So, the news of the week, or at least as I write this, is the release of the new Apple iPhone range. There are three models ranging from the 5.8 and 6.1 inch models up to the XS Max at 6.5 inches. The latter is a real departure from the early days of Apple declaring that no one needed a large-screen phone. Compared to the latest phone specs across other brands, the features in the new iPhone range are not so special. They do all have very special prices and the bottom of the line starts at US$749 (Thai prices are TBA) and goes up from there topping out at $1449, which would make the whole range easily the most expensive phones per feature on the market today. For this you get no fingerprint reader, no headphone jack, average pixel density and cameras, no expansion memory port but dual SIMs, wireless charging and face detection. Even my most ardent Apple-lover friend will not be forking out their cash for those kinds of prices. I don't expect this range to sell anywhere near as well as earlier models. Seriously, what were they thinking?
A couple of weeks back, owners of phones running Android 9 Pie found that their software's Battery Saver feature had been switched on, but not by the owners. It was occurring when the battery was close to full, so some thought it must have been a bug in the latest minor update. Turns out it was Google. Google was testing some battery saving features that they "mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended". Mull on that for a moment. Google changed the phone settings for a number of real-world users. For many the impact would have been minor though it turned off location services when the display was off which might have affected say the recording of an active run's tracking, important to an athlete. It also delayed some notifications that might have affected some users. Apple has had a similar capability for a decade, so Google having the capability makes sense. That their test code made it out so easily into the real world, however, should not have occurred. That all of this happened without any notification on the target phones is more disturbing.
The leaked video from Google showing their political bias will not make any new friends for Silicon Valley, but it does explain why they were so happy to help China censor their content. The President of the United States is starting up a multi-Attorney-General task force to investigate the social media platform issues. Over in Europe, they have solved the problem by passing resolution 13, which essentially negates the fair use laws and hands over total control to the EU. This will kill off any smaller to medium-sized businesses that make their money commenting on the state of things, as only the larger organisations will be able to track and pay for any usage. This will also effectively kill off memes in Europe. Might as well also cross off the concept of free speech in Western Europe.
I'm putting together a new PC, more in this in the next issue when I have it built and at home.
Net Neutrality. Just those two words sound great. An open, free, politically neutral internet controlled by no one. Insert sound of screeching to a halt here. What it really means is that if implemented a government or governments will control the internet. The word "neutral" here means that the government regulates the internet like a public utility. The US under Obama tried this by using the FCC to impose rules and regulations on consumers, they just did it, no consultation. It came down to providers being required to charge everyone the same price, no matter how much bandwidth they used. Netflix and Google use about half of the available bandwidth in the US. They fought back against the idea that perhaps they should pay more, and "net neutrality" was born along with a great marketing exercise that was by created by the biggest users. All to fight against the ISPs censoring them. This is of course a great example of irony, but without the humorous part. Thankfully this was all reversed in 2018 to get the government out of the way and let tech do its thing. If you hear the term in the future in your country, be very concerned.
There have been a number of hacks over the past few weeks I haven't written about, because, well, they're no longer news. I read an article about being able to use Wi-Fi to count the number of people in a room, nothing scary about that. Microsoft is still looking to take over the computer world with its cloud. The latest in this attempt is replacing IT Admins with something called the Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD) service. Uber posted a men-only advertisement on Facebook and got into trouble. So, all in all a fairly standard couple of weeks.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
