The week that was (TWTW) takes a look back at the week’s most prominent tech stories from around the world.
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In the week that was May 27th to June 2nd, 2018:
- Amazon blocks Australians from their US store
- Apple releases iOS 11.4 with AirPlay 2
- Beem It is launched for instant fund transfers in Australia
- PUBG is suing Epic
- Teasers for Anthem, Fallout 76 & Assassin’s Creed ahead of E3
Intro
Hey everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:
May 27th to June 2nd, 2018.
Stories
Amazon has announced that starting July 1st Australians will no longer be able to access the US version of their website. In addition to that, for those who skirt the website’s geofencing rules it will reject an Australian shipping address leaving no way to purchase directly from the US giant.
At the same time the company will begin collecting GST in accordance with the Australian government’s requirement for online international retailers.
The combined changes have left many Australian’s furious with the local offerings from Amazon’s Australian store four or five times the price when compared to its US store.
Apple released iOS 11.4 with a slew of long awaited features and just ahead of the unveiling of iOS 12 at next weeks World Wide Developers Conference.
The update finally brings the long awaited AirPlay 2 multi-room audio streaming solution to the platform after it first being announced nearly a year ago.
In addition to AirPlay 2 you can now pair two HomePod units to have them operate in stereo as well as Apple’s Messages platform gaining the ability to sync across all your devices by using iCloud.
Messages in iCloud hasn’t worked out quite as well as Apple would’ve hoped however with many users reporting that enabling the function has deleted their entire message history. Apple are yet to acknowledge or release a fix so enable the function at your own risk for now.
Beem It, the instanteous payment startup officially launched its app this week. Formed by three of Australia’s largest banks, CommBank, NAB & Westpac, the startup makes use of the EFTPOS and Visa Debit platforms to instantenously send funds between two people in a nicer, more socially driven UI.
Similar to the popular Venmo app in the US, Beem It will require everyone to register before it becomes useful and as an incentive to do so are giving any new customers $5 for doing just that.
PUBG Corp, makers of the wildly popular Player Unknown’s Battleground game is suing Epic, the makers of another, even more so popular game Fortnite over alleged copyright infringement.
The crux of the lawsuit is intellectual property theft with PUBG claiming Epic stole the idea for Fortnite, which when first released was an entirely different game, from them.
To be hear in a South Korean court where PUBG parent company Bluehole is incorporated the suit is being largely seen as frivolous and almost impossible to prove.
And sticking with games the pre-E3 hype train took it up a notch with bombshells coming from three major publishers. EA gave us a teaser for a trailer of the hotly anticipated MMO Anthem, which will be on show at EA Play in Los Angeles just prior to E3.
Ubisoft took to Twitter to give us a five second glimpse of the new, and totally unexpected, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, telling us to tune in for more after the leak of a keychain of all things forced them to show their hand.
And finally Bethesda teased out the reveal of a new Fallout title called Fallout 76 with a 24 hour live stream of literally nothing but a stand-by image & a figurine. The game is expected to be a different one from the normal Fallout series along the lines of an online RPG akin to DayZ.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
Go check out the website if you haven’t lately. There’s a review of God of War as well as a look at Intel’s new Hades Canyon NUC mini PC.
A quick shout and thank you to our amazing patrons. To Marius, Fred, Simon & Aaron your support means everything. Those guys and all our patrons will be entered automatically into our first Patreon giveaway this week but you could sneak in too by joining. Find out more at reckoner.com.au/patreon
Have a great week and bye for now.
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