TWTW: October 28th – November 3rd, 2018

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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Lastly you can find a full transcript of this week’s episode below.

In the week that was October 14th to October 20th, 2018:


Intro

Hello everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:

October 28th to November 3rd, 2018.

Stories

Apple dominated the headlines this week after holding an event in Brooklyn where Lana del Ray took to the stage to celebrate the resurrection of two long forgotten product families: The MacBook Air and Mac Mini.

The Mac Mini, which was last updated four years ago, now comes with a refreshed suite of modern i3, i5 or i7 CPUs, up to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. They can also be tricked out with 10Gb Ethernet, which appealing to those using Minis in a server capacity may enjoy.

The new MacBook Air also receives some long overdue updates but in doing so will only be available in a single 13″ version that is almost identical to Apple’s current 12″ MacBook offering. Differences lie in the inclusion of TouchID and an extra USB-C port but to say the MacBook lineup is messy at the moment would be an understatement.

Both the Mini & the Air are available for pre-order now, shipping in the coming week.


The true centrepiece of Apple’s soiree was of course the introduction of the new iPad Pro. Decked out with Apple’s latest A12x chip the new Pro removes the home button now mimicking the iPhone lineup and includes FaceID.

Surprisingly (well to me anyway) the rumours were true with Pro marking the first mobile device from Apple to replace the proprietary lightning connector with a standard USB-C one instead. The move allows the Pro the ability to potentially connect with other devices and potentially does away with dongle hell.

Alongside the Pro Apple showed off the new Apple Pencil which similar to the iPad has undergone a more squared off redesign and finally put a magnet in them both so they clip together instead of having nowhere to sit.

Both the new 12.9″ and 11″ iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil are available to order now and shipping next week.


Fighting for attention or perhaps hiding amongst the announcements RED’s Hydrogen One smartphone hit the market with reviews panning the phone’s supposed “holographic” display.

Repeatedly described as blurry, bulky and underwhelming the US$1300 smartphone has met heavy criticism across the board in its quiet release, which at this point has no accessories to take advantage of its proprietary connector on the phone’s rear.


Big Blue, AKA IBM, has bought itself into the Linux world at the cost of a lazy US$34b!! Red Hat Enterprise Linux has now entered the IBM fold allowing the company of old to compete in the land of cloud-computing new.

Many are fearful Red Hat could be interfered with, similarly to the fears when Oracle acquired open source based Java & MySQL years ago. Thankfully nothing has come of that to date and the hopes is the same can be said of Red Hat in years to come.


And finally WhatsApp has succumb to Facebook’s monetisation demons. Speaking at a conference in India this week WhatsApp VP Chris Daniels told the assembly that WhatsApp would be introducing targeted ads into the app’s popular “Status” area.

The introduction of ads to the platform contradicts statements made in 2016 when bought by Facebook that it would remain an ad-free communication tool.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t turn into the garbage pile that is Messenger today.

Outro

And that’s it for another week!

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We’re giving away the very cool and handy GL.iNet travel router this month. You can read a review of it on the website and enter the competition by heading over to reckoner.com.au/win.

In addition to that Patreon supporters got the latest episode of “I don’t quite know” featuring the wonderful Mr. Tom Merritt last week. If you’re not a Patreon supporter and would like to listen to this and other episodes of the exclusive podcast you can do so by heading over to reckoner.com.au/patreon.

Have a great week and bye for now.