Tech News Roundup for October 19, 2020
Here are a few things I found interesting over what was a very quiet weekend in the technology news space.
Google Announces Updates for Smart Displays
There are many excellent smart displays that run on Google software. These take the idea of a smart speaker like a Google Home or Amazon Echo and add a screen to it, which can add some nice visual cues. When you ask a smart display to start a timer, for example, it can show you the timer, instead of a regular smart speaker relying on you to ask it how long is left. The Google displays can also show photos from your Google photos collection, which is my personal favourite feature of the Nest Hub that is on my kitchen counter.
Google today has announced some useful updates to its smart displays. Some of them are useful but not world changing, like better displaying of information on the screen when you swipe on it, giving more information density. But the feature that I think could be most important is the addition of multi account support. This allows Google smart displays in households with more than one person to function properly for each person. By recognizing a user’s voice, it can provide the correct calendar information, pictures, and account data specific to that person. Considering these are almost always shared devices in common areas of the home, this is a really good update that I think many people will appreciate.
YouTube Music Has an Apple Watch App… but not a WearOS App
This is one of the many examples that shows Google’s lack of focus as a company. I’m generally a fan of Google Services, and do generally prefer Andrfoid to iOS, but sometimes Google drives me crazy. Last week I talked about how Youtube Music on iOS and iPad OS supported Apple’s Airplay but not Google’s own Chromecast streaming standard, and now we have yet another example. An update to Youtube Music on iOS rolled out that added an Apple Watch app. While it was always possible to control playback from an Apple Watch, the dedicated watch app allows for more granular control, and also offers standalone use so the app can be used to stream music when not connected to a phone. This is really nice, and no one should be sad Google added it.
What is infuriating is that Google hasn’t rolled out a watch app for its own platform, WearOS. No one Is saying that Google shouldn’t offer these features to iPhone or iPad users, but the fact that they offer them to those users but not the users of their own platforms is mind numbing. Google’s rollout of YouTube Music has been terrible, and this only adds to the pile.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/16/21518580/youtube-music-apple-watch-app-wear-os-wearable-problems
SpaceX is Making Rocket Launches Boring
This is an interesting read on how SpaceX has gotten so good at launching re-usable rockets and how their launch cadence has improved to the point that the launch of a Falcon 9 is now kind of boring, but in a good way. Sure, there will be missions that are more interesting than others, like when SpaceX takes humans into space on the Crew Dragon. But for the more “average” launches, SpaceX is trying to make the idea of launching something into space as trivial as transporting cargo via airplane… and they’re kind of succeeding.