Lego should snap up this rapid-fire brick-finding iOS app

Lego has worked extremely closely with Apple over the years, experimenting with unreleased iOS tech and demoing it onstage at launch events like WWDC; this has included some pretty heavy tinkering on the augmented reality ARKit platform that they’ve integrated several of their play sets with, adding digital experiences to the physical toys.

But one of the most impressive integrations between iOS tech and physical Lego bricks just popped up on the App Store, and it’s built by a team of fans. The new app Brickit is aiming to one-up what even the Lego Group has created with an app that uses computer-vision tech to quickly make sense of a mountain of bricks.

All users need to do is haphazardly dump Legos into a single layer on the floor. From there the app is able to quickly analyze and identify bricks in the collection and serve up some fun little projects that users have all or most of the bricks they need to build. The most impressive element of the app is its speed — the app is able to make sense of hundreds of bricks in a pile within seconds.

While I unfortunately don’t have access to a pile of Legos at the moment, a TechCrunch colleague demoed the app on iOS and had similarly smooth results to the demo above, with some added loading time in between discovery and when users are able to scroll through suggested projects. While navigating instructions, users are even pointed to the area in the brick pile that a particular needed piece is in.

What the Brickit team has done highlights the power of object recognition in the latest versions of iOS in a way that’s surprisingly useful for this very, very niche use case.

As is, the app is a bit limited by the fact that it’s a third-party design. The App Store’s disclaimer page is quick to specify that this is not an app built by the Lego Group and that its developers are just fans of the product, not employees of the company. Hopefully that’s enough to prevent Lego from overzealously siccing its lawyers on them, but given the app’s impressive use of Apple hardware, it really seems like the company would be better off acquiring the app.

There’s a lot more that Brickit could do with first-party access, mainly in terms of access to integrations with existing libraries of Lego instructions. With Lego’s 2019 acquisition of BrickLink, it’s clear the company has been aiming to capture more of the community fandom around aftermarket creations. Allowing the company to build up a database of the actual bricks that a user has in their possession, thus gaining some insights into the collections of sets that they own, would undoubtedly be valuable data to Lego.

For now the Brickit app is limited to iOS, but the company’s website indicates the team has aims to launch an Android app by the fall.

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Volvo Cars sets the tone for its next-gen vehicles with ‘Concept Recharge’ EV

Volvo Cars wants to completely electrify its lineup by 2030 and on Wednesday offered a glimpse into how it plans to get there and what its next generation of vehicles might look like.

But it’s not going to do it alone. Although the automaker plans on developing its own in-car operating system and other parts of the car, Volvo Cars detailed how it plans to work with partners like Northvolt, Google and Luminar to build out its future vehicles lineup. It also unveiled the first images of “Concept Recharge,” a concept EV that has flat floors, two interior screens and rear “suicide doors” that open from the middle of the vehicle.

Volvo Concept Recharge. Image Credits: Volvo Cars

The Concept Recharge is also outfitted with Luminar sensors, in line with an announcement earlier this month that Volvo Cars’ forthcoming flagship electric SUV will be equipped with Luminar’s technology stack as standard.

On the battery front, Volvo Cars is working with Swedish battery developer Northvolt on a pack that it says will enable a range of up to around 621 miles — a massive achievement of energy density, should Northvolt pull it off. The two companies are aiming to build a gigafactory in Europe by 2026 in a new 50-50 joint venture, with a potential annual capacity of up to 50 gigawatt hours. Volvo Cars will also source 15 GWh of batteries from Northvolt’s battery plant in Skellefteå, Sweden from 2024.

Future Volvo Cars vehicles will be capable of bidirectional charging, a capability that can turn the EV into a mobile generator or a mini power plant, offloading excess energy to the electricity grid.

Volvo said its OS, VolvoCars.OS, will act as an “umbrella system” for underlying operating systems, including its infotainment system led by Google and tech from Linux, QNX and AUTOSAR. While the vehicle will contain up to 100 electrical control units, these will run on a core computing system made up of three main computers being developed in partnership with Nvidia.

The automaker also discussed in more detail its plans to equip its flagship electric SUV with Luminar’s sensor suite and technology from Volvo’s software arm Zenseact. Executives shirked questions asking to specify the level of the autonomous system — referring to the scale developed by the Society of Automobile Engineers to measure the level of autonomy in a driving system — saying that they preferred to discuss the forthcoming AV driving system in terms of supervised or unsupervised. Under those terms, Volvo said the two modes — Cruise and Ride— would require driver supervision and no supervision, respectively. It said it would gradually launch unsupervised functionality at some point in the future.

The forthcoming system will generate tons of driving data from customers, and Volvo doesn’t intend on it to go to waste. The automaker said it aims to build a data factory to process information it collects from customers that use its autonomous drive safety features (with their consent). It would use this data to make improvements on the system, which it would push to vehicles via over-the-air updates.

“We need to transform this company from just a premium conventional company. We need to transform it into a leader in the new premium electric segment, which is growing very fast,” Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson said. “We need to understand batteries in the same way we understand the combustion engine.”

GM’s newest startup aims squarely at the commercial EV market

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Apple just released the first iOS 15 beta to everyone

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8. Those releases are the next major versions of the operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download these betas — you don’t need a $99 developer account. But don’t forget, it’s a beta.

The company still plans to release the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 this fall. But Apple is going to release betas every few weeks over the summer. It’s a good way to fix as many bugs as possible and gather data from a large group of users.

As always, Apple’s public betas closely follow the release cycle of developer betas. Apple also released the second developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 15 today. So it sounds like the first public beta is more or less the same build as the second developer build.

But remember, you shouldn’t install a beta on your primary iPhone or iPad. The issue is not just bugs — some apps and features won’t work at all. In some rare cases, beta software can also brick your device and make it unusable. You may even lose data on iCloud. Proceed with extreme caution.

But if you have an iPad, iPhone or Apple Watch you don’t need, here’s how to download it. Head over to Apple’s beta website from the device you want to use for the beta and download the configuration profile — do that from your iPhone for the watchOS beta. It’s a tiny file that tells your device to update to public betas like it’s a normal software update.

Once it’s installed, reboot your device, then head over to the Settings (or Watch) app. You should see an update. In September, your device should automatically update to the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 or watchOS 8 and you’ll be able to delete the configuration profile.

The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to “Do not disturb,” you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.

There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime with SharePlay and more. Safari also has a brand new look.

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Apple unveils iOS 15 with new features for FaceTime and better notifications

iPadOS 15 announced at WWDC, features improved multitasking and surprising Swift Playgrounds features

watchOS 8 brings new mindfulness features and respiratory tracking

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Microsoft says a third of its government data requests have secrecy orders

Microsoft’s customer security chief says as many as one-third of all government demands that the company receives for customer data are issued with secrecy clauses that prevents it from disclosing the search to the subject of the warrant.

The figure was disclosed in testimony by Microsoft’s Tom Burt ahead of a House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers weigh a legislative response to efforts by the Justice Department under the Trump administration to secretly obtain call and email records as part of an investigation into the leaks of classified information to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.

Burt said that such secrecy orders “have unfortunately become commonplace,” and that Microsoft regularly receives “boilerplate secrecy orders unsupported by any meaningful legal or factual analysis.”

In his testimony, Burt said that since 2016 Microsoft received between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders each year, or 7-10 a day. Microsoft said in its transparency report that it received close to 11,200 legal orders from U.S. authorities last year.

By comparison, the U.S. courts approved 2,395 warrants with secrecy clauses a decade ago in 2010, which Burt said is fewer than the number of secrecy orders Microsoft alone received in any of the past five years.

“These are just the demands that Microsoft, just one cloud service provider, received. Multiply those numbers by every technology company that holds or processes data, and you may get a sense of the scope of the government’s overuse of secret surveillance,” Burt’s testimony says. “We are not suggesting that secrecy orders should only be obtained through some impossible standard. We simply ask that it be a meaningful one.”

Much of the controversy over secrecy orders came of late when secrecy orders served on Apple, Google, and Microsoft expired in recent weeks, allowing the companies to disclose to the news agencies that the Justice Department under the Trump administration had sought to obtain their records by demanding the data from the tech companies that host the data.

President Biden pledged to stop the collection of journalists’ phone and email records, while also dropping some secrecy provisions. But lawmakers are likely to note that legislative change would be needed to codify policy into law.

Microsoft’s Burt said the company will “do everything it can to prevent the misuse of secrecy orders.” The software and cloud giant also sued the Justice Department in 2016 to challenge the constitutionality of gag orders.

Microsoft sues Justice Department for transparency in government data searches

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Apple and Snap partner JigSpace, the ‘Canva for 3D,’ raises a $4.7M Series A

When former Art Director Zac Duff started teaching a game development course online in 2015, he faced the same challenges that teachers around the globe have become all too familiar with after a pandemic-induced lockdown. So, he used his experience in 3D design to build a virtual reality classroom to make remote learning more engaging for his students. Instead of entering yet another Zoom lecture, the school gave students VR headsets to transport themselves to the Ancient Greek-inspired classroom that Duff built.

Still, Duff knew that this learning model couldn’t be easily scaled — most schools don’t have VR headsets to send out, and most teachers don’t have over a decade of game design experience to whip up a classroom with green fields and butterflies (yes, Duff made that). But he saw that there was potential for a user-friendly program that lets anyone create 3D presentations and share information in AR.

“Right at the center of it is knowledge transfer. It’s about one person giving knowledge to another person in a really effective way,” Duff told TechCrunch. He referenced products like Microsoft Powerpoint and Canva, which make it easy for the average user to create presentations and graphics that communicate their ideas. “We have those systems in 2D, but in 3D, we just didn’t have it, and it was a really complex, expensive technical process that you had to go through to build anything, and that stuck with me.”

Image Credits: JigSpace

Soon after, Duff took a Friday off from work to outline the company that would become JigSpace, which is poised to set the standard for knowledge-sharing in 3D. After launching in 2017, the JigSpace platform now has over 4 million users with a 4.8 average rating on the App Store. When you download the JigSpace app, you can interact in AR with 3D models that show how to fix a leaky sink, repair a dry wall, or even build a Lego Star Wars spacecraft. There are also educational models, or Jigs, that show how a piano works, the anatomy of the human eye, and even how the coronavirus spreads. The potential use cases for JigSpace are expansive — Duff says he hopes to work with manufacturing companies to have them make Jigs of their products. That way, let’s say you want to replace your AC filter, you can look at a 3D model in AR, rather than a black and white 2D drawing in an instruction booklet.

Today, JigSpace announced that it raised $4.7 million in Series A funding led by Rampersand, with Investible and new investors including Vulpes, and Roger Allen AM, also participating. The JigSpace app is free to use, and anyone can combine presets and templates of 3D modeled objects to create their own Jigs — the more tech savvy among us can upload up to 30 MB of files to make more customized Jigs on the free version. But the money-maker for Jigspace is its Jig Pro platform, which is designed for commercial businesses and manufacturers. Jig Pro‘s subscription for individuals is $49 per month, while the price of the enterprise offering isn’t listed online.

Image Credits: JigSpace

“The best area for us has been in durable manufacturing, because almost all manufacturing products have CAD files, so the 3D already exists,” said Duff. “Then, we’re able to work with those companies to give them the tools to create knowledge material around their products.”

Right after JigSpace launched its Pro version, it was featured in Apple’s iPhone 12 Keynote, demonstrating how the iPhone 12’s LiDAR scanner and 5G capabilities could be used to save time and money in manufacturing. JigSpace also partnered with Snapchat to create a Lens that allows you to scan kitchen items to reveal 3D Jigs that show how stuff works, from your microwave to your coffee maker.

Jig Pro’s customer base has grown 40% month-on-month since it launched in mid-2020, with the average user logging into the app at least once per day. Companies like Verizon, Volkswagen, Medtronic, and Thermo Fisher Scientific use JigSpace to develop 3D models to present to stakeholders, customers, and remote colleagues. Especially as products like Apple’s Capture emerge, it will become even easier for people to import their own 3D models into JigSpace.

Despite its commercial potential, it’s important to Duff that JigSpace always retains a free version that makes learning through AR easy.

“We want to make sure that all of the people with information they want to share, those are the people we serve, not just the technical people at the top,” Duff says. “From the beginning, my co-founder Numa Bertron and I always wanted to have a free version. Knowledge should be accessible to people in the best way possible, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be.”

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Shopify drops its App Store commissions to 0% on developers’ first million in revenue

Following similar moves by Apple, Google, and more recently Amazon, among others, e-commerce platform Shopify announced today it’s also lowering its cut of developer revenue across its app marketplace, the Shopify App Store, as well as the new Shopify Theme Store. The news was announced today alongside a host of other developer-related news and updates for the Shopify platform at the company’s Unite 2021 Conference, including updates to Checkout, APIs, developer tooling and frameworks, among other things.

Shopify says its app developer partners earned $233 million in 2020 alone, more than 2018 and 2019 combined — an increase that can likely be attributed, in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift to e-commerce that resulted. Today, there are over 6,000 publicly available apps across the Shopify App Store, and on average, a merchant will use around six apps to run their business.

Now, Shopify says it will drop its commissions on app developer revenue to 0%, down from 20%, for developers who make less than $1 million annually on its platform. This benchmark will also reset annually, giving developers — and, particularly those on the cusp of $1 million — more earning potential. And when Shopify’s revenue share kicks in, it will now only be 15% of “marginal” revenue. That means developers will pay 15% only on revenue they make that’s over the $1 million mark.

The same business model will apply to Shopify’s Theme Store, which opens to developer submissions July 15.

As the two stores are separate entities, the $1 million revenue share metric applies to each store individually. The new business model will begin on August 1, 2021 and will be made available to developers who register by providing their account details in their partner dashboard.

Shopify says the more developer-friendly business model will mean a drop in company revenue, but says it doesn’t expect this impact “to be material” because it will encourage greater innovation and development.

The changes to Shopify’s App Store follow a shift in the broader app store market around developer commissions.

Last year, amid increased regulatory scrutiny over how it runs its App Store, Apple announced it would reduce the App Store commissions for smaller businesses under a new program where developers earning up to $1 million per year would only have to pay a 15% commission on in-app purchases. Google and Amazon have since followed suit, each with their own particular spin on the concept. For example, in Google’s case, the fee is 15% on the first million the developer earns. Amazon is still charging a higher percentage at 20%, but is tacking on AWS credits as a perk.

Apple and Google, in particular, hope these changes can help shield them from antitrust investigations over their alleged app store monopolies, while also giving developers a better reason to participate in their own slice of the app economy.

Outside of mobile, Microsoft this year agreed to match the 12% cut on game sales that Epic Games takes on its Windows Store, as a means of increasing the pressure on its rivals. With the larger update to the new Windows 11 Store, it will allow developers to use their own payment platforms, while keeping its commission at 15% on apps.

To date, much of the momentum in the market has been focused on lowering the cut of app and games sales. Shopify’s app platform is different — it’s about apps that are used to enhance an e-commerce business, like those that help with shipping and delivery, marketing, merchandising, store design, customer service and more. These are not consumer-facing apps, but they are still marketed in an app store environment.

While the changes to developers’ businesses is the big news today from Unite 2021, that’s not to diminish from the host of updates Shopify announced related to its larger platform.

Among the updates are: the debut of Online Store 2.0, a more flexible and customizable update to Shopify’s Liquid platform (its templating language), which Netflix was the first to test; investments in custom storefronts for faster response times; a new React framework for building custom storefronts called Hydrogen; a way to host Hydrogen storefronts on Shopify called Oxygen; support for more Metafields for products and product variants and custom content that’s built on top; speedier Spotify Checkout; Checkout Extensions (customizations built by developers); easier and more powerful Shopify Scripts; a Payments Platform for integrating third-party payment gateways into Checkout; updates to its Storefront API; and more.

The company today also shared a few more business metrics, noting, for instance, that last year over 450 million people checked out on Shopify, totaling $120 billion in gross merchandise volume. It said its Shopify partners — which include app developers, theme builders, designers, agencies and experts — earned $12.5 billion in revenue in 2020, up 84% year-over-year, and 4x the revenue of Shopify’s own platform.

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Hit iPhone controller Backbone One scores Xbox Game Pass partnership at xCloud’s iOS launch today

Backbone One, the killer iPhone game pad I profiled here late last year has just scored the mother of all tie-ups for a gaming accessory. It’s getting bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate as it launches on iOS today alongside the xCloud game streaming service.

As a part of the deal, Backbone is being bundled with Xbox Game Pass in a new retail packaging that gets the Designed for Xbox stamp, making a Backbone + iPhone combo the closest thing we’ve ever seen to a portable Xbox. 

In my last piece I noted how Backbone cleverly used the accessory APIs built into iOS to offer super slick functionality for its cross-game dashboard. It’s been updating that dashboard to get better about showing you games, exposing you to new games and letting you use its clipping features to share killer plays with your friends. It’s one of the best gaming apps I’ve seen on iOS in years, and it has big potential to create a cross-universe place to play for the biggest gaming audience in the world. 

The Capture Button on Backbone One works with Xbox Cloud Gaming and lets you share it as a link. There’s also a new Xbox Game Pass feed and a way to move between Xbox and iOS games in the same interface. There’s  also a big callout for Xbox Remote Play, a feature that’s still super-under-utilized and actually quite good on current gen consoles. 

And the package even makes use of an AppClip to display an AR version of Backbone running xCloud for people happening on the retail packaging at a store. 

The Backbone team continues to impress with its slick and clever integrations and solid instincts. The game controller pedigree of the team shows (some original Xbox 360 controller team members worked on Backbone) but the software aspects are the most impressive. The way that Backbone unifies gaming experiences across AAA iOS ports like Warzone or Minecraft, Xbox and Playstation Remote Play and now native xCloud games feels like the way of the future for mobile gaming in a way that none of the individual players, including Apple, has managed to get right. 

Even though xCloud games are web based they are treated and presented as native apps inside Backbone’s really well done dashboard. I’ve personally played a lot of Destiny 2 over Stadia on Backbone and it feels fantastic, I can’t wait for it to be more directly integrated into the dash with clipping and social like the Xbox cloud titles are today. 

The experience of discovering, downloading and playing a game is better with a Backbone installed than even Apple Arcade now that the team is getting more into curation. They’ve also got a really slick linking mechanism that allows you to download apps right from the App Store if you see a clip of them being shared on your feed. This is how internet native players want to find and play new games — a continuously hyperlinked world of games and streams that makes it possible to see, follow and play without having to stop to manually search for anything.  

It’s also making me yearn for a time when discovering games goes beyond ‘downloading’ them and into a world where I can see a clip shared by a friend, tap on it and be playing a single level or match that gets me hooked before having to go buy the game. It would be a killer acquisition onramp for new players. 

The Microsoft tie up means that someone who purchases the Backbone for $99 from its website or at Microsoft Stores today gets 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate, making this the absolute best deal for new customers considering GPU is $45 alone. That’s bound to be a huge boost for Backbone as a young gaming startup. 

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Hit iPhone controller Backbone One scores Xbox Game Pass partnership at xCloud’s iOS launch today

Backbone One, the killer iPhone game pad I profiled here late last year has just scored the mother of all tie-ups for a gaming accessory. It’s getting bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate as it launches on iOS today alongside the xCloud game streaming service.

As a part of the deal, Backbone is being bundled with Xbox Game Pass in a new retail packaging that gets the Designed for Xbox stamp, making a Backbone + iPhone combo the closest thing we’ve ever seen to a portable Xbox. 

In my last piece I noted how Backbone cleverly used the accessory APIs built into iOS to offer super slick functionality for its cross-game dashboard. It’s been updating that dashboard to get better about showing you games, exposing you to new games and letting you use its clipping features to share killer plays with your friends. It’s one of the best gaming apps I’ve seen on iOS in years, and it has big potential to create a cross-universe place to play for the biggest gaming audience in the world. 

The Capture Button on Backbone One works with Xbox Cloud Gaming and lets you share it as a link. There’s also a new Xbox Game Pass feed and a way to move between Xbox and iOS games in the same interface. There’s  also a big callout for Xbox Remote Play, a feature that’s still super-under-utilized and actually quite good on current gen consoles. 

And the package even makes use of an AppClip to display an AR version of Backbone running xCloud for people happening on the retail packaging at a store. 

The Backbone team continues to impress with its slick and clever integrations and solid instincts. The game controller pedigree of the team shows (some original Xbox 360 controller team members worked on Backbone) but the software aspects are the most impressive. The way that Backbone unifies gaming experiences across AAA iOS ports like Warzone or Minecraft, Xbox and Playstation Remote Play and now native xCloud games feels like the way of the future for mobile gaming in a way that none of the individual players, including Apple, has managed to get right. 

Even though xCloud games are web based they are treated and presented as native apps inside Backbone’s really well done dashboard. I’ve personally played a lot of Destiny 2 over Stadia on Backbone and it feels fantastic, I can’t wait for it to be more directly integrated into the dash with clipping and social like the Xbox cloud titles are today. 

The experience of discovering, downloading and playing a game is better with a Backbone installed than even Apple Arcade now that the team is getting more into curation. They’ve also got a really slick linking mechanism that allows you to download apps right from the App Store if you see a clip of them being shared on your feed. This is how internet native players want to find and play new games — a continuously hyperlinked world of games and streams that makes it possible to see, follow and play without having to stop to manually search for anything.  

It’s also making me yearn for a time when discovering games goes beyond ‘downloading’ them and into a world where I can see a clip shared by a friend, tap on it and be playing a single level or match that gets me hooked before having to go buy the game. It would be a killer acquisition onramp for new players. 

The Microsoft tie up means that someone who purchases the Backbone for $99 from its website or at Microsoft Stores today gets 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate, making this the absolute best deal for new customers considering GPU is $45 alone. That’s bound to be a huge boost for Backbone as a young gaming startup. 

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Discord acquires augmented reality startup Ubiquity6

After raising tens of millions from investors and executing a pretty substantial pivot earlier this year, augmented reality startup Ubiquity6 and its team have been acquired by gaming chat app giant Discord.

The ambitious AR startup had raised $37.5 million from a series of top investors including Benchmark, First Round, Kleiner Perkins and Google’s Gradient Ventures who were betting on its vision of building a consumer-facing platform for hosting augmented reality content. Its most recent publicly disclosed financing was a $27 million Series B in October of 2018.

Terms of the Discord acquisition weren’t disclosed, though in recent months the startup seemed to abandon most of the products it had spent its first several years building, suggesting that Ubiquity6 had been having some issues finding wide audiences for its products.

Ubiquity6 nabs $10.5 million from top investors to build a deeper augmented reality

Launching back in 2017, Ubiquity6 hoped to build an app that would be the central way mobile phone users would browse augmented reality content. In late 2019, the startup launched a product called Displayland, which aimed to gamify the process of 3D scanning physical environments with a smartphone’s camera.

The company’s efforts to find mass adoption were hampered by a mobile AR market which has largely failed to gain any momentum in recent years despite hefty investment from tech giants including Apple and Google.

In early 2020, CEO Anjney Midha told TechCrunch that the startup had some 65 employees.

In recent months, Ubiquity6 had executed a pretty drastic pivot, leaving augmented reality completely behind in favor of building out a desktop platform that allowed users to play simple online party games together remotely. The beta platform, called Backyard, was designed for pandemic era habits that seem to be on the decline as the US springs back into action. Backyard was discontinued this week as part of the acquisition announcement.

In a Medium post announcing the acquisition, Midha seems to downplay any expectations that Ubiquity6’s augmented reality technology will be living on inside Discord.

“Our mission at Ubiquity6 has always been to unlock new ways for people to connect through shared experiences,” Midha wrote. “Joining Discord today allows us to accelerate that mission — Ubiquity6’s team, Backyard product and multiplayer technology will be integrated into Discord.”

Ubiquity6 launches a studio editor built for the real world

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The first preview of Windows 11 is now available

Microsoft today released the first preview build of Windows 11 to those in the Dev Channel of the company’s Windows Insider program. If you have joined the Insider program and meet Microsoft’s new — and somewhat complicated — system requirements for the new operating system, you should see the update soon.

This first preview includes most of the new features Microsoft has promised for Windows 11, including the new look and feel, themes, widgets, the new snap layouts and the updated File Explorer. But there are also some features that didn’t yet make the cut for this first release. Support for Android apps and the new built-in Teams integration, for example, are coming in a later release, but a preview of the new Windows Store is already available today.

Otherwise, though, you’ll get to try out the new Start menu for example (and fret not, you will be able to move the start button to the bottom-left if you don’t like the centered look — but you won’t be able to move the entire taskbar to another side of the screen). And while the Start menu is an iconic part of the Windows experience, most power users probably never use it and instead use their keyboard or the taskbar to start 99% of their applications. Still, Microsoft is trying to do something different here with its new “recommended” section that highlights newly installed apps and recently used files.

Image Credits: Microsoft

Another new feature you’ll likely spot right away is the new File Explorer, which now does away with the ribbon-style menu in favor of a flatter look (Microsoft calls it a ‘command bar’) and new, more modern icons across the board. It looks good, but we’ll have to give it a try to see if it hasn’t lost a lot of functionality in the process.

The File Explorer, just like every other app in WIndows 11, will also feature support for Microsoft’s new Snap layouts, which take the existing ‘snapping’ gesture or keyboard shortcuts in Windows that let you snap windows to any side of the screen and brings it to the maximize button. While the overall functionality isn’t new here, I’m pretty sure that a lot of Windows users never knew it existed, so this new feature will introduce window snapping to a lot more users.

Image Credits: Microsoft

The new widgets, too, are now prominently highlighted in the taskbar. Right now, there are calendar, weather, local traffic, Microsoft To Do and stocks widgets, as well widgets that show you recent photos from OneDrive and sports and esports news if that’s your thing. There’s also a personalized news feed.

The last new feature worth mentioning here is the new Settings menu. Ever since the ill-fated Windows 8, Windows essentially had two settings menus (the Control Panel and Settings). It looks like those confusing days aren’t over just yet, but the new Settings menu at least looks a lot cleaner than the existing one in Windows 10.

There are, of course, plenty of other changes in Windows 11. This is definitely more than just another bi-annual Windows 10 update with a few minor UI changes. Now we’ll just have to see how all of this works in the real world — though keep in mind that this is still an early release. The preview is now rolling out to Insiders, so we’ll likely hear more about how it performs soon. We’ll also put it through its paces in the coming days.

 

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Consumer spending on apps hit record $64.9B in first half of 2021, but install growth slowed to 1.7%

Consumer spending in mobile apps hit a record $64.9 billion during the first half of 2021, according to preliminary data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. This figure represents a 24.8% increase in spending seen across both the App Store and Google Play, compared with the year-ago period. But while industry experts believe the accelerated shift to mobile fueled by the pandemic is a trend that will continue, it’s worth noting that — despite the new record — the growth rate for consumer spending has slightly slowed, and the download growth slowed more dramatically.

From the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020, consumer spending on mobile apps grew 28.4% from $40.5 billion to $52 billion, for comparison — slower than the 24.8% seen in the current period.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Apple’s App Store accounted for $41.5 billion in global consumer spending during the first half of 2021, or 1.8x the $23.4 billion seen by Google Play.

However, Google Play continues to outpace on growth, having jumped 30% from the $18 billion in the first half of 2020 compared with the 22.1% growth from the $34 billion the App Store had seen. This is due, in part, to demand from markets like the Philippines, where the Covid-19 pandemic has forced business closures and quarantines, Sensor Tower noted.

Consumer spend outside of games was driven by sports, finance, business, book and entertainment apps. Subscription-based apps in the top 100 apps (excluding games) were a large part of this spend, too, contributing $8.3 billion during the period. TikTok remained a top grossing app during the first half of 2021, followed by YouTube and regular top earner Tinder.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Of course, mobile game spending continues to contribute to the largest part of the overall consumer spend, reaching $44.7 billion during the first half of the year. The App Store accounted for $26 billion of that figure, but growth slowed from 26.5% in the year-ago period to 13.5% from the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Top grossing games in the first half of 2021 were, in order, Tencent’s Honor of Kings ($15B+), PUBG Mobile (including its localized version for China, reached nearly $1.5B), Genshin Impact ($848M+), Roblox and Coin Master.

Mobile app download growth also significantly slowed in the first half of this year, the firm found.

Last year, the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to a surge of new mobile app installs around the world, as consumer looked to apps for work, school, shopping, heath, grocery, and more. During the first half of 2020, app installs had jumped 25.7% year-over-year to reach 71.3 billion downloads. But in the first half of 2021, downloads only grew 1.7% to reach 72.5 billion installs.

The App Store even saw a year-over-year decline in non-game installs in the first half of 2021, dropping 10.9% to 16.3 billion from 18.3 billion in the first half of 2020. Sensor Tower believes this is reflective of the increased competition for consumer attention in markets with a high number of iOS users, like the U.S., where businesses have been reopening and in-person activities are resuming.

Meanwhile, Google Play (non-game) installs climbed 6% in the first half of this year to 56.2 billion from the 53 billion in the first half of 2020. This could be tied to the demand for apps in markets where Android is dominant, like India, which has continued to be impacted by the pandemic. As a result, app adoption on Google Play was 3.5 times higher than on the App Store during the first half of 2021.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

The (non-game) app with the most downloads was TikTok, which gained 384.6 million new installs during the first half of this year. But this is down by around 38% from the 619 million installs it saw during the year-ago period — a change that can be attributed to its ban from the Indian market last year. The rest of the top 5 most-downloaded app chart was dominated by Facebook, which scored the No. 2, No. 3, and No 4 positions, with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. Telegram was No. 5 followed by Messenger, Zoom, Snapchat, CapCut and Google Meet.

Mobile game downloads, meanwhile, fell 22.8% to 4.4 billion on the App Store but grew 3.9% on Google Play to 23.7 billion in the first half of 2021.

The app data presented is a preliminary analysis that may become more precise over time. It’s also worth comparing it to related reports from other firms for a fuller picture.

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Android apps are coming to Windows 11 through the Amazon Appstore

Ecosystems make strange bedfellows. Here’s one of the stranger in recent memory – and one of the most unexpected bits of news from today’s Windows 11 event. Microsoft announced today that it will be making Android apps available on the next major version of its operating system.

Chief Product Officer Panos Panay called the addition, “just one more small surprise,” noting that the mobile apps can be integrated into the Start menu and taskbar. They’ll also tile or “window” as part of the OS’s new application placement UI.

Image Credits: Microsoft

The apps will be available through the Microsoft Store by way of the Amazon Appstore. The company highlighted TikTok running on a demo of the operating system. The app is presented in a vertical, portrait orientation, as you would expect from a mobile-first design.

With 1.85 million Android apps, it’s currently a way to flood the Microsoft app store with a whole bunch of new content – and make sure the latest popular mobile apps are suddenly available on the platform. Though time will tell how good the experience (built on top of Intel Bridge) ultimately is.

Windows 11 arrives this holiday season.

Microsoft announces Windows 11, generally available by the holidays

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Microsoft announces Windows 11, generally available by the holidays

After weeks of leaks and hype, Microsoft today officially announced Windows 11, the next version of its desktop operating system. While the company may have once said that Windows 10 was the last version of Windows, forgoing major point launches for a regular cadence of bi-annual upgrades, but it clearly believes that the changes — and especially the redesigned user interface — in this update warrant a new version number.

Microsoft plans to release Windows 11 to the general public by the holidays, so we can probably expect it sometime around late November. Before that, we’ll likely see a slew of public betas, starting next week. It’ll be a free update to Windows 10 users.

If you followed along with the development and eventual demise of Windows 10X, Microsoft’s operating system with a simplified user interface for dual- and (eventually) single-screen laptops, a lot of what you’re seeing here will feel familiar, down to the redesigned Start menu. Indeed, if somebody showed you screenshots of Windows 11 and early previews of Windows 10X, you’d have a hard time telling them apart.

Image Credits: Microsoft

As Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay noted in today’s announcement, the overall idea behind the design is to make you feel “an incredible sense of calm,” but at the same time, the Windows team has also worked to make it a lot faster. Windows Updates, for example, are supposed to be 40 percent faster, but Panay also noted that starting up your machine and even browsing should feel much faster.

Image Credits: Microsoft

One surprise feature here is that you will now also be able to run Android apps on Windows. These apps will seem like native apps that can be integrated into the taskbar, for example. These apps will be in the redesigned Microsoft Store, via — you want to sit down for this — the Amazon Appstore. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Android apps are coming to Windows 11 through the Amazon Appstore

Image Credits: Microsoft

Besides the new user interface, which makes copious use of translucency and shadows and new features for touch screen users, one of the core new UI features is what Microsoft calls Snap Layouts, which pops up a small widget when you hover over the icon that maximizes your window to allow you to move the window to any corner, something that previously involved dragging your window to the corner of your screen (which was often hard when you used multiple screens).

Image Credits: Microsoft

Another major new feature is that Windows 11 will come with Teams built-in from the outset. It’s no secret that Microsoft is bullish when it comes to Teams. It recently launched the consumer version of Teams, so it makes sense to now bring it to Windows 11, too. It’s worth noting that Microsoft never brought Skype to Windows, so this is quite a change, but it basically makes Teams Microsoft’s Facetime.

Image Credits: Microsoft

If you saw the Windows 11 leaks, you know that web widgets are one of the more visible new features. “Windows widgets is a new, personalized feed, powered by AI, serving you curated content,” Panay said. Widgets aren’t a new thing, of course, and in many ways, they make up for the removal of Live Tiles in the Start Menu. They’ll also give developers a new canvas to surface information from their applications.

Image Credits: Microsoft

This wouldn’t be a new Windows without Microsoft talking about gaming, of course. The company argues that Windows 11 will “deliver the best PC gaming experience yet,” but what else would they say?

Image Credits: Microsoft

Microsoft promises better graphics thanks to Auto HDR, a feature that’s already available on Xbox. Thousands of games, Microsoft says, will be automatically enhanced with Auto HDR on Windows 11. In addition, the company argues that thanks to a new storage API in Windows 11, games will be able to quickly load game assets without bogging down the CPU (but it’ll take a compatible PC to do so). Oh, and Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription will be built right into Windows 11, too.

Image Credits: Microsoft

As expected, there will be a new Microsoft Store, too, which Panay said was built from the ground up for speed (because speed was what people were complaining about?). Panay argues that Microsoft wants to help developers bring more of their applications to the store. One area where Microsoft is obviously trying to set itself apart from Apple is that it will allow developers to use their own commerce engine in their apps and that Microsoft will not take any cut from that.

Image Credits: Microsoft

Indeed, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that he wants developers to have the opportunity to build their own platforms on Windows 11. “Windows is the stage for the world’s creation,” he said. “With this new version of Windows, we are unleashing the innovation and ingenuity inherent in each of us. […] Today, the world needs a more open platform – one that allows apps to become platforms in their own rights. Windows is the platform where things that are bigger than Windows can be born — like the web. That’s our aspiration with Windows 11.”

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Google and Jio Platforms announce ‘world’s cheapest’ smartphone, JioPhone Next

Jio Platforms, run by India’s richest man (Mukesh Ambani), and Google on Thursday unveiled JioPhone Next, an affordable Android smartphone as the top Indian telecom operator makes further push to make it more affordable for people to sign up to its network.

The Indian firm, which secured $4.5 billion investment from Google (and another $15.5 billion from Facebook and others) last year and shared plans to work on low-cost smartphones, said the JioPhone Next will help roughly 300 million users in India who are still on 2G network upgrade.

The phone, which is “powered by extremely optimized Android” operating system, will first launch in India this September and eventually be made available outside of the country.

Jio Platforms, which serves 425 million subscribers, is positioned to add another 200 million in the next few years, said Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, at its annual general meeting Thursday.

The JioPhone Next will be the “most affordable smartphone” globally, said Ambani.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company has also entered into a 5G cloud partnership with Jio Platforms.

Even as most smartphones that ship in India, the second largest market, are priced at $150 or less, customers looking for a smartphone priced under $100 are left with little choice. And that choice has further shrunk in recent years.

Research firm Counterpoint told TechCrunch that the sub-$100 smartphones accounted for just 12% of the Indian smartphone market, down from 18% in 2019 and 24% in 2018. Sub-$50 smartphones represented just 0.3% of the entire market in 2020, down from 4.3% in 2018.

Smartphone makers are aware of this whitespace in the market, but have found it incredibly challenging to meet this demand. Some, including Jio Platforms, which has amassed over 425 million subscribers, earlier explored a range of feature phones to reach small cities and towns of India. Jio Platforms’ KaiOS-powered feature phone, called JioPhone, had amassed 100 million customers as of late February this year.

In a recent report to clients, analysts at UBS said that after accounting the recent price surge of memory component, any smartphone priced at or under $50 is likely selling at cost.

“While this move by Jio will accelerate 2G to 4G migration, we evaluated how interesting this space would be for other smartphone manufacturers, especially key players like Xiaomi. Xiaomi, the unit market leader in smartphones in India, is unlikely to follow up with a $50 smartphone, in our view,” they wrote in the report, obtained by TechCrunch.

Google, too, has previously made several efforts — $100 Android One smartphones program in 2014 and low-resource intensive Android Go operating system in 2017 — to expand the reach of its handsets. The company has also backed KaiOS, which powers popular feature phones.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

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Apple to drive China revenues with search ad launch

After launching five years ago in the United States, Apple’s search advertising service finally arrived in mainland China this week.

The feature, called Apple Search Ads, lets developers bid on an advertising slot based on users’ keyword search in the App Store, similar to how Google search ads work. JPMorgan previously estimated the giant’s annual ad revenue could top $11 billion by 2025, though the forecast didn’t have a breakdown for the search ad business.

Apple has itself been reining in on personalized advertising, letting users turn off data tracking by apps, a move that will inevitably roil the business models of Facebook and others dependent on third-party data to target ads.

China has historically been a strong market for Apple, but iPhones are increasingly losing their luster as a status symbol in the country with the rise of local offerings like Huawei. In the first quarter, however, Apple’s smartphone shipment saw a rebound thanks to Huawei’s slipping sales and the launch of the iPhone 12 family. The Chinese App Store is another important source of income for Apple.

In a five-page guideline, Apple outlines the qualifications for developers targeting ads at mainland Chinese users. There is a stack of industry-specific licenses that advertisers must obtain, which practically excludes most foreign entities from directly advertising in mainland China, as noted in a blog post by AppInChina, an agency that helps international apps launch in China. To bid for search ads in China, apps would have to find local partners with all the government approvals in place.

The requirements for apps importing goods into China, for example, include not just a general license to run value-added internet businesses but also registrations with the relevant trade and customs authorities. Apple may even start asking for these permits from apps that simply want to publish in China, wrote AppInChina, as Apple continues to enforce rules set by the Chinese government as evident from its crackdown on gaming apps.

China Roundup: Apple closes a 4-year-old App Store loophole

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