Sync allows Firefox users to instantly share preferences, bookmarks, history, passwords, open tabs and add-ons to other devices.
• Firefox Send is a free encrypted file transfer service that allows people to safely share files from any browser.
• Firefox Monitor allows you to check your email address against known data breaches across the globe. Optionally you can sign up to receive a full report of past breaches and new breach alerts.

The promotions are minimal and intended to not distract people from getting help with Firefox. So why promote anything at all on a support website when people are there to get help? People visit the support site when they have a problem, sure. But just as many are there to learn. Of the top articles that brought Firefox users to support.mozilla.org in the past month, half were about setting up Firefox and understanding its features.

This experiment is about understanding whether Firefox users on the support site can discover our connected services and find value in them. We are also monitoring whether the promotions are too distracting or interfere with the mission of support.mozilla.org. This experiment is about understanding whether Firefox users on the support site can discover our connected services and find value in them. We are also monitoring whether the promotions are too distracting or interfere with the mission of support.mozilla.org. In the meantime, if you find issues with the content please report it.

The test will run for the next two weeks and we will report back here and in our weekly SUMO meeting on the results and next steps.

As a programmer you face an ever-growing stream of new technologies: new frameworks, new libraries, new tools, new languages, new paradigms. Keeping up is daunting.

• How can you find the time to learn how to use every relevant tool?
• How do you keep your skills up-to-date without using up all your free time?
• How can you even learn all the huge number of existing technologies?

The answer, of course, is that you can’t learn them all—in depth. What you can do is learn about the tools’ existence, and learn just enough about them to know when it might be worth learning more.

Quite often, spending 5 minutes learning about a new technology will give you 80% of the benefit you’d get from spending 5 days on it.

In the rest of this article I’ll cover:

1. The cost of unnecessary in-depth learning.
2. Why breadth of knowledge is so useful.
3. Some easy ways to gain breadth of knowledge.

The cost of in-depth learning

Having a broad range of tools and techniques to reach for is a valuable skill both at your job and when looking for a new job. But there are different levels of knowledge you can have: you can be an expert, or you can have some basic understanding of what the tool does and why you might use it.

The problem with becoming an expert is that it’s time consuming, and you don’t want to put that level of effort into every new tool you encounter.

1. Some new technologies will die just as quickly as they were born; there’s no point wasting time on a dead end.
2. Most technologies just aren’t relevant to your current situation. GitHub keeps recommending I look at a library for analyzing pulsar data, and not being an astrophysicist I’m going to assume I can safely ignore it.
3. Software changes over time: even if you end up using a new library in a year or two, by that point the API may have changed. Time spent learning the current API would be wasted.

If you try to spend a few days—or even hours—on every intriguing new technology you hear about, you’re going to waste a lot of time.

The alternative: shallow breadth of knowledge

Most of the time you don’t actually need to use new tools and techniques. As long as you know a tool exists you’ll be able to learn more about it when you need to.

For example, there is a tool named Logstash that takes your logs and sends them to a central location. That’s pretty much all you have to remember about it, and it took you just a few seconds to read that previous sentence.

Maybe you’ll never use that information… or maybe one day you’ll need to get logs from a cluster of machines to a centralized location. At that point you’ll remember the name “Logstash”, look it up, and have the motivation to actually go read the documentation and play around with it.

This is also true when it comes to finding a new job. I was once asked in a job interview about the difference between NoSQL and traditional databases. At the time I’d never used MongoDB or any other NoSQL database, but I knew enough to answer satisfactorily. Being able to answer that question told the interviewer I’d be able to use that tool, if necessary, even if I hadn’t done it before.

Gaining breadth of knowledge

Learning about the existence of tools can be a fairly fast process. And since this knowledge will benefit your employer and you don’t need to spend significant time on it, you can acquire it during working hours.

You’re never actually working every single minute of your day, you always have some time when you’re slacking off on the Internet. Perhaps you’re doing so right now! You can use that time to expand your knowledge.

Here are a couple ways you can get pointers to new tools and techniques:

Newsletters

A great way to learn new tools and techniques are weekly email newsletters. There are newsletters on many languages and topics, from DevOps to PostgreSQL: here’s one fairly detailed list of potential newsletters you can sign up for.

Conferences and Meetups (you don’t have to go!)

Another good source of new tools and techniques are conferences and Meetups. Good conferences and Meetups will aim for a broad range of talks, on topics both new and classic.

But you don’t have to go to the conference or Meetup to benefit, or even watch a recording of the talks to learn something. Just skimming talk topics will give you a sense of what the community is talking and thinking about—and if something sounds particularly relevant to your interests you can spend the extra time to learn more.

Of course, if you can convince your employer to send you to a conference that’s even better: you’ll learn more, and you’ll do it on the company’s dime and time.

Your time is valuable—use it accordingly

There are only so many hours in the day, so many days in a year. That means you need to work efficiently, spending your limited time in ways that have the most impact:

1. Spend an hour a week learning about new tools, just enough to know when they might be useful.
2. Keep a record of these tools so you can find them when you need to: star them on GitHub, or add them your bookmarks or note-taking system.
3. Only spend the extra time and effort needed to gain more in-depth understanding once you actually need to use the tool. And when you do learn a new tool, do it at your job if you can.

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Tired of scrambling to get your job done?

If you were productive enough, you could take the afternoon off, confident you’d produced high value work. Not to mention having an easier time finding a new job when you need one.

Learn the secret skills of productive programmers.

The post Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ Camera Review: Maybe next generation appeared first on MobileSyrup.

After announcing tickets for their live WWDC show and judging their predictions for Apple's media event and breaking a score between Stephen and Myke, the guys share their impressions of the new AirPods, Apple News+ and more.

On this week's episode of Connected, we grade our predictions for Apple's media event and discuss some of the news related to services and AirPods. You can listen here.

Sponsored by:

• Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code CONNECTED at checkout for 10% off.
• Away: Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone. Get $20 off with the code ‘connected’.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

→ Source: relay.fm

We’ve had a number of surprises running the .INK domain name extension. Perhaps the biggest was that we got the target market wrong! What drew us to .INK was the creative nature of the word. Whatever you would be using it for, it would be an artistic, creative, and engaging brand. Even at its most literal application, such as for ink manufacturers or printers, those businesses supply the raw goods to make art happen. Ink is the medium and the fuel behind so much art, from poetry to painting.

Still, when we launched .INK, we thought our biggest user base would be tattoo artists. After all, not only is “ink” a slang-term for tattoos themselves but it is some of the most prevalent art that relies solely on ink. It is shareable, interesting, and an industry unto itself. We didn’t get that wrong – there are many tattoo artists and studios using .INK. What we didn’t expect though, was that they would be outnumbered by the writers!

Bonnie McDermid’s editing and publishing website, wordsmith.ink that helps you get your book done from beginning strategy stages to publication. She works to organize your ideas, edits and proofs your work, and so much more. Her focus on your writing was perfectly suited to a creative and self-explanatory domain name as she helps ink your book idea into a reality.

Yes, the most common application for a .INK domain name for a website surprised us. Did you think of writers, bloggers, poets, and storytellers when you were thinking of .INK? It’s okay if you did – we’re glad that this group was smarter than we were!

Tech Think is a blog about everything tech, living on techth.ink. The blog provides helpful tips and tricks to readers. It also plays host to articles on industry news and much more. Allister, the writer, provides all sorts of technical commentary. He uses the .INK domain name as a “domain hack” with the work “think” – rather than just an extension, the extension is part of his brand name.

What we know now about .INK is that those that find and match with this unique, new extension tend to love it. It’s a creative and evocative TLD, more fun and playful than many of the more literal new domain options. Perhaps that was our issue when we imagined tattooists as our biggest market was that we too were thinking too literally. It’s absolutely perfect that those that are using .INK in a more loosely creative way helped us cue into this creative spirit for the domain and the people that use it.

More and more of the creative process is digital, just consider how drafts are typed and how sketches happen on touch screens. Many of the writers on .INK are using their website and eBooks to promote their first work and look for a publisher. Ink, for them, is evocative of the process, even if their first readers will not hold their writing on an actual inked page. In that way, it’s poetic. The ink domain playfully and poetically references the historic art of writing even if the site is a blog, or the writer remains unpublished. The written word and printing and now digital distribution have all been monumental cultural achievements and .INK is a unique way to reference that. It is fun to see individual bloggers, writers, poets, and story-tellers create a new way that we can interact with “ink” and their words on .INK domain names.

Walking through the mall this morning I passed this illustration of what the new mall development will look like. I then crossed the 41st Ave and Cambie Street intersection to take a photo from the diagonally opposite corner for comparison purposes. You will note that the rendering adopts a much higher viewpoint than street level.

The rendering also eliminates the overhead wires for the 41st Avenue trolleybus.

Preparatory work for the development is already underway, hence the traffic control officer and the bollards in the street.

If you also follow me on flickr you will already have seen the following photos there. The exhibit is still open in the mall as part of the marketing effort for the condos.

Note the brewing vessels top centre.

The view below shows the proposed brewpub

This will not be like the usual mall food court. No franchisees allowed. Guest chefs from all over will be showing off their skills here.

This is a sample of the Green Walls that will be a feature of the new buildings.

In each Stack newsletter, we share a long mix we’re enjoying that week. We’ve collected them all on our new Mixes page, for times when you just want to sit back and listen. There are artist guest mixes, radio show archives, DJ sets, and more; categorized very roughly by energy (Up, Down, Weird, like our playlists). That’s over 100 hours of uninterrupted music. Perfect for your next cross-continent drive.

The examination to become a London cabby is possibly the most difficult test in the world — demanding years of study to memorize the labyrinthine city’s 25,000…

Bonanza at or below the rate of inflation @Sean_YYZ
By illegally following a streetcar on King Street, this doofus manages to block the crosswalk. But remember pedestr… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

mkalus shared this story from SPIEGEL ONLINE - Schlagzeilen.

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mkalus shared this story from piris_jc on Twitter.

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Daniel T.Willingham, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Mar 29, 2019

This is another article from what I previously described as the other side of the 'scientific evidence' debate. In this article Daniel Willingham looks at three proposed effects of digital technology - less memorization, flipped classroom and personalized learning - in order to argue "that the suggested education reforms are founded on a misunderstanding of the cognitive processes involved." What follows is (in my view) intellectually questionable. There isn't room here to break it down, but you can't prove a trend by citing a survey from 19 years ago, or cite a single paper to show that "college students attending a selective university use a feeble strategy" in search. Nor is it reasonable to cite Marissa Mayer to represent the position you are opposing, or to say it draws on a set of factors that hadn't been published yet.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Image via Todd Vaziri.

In a statement first reported by TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino, Apple has confirmed that AirPower, the wireless charger with support for multiple devices first announced in September 2017, has been cancelled.

“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.

On September 12, 2017, Apple unveiled the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, Apple Watch Series 3, Apple TV 4K, and related OS updates. Alongside the iPhone X’s introduction, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, presented a sneak peek at a new wireless charging mat Apple was developing, named AirPower, which could charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods simultaneously. At the time, Apple said the AirPower charger would be available in 2018.

In theory, AirPower, which was an Apple-patented technology, allowed an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods – which each have different charging needs – to be charged at the same time. While charging, the status of each device on the mat was supposed to be displayed on your iPhone. Those features, and the fact that the three devices did not need to be as precisely placed on the charger as other Qi chargers, were touted as the main benefits of the AirPower mat over Qi-based competitors.

As 2018 drew to a close and Apple kept quiet about the status of AirPower, the mystery surrounding the project left the press speculating about development struggles and suspicious appearances of AirPower on product boxes, trademark registration databases, iOS source code, and patent filings. Most recently, following the announcement of AirPods with a Qi wireless charging option (itself, in hindsight, a departure from the original announcement), a new image of AirPower was found hiding on Apple's servers; AirPower is also depicted and mentioned on the packaging of second-generation AirPods that Apple announced last week. In the past 18 months, AirPower became a recurring joke among Apple observers given the company's famous penchant for not pre-announcing unreleased products to avoid the kind of embarrassing cancellation that sealed AirPower's fate.

Hopefully, AirPower will be a learning opportunity for Apple, a company that traditionally prides itself on underpromising and overdelivering with products that surprise and delight customers. In this case, unfortunately, the only disappointing surprise is that we'll never get to experience a wireless charger with support for multiple Apple devices and deep integration with the iPhone's software.

Third-party chargers that promise AirPower-like functionality do exist today (personally, I'm considering this premium charging pad by Nomad), but they can't achieve the level of seamless integration and multi-device charging that set AirPower apart. And at this point, that's probably for the best.

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Freedom Mobile is making some changes to its wireless plans that might benefit subscribers, according to internal documents obtained by MobileSyrup.

Starting on Aril 4th, 2019, the Shaw-owned carrier will introduce its new ‘Freedom Nationwide’ plans.

Freedom Nationwide should make things easier for customers, as it does away with the ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ network monickers and merges several plan features across both networks.

Freedom has long offered customers lower-cost plans with the compromise of limited use outside of specific regional areas. For example, a Freedom user in the GTA would have full access to all features of their plan — such as data, picture messaging and more — as they’re in the ‘Home’ network.

However, if that same subscriber travels out of the GTA — say, to Uxbridge or Orillia, Ontario — their phone would switch to ‘Away,’ which runs on partner networks.

Starting April 4th, Freedom’s ‘Nationwide’ coverage will replace the Away coverage. Users will still be on partner networks, but things will work a little differently.

For one, subscribers will get to keep almost all their plan features. Currently, Freedom users on an Away network will see some texting options, such as picture and video messaging, removed. That’s no longer the case. Talk and text features will remain the same regardless if you’re on Freedom or Nationwide networks.

Additionally, Freedom is making changes to how customers access data on Nationwide networks. Previously, plans included a varying amount of Away data for use when not on the Home network.

While that’s not changing, Freedom will allow customers to use up their Nationwide data allotment on the Freedom network if they use all their Freedom data first. For example, if your plan has 5GB of Freedom data and 500MB of Nationwide data, if you use up all 5GB of Freedom data before your cycle resets, you’ll use up the 500MB of Nationwide data before Freedom starts throttling your plan.

What are these changes going to cost me?

The short answer is probably nothing.

According to the internal document, Freedom’s Data + Talk, Data and ‘Freedom’ plans aren’t changing in price. The only exception here is the company’s $25 CAD 1GB Data plan, which doesn’t appear in the document.

It appears new Freedom Prepaid options will replace that plan.

The first is a $14 per month ‘Freedom Nationwide Text’ plan with unlimited global text, picture, and video messaging. This plan doesn’t have a calling package, so users will pay $1.50 per minute for outgoing and incoming calls to Canada, the U.S. and internationally.

There’s also a $24 per month ‘Nationwide Talk + Text’ plan that’s the same as the $14 plan but with unlimited Canada-wide calling. Finally, there’s a ‘Nationwide Talk + Text + 1GB’ plan that adds 1GB of Freedom data to the offer.

All of these are compatible with Freedom’s $5 Digital Discount, meaning you can get a plan for as low as $9 per month.

The only other significant change in the internal document is to throttling.

Freedom’s Fair Usage policy outlines how the carrier will throttle users who go over their monthly allotment. Freedom doesn’t charge overage fees for customers who go over their data cap. Instead, it just slows things down.

If you’re on the Freedom network, the slowest Freedom will make your data is still 32Kbps download and 16Kbps upload. However, if you’re on Nationwide or U.S. networks, the slowest Freedom will throttle you is 1Kbps download and upload.

Further, if you sign up for one of the new Freedom Prepaid plans, you won’t have access to data outside of what’s included in your plan unless you purchase more.

If you need more data, it’ll cost you

The internal documents list three new ‘One-Time Use Packages’ that subscribers can purchase, which are compatible with the new Freedom Nationwide and Freedom Prepaid plans.

All three offer 1GB of data for $15. Further, the 1GB is valid for 30 days.

The three packages offer users either Freedom data, Nationwide data or Freedom Nationwide data. The latter is for the new plans, while the former options will work for grandfathered plans.

Finally, the document notes that all of Freedom’s core in-market rate plans will be available to both new and existing post and prepaid customers. The new Freedom Prepaid plans are only available to new and existing prepaid customers.

Existing customers can switch to any in-market plan as long as their account is active and current. However, Freedom notes that it may charge customers the remainder of their MyTab difference if they downgrade their plan to one with different MyTab eligibility.

These changes are set to go live April 4th, and all relevant details will be on Freedom Mobile’s website.

Freedom did not provide comment to MobileSyrup regarding the upcoming changes.

The post Freedom Mobile to introduce new ‘Nationwide’ coverage and prepaid plans appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Freedom Mobile has announced it will soon launch in several new cities across Canada.

On its website, the Shaw-owner carrier confirms that it is bringing its Big Gig plans and fast Extended Range LTE to the following Canadian cities:

• Lethbridge, Alberta
• Medicine Hat, Alberta
• Nanaimo, British Columbia
• Prince George, British Columbia

Freedom did not provide a specific launch date beyond “coming soon.”

The Big Gig plans offer customers several gigabytes of data on top of various talk and text service, starting at 5GB + talk plans for $50/month. Extended Range LTE, meanwhile, offers a better network that can reach farther and even penetrate walls for improved indoor coverage.

Source: Freedom Mobile

The post Freedom Mobile ‘coming soon’ to Prince George, Medicine Hat appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Apple has officially cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat.

The company shared the news on Friday in an official statement.

“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward,” said Apple senior vice president of hardware engineering in a statement emailed to TechCrunch.

Apple first announced AirPower at its 2017 iPhone X launch event. The company’s Phil Schiller said the accessory would be capable of simultaneously charging an Apple Watch, iPhone and AirPods charging case all at once.

Aside from the occasional product packaging misstep, in the time between when it first announced AirPower and now, Apple had been notoriously tightlipped about AirPower, sharing few updates on its launch status.

That said, as recently as last week, it appeared the company was on track to release AirPower in the near future. Most notably, the packaging of the new second-generation AirPods feature references to AirPower.

Most reports, including one published by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, suggested Apple experienced engineering issues related to the mat overheating.

Source: TechCrunch

The post Apple officially cancels AirPower appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Sony is planning to slash 50 percent of its smartphone division’s workforce by March 2020, according to a new report from Nikkei Asian Review.

The reported layoffs could see up to 2,000 Sony employees without a job, although some staff may be transferred to other departments. The shake-up is as part of the Japanese tech giant’s larger effort to reduce costs in the ever-saturated mobile space.

Overall, Sony’s smartphone division has struggled over the past several years to compete with market leaders like Samsung, Apple and Huawei.

As a result, Sony’s mobile market share now sits at a mere one percent, down from more than three percent in 2010, according to research portal Statista. Further, Sony’s worldwide smartphone sales for fiscal 2018 are projected to come in at a paltry 6.5 million units — down 50 percent from the previous fiscal year and one-sixth that of five years prior.

Sony isn’t abandoning smartphones entirely, however. The company launched its latest pair of mid-range smartphones, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus, in the U.S., although there’s been no word yet on Canadian availability.

Additionally, Sony has its upcoming Xperia 1 flagship, which focuses on 4K HDR media. A release date has yet to be confirmed, however. At the same time, Sony is developing a 5G phone, a prototype of which was shown off to Mobile World Congress attendees last month.

In the meantime, Sony has turned to its music, film and gaming divisions to generate the majority of its profits. In particular, Sony’s most recent quarterly earnings report for Q3 2018 revealed that its music business helped drive the company to a record-high quarterly profit of $3.46 billion USD.

Source: Nikkei Asian Review Via: Engadget

The post Sony planning to cut half of its smartphone division by 2020: report appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Unsurprisingly, a recent iFixit teardown indicates that Apple’s second-generation AirPods are just as difficult to repair as the first-generation version of the earbuds.

Everything from taking apart the AirPods, to popping open their charging case, is a complicated process that requires heat, rubbing alcohol and slicing plastic, according to iFixit.

That said, iFixit does mention that the second-gen AirPods new wireless charging case is more durable than its predecessor thanks to an improved hinge and a motherboard covered in water-resistant goop.

The battery featured in the new AirPods is also the same size as the one included in their predecessor, coming in at just 93mAh. The same can be said about the charging case and its 398mAh capacity battery.

In the end, iFixit gave Apple’s new AirPods a rare zero out of ten repair rating, indicating that it really isn’t possible for the headphones to be repaired in any way.

To put the second-generation AirPods in perspective, iFixit also gave Apple’s first Bluetooth earbuds a zero out of 10 rating. The publication then went on to describe them as disposable tech that is too difficult to repair effectively.

For a complete look at iFixit’s second-gen AirPods teardown, follow this link.

Image credit: iFixit 

Source: iFixit

The post Apple’s second-generation AirPods are just as difficult to repair as their predecessor appeared first on MobileSyrup.

It looks like Google is following up the Home Hub with a 10-inch HD display with Nest Branding.

The leaked smart display is called the Nest Home Hub Max, suggesting that it will take components from Nest and the massive Google Home Max speaker.

The Google page that leaked the device says:

• “Keep an eye on things at home with Nest Hub Max’s built-in Nest Cam and get motion and sound alerts.”
• “Make video calls with Duo to friends and family on Nest Hub Max.”
• “Everything looks and sounds great on Nest Hub max’s 10-inch HD screen and stereo speakers.”

One of the largest issues with the regular Home Hub is that its integrated speaker are lacking in sound output. Therefore combining a smart display with Google Home Max type speakers should solve that issue.

Note that the Canadian version of the Google Store doesn’t feature the new product. It’s only on the U.S. store –you may have to go to the bottom of the page and change your region.

Source: Google Store (U.S.)

The post Google leaks new smart display called Nest Hub Max with 10-inch display appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Rogers subscribers who own the Galaxy S8, S8+ or the Note 8 are set to get Android 9 Pie on the first day of April.

Samsung’s version of Android Pie is called One UI, and it adds quite a few new features and a visual overhaul to the South Korean tech giant’s first-party apps. You can find out more about the new user interface here. 

Notably, the Note 8 is also getting support for voice over LTE (VoLTE) roaming.

On the same day, a handful of other Android devices on Rogers are getting the March and April security updates. For example, Google’s Pixel phones are all getting the April update. Further, the Galaxy S7 and S7+ are receiving the March Android security update as well.

Source: Rogers

The post Samsung Galaxy S8 series and Note 8 on Rogers to get Android Pie April 1st appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The other day I read about another new Mozilla project that decided to go with GitHub issues instead of our Bugzilla installation (BMO). The author’s arguments make a lot of sense: GitHub issues are much simpler and faster, and if you keep your code in GitHub, you get tighter integration. The author notes that a downside is the inability to file security or confidential bugs, for which Bugzilla has a fine-grained permission system, and that he’d just put those (rare) issues on BMO.

mkalus shared this story from iandunt on Twitter.

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