Amazon held a “surprise” product launch overnight showcasing a bunch of updates to existing Alexa products as well as introducing some very interesting new ones.

The Echo Dot was the first cab off the rank, it’s got a new material exterior not unlike the rest of the Echo speaker family and now looking very, very similar to the Google Mini. The new version remains at A$79 but has reduced its microphone count from 7 to 4 but from all reports it hasn’t affected its ability to pick up your voice.

The Echo Show, which remains at A$349 has a new exterior design and looks a little more “home friendly” instead of tech put in your home, if you know what I mean. It’s also got a new set of speakers in it, which apparently sound a lot better but YouTube still block it and Amazon’s video offerings suck so “meh”?

The Echo Plus, is the least exciting of the updates. It’s getting a new set of speakers and remains at A$229.

A new Echo Sub was announced. Looking like a giant ottoman this guy pairs with a single or pair of Echo Plus speakers to provide some much needed chest thumping bass to your home.

Amazon not having the best reputation for sound quality in their smart speakers appear to be making a real play for the entertainment space by updating all their speakers and introducing the sub at the acceptable price point A$199.

Away from their speakers they also announced a bunch of home appliance products that integrate with Alexa in different ways.

A new Echo Link brings your existing receiver or amp into the Alexa fold. Whilst an Echo Link Amp adds a 60W 2-channel amplifier to the equation. Amazon further copying the cohort Sonos in the home entertainment space. There’s no word on Australian pricing or availability for these as yet.

A new US$30 wall clock from Amazon is one of the more quirky product announcements Amazon made. The clock looks like any other and instead of having Alexa built in like you think it might, it simply display active timers you’ve set around the face of the clock. Weird?

Lastly the US$60 Alexa enabled Microwave from Amazon similarly to the clock doesn’t allow you to ask your Microwave what the weather is but it will let you tell it how long you want it to microwave something for.

A dedicated “Ask Alexa” button on the front invokes the voice assistant to wait for your command or you can bark orders at it as you might a normal Echo speaker. The microwave will understand bits and pieces like “frozen vegetables” and other microwave-related phrases but requires you to have a fully-fledged Echo device to pass up the request to the Amazon cloud to process and does not have any in-built Wi-Fi or ethernet.

Source: Amazon: The Echo family

John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones…

In case you haven’t heard of “interactive life insurance” before, it’s a new policy type that’s already prolific in Britain and South Africa with inroads now being made into the US.

The policies are sold as a theoretical “win-win” with policy holders incentivised to be healthier and fitter by monitoring their exercise & habits whilst the issuers pay less in claims should you live longer.

The realities and fear of the policy type is that the reported data allows insurance companies to potentially pick and choose whom they offer policies to even further, whilst raising premiums for those not adhering to potentially mandated reported data.

Source: Strap on the Fitbit: John Hancock to sell only interactive life insurance

Tesla Inc. is under investigation by the Justice Department over public statements made by the company and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, according to two people familiar with the matter. The criminal probe is running alongside a previously reported civil inquiry by securities regulators.

All of good ole Elon’s tweeting work has come undone in spectacular fashion.

Last month the Tesla CEO said he had the funding to make the company private and would do so should its stock hit US$420.

The SEC launched an investigation into the CEO’s claims who quickly abandoned the privatisation efforts, which earned the company a very nice little price bump.

Today we learn the DOJ has commenced a criminal inquiry requesting documents from Tesla whom have complied. Shareholders, not particularly fond of the idea that their company is being investigated have jumped ship in droves, the stock dropping 4.4% in today’s trading alone.

Source: Tesla Facing U.S. Criminal Probe Over Elon Musk Statements – Bloomberg

iPhone XS. With an all-screen design. Super Retina display in two sizes. TrueDepth camera. Face ID. Dual-camera system. And A12 Bionic chip.

Holy [email protected]#k the new iPhones are expensive.

Its lowest capacity (and ultimately useless) 64GB version starts at A$1,629 for the Xs & A$1,799 for the larger Xs Max.

Next is a 256GB that will set you back A$1,879 for the Xs and a casual A$2,049 for the Xs Max and finally the gob smacking 512GB version for A$2,199 & A$2,369 respectively. Jebus-H-Christ.

What does spending the price of used car get you? Well not a lot more different to last year’s iPhone X to be honest. Of course the Xs “Max” includes a larger 6.5″ OLED display in a bigger enclosure to the Xs and that means a larger battery too.

The phones are faster, they’re using Apple’s new A12 SoC, which is the world’s first 7nm chip. It’s GPU component is reportedly 50% faster than it’s predecessor the A11 and the CPU side of things is more efficient and includes something called a “Neural Engine” that Apple claims to bring real-time machine learning to the iPhone. Scary?

The rumoured dual-SIM came to fruition… in China. They’ll be getting two SIM trays in their new iPhone Xs’ while the rest of the world will have to settle for one and an inbuilt eSIM, so we kinda get it too.

Lastly the camera has seen some love but it’s nothing ground breaking. I’d argue it’s more in the processing side of things with an upgraded Image Signal Processor that works with the aforementioned Neural Engine for betting image processing.

Putting that all aside Apple also announced the iPhone Xr. This guy is essentially exactly the same as the new Xs but comes with a 6.1″ LCD screen, single lens rear camera instead of dual and a metal, glass-free enclosure. It’s also significantly cheaper with 64GB, 128GB & 256GB options available for A$1,229, A$1,299 & A$1,479 respectively.

Source: iPhone XS – Apple (AU)