Firefox will soon start blocking trackers by default

Mozilla today announced that its Firefox browser will soon automatically block all attempts at cross-site tracking by default.

There’s three parts to this strategy. Starting with version 63, which is currently in testing in the browser’s nightly release channel, Firefox will block all slow-loading trackers (with ads being the biggest offender here). Those are trackers that take more than five seconds to load. Starting with Firefox 65, the browser will also strip all cookies and block all storage access from third-party trackers. In addition, Mozilla is also working on blocking cryptomining scripts and trackers that fingerprint users. As usual, the timeline could still change, depending on how these first tests work out.

“In the physical world, users wouldn’t expect hundreds of vendors to follow them from store to store, spying on the products they look at or purchase,” Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen writes today. “Users have the same expectations of privacy on the web, and yet in reality, they are tracked wherever they go. Most web browsers fail to help users get the level of privacy they expect and deserve.”

If you want to give these new features a try today, all you have to do is install the unstable Firefox Nightly release. There, in the privacy settings, you’ll find the new tracker blocking features under the “Content Blocking” header. Once you’ve turned that on, the browser will also walk you through how all of this works and highlights that some of the more aggressive settings may break a few sites.

In addition, Firefox’s private mode also uses the same kind of tracking protection already, as does Firefox for iOS.

Safari users, too, will have likely yawned while reading this. Apple, after all, already announced similar privacy features for its browser last year. The approach here is different, with Apple betting on machine learning and Firefox using more traditional block lists, but the intent is the same.

As Mozilla notes, the idea here is to give users choice. Sites can still ask for a user’s data but they’ll have to ask for consent before they get it. “Blocking pop-up ads in the original Firefox release was the right move in 2004, because it didn’t just make Firefox users happier, it gave the advertising platforms of the time a reason to care about their users’ experience. In 2018, we hope that our efforts to empower our users will have the same effect,” writes Nguyen.

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The Google Assistant is now bilingual

The Google Assistant just got more useful for multilingual families. Starting today, you’ll be able to set up two languages in the Google Home app and the Assistant on your phone and Google Home will then happily react to your commands in both English and Spanish, for example.

Today’s announcement doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, given that Google announced at its I/O developer conference earlier this year that it was working on this feature. It’s nice to see that this year, Google is rolling out its I/O announcements well before next year’s event. That hasn’t always been the case in the past.

Currently, the Assistant is only bilingual and it still has a few languages to learn. But for the time being, you’ll be able to set up any language pair that includes English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. More pairs are coming in the future and Google also says it is working on trilingual support, too.

Google tells me this feature will work with all Assistant surfaces that support the languages you have selected. That’s basically all phones and smart speakers with the Assistant, but not the new smart displays, as they only support English right now.

While this may sound like an easy feature to implement, Google notes this was a multi-year effort. To build a system like this, you have to be able to identify multiple languages, understand them and then make sure you present the right experience to the user. And you have to do all of this within a few seconds.

Google says its language identification model (LangID) can now distinguish between 2,000 language pairs. With that in place, the company’s researchers then had to build a system that could turn spoken queries into actionable results in all supported languages. “When the user stops speaking, the model has not only determined what language was being spoken, but also what was said,” Google’s VP Johan Schalkwyk and Google Speech engineer Lopez Moreno write in today’s announcement. “Of course, this process requires a sophisticated architecture that comes with an increased processing cost and the possibility of introducing unnecessary latency.”

If you are in Germany, France or the U.K., you’ll now also be able to use the bilingual assistant on a Google Home Max. That high-end version of the Google Home family is going on sale in those countries today.

In addition, Google also today announced that a number of new devices will soon support the Assistant, including the tado° thermostats, a number of new security and smart home hubs (though not, of course, Amazon’s own Ring Alarm), smart bulbs and appliances, including the iRobot Roomba 980, 896 and 676 vacuums. Who wants to have to push a button on a vacuum, after all.

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Apple’s next big event is September 12

The invites have dropped, and the big show’s official. After months of speculation, Apple just let slip that its next event will be going down September 12, at the company’s shiny new headquarters in Cupertino. The invite bears the words “Gather round,” along with a large gold circle, which appears to be a reference to its big, circular new digs. 

This year has been a fairly quiet one for the company on the hardware front. Apple showed off some new iPads at an event in Chicago, back in March and updated the MacBook Pro line more recently. Otherwise, however, we haven’t heard a lot out of the company, including a WWDC that was entirely devoid of new hardware.

All of that’s about to change, however. And if the rumors are to be believed, Apple’s going to make up for all of that in a big way the second week of September. At least one new iPhone is almost certainly on the schedule for the event.

The company’s done a pretty solid job keeping things under wraps this time, unlike Google and Samsung, though a few leaks have sprung up here and there. Three new iPhones are supposedly in the works, including an upgraded version of the iPhone X. A new Watch and iPad Pro have also been rumored for the big show. 

We’ll certainly be there with bells on and a few large camera lenses in tow. Rumor has it that the company will also shakes things up a bit this time out by livestreaming the show via Twitter.

 

 

 

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Apple buys Denver startup building waveguide lenses for AR glasses

Apple has acquired Akonia Holographics, a Denver-based startup that manufactures augmented reality waveguide lenses. The acquisition was confirmed by Apple to Reuters who first reported the news.

An Apple spokesperson gave TechCrunch the company’s standard statement, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans.”

This acquisition offers the clearest confirmation yet from Apple that it is investing resources into technologies that support the development of a lightweight augmented reality headset. There have been a number of reports over the years that Apple is planning to release consumer AR glasses within the next few years.

Apple said to be working on AR headset aimed for potential 2020 ship date

In late 2017, we reported that Apple had acquired Vrvana, a mixed-reality headset company with a device that offered users pass-through augmented reality experiences on a conventional opaque display. This latest acquisition seems to offer a much clearer guide to where Apple’s consumer ambitions may take it for a head-worn augmented reality device.

Waveguide displays have become the de facto optic technology for augmented reality headsets. They come in a few different flavors but all of them share the quality of an image being beamed in from the side of a piece of glass and bouncing off an etched glass lens towards a user’s eyes.

Waveguide lenses are currently used in AR headsets sold by Magic Leap and Microsoft, among many others.

A reflective waveguide display built by Lumus.

They’re popular because they allow for thin, largely transparent designs though they also often have issues with color reproduction and the displays can only become so large before the images grow distorted. Akonia’s marketing materials claim for their “HoloMirror” solution says it can “display vibrant, full-color, wide field-of-view images.”

The startup raised $11.6 million in funding according to Crunchbase.

While many of Apple’s largest technology competitors have already experimented with AR headsets, Apple has directed the majority of its early consumer-facing efforts to phone-based AR technologies that track the geometry of spaces and can “project” digital objects onto surfaces.

Apple ARKit

The most unclear question regarding Apple’s rumored work on its AR glasses is whether the company is looking to ship a higher-powered device akin to Magic Leap that would track a user’s environment and be built upon Apple’s interactive ARKit tech, or whether it’s first release will be more conservative and approach AR glasses as more of a head-worn Apple Watch that presents a user’s notifications and enables light interactions.

Moving forward with waveguide displays would certainly leave both options open for the company, though given the small window that even today’s widest field-of-view waveguides have, I expect that Apple may opt for the latter pending a big tech breakthrough or a heavily delayed release.

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Apple updates AirPort Express firmware with AirPlay 2 support

Surprise, the AirPort Express isn’t dead! While Apple stopped selling AirPort products back in April, the company is still updating the firmware of the once beloved AirPort Express.

This firmware update is quite significant as it adds support for AirPlay 2 and the Home app. In other words, you can now plug speakers to a dusty AirPort Express and turn them into wireless speakers for your home sound system.

The AirPort Express was a pretty basic home router. It hasn’t been updated since 2012, which means that it’s nowhere near as performant as today’s cheap routers. It only supports 802.11n while everybody has moved on to 802.11ac.

Its Ethernet ports are limited to 100 Mbps. So if you have fiber internet, the AirPort Express is not a good solution as it caps your internet connection to 100 Mbps.

But the AirPort Express also has an audio jack — something that you can’t find in many Apple products these days. Today’s update makes this audio jack relevant again, as it’s a cheap way to get started with AirPlay 2.

After updating the device with the AirPort Utility app on your Mac or iOS device, you can launch the Home app and add the router as a new Home accessory. After that, you’ll find the AirPort Express in your AirPlay speaker list.

Apple recently released AirPlay 2, an update to its audio and video protocol. With AirPlay 2, you can stream music from your Apple devices to multiple speakers at once. On your phone, you can control the volume of each speaker individually and play the same song across your home.

While Sonos, Bose and other speaker manufacturers are updating their devices to support AirPlay 2, chances are many devices won’t get an update. The AirPort Express update can help you go through this transition.

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Google’s Wear OS gets a new look

Wear OS, Google’s smartphone operating system that was once called Android Wear, is getting a new look today. Google says the overall idea here is to give you quicker access to information and more proactive help. In line with the Google Fit redesign, Wear OS now also provides you with the same kind of health coaching as the Android app.

In practice, this means you can now swipe through multiple notifications at once, for example. Previously, you had to go from one notifications card to the next, which sound minor but was indeed a bit of a hassle. Like before, you bring up the new notifications feed by swiping up. If you want to reply or take any other action, you tap the notification to bring up those options.

Wear OS is also getting a bit of a Google Now replacement. Simply swipe right and the Google Assistant will bring up the weather, your flight status, hotel notifications or other imminent events. Like in most other Assistant-driven interfaces, Google will also use this area to help you discover other Assistant features like setting timers (though I think everybody knows how to use the Assistant to set a time given that I’m sure that’s 90% of Assistant usage right there).

As for Google Fit, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Wear OS is adapting the same circle design with Hear Points and Move Minutes as the Android app. On a round Wear OS watch, that design actually looks quite well.

While this obviously isn’t a major break from previous versions, we’re definitely talking about quality-of-life improvements here that do make using Wear OS just that little bit easier.

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Huawei bags Apple’s 2nd place spot in global smartphone sales: Gartner

Another analyst has Huawei overtaking Apple in the global smartphone rankings for the second quarter this year. The latest figures from Gartner put Huawei ahead on sales to end users in Q2.

Overall, Gartner says sales of smartphones to end users grew 2% in the quarter, to reach 374 million units.

The analyst pegs the Chinese smartphone maker with a 13.3% marketshare, saying it sold ~49.8M devices in the quarter, up from 9.8% in the year before quarter — ahead of Apple, which it calculates took an 11.9% marketshare (down from 12.1% in Q2 2017), selling ~44.7M iPhones.

According to Gartner’s figures, Samsung also lost share year-over-year — declining 12.7% in the quarter.

The Galaxy smartphone maker retained its no.1 spot in the rankings, with 19.3% in Q2 (vs 22.6% in the equivalent quarter last year) and ~72.3M devices sold. Though Gartner notes it’s being squeezed by “ever-growing competition from Chinese manufacturers”, while slowing demand for its flagships are squeezing its profitability. Not a happy combination.

In recent years Huawei has been one of a handful of Chinese OEMs bucking the trend of a slowing global smartphone market. And Gartner’s data suggests Huawei’s smartphone sales grew 38.6 per cent in the second quarter.

As we noted earlier this month, when other analysts reported Huawei outstripping Apple on smartphone shipments in Q2, the handset maker has built momentum for its mid-range Honor handset brand while performing solidly at the premium end too, with devices such as the P20 Pro (albeit while copypasting Apple’s iPhone X ‘notch’ screen design in that instance.)

“Huawei continues to bring innovative features into its smartphones and expand its smartphone portfolio to cover larger consumer segments,” said research director Anshul Gupta in a statement. “Its investment into channels, brand building and positioning of the Honor devices helped drive sales. Huawei is shipping its Honor smartphones into 70 markets worldwide and is emerging as Huawei’s key growth driver.”

For Apple the quarter was a flat one (0.9% growth), though that’s to be expected given Cupertino structures its mobile release cycle around a big-bang annual smartphone refresh in the fall, ahead of the holiday quarter, rather than releasing devices throughout the year.

Even so, Gupta noted that Apple is also facing growing competition from Chinese brands, which in turn is amping up pressure on the company to innovate its handsets to keep increasingly demanding consumers happy by delivering “enhanced value” in exchange for the iPhone’s premium price.

And recent reports have suggested Apple is prepping a number of iPhone design changes for fall, including a splash of color.

“Demand for the iPhone X has started to slow down much earlier than when other new models were introduced,” he added, sounding another note of concern for Apple.

Fourth placed Chinese OEM Xiaomi is one device maker putting pressure on longer term players in the smartphone market. In Q2 Gartner reckons the company sold ~32.8M devices, carving itself an 8.8% marketshare — up from 5.8% in the year ago quarter.

The analyst’s data also shows Google’s Android operating system further extending its lead over Apple’s iOS in Q2, securing 88% market share vs 11.9% for iOS.

While the smartphone market is no longer a simple duopoly on the device maker front, with Huawei elbowing past Apple to bag the second spot in the global rankings, it remains very much the opposite story where smartphone operating systems are concerned.

And Gartner’s data now records the ‘other’ category of smartphone OSes at a 0.0% marketshare, down from 0.1% in the year ago quarter…

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