Important Note

Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.

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    Amazon Grows Self-Serve Tools for Advertisers (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Amazon Announces Multi-Room Audio Through Echo, Developer Tools (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Apple Adds Accenture as Latest Enterprise Partner for iOS (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Apple Reportedly At Odds with Movie Studios Over Pricing 4K Movies (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Amazon Struggles to Gain Market Share in China, With Prime Lacking Appeal (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Uber Stops Tracking User Locations After Dropoffs (Aug 29, 2017)

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    Sony Discounts PlayStation VR Gear by $50 (Aug 29, 2017)

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    ★ Google Previews ARCore, Its Response to Apple’s ARKit for Android Phones (Aug 29, 2017)

    Google today announced ARCore, an equivalent to Apple’s ARKit tools for developers to create AR experiences on Android phones. Importantly, it’s not tied to the latest version of the Android operating system but rather is being implemented on a device-by-device basis, with Google’s own Pixel and Samsung’s Galaxy S8 the first devices to support it, with the latter running Nougat rather than Oreo. There are two ways to look at this announcement, given the timing: on the one hand, it looks like a response to ARKit and the massive positive buzz that’s received since it was announced in June; on the other, it’s a natural outgrowth of the work Google’s done with its much higher end Tango AR framework in the last few years, and that’s certainly how Google’s pitching it. I think the reality given the speed with which this has been released is that this was something Google was working on pre-ARKit but has accelerated in light of the ARKit launch.

    Its blog post headline is “Augmented reality at Android scale” and you can read that one of two ways: on the one hand, as a counterpoint to ARKit, which runs at the somewhat smaller iOS scale, but on the other as an acknowledgement that – interesting though Tango is as a platform – it was never going to achieve true Android scale. The rollout plans here are a little vague – Google hopes its “preview” of ARCore will hit 100 million devices sometime this winter, which is likely a fraction of the iOS devices that will support ARKit by that time, but there’s potential for broad rollout of this platform to most recent premium Android devices over the next couple of years. That’s likely short of true Android scale (2 billion plus phones) but would likely hit the devices where it’s most relevant, which are those that compete more directly with the iPhone, though Apple will enjoy a year or two of significantly greater adoption before Android starts to catch up.

    At this point, it’s hard to see Tango as anything other than a time-consuming and expensive failure in its own right, but it’s clearly allowed Google to learn a lot which can now be applied to ARCore and therefore be much more useful and widely available. Between Apple and Google’s launches, it’s clearer than ever that smartphone AR will be by far the largest chunk of the overall AR/VR spectrum, and we should see some really interesting implementations over the next few months.

    via Google


    Daily Podcast Episode 45 – August 28, 2017 (Aug 28, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 28 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    DJI Drones’ Security Backdoors Cause Concerns in Military, Commercial Circles (Aug 28, 2017)

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    Facebook Disables Advertising for Sites That Repeatedly Share Fake News Links (Aug 28, 2017)

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    Google Starts Branding Google-Fork Android Devices as Certified (Aug 28, 2017)

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    Amazon’s Whole Foods Price Drops Affect Relatively Few Items, Can Be Steep (Aug 28, 2017)

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    Sonos FCC Filing Suggests Voice-Controlled Speaker is Coming Soon (Aug 28, 2017)

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    Microsoft Offers Additional Details on Mixed Reality Headsets (Aug 28, 2017)

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    ★ Uber Expected to Name Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi as New CEO (Aug 28, 2017)

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    ★ Fitbit Pre-Announces Fitbit Ionic, Its Second Smartwatch, Due in October (Aug 28, 2017)

    Fitbit has finally announced its second smartwatch, the Fitbit Ionic, following the launch of the Fitbit Blaze in May last year. At the time, Fitbit described the Blaze as a “smart fitness watch” but it seems to want everyone to forget that designation now as it launches the Ionic and wants to frame it as its first entry in this space. To be sure, when it launches, this device will have an app store, something the Blaze didn’t have, but it’s far from certain that there will be anything meaningful in it. One reason Fitbit is pre-announcing the device two months ahead of launch is to get developers going, while the other is surely to get out ahead of Apple’s third set of Watch hardware, which will be announced in a couple of weeks. Based on what we know so far, the Ionic looks very similar on paper to the Apple Watch in several respects: it has GPS, contactless payments, it’s swim proof, stores and plays music, provides personalized fitness coaching, and so on.

    But on paper is about the only place it does look like the Apple Watch – the Ionic is very much in the design tradition of Fitbit’s other devices: angular and industrial looking, with garish colors an optional extra. It hasn’t published the dimensions of the device, but at least a couple of shots in its promotional video make it look enormous, especially for wearing in bed. That’s important, because multi-day battery life and eventual ability to track sleep apnea are among the very few differentiators here against the Apple Watch, and if it’s uncomfortable to wear at night, none of that really matters.

    We’ll have to wait and see all the details in October, but based on what we’re seeing today, my guess is that the Fitbit Ionic will sell maybe a couple of million units, or roughly ten percent of Fitbit’s annual device sales, over the first year, maybe slightly more if the third party app ecosystem is stronger than I’m expecting. At those numbers, it’ll barely make a dent in the overall smartwatch market, which is dominated by Apple, with Samsung in second place and other Android devices in third, though it might provide a boost to Fitbit’s ASP, which is currently around a hundred dollars. I would guess it’ll mostly appeal to existing Fitbit users who admire its aesthetic, and will likely do better among Android users who have relatively few other compelling options than among iPhone owners. Fitbit today also announced wireless sports headphones called Flyer, which will retail for $130 and be available online right away: these are a sign that Fitbit recognizes its lack of an ecosystem is going to be an increasingly big challenge going forward given its lack of integration with either Android or iOS, and it therefore needs to build its own.

    via Fitbit


    Daily Podcast Episode 44 – August 25, 2017 (Aug 25, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 25 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    Microsoft Sees Strong Xbox One X Pre-orders, Discontinues Xbox One Sales (Aug 25, 2017)

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    Facebook Hires Former NYT Public Editor as Consultant to Improve Transparency (Aug 25, 2017)

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