Here are a few of the stories I found interesting over the last couple days.
Apple Blocks App Security Update After Promising not to Block App Security Updates
Apple just can’t help itself. A few months after the App Store debacles that lead to Apple facing antitrust investigations in the US, the EU, Australia and others, the company is once again facing some controversy. It blocked a security update to the ProtonVPN app in the app store, because there was one sentence in the description of the App that Apple said violated its app store policy. Apple said it would no longer block security updates when there was an app store policy dispute, so this is yet another bad look for the company.
Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 780G Processor
Last year’s Snapdragon 765G was in a lot of mid tier phones, including Google’s own Pixel 5. It offered a cheaper alternative to the very expensive Snapdragon 865. It wasn’t as fast, but did the job for most people. This year’s Snapdragon 780G aims to offer the same cost effectiveness while increasing performance. Qualcomm says the 780G will be close in performance to last year’s 865, which should make this a popular choice for that mid tier of phones again.
Fire At Japanese Chip Fabrication Facility Makes Shortages Worse
Already facing severe silicon shortages around the world, a fire at a fab in Japan has taken it offline for up to a month. As a direct result of this, GM and Hynudai are being forced to suspend some vehicle production. There just isn’t enough capacity to meet demand around the world, and when a fab is forced to stop production for any reason, it has huge ripple effects. This is a situation that may not get better until at least 2022.
Dyson’s new $900 Vacuum Uses Lasers to Show You How Dirty Your Floor is
For some reason, Dyson feels that it needs to show us how dirty our floors are with it’s new V15 vacuum. Not only does the vacuum use lasers to illuminate dirt, dust, dog hair, etc, it can connect to an app that will actually quantify what the vacuum picked up was.
I don’t need an app to tell me what the vacuum picks up. It’s always 90% dog hair, at least in this house.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22327796/dyson-v15-detect-vacuum-lasers-cleaning-dust-sensors