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 September 9th to September 15th, 2018:
- Apple introduces the iPhone Xs, Xs Max & Xr
- More Apple with the Apple Watch Series 4
- Nintendo Direct unveils Luigi’s Mansion 3 & more
- Google kills off Inbox
- Teslas can be easily stolen
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:
September 9th to September 15th, 2018.
Stories
Unless you were living under a rock this week the likelihood is that you already know Apple announced its latest iPhones this week.
The new phones come baked in a variety of colours and sizes but ultimately have the same ingredients, the most important being Apple’s latest smartphone SoC brain the A12.
The iPhone Xs is the successor to last year’s X, it will now also be available in a 6.5″ OLED version Apple are calling the Xs Max. These range in price from A$1,629 for a 64GB Xs up to a crazy $2,369 for the 512GB Xs Max.
To appeal to those of you not having the disposal budget of a shitty used-car Apple have introduced a budget version of the X they’re calling the “Xr”. The Xr is almost identical to the Xs the only differences being the use a 6.1″ LCD screen instead of OLED and the removal of the barely used (or known about) 3D Touch. The iPhone Xr has a far more reasonable price tag and starts at A$1,229.
The iPhone Xs is available for pre-order immediately and shipping on October 21st. The Xr is available for pre-order on October 19th and is shipping October 26th.
In addition to the phones Apple also unveiled Series 4 of their popular Apple Watch. The new version introduces an ECG to the watch that combined with a proprietary algorithm has received FDA approval to act a detection device for heart attacks. Sadly that feature is only approved to be used in the US and will be locked elsewhere for now but there’s more to the watch announcement than that.
The Series 4 versions are larger than previous Apple Watches moving up to 40mm and 44mm. A new display is now virtually bezel free and includes a new CPU that is supposedly twice as fast and an accelerometer that will detect you falling and can even call for help.
The Apple Watch Series 4 is available to pre-order immediately starting at A$599 and ships September 21st.
Outside the Apple bubble Nintendo held their earthquake delayed Nintendo Direct this week and it was definitely worth the wait. Fan favourite Luigi’s Mansion was teased as the next first-party title to be getting the Switch treatment. Details amount to little more than the announcement it’s coming but that’s enough for most given the next biggest reveal that Animal Crossing will finally be hitting the Switch in the new year.
On top of that we saw a release date for Civ6, coming November 16th as well as Diablo 3 on November 2nd. City Skylines was also announced for the platform, that one’s available immediately.
Lastly Nintendo also revealed more details on their Nintendo Online Service, which launches next week on September 19th. The thing kind of looks like a hot mess and using it will set you back US$30/year.
Google has announced that it’s alternative email application “Inbox” will be discontinued in the coming months. Released four years ago Inbox’s most popular features have been slowly migrated to Google’s mainstream Gmail offerings and with the iOS version of the Inbox app not seeing an update for many months the writing was on the wall.
Google will support the app through to March 2019.
And finally Tesla owners got a scare this week. It was revealed that Tesla made before June of this year were using a key fob with weak encryption. Researchers notified Tesla of their ineffective wireless encryption that could easily be hacked with less than $600 of off the shelf equipment.
White-hat hackers demonstrated not only entering a Tesla vehicle and driving away in it in just a few seconds.
Whilst not confirming the vulnerability Tesla have released a software update to vehicles that enables a PIN to be set for an added barrier of protection.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
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On the website you can check out our feature on why not having the latest iPhone isn’t the end of the world and for your listening pleasure the big show has a new episode where James, Ant & myself break down the Apple announcement and our feelings on it much more detail.
Have a great week and bye for now.
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