https://techlife.app/tag/Google https://techlife.app/archives/google-is-angry-at-apple-and-will-be-sidelined-if-you-don-t-use-the-iphone.html 2022-08-10T04:02:00+08:00 Earlier this year, American teens were caught in a 'social rift' over the blue and green of text message bubbles.Green bubbles and blue bubbles, divided into different camps, are used as color metaphors for the miscommunication of text messages between iPhone and Android phones. On either side of the rift, one is the prehistoric era of text communication and the other is the contemporary era of media abundance.Here, blue is more noble than green, and the way to 'give up the dark for the light' is to have an iPhone.If the mountain doesn't come to me, I'll come to the mountain. 9 August, Google calls out Apple - It's because Apple doesn't support RCS (Rich Media Communication Service) that the 'blue-green bubble debate' is happening.Why is Google asking Apple to support RCS?When an iOS user receives a cross-device message from Android, the text message is displayed in a green bubble box.This would have been no surprise; before Apple launched its free communications service iMessage in 2011, bubbles were basically green.To differentiate iMessage from traditional SMS messages, Apple designed the bubble in blue, setting the stage for future blue-green battles.Americans who love to chat by text message don't like the green bubble, they prefer the blue bubble of iMessage. The color itself is neutral, but it represents a very different experience.iMessage offers end-to-end encryption, supports text, picture, video, voice, group chat, and adds effects such as invisible ink, shrink, zoom, screen echo effects, and data transfer via traffic or Wi-Fi. These features are needed for modern communication.The problem is that text messages sent between iPhone and Android users are converted into SMS (Short Message Service), which sends plain text messages between devices, and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which can only include limited images, background music, and is described by Google as "outdated technology from the '90s and '00s".The first SMS message was sent in 1992.Going back to SMS and MMS from iMessage is a fall from luxury to frugality, with compressed photos and videos, no read and incoming alerts, no support for end-to-end encryption, and hard-to-read white text on a bright green background ......"The 'green bubble' discrimination has even become a social issue. Some American teens are so socially pressured that they have switched their phones to iPhones in order to use iMessage.But Google argues that there's no need to spend money switching phones, and that the poor experience of texting each other on iOS and Android is caused by Apple, which should fix the problem by switching from SMS/MMS to the modern industry standard RCS.RCS is a cross-platform messaging protocol and is seen as a successor to SMS and MMS. Google says that most carriers and more than 500 Android device manufacturers support RCS, but Apple does not.SMS, born in 1992, is basically useless for anything other than receiving verification codes, advertisements, and delivery notifications. iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc., are not universal solutions, either by downloading an app or by limiting the operating system.So, with RCS, an upgraded version of traditional SMS, Google hopes to truly enable cross-platform messaging.RCS is much richer than traditional SMS, supporting a variety of instant messaging features such as image, text, voice, video, group chat and file transfer, and letting you know if the other party has read and is typing. It also supports B2C services, where companies can push graphic messages to users, providing an interactive 'applet'-like interface in the form of cards.In short, RCS is like a cross-platform iMessage without the app dependency, but integrated directly into the OS and tied to the phone number. In theory, users from different carriers know each other's phone numbers, don't need to friend each other and can chat for free.And in essence, RCS is a protocol that works on iOS and Android and offers many of the features of iMessage, and is not the same as an instant messaging service.RCS has most of the features of iMessage, but not all. rcs does not yet support end-to-end encryption in 2019 , end-to-end encryption is now available for one-to-one chats, and end-to-end encryption in group chats will be available later this year.▲ Image from: the vergeIn recent months, Google has been asking Apple to support the RCS, even building a 'Get The Message' website and launching an advocacy initiative on 9 August calling on users to speak out.If you're texting with an Android user, you won't be able to change the bubble color or bypass the SMS, MMS restrictions. But Apple can take the RCS and make those conversations better. You can @Apple and tweet with the #GetTheMessage hashtag.There's no reason Apple has to support RCS yetIs it possible for Apple to respond to Google and support the RCS? In response, The Verge reporter Jon Porter weighs in."The implication is that it's unlikely that "Apple's adoption of RCS will feel like Americans abandoning iMessage en masse and moving to WhatsApp or Signal.From a competitor's perspective, Apple's iMessage is seen as a "soft monopoly." Hiroshi Lockheimer, a senior vice president at Google, believes that the closed environment of iMessage is a business strategy for Apple.This is evident in the behavior of American teens switching iPhones and actively committing to the "iOS Wall of Service" in order to use iMessage.What's more, for Apple, iMessage is close to the RCS, whether it's the richness of the instant messaging software or the convenience of the system of tying your phone number, so there's no need to destroy your own prestige.So conversely, is it possible for Apple to launch an Android-enabled version of iMessage? After all, Apple doesn't have a closed strategy for all of its services.This question has been answered long ago; in 2016, Phil Schiller, then director of marketing, admitted that 'porting iMessage to Android has done us more harm than good'.With more than a billion active devices of Apple's own, there's enough data for Apple to use for AI learning research, and the benefits of porting iMessage to Android would be more limited.Interestingly, Google's focus on RCS comes after Hangouts, Allo, and other chat apps faltered.In 2018, Google said it wanted "every Android device to have a great default messaging experience," but the truth is that some of the products it has made still can't beat iMessage.After Google called on the public to speak out, one Twitter user asked rhetorically.I rarely use iMessage, but how many different chat apps has Google built and closed since iMessage was released?Domestic carriers are getting into the game, do we need RCS?Disliking Google's chat app is one thing, and the RCS, which brings carriers into the fold, is another, and they're not the same thing.Back in 2008, the GSMA, the global communications industry association, defined the RCS standard. While iMessage, WhatsApp and WeChat have replaced traditional SMS, RCS still hasn't caught on, but the country's operators aren't giving up.In July 2018, China Mobile and Huawei partnered to launch RCS "Enhanced SMS", a traffic data-based instant messaging service that can send graphics, voice, video, location and other content.At that time, China Mobile also offered 10GB of "Enhanced Messaging Exclusive Traffic" per month. After all, apart from SMS, traffic is also a big part of the operator's business.In April 2020, RCS rocketed to be called '5G messaging' in China. In this month, China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom jointly released the "5G Messages White Paper".5G messaging is "a new upgrade of the terminal's native basic short message service," and the message content will not only break through text limitations and length restrictions, but also enable the effective integration of text, images, audio, video, location and other information.5G news is not a solo act sung by operators, as ZTE, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, OPPO, Vivo and other terminal manufacturers have all paid some attention to 5G information.And a test in late 2020 showed that only 5G phones could send and receive RCS messages properly, while 4G phones sending and receiving RCS messages would automatically be converted to SMS or MMS, amounting to a strong association of RCS with the rollout of 5G phones.RCS seems to be very much in line with our imagination of "small but beautiful", similar to the ready-to-use small program, with the advantages of no registration, no login, no installation, real name system, etc. Users do not need to download a lot of apps, through the native message portal can complete all kinds of operations, to achieve "message as a service".But for now, it seems that the social attributes of RCS for acquaintances are not obvious and have more value for business services and government services than the head instant messaging products that focus on social.On the one hand, every shopping holiday, SMS from major e-commerce companies come one after another, and RCS is able to package such SMS in a more graphic, smart and high-end way.On the other hand, as Zuo Pengfei, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, in practical applications, apps are common in finance, education, taxation, healthcare and other fields installation cost is high, retention rate is low, and user activity is low, RCS may be able to solve this thankless situation.However, the "harassment property" of traditional SMS is too prominent, and once the mobile phone number is stolen, the marketing SMS is like a faucet that can't be tightened. whether RCS can block spam messages such as casinos and online loans is directly related to user experience, iMessage users have long experienced the "Macau casino" bombing.Until the arrival of the RCS, which offers a "one-stop service experience," text messages that you don't want to open except to check the captcha are still a necessity. https://techlife.app/archives/for-the-next-big-android-update-google-wants-to-crowdfund-an-icon-pack-for-you.html 2022-07-26T17:20:00+08:00 Google wants to "crowdfund" an icon pack for you in the next big Android updateIn Android 12, Google introduced a dynamic theme system for Android based on wallpaper coloring through Material You. We just need to change a favorite wallpaper, and the system interface and third-party applications will be changed to a theme with the same color style according to the selected wallpaper, which not only further satisfies users' personalization needs, but also gives Android a more harmonious and unified visual appearance.In previous versions, theme changes based on wallpaper color picking could affect most system interfaces: from lock screen to system settings, from notification center background to quick settings panel switches, from widgets to toolbars for non-system applications ...... Only desktop icons were not covered.Only Google's own apps in Android 12 Themed icons support is a cool thing, but it's also cool to have "desktop icons that follow the wallpaper and change themes", and the themed icons feature that Google had reserved for its own apps in Android 12 is finally a staple in Android 13.Shape, Order and StyleGoogle's design of Android desktop icons has gone through a process from irregular to regular, from emphasizing individual recognition to emphasizing overall visual consistency, and the "watershed" in this process is the introduction of the adaptive icons feature in Android 8.0.Associated Reading: What's the point of Android O adaptive icons? Google designers give you the answerRegarding the shaped vs. regular icon debate, Nick Butcher, who is responsible for Android developer relations and is also a Google UI and JetpackCompose engineer, had at the time given an example using his own Plaid app development.Ideal (left) vs. reality (right): everyone's unique, put it together and everyone's not. Ideally, shaped icons make app icons more recognizable and naturally better found when placed alongside other apps in Android's app drawer and on the home screen. But when all the icons on the screen are different shapes and sizes, users' attention is more likely to be distracted by the shape and design details of a particular icon.Adaptive icon cropping illustration for different shapes | Figure. Google In contrast, adaptive icons by retaining the icon body and then cropping the icon shape with a global mask, to some extent, retains the personalized qualities of the application icons, but also makes the overall look and feel of the application drawer and the home screen more harmonious. Different manufacturers can also choose different shapes of masks according to their actual needs to get a more uniform icon style that meets their own brand design needs.And if the adaptive icons introduced in Android 8.1 dictate the icon shape of Android apps, what Android 13's theme icons dictate is the icon style of Android apps.In Android 13, the theme icon feature can be experienced when the following conditions are met.The system has enabled the theme icon functionThe application itself is adapted with theme iconsLauncher support for displaying theme iconsIn the case of the Google Pixel with Android 13 Beta, simply long-press in a blank space on the Pixel launcher desktop and then find and enable "Icons with themes" in the Wallpapers and Styles settingsIf you add Android 13's Material You dynamic color picking egg widget to your desktop, you'll see that theme icons extract A1-100 color values for the icon background and N2-700 color values for the monochrome icon body by default when the dark theme is off. The color values for the icon background are the same as the color values selected for Android 13 lock screen time, quick settings panel switches and other interface elements. The same wallpaper in the default coloring style, the theme icon when the dark theme is on will select the color values of the icon body and icon background above reverses the color value of A1-100 as the icon body color, while choosing a darker N1-800 as the icon background.In this way, a set of theme icons that can automatically apply similar color schemes according to wallpaper changes and work with the system dark theme on and off is created.Theme icons turned on and the effect in dark themes | Figure. How to generate Google theme iconsStarting with Android 13, Google began to officially provide developers with a method for adapting theme icons. The development and adaptation documentation that has been published so far shows that theme icons are related to adaptive icons in a way that goes far beyond design style.Theme icons are mainly used to achieve the theme effect by applying different Material You dynamic colors to the icon body and icon background. This method of splitting the icon into two and treating the foreground and background separately is almost the same as Adaptive Icon Adaptation Method; as for the design specification, the theme icon also directly follows the size specification of the adaptive icon, for example, the container area size of the theme icon corresponds to the background layer of the adaptive icon, and the logo area corresponds to the unmasked icon content area of the adaptive icons.The container area (1) has a size of 108x108dp. Logo area (2) recommended size is 44x44 dp, maximum size is 72x72 dp | Figure : Google Because of similar specification requirements and to ensure consistent recognition to users when the theme icon feature is off and on, many developers currently choose to generate SVG monochrome application icons directly using existing adaptive icon material as Google does. To adapt, simply provide both the adaptive icon and the monochrome app icon, and point to the monochrome app icon via the `` element in the manifest.Of course, app icons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and not all apps we encounter are as simple or even abstract as Google apps. When it comes to complex and unique app icons, generating monochromatic app icons directly from the original adaptive icon resource can also pose a number of problems.Unprocessed long projection style icons | Photo: Yahor UrbanovichSo Google on the one hand recommends developers to use flat, 2D style icon design, but on the other hand also offers a way to reproduce 3D and layered effects in theme icons: Alpha gradients. Here again, the idea is similar to Google's dark theme design, where monochromatic icons can have light and dark as well as interface elements in dark themes through differences in transparency, and the presence of light and dark relationships can further reflect the hierarchy.Material Design by brightness to show UI layers in dark themes | Photo: Google here developer Yahor Urbanovich -------) gives a better example to help us understand how theme icons deal with shadows and layers: take the Microsoft Teams icon for example, which has very complex screen elements and layers, and would end up very badly if the theme icons were generated directly by borrowing from adaptive icon resources.Icons for Microsoft Teams The "lazy" adaptation effect | Photo: Yahor UrbanovichWhen this happens, the developer can simply make the individual element layers in the icon visible again in the theme icon by adding different alpha transparency as appropriate.Summary of the generated effect after adding transparency: problems and experiencesAndroid 13 is coming soon, and the theme icons, one of its main features, should be coming to Android devices other than the Google Pixel, such as Samsung One UI 5.0, but objectively speaking, not too many Android users will be able to experience this feature in the end.Thematic icons rely heavily on adaptive icons, both of which provide plenty of room for device manufacturers to customize as design specifications, but Google has never made them mandatory - adaptive icons have not yet become the "default standard" in the Android ecosystem after five major updates. "Thematic icons, as a stylistic extension of this, still require developers to answer the call to move forward.That's what we said in the title, that Google wanted to assemble a widely applicable set of rules icon pack starting with adaptive icons, and the introduction of themed icons brings a thousand color styles to this pack. But how many apps this icon pack can actually cover still depends on how many interested developers are willing to participate in the 'crowdfunding'.From the latest Android 13 Beta experience, it's clear that there are a bit more medium and small volume apps that adapt theme icons. From my own use and collection, there are close to 30 non-Google apps that have been adapted, including those that use the transparency mentioned above to restore the icon element hierarchy (e.g. Skit), and those that use two visual schemes for adaptive and themed icons (e.g. Battery Guru).Android 13 opens the home screen effect of the theme icon but In general, among the few apps that have adapted this feature, not many have achieved the perfect "desktop icon > opening screen animation > app interface" transition effect like Google's clever color fill animation.Theme icons, opening screen animations can actually be interlinked Related reading:A pleasant view beyond the opening screen ad as it should be: Android 12 app launch animations detailedI've also created a list of apps that have been adapted to theme icons, if you're interested, feel free to download and install the apps mentioned in the list to see the results. If there's something missing from the list, feel free to add it in the comments section of the document. If you don't have a Pixel device but want to test and experience the theme icon feature, you may want to read the DSU Loader that we introduced before. https://techlife.app/archives/qualcomm-poached-apple-chip-engineers-and-wants-to-build-a-core-to-beat-the-m-chip.html 2022-06-26T20:02:00+08:00 In 2017, right after Apple launched its newly designed MacBook Pro line, Qualcomm, with its nose for mobile chips, began working with Microsoft to build the Windows on Arm ecosystem together.At the time, Qualcomm was offering SoCs for the Windows platform based on the Snapdragon platform, which did not take advantage of the energy efficiency of the Arm architecture. Instead, it revealed its weak performance and high price, which made it difficult to attract consumers who were willing to try it.▲ Surface Pro X Image via: thevergeEven when Microsoft followed up by pulling in its own Surface line with an Arm-based Surface Pro X, it failed to reverse the lukewarm status of Windows on Arm.It was only with the advent of the M1, or rather Apple's strong entry, that the Arm chip broke through on the PC platform for good.Last year along with the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 flagship SoC, Qualcomm also launched the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3, 7c+ Gen3 chips for PCs along with a significant leap forward promised at launch.Recently, the ThinkPad X13s with Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip was launched as expected, and then the related theoretical tests surfaced.The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is indeed a significant improvement over its predecessor, with GeekBench scores showing a 40% improvement in single-core and 85% improvement in multi-core.However, compared to Apple's M1, which was released a year ago, there is still a very noticeable gap in multi-core, not to mention the "core monsters" like M1 Pro and M1 Max.▲ Apple M1 Chipset SkyQualcomm, which has achieved such success, does not seem to be discouraged, but instead has prepared a chip codenamed "Hamoa" to compete with Apple's M chip, which is scheduled for 2023.Beat the apple with the appleEven though the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is a significant improvement, it's still a bit "fanciful" to try to catch up with Apple's established M-chip system in just a few years.What's more, Qualcomm's mobile SoC journey has not been smooth in recent years, with flagship chips performing half as well as half as well, and even though GPU, baseband, AI, ISP and other modules have been significantly improved, they will be pinned down by Arm's public version of the architecture.In order to master its core competencies, Qualcomm is also aiming at self-designed IP architecture cores, which means that it has licensed Arm and designed its own cores, just like Apple.With this in mind, Qualcomm acquired Arm chip design company NUVIA for $1.4 billion in March 2021.Crucially, NUVIA was co-founded by former Apple chip engineers Gerard Williams III, John Bruno and Manu Gulati.William has been involved in the development and design of the A7~A12X, and has been in a leadership role. In addition to chip design, he also worked on the layout design of the A chip during the first few years of founding NUVIA.▲ The three people who co-founded NUVIA Photo from: NUVIAAnd NUVIA was founded with the goal of developing an Arm-based server chip that would shake up the industry.After being taken under Qualcomm's wing, NUVIA's target has also shifted to consumer-grade Arm chips, aimed squarely at PCs.▲ Arm Public Edition Core IP Image from: ArmIn other words, Qualcomm indirectly from the corner of the core team of Apple chip, this may be Qualcomm a few years to catch up with one of the bottom of the M chip.Similar to Apple's M chips, Qualcomm is leveraging the design capabilities of NUVIA's own core to move away from its dependence on Arm Cortex public IP.Of course, autonomous core IP goes beyond Arm chips for PC platforms, and Qualcomm VP Keith Kressin emphasized in an anandtech interview that "each metric is evaluated and the right design is selected for the appropriate product.It is not excluded that the Snapdragon 8 series SoCs for smartphones will also have an autonomous architecture in the future.▲ Apple's M-Chip Splicing SpreeThe rumored "Hamoa" chip that will be available in 2023 will most likely be a NUVIA designed CPU with Adreno GPU, Hexagon DSP and other modules.It may be difficult for Qualcomm to catch up to Apple's M chips with a single acquisition, but how about aiming to play up the power efficiency ratio of the Arm architecture first?Catching up on hardware is easy, ecology is notThe CPU cores of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 are actually taken from the combination of the mega-core X1 and the big-core A78 of the Snapdragon 888.The Hamoa chip, on the other hand, could be a qualitative improvement in CPU, and closing the gap with the M chip is a definite possibility.▲ Surface Pro X with the weird Arm ecosystem Image via: MicrosoftIt's just that the lack of hardware power was not the root cause of the previous Qualcomm-Microsoft joint effort to create Windows on Arm.With the later Surface Pro X, the hardware wasn't the shortcoming, it was the ecology.Even with Microsoft's hands-on Arm platform, many of its own programs have failed to migrate, let alone the professional-grade tools and productivity environment on Windows.Not to mention, Microsoft's voice in ecological appeal, many traditional PC manufacturers are still waiting on the sidelines. After the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 release, it's taken until now for consumer devices to appear, and the pace is just too slow compared to the M chips next door.Apple gave the Mac two years to move from x86 to Arm, and during the two-year transition period, Apple provided Rosstta 2's translation technology to minimize the impact of the transition on users.Ironically, after the Mac moved to Arm, Microsoft was the first to adapt the Arm version for Office, and Adobe was quick to do the same.And incidentally, a corresponding Arm version for Windows was also made available, with many people jokingly calling Microsoft the best developer for Apple.In addition to the inefficiency of adapting and translating programs in Windows on Arm, it is also difficult for Microsoft to call on third-party software to actively adapt to the compatible Windows ecosystem.So, in the current Windows on Arm environment, Qualcomm may need to call on third-party vendors to abandon the x86 platform and move to Arm before it can make a mark.To make the move to Arm in a few years' time, exactly as successful as Apple's, will require Qualcomm, Microsoft, and third-party vendors to work together, not just a processor with a superior power efficiency ratio to decide.▲ Apple's 'computers'Apple's All in Arm strategy has been very successful in the last two years, with the M chip's superior performance really shining through, but behind it all is Apple's unprecedented control of the ecology that ultimately makes the Mac that embraces Arm so impressive.Arm architecture PC is the futureTo be precise, portable PCs with Arm chips are the future.The advantages of Arm chips are power efficiency, portability, low price, and customizability. PCs with Arm chips can be the ultimate in thinness and lightness, as well as being able to reduce costs and allow hardware vendors to participate in customization.▲ Google's Deeply Customized Tensor SoCIt's not just Qualcomm, but Google and Microsoft are all forming their own Arm teams to get into the emerging Arm market.But unlike Qualcomm, Google and Microsoft are closer to customizing their Arm chips to fit the needs of their devices, and Google's Tensor is one example, with an architecture that's almost a customized version of Samsung's Exynos chip.Google, however, has reorganized the AI performance, CPU core mix, and other aspects to suit its needs. And in the future, it will extend Tensor to ChromeOS devices.According to a study by Strategy Analytics, Qualcomm accounted for 34 percent of the Arm processor market in 2021, compared to 31 percent for Apple, a difference of just a few percentage points.If you switch to the Arm PC market, Apple eats up 90 percent of the revenue, with Qualcomm at just 3 percent. And, with the strength of the M chips, Apple Macs already accounted for 9% of the PC segment in 2021, a 26% increase from the previous year's share.▲ Apple has a head startQualcomm is betting on the Arm PC for its future potential, as the Arm PC market is still emerging as opposed to the stable smartphone market.Qualcomm is banking on NUVIA's technology to make a breakthrough on Arm chips and catch up with M chips. But to achieve what the Mac has achieved, Qualcomm will need to work with Microsoft to implement the Arm ecosystem and convince traditional PC makers to abandon x86 chips.Either one would be an epic challenge for Qualcomm. https://techlife.app/archives/aiming-at-apple-watch-google-to-develop-multiple-bands-for-pixel-watch.html 2022-06-22T14:04:00+08:00 The Pixel Watch was teased at Google I/O 2022 last month. The smartwatch, which will be available this fall alongside the Google Pixel 7 line, is also the first smartwatch built by Google.Equipped with Wear OS and deeply integrated with Fitbit functions, it is a reflection of Google's strength in the field of wearable devices. But in today's industrial design, there is an inevitable convergence in both functionality and appearance, and smartwatches are no exception.▲Image from: GoogleIn terms of the health monitoring function of smartwatches, different brands may have different indicators and accuracy, but all of them can meet the daily use of users. As for the appearance, the rounded case of Pixel Watch is also recognizable, but there are no more than these smartwatches on the market.If you want to make the product more recognizable, but also to meet the user's quest for personalization. Smartwatches are coincidentally aiming here - the strap.▲Image from: GoogleAccording to the 9to5Google website, Google is working on a variety of bands for the Pixel Watch, a smartwatch launching this fall, and there will be at least seven, including the one shown at I/O.▲Image from: GoogleThe Pixel Watch that was shown at I/O is supposed to use the common silicone strap. Beyond that, Google is working on a couple of high-end bands. One is a Milanese style band with a woven stainless steel mesh, similar to the Apple Watch, and a magnetic closure between the clasp and the band.▲Apple Watch Milanese band, image via: AppleThere is also a chain strap that is also used by watch brands such as Rolex and Omega, and the Apple Watch has a similar product that allows the strap to be adjusted by pressing on the interconnected rectangular metal pieces. There are also two leather-textured straps, as well as braided straps and stretchy straps that will be more affordable.▲Apple Watch braided, leather, chain strap, image via: AppleSilicone, metal chain style, stainless steel mesh, 2 leather textures, braided fabric, and an elastic band are just a few of the bands that Google may be working on for the Pixel Watch right now.Since Google has not officially revealed its plans for the Pixel Watch, it's not yet known if all of these bands will be available. But from what we've heard, it seems that Google is apparently going to use the Pixel Watch to "compete" with the Apple Watch.▲Image from: GoogleApple Watch can be said to be the pioneer of the rich "band culture" of smartwatches. Not only does it have almost all the materials that the Pixel Watch might have, but it also has always captured the hearts of users in terms of color and pattern design, such as the "rainbow band" that comes out every year but is different.▲2022 New rainbow strap, image via: AppleIt's also worth noting that Google has equipped the wearable with a proprietary wristband system that makes it perhaps easier to swap out compared to other devices. From the previously published video, it appears that the Pixel Watch uses not a simple snap-in style, but requires twisting to insert the strap before returning it squarely for snapping into place.▲Image from: GoogleUntil the product is officially launched, all the specs and parameters of features, bands and replacement methods are still uncertain, making it even more curious to see how the Pixel Watch will "compete" with the Apple Watch when it launches this fall. https://techlife.app/archives/google-researcher-mocked-by-group-it-s-nonsense-that-lamda-has-a-personality-google-also-responds-think-too-much-it-s-just-a-con.html 2022-06-14T13:56:00+08:00 What? AI has a personality? Google recently came up with a mega-language model, LaMDA, and a researcher at the company, Blake Lemoine, talked to it for a long time and was so surprised by its capabilities that he concluded that LaMDA might already have a personality. (The original word used was sentient, which in different contexts can be translated as feeling, intelligence, perception, etc.)Soon after, this man was put on "paid leave". But he's not alone: even the company's VP Blaise Agüera y Arcas is publishing an article stating that AI has made huge strides in gaining awareness and "has entered a whole new era." The news has been reported by a host of media outlets and has rocked the entire tech world. Not only the academic and industrial worlds, but even many ordinary people, were amazed by the leap in AI technology."The day has finally come?" "Remember, children (if you survive in the future), this is how it all began." The real AI experts, however, scoff at this.AI with personality? The big boys snickerErik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford HAI Center, directly compared the incident to "a dog facing a gramophone", tweeting."One thing that foundation models (i.e., self-supervised large-scale deep neural network models) are very good at doing is stringing text together in a statistically sound way based on cues.But if you say they're sentient, it's like a dog hearing a voice in a phonograph and thinking its owner is in there." ** Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University and a fairly well-known expert on machine learning and neural networks, also directly wrote an article trolling LaMDA for having a personality "Nonsense" (Nonsense). **[1]"It is simply bullshit. Neither LaMDA nor its close cousins (like GPT-3) are intelligent in any way. All they do is extract from a massive statistical database of human languages and then match patterns.These patterns may be cool, but these systems speak a language that doesn't actually make any sense at all, much less imply that these systems are intelligent."Translated into the vernacular.You watch LaMDA say things that are particularly philosophical, particularly true, particularly human-like - yet it's designed to function as a parody of other people's speech, and it doesn't actually know what it's saying. "To be sentient means to be aware of your presence in the world, and LaMDA does not have that awareness," Marcus writes.If you think these chatbots have personalities, you should be the one having visions ......In Scrabble tournaments, for example, it's common to see players whose first language is not English spell out English words without having any idea what the words mean - the same is true of LaMDA, which just talks but has no idea what the words it says mean.Marcus the Great directly describes this illusion of AI gaining personality as a new kind of "imaginary illusion, " i.e., seeing clouds in the sky as dragons and puppies, and craters on the moon as human faces and moon bunnies.Abeba Birhane, one of the rising stars of AI academia and a senior fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, also said, "With minimal critical thinking, we've finally reached the pinnacle of AI hype."Birhane is a long-time critic of the so-called "AI Theory of Knowing". In a paper published in 2020, she once directly made the following points.1) the AI everyone speculates about every day is not really AI, but a statistical system, a robot (robot); 2) we shouldn't empower robots; 3) we shouldn't even be talking about whether to empower robots at all ......Olivia Guest, a professor of computational cognitive science at the Donders Institute in Belgium, also joined the fray, saying the logic of the whole thing is flawed."'I see something like a person because I developed it as a person, therefore it is a person' - simply backwards donkey riding logic. " Roger Moore, a professor at the Robotics Institute at the University of Sheffield in the UK, points out that people have the illusion that "AI One of the key reasons for the illusion that "AI gets personality" is that the researchers back then had to call the work "language modeling".The correct term should be "world sequence modelling". "You develop an algorithm and don't name it after what it can actually do, but instead use the problem you're trying to solve - that always leads to misunderstandings." In short, the conclusion of all you industry gurus is that the most you can say about LaMDA is that it can pass the Turing test with a high score. Saying it has personality? That's hilarious. Not to mention that even the Turing test isn't that informative anymore, and Macus says outright that many AI scholars want the test to be scrapped and forgotten precisely because it exploits the weakness of humans' gullibility and tendency to treat machines like people.Professor Emily Bender, Chair of the Department of Computer Languages at the University of Washington, simply made a bingo card for the "AI Personality Awareness Debate":(What this bingo card means is that if you think AI has personality/sentience and your argument is one of the following, then you'd better stop talking!)Google also responded: don't think too much, it just talksBlake Lemoine, the allegedly "obsessive" researcher, criticized Google for being "uninterested" in understanding the realities of his own developments in a self-published article, but in the course of a six-month-long conversation However, over the course of a six-month-long conversation, he saw LaMDA become more and more vocal about what he wanted, especially "his rights as a human being," leading him to believe that LaMDA was really a human being.However, in Google's opinion, the researcher totally overthought and even went a bit off the deep end. laMDA really isn't human, it's purely and simply extraordinarily chatty ...... **After things took off on social media, Google quickly responded.LaMDA, like the company's larger AI projects in recent years, has undergone several rigorous audits of the ethical aspects of AI, taking into account various aspects of its content, quality, and system security. Earlier this year, Google also published a paper dedicated to disclosing the details of compliance during LaMDA's development."There is indeed some research within the AI community on the long-term possibilities of AI with sentience/general AI. However in today's context of anthropomorphizing conversational models, it doesn't make sense to do so because these models are not sentient.""These systems can mimic the way communication works based on millions of sentences and can pull out interesting content on any interesting topic. If you ask them what it's like to be an ice cream dinosaur, they can generate tons of text about melting roars and such."（These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic — if you ask what it’s like to be an ice cream dinosaur, they can generate text about melting and roaring and so on.）We've seen too many stories like this, especially in the classic movie "Her" a few years ago, where the protagonist's identity as a virtual assistant becomes increasingly unclear, treating "her" as a person.Yet according to the film's portrayal, this illusion actually stems from a host of contemporary social failures, emotional breakdowns, feelings of loneliness, and other issues of self and sociability that have nothing remotely to do with the technicalities of whether chatbots are human or not.Stills from the movie "Her" Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Of course, it's not our fault for having these problems, and it's not that researcher's fault for wanting to treat robots like people. **Trusting various emotions (such as thoughts) onto objects is a creative emotional capacity that humans have had since the beginning of time. Isn't treating large-scale language models as human beings and pouring emotion into them, while criticized by various AI gurus as a form of mental error, the very embodiment of what makes people human?But, at least today, don't talk about feelings with robots in anything ...... https://techlife.app/archives/google-changes-platform-policy-bans-deepfake-project-research.html 2022-05-31T19:13:00+08:00 Google recently changed its platform policy to prohibit developers from using the services of its Colaboratory platform for research on the Deepfake project, ending the large-scale use of the platform's resources for this purpose.Colaboratory, or Colab for short, is a product developed by the Google Research team. In Colab, anyone can write and execute arbitrary Python code through a browser. It is particularly suitable for machine learning, data analysis, and educational purposes. Technically, Colab is a hosted Jupyter Notebook service. Users can use it directly without setup and also get free access to computing resources such as GPUs to accelerate project research.Colab supports most major browsers and has been fully tested on the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.Deepfake can be trained to swap faces on video clips, adding realistic facial expressions to make the final video effect look realistic for the purpose of faking it. The technology itself is based on machine learning and is currently a popular area of research in the industry, but it has been used by a number of people to spread fake news and fake political or pornographic videos. As this technology is ethically controversial, many people and businesses are very concerned about it.According to archive.org's web page historical data, the Google earlier this month modified Colab's banned items list, adding Deepfake to the blacklist (red box below).If a developer attempts to continue training a Deepfake project on the Colab platform despite the blacklist, the developer will receive an error like the following.You may be executing code that is not allowed, which may limit your ability to use Colab in the future. Please be aware of the prohibitions we have set out in the FAQ.The impact of this new restriction is expected to have a profound effect in the Deepfake space, as many users take advantage of Colab's pre-trained models to start their projects. And Colab itself is so easy to use that even those with no programming background can get started quickly, which is why a very large number of Deepfake tutorials recommend using Colab.It is not known whether Google is enforcing this policy for ethical reasons or as a limitation on the excessive load of computing resources utilized by these projects. https://techlife.app/archives/history-of-streaming-music-services.html 2022-05-31T00:30:00+08:00 The history of streaming music servicesFrom buying discs and downloading to listening online, this is how streaming music services are reshaping the way we listen.iTunes Music StoreIn 2001, the iPod was introduced.Two years later, Apple had already capitalized on the iPod's instant popularity, and iTunes had leveraged the iPod's popularity to become essential software on many people's computers. But by that time, Apple was desperate to solve a new problem: where to get the music.In those days, buying a physical CD was the most compliant way to get music. But with the rise of the internet, buying CDs became a 'not so smart' option. For one thing, these CDs were always available as albums, but many people didn't actually like all the songs on an album, but they still had to pay for the other songs.The second point was even more deadly: 1999 was the golden age of records, but in the same year it also saw its worst enemy: Napster, a P2P sharing site specializing in free MP3 music. that year, global CD sales peaked, but by 2003, global record sales had fallen by a whopping 17.1%.As a result, record companies saw Napster as a beast, and after unsuccessfully appealing to users to reject piracy, they decided to come together to hang it by law. However, the most aggressive legal action backfired, attracting a large number of young users - those without much financial means, but with Napster they could download the songs they needed directly for free. If that's the case, why pay to shop for them at an offline video store when you have to go all the way there? If this continues, then pirated music will completely shatter the entire music industry. So, everyone is turning their attention to the Internet and digital music without fail.Actually, the digital music store wasn't a genius idea, a group of college students from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in computer science made it back in 1994. Only, at the time, they didn't have the concept of fees and copyrights, but used it to distribute the work of a few niche bands.So Jobs wasn't the only one who could think of creating a digital music store to fight piracy, other music company executives did too.In 2001, Time Warner and Sony, the two music giants, were already working together, and hoped to bring Apple into the fold, hoping to use the iPod's influence to change the rampant piracy of music. But this was only superficially friendly - in private, everyone had their own agenda: while music piracy put the giants on a united front, in reality they didn't let anyone get away with it, and the benefits of being the leader or rulemaker in a new field were immeasurable.Sony Music later led the backlash, deciding to pull out of the three-way partnership and creating the Pressplay streaming music service on its own, in partnership with Universal Music. Shortly after, a back-stabbed Time Warner pulled in Bertelsmann, Bacardi Records, and Lille Networks to also go toe-to-toe with the streaming music service MusicNet.Both of these streaming services, which are already much the same as the streaming services we have today, such as MusicNet's subscription rules ofMusicNet subscribers can listen to 250,000 songs from Warner Music with a one-month free trial and then choose from three subscription options: $3.95 per month to listen or cache 20 songs; $8.95 per month for unlimited listening or caching; and $17.95 per month for unlimited listening or caching and the ability to burn 10 songs to CD.Although there are still some shades of the physical record era, I have to say that the concept is quite advanced. However, back in the days when people were still buying CDs or downloading pirated copies, the act of "paying to rent songs" was just crazy. In addition, Sony and Time Warner were so much worse than Apple in terms of user experience and UI design that they were criticized by users and the media.In today's terms, Sony and Time Warner were a pair of "crouching dragons and phoenixes" at the time. And this scene is like the first few years of China's music licensing, except that the protagonists of the story have become Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music. The official wave of internecine warfare naturally gave Steve Jobs a chance. Perhaps he would have thought that this was a god-given opportunity: the two giants at each other's throats naturally gave way to the iTunes Store, giving it a chance to ascend to the throne of the digital music distribution era.As it happens, Time Warner's owner Barry Schuler was an 'old friend' of Jobs, so naturally the first successful raid on the iTunes Store was on him and his Time Warner. Next, Steve Jobs used his unique reality-distorting stance to take down Universal Music and even Time Warner's "nemesis" Sony Music. Finally, on April 28, 2003, the iTunes Music Store was launched.The difference iTunes has made is clear: piracy has indeed been effectively curbed, with a million songs sold in six days and a shot in the arm for the sagging music industry.PressPlay and MusicNet were listed in a tie for ninth place in the "25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" by PC World magazine because they were so difficult to use. MusicNet went to Microsoft Windows Media, and Pressplay was acquired by Roxio and later became Napster 2.0.Interestingly, these two music subscription services dominated almost the entire online music market before the iTunes store was launched, and the decline of physical recordings was not halted in August 2001 when the major record labels teamed up to sue and successfully hang Napster, the largest pirate music sharing site at the time. And just weeks after Napster was shut down by court order, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a new antitrust investigation into Pressplay and MusicNet. And when did this antitrust investigation end? The answer is the summer of 2003, not long after the iTunes Store was released.Was the iTunes Store Success in 2003?We've spent a lot of time in the previous chapters going through the iTunes Music Store, only to pass over two of the 'grandfathers' of streaming music, Pressplay and MusicNet, and why is that?It starts with the music industry, which is still going downhill.Many people believe that the iTunes Music Store, a "Genuine Digital Store Buy - Sync Device - Listen" model, is the future of the music industry. PC World even published an article on August 13, 2003, comparing almost every online music service at the time, not only iTunes Store, PressPlay and MusicNet, but also Rhapsody and EMusic, among others. In the last paragraph, the author used "The Future's So Bright" as the title and concluded in the first sentence.iTunes is the future.However, they all looked at it wrong.This is something that even Steve Jobs couldn't have predicted. Maybe we only remember him saying "3.5 inches is the perfect size for a smartphone" and "who tm wants a stylus", but Jobs actually said something similar when it came to music. When the iTunes Music Store was first launched, he was adamant that what user would want to stream? "They just want to buy music (physical or paid downloads), they don't want to rent it (monthly subscriptions).The iPod + iTunes Store model has certainly redeemed some of the impact of pirated music, but across the board, the future of the music industry remains cloudy -- a revenue curve that's still on a downward path. Those of us who have been there know that during these difficult days of discovery, the iPod and iTunes Music Store gave the model its final comeback and stuck around all the way through the first few years of the 2010s, until streaming started to take off in a big way in 2011 and became the biggest head of the music industry's revenue share in just six years.Yet there is a long story in it.A 'Little Splash' from the Chinese WorldIn the seven years between 2003 and 2010, the iTunes Music Store pretty much dominated the majority of the market for digital music distribution platforms. While it didn't pull the throttle on the music industry's continued decline, it did at least put the brakes on half a foot. As a result, many people feel that this is a healthy digital music model, and that by simply continuing to cultivate users' paying habits while fighting piracy harder, the 'buy + sync' model of the digital music market can surely return to the 'old days of prosperity' of the 1999 record era.So during these years, streaming music services were not well received, with a handful of providers announcing closures and transitions as a result of the iTunes Store. So between 2003 and the first half of 2007, most of the remaining streaming music services were moving towards radio, with services like Pandora, which focused on similar song recommendations, LiveXLive, which focused on live and on-demand music, and RadioTime (later called Tunein), which was itself focused on podcasts and radio.But things have always taken a turn for the worse. In just one year since the second half of 2007, the streaming music service giants that we've come to know so well have sprung up like wildfire.But before we do, let's rewind to a time before these giants were born and look around us at the Greater China region. Unlike North America and Europe, which were dominated by the iTunes Store, between 2003 and the first half of 2007, Taiwan and Hong Kong saw the birth of the two streaming music providers that operate today: KKBox and MOOV.In October 2005, KKBox was announced to be launched in Taiwan. Its operating model, however, has been exactly the same as today's streaming music services: KKBox obtains licenses to distribute music directly through licensed channels such as signed music companies, songwriters and distributors. Users have unlimited access to all songs in the KKBox library for as long as their subscription lasts, or they can choose to download songs locally to enjoy them offline. However, files downloaded from KKBox are DRM encrypted and can only be played using the KKBox App. Later, KKBox also offered a music store like the iTunes Store for users to purchase and download songs. Naturally, songs downloaded through such a format were DRM-free protected music files that users were free to play using other devices. In 2017, however, KKBox announced that it was taking this feature offline and transforming into a purely streaming music service App.In the coming years, KKBox has announced its entry into Hong Kong, China, Macau, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and other countries to become a well-known streaming music service in East and Southeast Asia. And in 2020, KKBox will also offer Hi-Res lossless audio and podcasts for its music.As such, KKBox is perhaps the most similar to today's and the most well-established and earliest streaming music provider we can find today.Another streaming music service app from Hong Kong, China is called MOOV, which also uses a similar subscription system as KKBox. It was founded in April 2006 by PCCW in Hong Kong and launched its service in mainland China in 2013 through a partnership with Southern Broadcasting Media Group, China Telecom and BTV. The mainland version of the service was titled "MoNote" and became the first paid music service outside of China in an era when free downloads were still prevalent.It's easy to see that both KKBox and MOOV have chosen to focus on the East and Southeast Asian markets, and have made a number of features to suit the local market. For example, KKBox and the then-hot celebrity promoters, MOOV added "music self-healing" service, etc. But on the other hand, KKBox and MOOV were born even before Spotify and Amazon Music, which are now streaming music giants, and if they had been quicker to internationalize, the market might be a lot different today.The birth of first generationBy the second half of 2007, perhaps catching wind of something, or perhaps discovering a music market that the iTunes Store had failed to save, in the period between late 2007 and 2008, Spotify (October 2008), Amazon Music (September 2007), SoundCloud (October 2008), and Deezer (August 2007), all well-known streaming services, competed for this untapped wilderness by starting their services.In terms of timeline, Deezer from France was the first, followed by Amazon Music. Spotify and SoundCloud were born 'on the same day'.DeezerDeezer didn't start off well in the early days, and because it was basically a 'white knuckle' operation, it took a lot of time to negotiate and sign licensing deals with music companies. But after securing the rights, Deezer's traffic grew rapidly, and through ad placements and paid de-merchandising, it expanded over the next 10 years, and is now available in over 180 countries, including even Russia and Afghanistan, which Spotify can't reach.But even though Deezer had the advantage in terms of breadth of regions served, Deeze ended up not being one of the leading players in a highly competitive market. By 2021, Deezer's market share of music streaming services worldwide had shrunk to 2%. And not long ago, Deezer has shut down its free version of the service in a number of countries. Interestingly, Deezer was also on the side of Ubisoft and Spotify in the previous debate between Ubisoft and Apple about fairness, lambasting Apple's 'hegemony' and demanded fairer treatment from Apple and Google in the app store.Amazon MusicDespite being one of the current giants of streaming music services, Amazon Music was pretty much a 'junior' to the iTunes Store in its early days - the service was called 'Amazon MP3' and only sold DRM-free MP3 music files. So while it became the first platform to sell all four major record labels (Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI) at the same time in 2008, it still followed the same old "buy → download → sync → listen" path.It wasn't until March 2014, shortly after Amazon announced an increase in the annual subscription fee for its Prime service from $79 to $99, that it added Prime Music, a purely streaming music format, to its Prime service.Two years later, perhaps seeing the huge gains Apple Music and Spotify were making with their subscription services, Amazon opened up a new music service: Amazon Music Unlimited. Unlike the old Prime membership service, it requires a separate subscription, and the music library is much larger than Prime Music as well.What's not hard to see is that Amazon hasn't really changed the music industry as much as Apple and Spotify, but its business model is still worth looking at. By incorporating Prime Music directly into the Prime membership, it naturally attracts users who are already using the Prime service: it's like I'm just trying to save on postage on a purchase, and then I get a music service for 'free', so why not? It can be said that Amazon has managed to force a share of the market by relying on its own huge user base and company strength, even though it started later than other competitors.It's also worth noting that Amazon's original music store hasn't shut down yet, and still offers the purchase of copyright-free DRM music as well. If something like "iTunes Music Store will soon be discontinued" becomes a reality, it would be like Apple has completely emptied itself of this market. Amazon will probably be the 'winner' again.SoundCloudSoundCloud's history actually dates back to 2007, the same year as Deeze and Amazon Music. In July of that year, Swedish sound designer Alexander Ljung and electronic musician Eric Wahlforss founded SoundCloud in Berlin, but it was only a year later, in October, that SoundCloud's website was officially launched.To understand SoundCloud simply, you can think of it as an "international version of NetEase Cloud".In the beginning, SoundCloud didn't think about music distribution, but rather wanted to allow users to exchange the music they had created or to make 'dream links' through user audio sharing. However, they later found that the newly created music also had good commercial prospects, and with more and more musicians and artists in residence, it gradually turned into a publishing platform for music distribution as well. And it's like Netflix because SoundCloud is fundamentally different from other streaming music services in one way: it's more like a community for musicians and music fans' communication and music sharing community, covering everyone from the biggest stars to indie creators just starting out in music. As a result, SoundCloud has actually become the distribution platform of choice for many mainstream stars and niche musicians alike, and it has also produced some of today's biggest artists, such as Billie Eilish, Lorde, and many others.However, this model has created a big problem for SoundCloud. Since all registered users could upload their own music to SoundCloud, and users could listen to music uploaded by others for free, copyright became a tricky issue, and made SoundCloud a 'peach of a place' for pirated and copyright-free music. As a result, SoundCloud has since gone down the path of streaming subscriptions, negotiating rights with major music companies and finally launching a paid subscription in March 2016 under the official name 'SoundCloud Go'.Similar to other streaming music services, a SoundCloud Go subscription gives you access to ad-free and offline playback of these copyrighted music. A year later, SoundCloud launched the SoundCloud Go+ subscription service with a "premium members-only library". The original Go was downgraded to a basic subscription, and the cost was reduced to $5 a month. ad-free and offline playback are still available with the Go subscription, but when it comes to music in the premium members-only library, you can only try it for 30 seconds.Additionally, for creators, SoundCloud also offers SoundCloud Pro and SoundCloud Pro Unlimited subscriptions. The former allows users to upload up to six hours of audio files and adds other enhanced features such as more robust data analysis and disabling track comments, while the latter has all the features of Pro in addition to removing the length limit for uploading audio files.SoundCloud said they would have a bigger advantage in doing so than competing services like Apple Music and Spotify at the time: in addition to getting copyrighted songs, they also have a large number of songs uploaded from musicians, so you could hear both their album releases and singles that were only available on SoundCloud here. But the confident SoundCloud faces a big problem: many mainstream musicians don't have album rights here.For example, it's like if Jay released a new song on Apple Music in 2022, but SoundCloud still had the rights to 2003's "Amy Yip". At that point, even if Jay released more private singles on SoundCloud, users would still choose to subscribe to Apple Music -- because Jay's privately released singles on SoundCloud are free to listen to.But more than its helplessness with subscriptions, SoundCloud's biggest change is its implementation of a new musician revenue model in 2021, making it the first streaming music service to implement 'fan-driven royalties'. Simply put, SoundCloud allocates musicians' revenue (as a percentage of user plays) based on the number of times a user listens to a song over time as a percentage of their total listens. In contrast, most streaming music services currently pay royalties on a 'market-centric' model, which allocates revenue based on the percentage of plays of a particular song out of the total number of plays on the platform over a period of time.In its 2022 report, SoundCloud says the model has brought in more revenue for musicians and has allowed the horse-trading effect in the streaming music market to be effectively avoided, as well as reducing problems such as charting specifically to increase airplay.Maybe SoundCloud doesn't have an advantage over other platforms when it comes to the copyright battle. But in this new dimension of "fan-driven royalties," SoundCloud may be the first in a long line of streaming music services to successfully eat the crab. Perhaps in the future, it could also be one of the founding fathers of change in the music market.SpotifyFinally, it's Spotify, but more than the history of Spotify, I want to talk about what made Spotify stand out from the crowd of streaming music services and become number one in the industry -- after all, the history of the giant is something that many specialized articles and books go into much more detail about.Spotify was founded in 2006, and in no time at all the founders, Eike and Lorenz, developed a prototype and sent it out to some influential Swedish musicians to try out. It turned out to be a really good product - not only was the experience so good that it didn't feel like an online service, but most importantly, they actually approached musicians about royalties in good faith, unlike previous P2P services that relied on users' random sharing to spread their work.So in the beginning, Spotify's efforts actually went in a different direction than each of the others at the time. While the models were all similar, Spofity focused on the experience, taking the biggest pain point when listening to music online: transfer speed, and focusing on improving it, as well as designing a good-looking official website. This meant that it had a head start on its rivals in terms of user experience before it officially started expanding to the world. The design also looked hundreds of times better than a bunch of streaming music service sites at the time With a base of strength, Spotify's expansion globally was However, Spotify, coming from Europe, entered the U.S. market with a head-on collision with the Big Four on the other side of the Atlantic.At the time, the Big Four didn't grant Spotify a music rights license to operate in the US. Spotify was "humiliated" to get it, because at the time, Spotify had a huge subscriber base, but the company's financials were so bad that it had to enter the US, the biggest paying market for music, to get ahead. However, Spotify was the one who wanted the rights, so the Big Four could hold it to the ground.One of the central arguments between the Big Four and Spotify is that they want the North American version of Spofity to be a paid subscription only product, while Spotify insists on offering a free version. Moreover, the Big Four both asked Spotify for "most favored nation" status, so I couldn't have what everyone else had. As a result, the two sides were at each other's throats for a long time, but the problem was "cleverly" solved when Goldman Sachs pulled in a bunch of minions to put in $100 million in Series E funding for Spotify, plus a total of $300 million in other venture funding.In fact, the Big Four were in a state of desperate need at this time. After all, the "iPod + iTunes" model, which was seen as the salvation of the music industry worldwide, could not be reversed and the industry was still experiencing a "sustainable decline" in revenue.That's when a Spotify that visits your door with a brand new model becomes a natural option to try. If Apple can't save the market, then this new approach might as well be a gamble to beat a dead horse anyway. But since you're the one begging us, you're going to have to make a lot of money before that.In the end, Spotify signed an unequal, almost "sell-out" deal -- the Big Four took almost a fifth of the company for $112,000, with a set of conditions. That's a fraction of what the Big Four would have paid at the time, and I'm guessing any executive would have made more than that per year, so the worst that could have happened was another small fortune. In exchange, Spotify managed to get the rights and a ticket to the US market.The Big Four wanted money and a new model, Spotify wanted market and traffic, and Goldman Sachs didn't need money and wanted to make a return on its venture capital investment, so the three of them kind of hit it off. But if we take a look behind the scenes, based on Spotify's market cap today, it's one of the most successful venture capital investments ever written in a textbook.Spotify is also still very much into offline advertising now but having officially entered the US market, Spotify immediately fought a battle of affluence that Li Yunlong had never fought in ten lifetimes. With millions of dollars in library rights and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash in hand, Spotify went straight for the jugular: partnering with some of the biggest consumer brand giants in the US market, like Chevrolet, Coca-Cola and Motorola. It's also exploring music socially with Facebook to further capture the hearts and minds of young people.Spotify was born mediocre but became the chosen child in the early days of the streaming music era, finding a direct highway to success and then going on a wild ride. In later years, even Napster founder Parker, one of the 'progenitors' of digital music platforms, was full of praise for it, and the world kept rainbow farting at it.In short, Spotify, which grew to become the actual world's streaming music giant by 2012, albeit with some twists and turns, brought the world's music industry into the streaming era all by itself. While streaming music services accounted for just 0.5% of the entire music industry at that point, the last pain point for streaming music was soon cleared by another company, and there was no one left to stand in its way until 2015.The Golden Age of Streaming MusicThe company that cleared up this pain point was again the same Apple we know so well, and the man - Steve Jobs.While the iPhone was 3G-enabled in its second generation, it was the iPhone 4, released in 2010, and the iPhone 4S, released the following year, that really brought about the explosion of mobile internet, and not to be outdone by the fact that around 2010, U.S. carriers also drastically reduced their mobile phone traffic rates. With a great internet experience, lower internet rates, and Spotify bombarding the streets of America with ads, the conditions were right. Streaming music services, at last, are on a high with the advent of mobile internet.As you can see from the IFPI's annual Global Music Report, the year streaming music services started to take off was 2010. before 2010, streaming music services were only a fraction of the revenue of the music industry as a whole, and the fact that it wasn't put in the 'other' was the greatest respect it could have. Starting after 2010, however, streaming music, which had the right time and the right people, began to grow in leaps and bounds, taking three consecutive years of music industry milestones in history: successfully stopping the music industry's nearly 15-year revenue decline in 2015, and taking out digital music purchases and CDs over the next two years to become the largest revenue category in the overall music market in terms of share.But it still hasn't stopped after that, continuing to massively eat into the market share of other categories. Especially since the new crown epidemic in 2020, demand for music has increased further, bringing in $330 million in 2021, well ahead of other categories. And it was also the year that the global music industry finally 'regained its 1999 glory' with the addition of streaming music services.It's easy to see that 2015 was a watershed year for streaming music services. Yet it was also a year worth talking about in detail -- the gods, at last, began to fight.New to spoilersIn June of that year, Apple officially announced the arrival of Apple Music at WWDC15. Apple, which had stuck to its "iPod + iTunes" digital music sales model, finally registered itself in the streaming music service Online game.On the other side of the coin, China's National Internet Information Office and National Copyright Administration, in August, officially issued the Notice on Ordering Online Music Service Providers to Stop Unauthorized Distribution of Music Works, ushering in an era of full-scale licensing of digital music in China. Under this document, which has been called the "strictest copyright order", China's digital music market, which was once flooded with pirated music, is also facing a major reshuffle.Apple MusicIn 2014, Apple's high-profile acquisition of audio device maker Beats was announced along with the acquisition of ownership of Beats Music. It's not that Apple's didn't have a streaming service at the time, but only as one of the iTunes services (iTunes Radio), but news soon broke that Apple would be merging the two services and tapping famed British radio DJ Zane Lowe as a music curator.All signs point to Apple becoming Spotify's biggest competitor.Finally, at WWDC 2015, Cook officially unveiled Apple Music in the form of "One more thing..." But in terms of development path, Apple Music has some uniqueness from other streaming music providers - a distinctly 'American' style. -There's a distinctly 'American' style to it.The biggest difference between Apple Music and the streaming music services of today is that instead of offering a free version, it offers a one-month (and now three months) fully functional free trial. This business model is not unlike what the major music companies asked for when they first negotiated with Spotify from Europe. Only Spotify's low stock and money spreading approach finally convinced those North American executives to let Spotify keep the free option.Apple Music, on the other hand, is a purely 'American genre' product, born with a straightforward threshold - after the free trial period has passed, either don't use it or pay for it.Apple Music, in order to make the experience as consistent as possible for all users, does not offer differentiated subscription plans, but only differentiates between people and devices, targeting individuals, families, students, etc. Giving different subscription prices.But after all, Apple Music is so well established that the subscription prices it offers are extremely attractive in many countries. In addition, it gives users who buy a new Apple Music device six months of access, or one to three months of free experience every now and then through a campaign, which amounts to a price war with local streaming music providers. But outside of that, Apple has a killer app - hardware and software ecology.The iPhone, iPad, and Mac are the best devices for distributing Apple Music ads than the signs on the street. And with Apple Music's unmatched Spotify experience, it's also a huge hit with users.It's safe to say that Apple Music was born with the golden key, a proper rich generation - -not only has a billion dollar family fortune, but also a team of professional musicians. Even though it was born many years later, it was still able to quickly steal a huge chunk of the market in a few years' time and become the world's second largest streaming music provider. According to Fortune, Apple Music already has 10 million paid subscribers in just six months, while it took Spotify six years to reach that mark. And in July 2018, Apple Music surpassed Spotify in the U.S. market in terms of subscribers.While there were some early ties to music rights companies and musicians, Apple Music was quickly resolved. With all this PR, the buzz around Apple Music was renewed, and the world saw Apple's terrific negotiating power and responsiveness. After Taylor Swift and a host of other musicians announced that they were re-listing their work on Apple Music, it quickly went into high gear, expanding rapidly around the world and launching the service in a number of countries, including mainland China, a market that many streaming providers covet but have been unable to enter.One of the high points of cultural development in mainland China followed, with Apple Music also serving as Apple's music service for the new era, being laid out across nearly all of Apple's hardware lineup, and even expanded into competitors' devices. And then the availability of spatial audio, Dolby Atmos, and lossless sound quality made it a further technological barrier.YouTube Music and TidalAs contemporaries of Apple Music, YouTube Music and Tidal have their own focus: the former emphasizes linking with video, while the latter focuses on high-quality lossless.The music library on YouTube Music includes music MVs from its site in addition to the major music rights holders, and since MVs don't require payment, the free version of YouTube Music has an advantage that no other streaming software can match: the ability to hear a number of tracks that other platforms require payment to listen to. But for this very reason, the free version of YouTube Music is the only streaming music service that doesn't support background playback App, and will also only play the MV version of songs. Non-subscribers can only keep YouTube Music in the foreground at all times, and there is a chance that ads will be inserted after the song has finished playing.Subscribers can rest or play in the background, and in addition to the option to watch MVs, they can also listen to music released by copyright holders.Tidal, a streaming music service that rose to prominence in 2014, has gotten a piece of the market with its high-quality lossless audio. And being owned by Jay-Z, he has generously given out shares of Tidal to 17 musicians. What's more, users can also support their favorite musicians by opting for a $19.99 per month lossless subscription: because with this subscription, Tidal will pay royalty revenue to those musicians who are on board with double the royalty tax rate.Tidal's support for European and American hip-hop is excellent, and has attracted a number of big name musicians to feature and release exclusive content, but copyright remains a hard sell. While it maximizes the benefit to musicians and the very best sound quality, it's also a real pain in the ass not to hear your favorite songs.FutureToday's streaming music market has entered a booming and relatively healthy state of competition.Globally, Spotify and Apple Music are still fighting it out, with YouTube Music, Tidal, Deeze and a host of other "dragon slayers" looking for a piece of the action, with their own swords in hand. Looking at the different regions, KKBox is still dominating in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore-Malaysia, while mainland China is still firmly controlled by QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, and Apple Music is still prying up the market little by little.What's even more interesting is that in the midst of all this is a land to be explored: Japan - today, Japan is still clinging to the record era, where video stores facing closure around the world still thrive and flourish. But one of the points we can't talk about when we get to the topic of streaming music services without discussing subscriptions - -whose essence is that we no longer buy ownership of songs, but rent access to them.When did we move from buying digital files to streaming music? There's actually no way to find the pulse of detail anymore. But what is clear about streaming music providers is that they almost always use a very subtle way of advertising their services as 'better than buying': theFree X months trial, low price subscription, listen to XX million songs.There is no denying that with the advent of the mobile internet era and the popularity of smartphones, this model of using 'free trials' to attract users to use and then lead to paid subscriptions has really activated the sluggish music industry. It's also true that most users don't like the songs in their music library for that long, so it's better to "rent a song and listen to it" than to buy a song and own it forever.Moreover, there is no greater contribution that streaming music has made to the music industry than the push for licensed music. Its ease of use and low subscription costs have managed to kill the rampant piracy of music for a while. And it has also bred huge business opportunities, allowing musicians to regain a reasonable income in a relatively healthy way, guiding music towards a healthy development.But let's tell a story. in July 2009, Amazon remotely removed two books from Kindle users: George Orwell's 1984 and Animal House. Although Amazon later came out and said that it had removed them from users' Kindles because it hadn't acquired the rights to the two books. After Amazon got the rights from new later, the two books were restored.But the incident still sparked a lot of user protest: if Amazon had just removed a certain recipe book, maybe people would have thought it was okay. But what was removed by coincidence were two books with a full social irony, and it was really hard not to let people express something.One of the artists also created a performance art piece specifically for the occasion. She made an exact copy of 1984 on the Kindle, along with the Kindle itself, and made it into a physical book. Intriguingly, however, the physical book is also out in electronic form later on, and is also available on Amazon's Kindle bookstore.We've been fortunate enough to experience nearly 20 years of the music industry being reinvented and witnessing one historic moment after another. From iPods to digital albums, to copyrighted music and streaming, this seemingly 'more user choice' path has also been a constant reminder to ponder: how much of our lives, from buying to renting, is left to be completely our own?But let's will look back at this chart, the music market in 2021, and there seems to be some more changes that make it feel alien: in 2021, global CD sales revenues start to rise again, for the first time since 2001. In the midst of this, the re-emergence of vinyl records has contributed a lot. But perhaps what's behind this is also a sign that there are still people who will want to 'have music that they can hold in their hands' again. https://techlife.app/archives/new-computers-new-chips-computex-2022-brings-these-new-gadgets.html 2022-05-28T20:24:00+08:00 New computers, new chips: COMPUTEX 2022 brings these new gadgetsThis year's Computex Taipei (hereafter referred to as COMPUTEX) was held from May 24 to 27. After two years of online exhibition, the physical exhibition finally returns - COMPUTEX 2022 adopts a combination of online and offline "virtual and real" approach. , which allows exhibitors to conduct new product launches, on-site tours, product demonstrations and other activities directly online.COMPUTEX 2022 still focuses on six major themes: "Innovative Computing", "Accelerating Intelligence", "Digital Resilience", "Connected X - Experience". Innovative Computing", "Accelerating Intelligence", "Digital Resilience", "Connected X - Experience", "Innovations & Startups" and "Sustainability", bringing a wealth of content to both online and offline exhibitors in the areas of endpoint computing, artificial intelligence, edge computing, autonomous driving, and data security.WebsiteDuring the COMPUTEX CEO Keynote from the 23rd to the 25th, the CEOs or CSOs of AMD, NXP, Micron and Supermicro were present. The CEOs or CSOs of AMD, NXP, Micron, and Supermicro all made appearances during the COMPUTEX CEO Keynote from the 23rd to the 25th, giving their outlook on the future of the industry and information technology, as well as introducing some company trends and new products. Microsoft and NVIDIA participated by way of live online Keynotes, but the much-anticipated Huang did not appear, nor did he release any more information about the 40-series graphics cards. Intel did not participate in COMPUTEX this year due to the epidemic, so we won't be able to see the red, green and blue together last year.This year's COMPUTEX offline show officially ended on May 27th, while the online show COMPUTEX DigitalGo will be held until June 6th, so if you're interested, you can take a "cloud walk" through the link above. In addition, we've compiled a list of information and products that may be of interest to you.AMDA new line of APUs codenamed MendocinoA Zen 2 architecture APU using TSMC's 6nm process with RNDA 2 cores, up to 4 cores and 8 threads, LPDDR 5 memory and the latest video encoding. The Mendocino series APUs aim to provide a power-efficient solution for the Windows laptop and Chromebook market in the $400-$700 price range, and are specifically optimized for video office software such as Teams, Zoom and Google Meet, and are expected to deliver "no less than 10 hours of endurance under mixed loads," the company announced at launch. The launch announced that it expects to achieve "no less than 10 hours of battery life under mixed loads," with a planned launch date of the fourth quarter of this year.CEO Keynote Considering the Zen 2 architecture's performance so far, this year The second half of the year may see Mendocino competing back and forth with Celeron and even i3 in the entry-level notebook market. The APU also has a lot to do with the processor codenamed "Van Gogh" from Steam Deck earlier this year, and there may even be more Mendocino-based handhelds to follow.AMD Advantage Framework adds another member: Smart Access StorageAMD Advantage is a gaming notebook design framework for the Ryzen + Radeon pairing presented by AMD at COMPUTEX last year, designed to enable a great gaming experience on mobile with a series of underlying optimization technologies. So far, we've introduced Smart Shift Max / Eco for intelligent CPU and GPU load scheduling, Smart Access Graphics for seamlessly switching between discrete and core graphics, and Smart Access Memory for efficient memory calls, and this year we're bringing a new Smart Access Storage technology that leverages Windows' DirectStorage API with Radeon. This year, the new Smart Access Storage technology is introduced, which can further optimize game startup time and texture loading time by efficiently communicating with the decoding process of Radeon graphics cards through Windows' DirectStorage API.Ryzen 7000 Series PreviewZen 3 is still gaining momentum and Zen 4 is here.In the second half of AMD's CEO Keynote, Dr. Su briefly introduced the 7000 series Riptide processors, expected to be available this fall, and the corresponding new slot standard AM5. 7000 series Riptide uses TSMC's 5nm Zen 4 cores, which have double the L2 memory compared to Zen 3, a 15% increase in single-threaded performance, up to over 5Ghz acceleration, and an expanded AI instruction set. expanded AI instruction set.The 7000-series Riptide's interface chip (IOD) uses a 6nm process for improved low-power performance, integrated DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 controllers, and RDNA2 core graphics - although the specs are expected to be considerably lower than the 6000-series mobile Riptide's core graphics, AMD is making up for the last few significant differences from Intel. In a small live game demo, a 16-core 7000-series Riptide was able to run at a steady 5.5 GHz all-core in Phantom Thread: Tokyo, matching the i9-12900KS's maximum RWD.The slots used in the 7000 series have also been replaced, with the new AM5 specification using a 1718-pin LGA slot, a maximum TDP threshold for processors coming in at 170 watts, support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 connectivity, and AM4-compatible hole spacing for heat sinks.Motherboard, the AM5 standard is divided into three kinds of X670E (Extreme), X670 and B650 specifications. It is expected that the 7000 series Raider will be available this fall, and the major particle manufacturers and motherboard manufacturers are ready for PCIe 5.0 and AM5 products.NVIDIAInstead of announcing any 40-series consumer graphics cards at this year's Computex Taipei, NVIDIA continued to focus on its 2B business, spending three-fifths of its nearly hour-long Keynote on NVIDIA's future plans for AI factories, automated robots and robotics applications. Only in the last 20 minutes did VP Fisher come on to talk about how NVIDIA is working closely with game developers to develop GRD (Game Ready Drivers) drivers for graphics cards, several new light tracing games, Reflex technology for latency reduction, and more. Other than a ROG Swift 500Hz gaming monitor with Reflex low latency support and some new RTX laptops, there was also no announcement of any other in-house 2C hardware products.From Data Center to AI FactoryAt the beginning of the Keynote, NVIDIA introduced the concept that "the data center is transforming into an AI factory" and used it as an opportunity to introduce three server products based on the 4nm ARM architecture Grace chipset - the Grace Hopper SuperChip and Grace CPU SuperChip - the CGX server framework for cloud graphics and cloud gaming loads, and the OVX server framework for Digital Twins and Omniverse data processing, respectively. --The three server products derived from the 4nm ARM-based Grace chipset - Grace Hopper SuperChip and Grace CPU SuperChip - are the CGX server framework, which focuses on cloud graphics and cloud gaming loads; the OVX server framework, which focuses on Digital Twins and Omniverse data processing; and the Grace CPU SuperChip, which focuses on high-performance computing, respectively. server focused on high-performance computing and the Grace Hopper SuperChip server focused on AI training, both known as the HGX framework.Also, NVIDIA announced the HGX Grace and HGX Grace Hopper frameworks for OEMs The HGX Grace and HGX Grace Hopper frameworks for high-density servers are designed to help OEMs such as ASUS, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Gigabyte, Unitech, Supermicro and Wistron quickly convert their existing 2U servers to the Grace architecture.AI Robotics Platform IsaacIn addition to the new computing platform, NVIDIA also introduced its AI robotics platform, NVIDIA Isaac, which includes four sequential functional segments: AI model training, simulation deployment, robot manufacturing, and post-deployment management.Also, to reduce robot pilot costs and improve test To reduce robot pilot costs and improve safety, NVIDIA has developed the Isaac Sim robot simulation deployment technology based on the Omniverse platform. The NVIDIA Isaac 2022.1 release announced at this year's show adds several new tools such as Cortex for human-robot collaboration, Isaac Gym to accelerate robot behavior policy formation, and with technologies and interfaces such as Isaac ROS and Isaac GEMs, NVIDIA announced a GPU with an Ampere Tensor architecture-based core and 12 ARM AGA cores. NVIDIA has announced Orin NX, a robotics development module that includes a GPU based on Ampere's Tensor architecture and 12 ARM A78 CPUs, starting at $399. To accelerate the development and adoption of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR), NVIDIA is also announcing Isaac Nova Orin, a robotics development platform that includes two Jetson AGX Orin modules and support for multiple types of sensors, to provide a more end-to-end solution for the fully automated robotics market. NVIDIA aims to provide a more end-to-end solution for the fully automated robotics market, as well as a push into autonomous driving with the DRIVE Hyperion platform.New RTX GamesYour hitman, now presented more as a light chase.Later in the Keynote, NVIDIA Vice President Fisher came out with some news related to the gaming market. Since the last COMPUTEX show, more than 250 games and software have supported ray tracing technology, double the number from the previous show. And the upgrade of GeForce users continues, with more than 30% of users having upgraded to RTX cards, contributing more than 1.5 billion hours of raytraced gaming time.And starting May 24, several more games will join the ray-tracing technology's camp: Hitman 3 as well as F1 22, and ten more RTX games, including NetEase's New Sinister.Low Latency Reflex Technology and Gaming ScreensIn its own System Latency Challenge survey, NVIDIA collected data on the aiming accuracy of 20,000 players at different latencies in the aiming training software Kovaaks, and found that players at different levels of accuracy improved by 2 to 2.5 times at low latency (25 ms) compared to high latency (85 ms).And NVIDIA Reflex technology, used to intelligently reduce game lag, is already supported in many of the biggest games. Reflex technology is already supported in many of the biggest games, and according to NVIDIA, more than 20 million gamers a month are currently playing games with Reflex turned on at the same time. In keeping with the growing number of hardware peripherals that support Reflex, NVIDIA showed off one of the few consumer-oriented hardware products at this year's Keynote: the Gamer Nation Swift 500Hz gaming monitor, featuring a 24-inch 1080P TN panel with a refresh rate of up to 500 hertz.CorsairVoyager a1600 AMD Advantage EditionThe Voyager a1600, which was singled out in AMD's CEO Keynote, is a gaming + live streaming product, with the highlight being the 10 separate function shortcuts on the spindle that use Stream Deck software in partnership with live streaming peripheral maker Elgato to launch some quick functions during live streaming. This extra area also displays the laptop's battery status and is not obscured when the lid is closed.The Voyager a1600 features a 16-inch 240Hz 1440P screen, hardware options up to a Ryzen 9 6900HS processor and Radeon RX 6800M mobile graphics, support for up to 64GB of RAM, and a standard Cherry MX low-profile keyboard as standard.MSIRaider GE67 HXDespite being mentioned in NVIDIA's Keynote, the GE67 HX has yet to appear at MSI's official virtual booth and is expected to be released via MSI's MSIOLOGY: Ahead of the curve online launch event on June 6. According to the information disclosed in the NVIDIA press release, the GE67 HX is a new product compared to the current Raider The GE67 HX will use the latest 12th generation Alder Lake-HX processors (such as the i7-12800HX or i9-12900HX), support up to 128GB of DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 SSDs, and a 240 Hz refresh rate OLED screen.AcerConteptD 7 SpacialLabs EditionThe NVIDIA Studio Workstation Notebook ConceptD 7 SpacialLabs Edition with Naked Eye 3D technology was also present at COMPUTEX this year, with a 15.6" 4K screen that covers the full Adobe RGB color gamut, is Pantone color-certified, and has an overall color-calibrated ΔE of less than 2. It can meet the needs of most scenarios of content creation. In addition, with Acer's SpacialLabs technology, the ConceptD 7 SLE can display models from software such as Blender as near-3D holograms for a more realistic display with real-time eye tracking, AI complementary calculations and special display hardware.SoltekWearable PC Zotec VR GO 4.0The fourth generation of ZOTAC's VR GO, the VR GO 4.0, was presented at this year's COMPUTEX, as promised, and features an 8-core, 16-thread Core i7 processor, RTX A4500 graphics, upgradable RAM and hard drive, and Windows 11 Pro pre-installed in a slim backpack design. The main performance upgrade over its predecessor is a reduction in nominal battery life, from the 1 hour claimed by VR GO 3.0 to 50 minutes.Mini PC Workstation ZBOX QTG7A4500Inside a 2.65 liter, 6.3 cm (2.45 inch) high enclosure, the ZBOX puts down the same hardware configuration as the VR GO 4.0, with up to 64G of DDR4 RAM, two M.2 SSDs or M.2+ Aptera, and a 2.5 inch hard drive bay. The ZBOX is also equipped with a wide range of ports, including five USB 3.1 ports on the front and back, two DP 1.4A and two HDMI 2.1 ports, as well as a Gigabit + 2.5GbE network port and Thunderbolt 4 port.Desktop PC that fits in your pocket ZBOX PI336 PicoThe ZBOX PI336 is a miniature desktop PC with a capacity of just 1.8 liters. The ZBOX PI336 Pico features a dual-core Celeron N6211 processor, expandable storage via a Micro SDXC card slot, and allows for simultaneous connection of two 4K displays via the HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4 ports on the chassis. The ZBOX PI336 Pico has a dual-core Celeron N6211 processor, expandable storage via a Micro SDXC card slot, allows two 4K displays to be connected simultaneously via HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4 ports, supports Wi-Fi 6E and Gigabit LAN, and has three USB 3.1 ports (2A1C), making it ideal for flexible deployment of hosts or decentralized home use.MediaTekAlso present at COMPUTEX was MediaTek, which brought its first 5G millimeter wave-enabled mobile platform, the Tiangui 1050, and its Wi-Fi 7 wireless connectivity platform solutions, the Filogic 880 and Filogic 380, to COMPUTEX 2022.The 1050 mobile platform is powered by TSMC's 6nm process, with an octa-core CPU consisting of two 2.5GHz Arm Cortex-A78 cores and a Mali-G610 GPU, supporting LPDDR5 memory and UFS 3.1 flash memory. The integrated 5G modem is the main focus this time, supporting 5G millimeter wave and Sub-6GHz full-band network dual connectivity and seamless switching, as well as 5G dual SIM dual standby and dual SIM VoNR calling services.Also announced were the Breguet 930 5G and Helio G99 4G mobile platforms, with the former supporting full-band Sub-6GHz 5G networks and the latter supporting 4G LTE networks only. The Breguet 930 5G mobile platform devices are expected to be available in the second quarter of this year, while the Breguet 1050 5G and Helio G99 4G mobile platform devices are expected to be available to consumers in the third quarter of this year.The Filogic 880 and Filogic 380 are the first Wi-Fi 7 wireless connectivity platform solutions from MediaTek. The Filogic 880, built on a 6nm process, is designed for carrier, retail and commercial markets, and is aimed at routers and gateways with 5-band 4x4 MIMO support and network speeds of up to 36Gbps. The Filogic 380 is aimed more at smartphones, tablets, TVs and other devices, also using a 6nm process, with integrated Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 support, MLO (Multi-Link Operation), and network speeds up to 6.5 Gbps.SummaryCompared to last year, this year's COMPUTEX conference seemed to be more industry-oriented, and Intel's absence made this year's event almost a one-man show for AMD in the eyes of consumers. The lack of Intel also made this year's event almost a one-man show for AMD in the eyes of consumers. The tricks that the major players played in the gaming notebook direction couldn't keep NVIDIA's lack of new graphics cards out of the business presentations. Hopefully, we'll get more surprises from the vendors later this year.Reference ArticlesComputex TaipeiComputex Taipei - Latest News List - COMPUTEX 2022 returns after two years of absence to open up new digital opportunitiesCOMPUTEX Taipei - Latest News List - COMPUTEX 2022 Physical Exhibition Successfully Ends with Virtual and Real COMPUTEX DigitalGo Online Exhibition Fever Continues2022 COMPUTEX DigitalGo | EventXTechradar Computex 2022 NewsAMD COMPUTEX 2022 CEO KeynoteNVIDIA Keynote @ COMPUTEX 2022NXP COMPUTEX 2022 CEO KeynoteMicron COMPUTEX 2022 CEO KeynoteSupermicro COMPUTEX 2022 CEO KeynoteVOYAGER a1600 240hz PC Gaming Laptop - Streaming Laptop | CORSAIRCorsair’s first-ever gaming laptop has a touch barCOMPUTEX 2022: New GeForce RTX Gaming and NVIDIA Studio Laptops Announced, Now Over 180 DesignsMSI Raider GE67 HX with 240Hz OLED laptop displayASUS AUROS 17X Datasheet PDFASUS AERO 16 Datasheet PDFConceptD 7 SpatialLabs EditionCG Geeks x SpatialLabs™ | Next@Acer | ConceptDZOTAC 2022 COMPUTEX DigitalGo | EventXZotac VR GO 4.0 backpack announced at Computex 2022ZOTAC unveils several products exclusively at Computex Taipei 2022VR GO 4.0 with Windows 11 Pro | ZOTACZBOX QTG7A4500 | ZOTACZBOX PI336 | ZOTACMediaTek Announces World’s First Complete Wi-Fi 7 Platforms for… https://techlife.app/archives/google-is-going-to-change-the-hard-to-use-back-button-on-android-phones.html 2022-05-25T22:21:00+08:00 At the recently concluded Google I/O developer conference, the Pixel 6a, Pixel Buds Pro and other new hardware products sparked the emotions of the audience, while stealing the attention of the original protagonist of the conference - the software.But that doesn't mean the software and Android OS announced at the developer conference are worthless - they're improving our experience with our phones in more subtle ways.▲ Used to using gesture back, do you remember the virtual back button?For example, Google announced at its developer conference that it was modifying Android's gesture back feature to make the 'back button' work better.The App is so messy, Google is coming down on the scene itselfIt's already 2022, why does Google want to change the Android back button?Doesn't it work fine, why did you change it?Perhaps you have similar questions, but the best answer is the fact that the Android back button is not that difficult to use, the problem is the apps that abuse the "back" function.Since the Android back button supports global operations and can be used to return directly to the desktop, such as WeChat, Weibo and the system's built-in applications are able to return directly to the desktop in one swipe.If you switch to apps like Baidu Maps or B Site, you need to swipe sideways 2 times to return to the desktop. Today's headlines even directly make the back button a "refresh" button, so swiping sideways on the app's home page is not to quit the app or hang it in the background, but to refresh the stream.In addition to easier operation, Today's Headlines has enabled the "back button to replace refresh function" by default, perhaps with the purpose of enticing people to stay in the app to watch content by refreshing with new content.▲ Slide once to return to the desktop and slide twice to return to the desktopThe original side-swipe twice to return to the desktop feature is designed to prevent accidental touch, in landscape gaming scenarios, fingers often operate inevitably touch the small horizontal bar interaction area at the bottom of the phone by mistake to trigger the return function, two return verification is a good solution to this problem.It's just that a large number of apps now use this mechanism, making it difficult to tell exactly which apps need to be side-swiped twice to return to the desktop and which apps can be side-swiped once, and there aren't really that many apps that need to be mistake-proofed by the side-swipe feature twice.When the return key destination is uncertain, the more confusing it is for people to operate.On the other hand, apps are getting richer in features and content, and the app homepage even has dozens of secondary menus, but secondary menus cannot be increased indefinitely, and going to new menu levels all the time is not only inefficient to operate, but also a bad experience.So both horizontal and vertical operations are being looked at by major app developers, for example in Today's headlines you can swipe left and right to switch content sections, and in some e-commerce apps there are even dedicated cards that swipe left and right to switch content.Compared to physical buttons, gesture operation is obviously more complex and difficult to understand, and the trigger range, swipe length, etc. of gesture swipes can affect the use of the function.▲ Swipe to switch content cards in the app may conflict with the swipe back gesture.These apps include the ability to swipe left and right to switch content, all to some extent and the system side swipe back function to form a 'conflict', side swipe is swipe the content in the card, or trigger the return action?Google's latest approach is to introduce "predictable design", not only does the normal swipe back have a corresponding arrow symbol to prompt people, but when swiping back to the desktop it will directly display the desktop wallpaper, with a clear interface animation to prompt people where the back button will take them, reducing the number of cases of inadvertent app closure.▲ New Back gesture. Image from: Google I/OWith the popularity of full screens and the absence of physical buttons, intuitive and obvious animations and symbolic cues are a better solution.As per Google's announcement at I/O, the new Back feature has been tested in Android 13 and will not be the default setting until Android 14.Fragmentation of the Android experienceIn fact, Google has been "tossing and turning" the back button for a very long time, starting as early as the button smartphone era, and various experience fragmentation problems have not been completely solved to this day.Initially, Google set 2 definitions for the Back button, Up and Back, the former referring to returning to the previous information level and the latter to return directly to the end of the current activity, a more intuitive example being the Back button on the search interface and the phone's side-swipe to return.When you swipe sideways to return, the phone will first retract the keyboard bar and you need to swipe sideways again to return to the original interface, whereas pressing the back button directly next to the search bar will return you directly to the original interface.▲ Take the back button of the search bar as an example to return and go back to the previous information level .The back button next to the search bar performs a return to the previous information level, while the phone's side swipe triggers an end to the input activity.Unfortunately this design has not been fully popular and not every developer can design applications to the appropriate standard.As phone screens get larger, it's becoming increasingly cumbersome to tap the back button at the top of the phone with one hand, so many apps have simply removed the back button from their interface and rely on Android-level global side-swipe back functionality.It is common for app developers to copy the interface design of the iOS version of their apps, resulting in a poor experience.Originally, Google's design language for Android, Material Design, made the side left swipe to call out the side menu bar, but a large number of developers did not support this design eventually led to the bankruptcy of the design, the side swipe call out menu completely gave way to the back function.▲ Many apps have abandoned the side-swipe call-out app menuWeChat Android version does not support side-swipe to call out the "article floating window" function, while the iOS version supports this feature, which is apparently one of the effects of the Android side-swipe back function, many Chinese mobile phone manufacturers also add "innovation" to the return button, side-swipe stay will call out the new application menu.The iOS version of WeChat supports dragging and dropping to bring up the "article floating window", while the Android version does not.Google is a latecomer to full-screen and gesture interaction. Xiaomi implemented a full-screen design on the initial MIX, completely abandoning Android's three physical buttons and replacing them with virtual ones, followed by an increasing variety of full-screen models and technical directions.After the full-screen trend, phone makers with custom Android systems have reached out to the bottom of the system to try to define full-screen interactions. Xiaomi has fixed the back button and home button directly into side-slide and bottom-up gestures, and Meizu can enable different functions with different side-slide depths when sliding sideways.▲MIUI 10 side swipe screen in different positions will trigger different functionsThat's when Google, an afterthought, enabled full gestures in Android 10, being the one in control of Android, only to be upstaged by phone manufacturers in terms of the underlying interactions.From this matter, you can get a glimpse of Google's control over the Android ecosystem, which is why when the new Android design and Material You were launched, many people said.It looks good, but I sure can't use it.How many app developers will support the fragmentation of Android that comes to mind as soon as they see the new design?A good change is that Google is trying to solve this problem, external pull through chip vendors and mobile phone manufacturers, such as system upgrades through cooperation with Qualcomm to improve the phone system update cycle, OPPO, Samsung and other manufacturers have supported three years of Android system updates.Material You is also promoting this design language by partnering with phone manufacturers like Samsung, and Android 13 now fully supports third-party apps to modify the Material You icon.Internally, through more self-developed hardware products, we understand the nuances of the product experience, and really define a good experience with a combination of software and promote it as a standard.A small but very important basic feature like the back button can be valued and changed with the Android update into each phone system. https://techlife.app/archives/s3-object-storage-a-great-design.html 2022-05-25T05:53:00+08:00 Getting started with serverless software development requires knowing this story: why did AWS release S3 Object Storage in 2006, followed by AWS Lambda (serverless) in 2014? Let's explore the story behind it and hopefully inspire you to migrate your software projects to a serverless platform.25,000 #CloudMadness voters can't be wrong. Amazon S3 is the greatest cloud service of all time.Really, you never know how a popularity contest like this is going to go. But in this case, I think the voters made the right decision. And I have a reason!S3 is an OG cloud serviceDepending on how you define it, 'Simple Storage Service / Simple Storage Service' may not be the first product from AWS -- SQS was actually launched first, but was only used in production environments some time after launch. Regardless, a message queue management product alone is not going to convince most enterprises to consider using the public cloud. A distributed storage solution that can scale as massively and elastically as your data without any additional O&M investment.As AWS's Mike Deck said on Twitter during the frenzy of voting, "I don't think you appreciate what a revolution it was in the late 00s to have virtually unlimited, highly durable, on-demand storage that didn't require you to manage any hardware. "Remember the days when you had to back up your drives on a cyclic basis every seven days? Or driving a whole truckload of data backup tapes to an offsite DR location? But, the generation that grew up with S3 doesn't remember these things.But S3 has become more than just a data repository. As a static web server, S3 serves content to thousands of websites, including Netflix, Wikipedia, and the New York Times. In fact, the world has 'standardized' on S3's API, so much so that Google's comparable competitor has support for the S3 API out of the box.That's why, when S3 has a rare availability burst in a region, it seems that half of the internet services are down. It's hard to imagine that other cloud services - except perhaps CDNs, such as the closely related CloudFront - would have such an impact. At this point, S3 is the basic Internet infrastructure that will continue to exist for a long time because...S3 is an engineering marvel.Distributed storage remains one of the most difficult problems in computer science, especially at scale. Historically many storage management services have emerged, but all have been eliminated because of their inability to maintain the integrity of customer data, which is their most valuable resource.With that in mind, the S3's durability guarantee -- 11 decimal places to 9, are you kidding me? -- represents a jaw-dropping feat of engineering. To put that in perspective, you are personally 400 times more likely to be hit by a meteor than the likelihood of losing one in a million S3 objects ...... is 400 times greater. Check out this pretty amazing Invent keynote from S3 VP Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec and try not to be surprised by the numbers: megabytes of data, tens of trillions of objects, over 235 microservices, distributing that data over an unknown number of physical facilities.She's talking about canonical 'correctness verification algorithms', checksums between loosely coupled systems, and complex actuarial predictive models for when hard drives will fail.AWS has automated 'endurance audits' that repeatedly grab every byte of S3 data to verify that it's correct when you retrieve the data you've stored in it. They are constantly updating these tools based on their experience from nearly 15 years of running S3 at unimaginable scale.All this so I could type 's3 sync' at the command line seven years ago to upload random source files. To be honest, at the time this made me feel a bit worthless.Sure, S3 has added a ton of features over the years, some more specialized than others (S3 Access Points / S3 Access Points, anyone know what that is?) ), but the core value concept hasn't changed: you can put as many objects as you want, store them for as long as you want, and they never crash. Drives fail, data centers go offline, but S3 is still there. That's why we developers take it for granted, you can build an entire architecture around it: just like the sun rises, S3 will be there in the morning, barring a planetary extinction event. That's what makes it truly, unquestionably great.Without S3, you can't spell serverlessOf course, when most of us hear the word 'serverless', our brains jump to a different service -- AWS Lambda, the original FaaS (Function as a Service / Function as a Service) that kicked off a generation of stateless applications and HackerNews discussion spotlight. (It's no coincidence that Lambda was a close second in the #CloudMadness poll).However, Ben Kehoe, who has been building serverless applications at iRobot for years, argued strongly in the poll for S3, telling me that "S3 is the epitome of serverless cloud computing," adding that "it solves a very difficult problem that everyone needs to solve, it has a (relatively) simple API that scales to whatever your Internet service can generate storage access traffic, but you only have to pay for storage at standard rates. And, it keeps getting better and better, without requiring any action from the user".Tim Allen Wagner, who invented Lambda, says that Lambda "actually started as an offshoot of S3, not EC2. so S3 brought something else revolutionary to the world!That's right: the whole serverless revolution started with her as a service that built triggers for S3 events, and Wagner remembers one of the 'scariest moments' of his career was integrating Lambda with S3: 'In those days, it was like pointing a firehose at a Dixie cup. Fortunately, S3 had an amazing architecture and team, and Lambda grew into very large 'shoes' that could use it at scale.'"While S3 is probably the greatest cloud service ever," Kehoe added, "Lambda also deserves credit for successfully changing the focus of cloud users from "this is part of my server that is a cloud service managed by someone else and is useful" to "wow, I can do everything with these services. This is an evolutionary step in managed computing resources (cloud computing), but it has completely changed the thinking of developers.'That's the real bottom line, isn't it?S3, along with some other foundational AWS services like EC2 and Elastic Load Balancer, established some of the fundamentals that have led to a Cambrian explosion of higher-level product innovation over the past decade. While S3 may no longer be the shiny new thing, it's worth looking back to appreciate what AWS has provided us over the years with Storage Optimization Services that Working quietly like an engine under the hood, it's actually not that simple.After all, you have to stand above the clouds to see the world to be considered standing on the shoulders of giants. And S3 is a giant.