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 June 3rd to June 9th, 2018:
- Apple WWDC announcements
- Sonos Beam soundbar announced
- Microsoft buys GitHub for US$7.5b
- Melbourne Esports Open event announced by Vic gov
- NBN Co blames gamers for network issues
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:
June 3rd to June 9th, 2018.
Stories
Apple held their World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week to showcase their upcoming operating systems iOS 12 and macOS Mojave.
iOS 12 will gain a range of new features however digital health appears to be the feature de jour at the moment, Apple spending a significant amount of time to the upcoming feature Screen Time that will tell you how long you’ve used your phone & in what ways.
macOS is largely receiving a performance update with some minor new features such as a dark mode and redesigned app store. Apple will also use the update to begin the process of unifying both iOS and macOS migrating some previously iOS only apps to the new cross-platform architecture.
WatchOS also received some love with the ability to listen to podcasts as well as tvOS receiving support for Dolby Atmos.
Sonos took the wraps off their new smart soundbar Beam this week. The new soundbar is somewhat of an upgrade to Sonos’ play bar speaker with the integration of far-field microphones and the ability to interact with multiple voice assistants, similar to the Sonos One speaker.
Available in July the new Beam soundbar will connect to your TV via HDMI and provides three channels of sound for A$599.
Microsoft has acquired GitHub in a deal worth a lazy US$7.5b. Developers have had mixed reactions, many have fled the service to rival GitLab out of fear for its new owners while others appear non-plussed.
Ironically for those shifting to GitLab the service is somewhat Microsoft related being run on the Microsoft Azure platform.
The Victorian government announced a new esports tournament is to take place in Melbourne later in the year. Esports has seen a meteoroic rise in recent years and it would appear Melbourne plans on being the sports capital of the country in both physical and digital worlds.
The new event dubbed Melbourne Esports Open is being run by ESL and will take place over the weekend prior to the AFL grand final at Olympic Park.
And finally NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow has put his foot in it blaming gamers for causing congestion predominately on the fixed wireless portion of the NBN.
Naturally this caused a minor outrage amongst with gaming using significantly less bandwidth than the average viewing hour on Netflix to which Morrow back-peddled significantly.
Sadly the back peddling was made up of even more ridiculousness with NBN stating that “no one designs a network to where everybody uses it at the exact same time” and pinning the blame on unforeseen innovations such as the iPhone for ruining network planning.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
You can always stop by the website where this week we have our Intel NUC 8 Hades Canyon review as well as a look at the Street Fighter 30th anniversary collection.
A quick shout and thank you to our amazing patrons. To Jeremy, Jonathan, Simon & Aaron, thank you so much for your support. 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
I’ll be in the US for E3 next week and then taking a well deserved week off so until I return, have a great week and bye for now.
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