American Idol is shooting on iPhones amid stay at home orders

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a lot of otherwise traditional industries to become creative and flexible in ways that might have seemed entirely out of the realm of possibility only a few months ago. With most of the county at home, social distancing, a number of networks have turned to consumer technologies in order to keep creating content.

Apple’s among those tech companies working with production houses, getting some iPhone-powered rigs into the hands of producers and hosts. The list includes a Parks and Recreation reunion, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon’s late night shows and now longstanding prime time talent contest, American Idol.

The ABC show’s producers are sending home studio rigs to each of the contestants and judges to shoot the final few episodes of the season. It’s a three-camera setup, including three iPhone 11 Pros, a tripod and a ring light. The  production team is helping out with camera setup and editing at a safe distance, from home.

Here’s Apple, which is naturally more than happy for the opportunity to showcase how the smartphone can work in a pinch,

We know that people are relying on their favorite shows while staying at home, and we are happy to be a part of that process with the team at American Idol. iPhone offers a unique solution to deliver broadcast quality video, in the palm of your hand, while keeping production staff and on-air talent safe and in their homes.

A number of television and movie studios have been exploring the use of smartphones in content creation. It seems unlikely that they’ll be replacing studio equipment on a majority of shoots any time soon, but the on-going pandemic could represent a kind of sea change toward a more mainstream use among studios.

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This Week in Apps: WWDC goes online, Android 11 delays, Facebook SDK turns into app kill switch

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week we’re continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including the latest on countries’ various contact-tracing apps, the pandemic’s impact on gaming and fintech and more. We’re also looking at that big app crash caused by Facebook, plus new app releases from Facebook and Google, Android 11’s new timeline and Apple’s plans to move WWDC online, among other things.

Headlines

WWDC goes virtual June 22

Apple announced this week its plans for a virtual version of its Worldwide Developer Conference. The company will host its WWDC 2020 event beginning on June 22 in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free for all developers.

It will be interesting to see how successfully Apple is able to take its developer conference online. After all, developers could already access the sessions and keynotes through videos — but the real power of the event was in the networking and being able to talk to Apple engineers, ask questions, get hands-on help and see how other developers are using Apple technologies to innovate. Unless Apple is planning a big revamp of its developer site and app that would enable those connections, it seems this year’s event will lack some of WWDC’s magic.

The company also announced the Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for student developers to showcase their coding by creating their own Swift playground.

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Google’s Duo video chat app gets a family mode with doodles and masks

Google today launched an update to its Duo video chat app (which you definitely shouldn’t confuse with Hangouts or Google Meet, Google’s other video, audio and text chat apps).

There are plenty of jokes to be made about Google’s plethora of chat options but Duo is trying to be a bit different from Hangouts and Meet in that it’s mobile-first and putting the emphasis on personal conversations. In its early days, it was very much only about one-on-one conversations (hence its name), but that has obviously changed (hence why Google will surely change its name sooner or later). This update shows this emphasis with the addition of what the company calls a ‘family mode.’

Once you activate this mode, you can start doodling on the screen, activate a number of new effects and virtually dress up with new masks. These effects and masks are now also available for one-on-one calls.

For Mother’s Day, Google is rolling out a special new effect that is sufficiently disturbing to make sure your mother will never want to use Duo again and immediately make her want to switch to Google Meet instead.

Only last month, Duo increased the maximum number of chat participants to 12 on Android and iOS. In the next few weeks, it’s also bringing this feature to the browser, where it will work for anyone with a Google account.

Google also launched a new ad for Duo. It’s what happens when marketers work from home.

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Xiaomi, Samsung and others begin to resume smartphone production in India

Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, Oppo and other smartphone companies have received approval from some state governments in India to partially resume manufacturing and assembling of devices amid the ongoing lockdown in the world’s second largest handset market that completely shut operations at these plants in late March.

The companies said that they have secured permission to kick start their manufacturing operations in the country, though several restrictions such as operating with limited workforce are still in place. (The federal government allowed the resumption of smartphone production earlier this month, but state governments have the final say on whether the local conditions are safe enough to enforce the relaxation.)

New Delhi’s decision comes days after it extended the lockdown by two weeks earlier this month but eased some restrictions to revive economic activity that’s been stalled since the stringent stay-at-home orders were imposed across the nation in late March.

Earlier this week, the government permitted e-commerce firms and ride-hailing services to resume services in green and orange zones, districts that have seen less severe outbreak of the coronavirus, across the country. Green and orange zones account for 82% of India’s 733 districts.

Xiaomi, which launched a range of gadgets in India today including its Snapdragon 865-powered Mi 10 smartphone, said earlier this month that it only had inventory to meet demand for up to three weeks.

Manu Kumar Jain, a VP at Xiaomi who oversees the Chinese firm’s business in India, said today that the company, which has been the top smartphone vendor in the country for more than two years, would restart operations in its contract partner Foxconn’s facility in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

A person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Wistron, a contract partner of Apple, has started limited operations for the iPhone-maker in Bangalore.

Vivo, the second largest smartphone vendor in India, said the company will resume production at 30% of their capacity. “We shall begin production with around 3000 employees,” a Vivo spokesperson said.

Like Vivo, Oppo will also resume production at its Greater Noida facility with around 3,000 employees who would work in rotation, it said.

The coronavirus outbreak has severely disrupted several businesses. India did not see any handset sale last month, according to research firm Counterpoint. Every top smartphone maker in India has either established its own manufacturing plant or partnered with contract vendors to produce units locally in recent years to avail the tax benefits that New Delhi offers.

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New studio Modern Games acquires Beasts of Balance

Modern Games is a new studio working to create games that combine physical and digital play.

The company was founded by husband-and-wife team Justin and Amanda Kifer — serial entrepreneurs who previously launched companies including Citizen Local (acquired by MyLife in 2011) and Fidgetly, a fidget spinner company that also created a motion controller for iOS and Android games.

It sounds like the Kifers have a number of new titles in development, but the company is announcing today that it has acquired and is relaunching an existing game, Beasts of Balance.

The game was first released by Sensible Object in 2016. As demonstrated for me by Justin Kifer (the startup’s CEO), Beasts of Balance involves stacking physical animal pieces, while also scanning them into a companion app that keeps score and brings their fantastical skills to life. The basic game costs $99 (currently on sale for $79), and players can purchase expansion packs to get additional accessories, beasts and other “artefacts.”

The other Modern Games titles released this year will be purely physical board and card games, released under its Modern Games [Analog] brand. Kifer told me that the company’s big “flagship” launch is planned for 2021, with a mobile game that involves augmented reality and connected objects, and that takes place in a rich science fiction/fantasy world. In fact, Kifer’s even writing a series of young adult novels to flesh out the setting.

“I want people to think of Modern Games as a studio that is working hard every day push the boundaries what it is to play a game,” he said.

Image Credits: Modern Games

Kifer suggested that by combining physical and digital gameplay, Modern Games’ titles will have the real-world social component of a traditional tabletop game while taking advantage of gameplay that’s also possible digitally.

Kifer also said that by always starting with a core physical product that players need to buy, the company can avoid having to go the free-to-play route adopted by most mobile games. At the same time, he also emphasized that the company will keep the games relatively affordable, with a sub-$40 price for core products. (There were will be additional monetization through physical and digital add-ons.)

On the other hand, our remote demo made it clear that there’s a downside to relying on a physical products — since we weren’t in the same room (and, given COVID-19, are unlikely to be anytime soon), Kifer and I couldn’t actually play the game together.

“The games that we’re working on right now are also multi-player,” Kifer said when I pointed this out. “They’re games that could be played in proximity to other others, but they don’t have to be. For us, it’s all about bringing people together in ways that are inherently social, but it doesn’t necessarily mean physically co-located.”

We need more video games that are social platforms first, games second

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Google launches ‘Read Along,’ a free app that helps young children practice reading

Google today is launching a new app, Read Along, that aims to help elementary school students practice their reading skills and stay educationally engaged amid school closures due to coronavirus. The new Android app is based on Google’s existing application, Bolo, which launched in India last year with a catalog of read-along stories in both English and Hindi. The updated and rebranded version is now globally available with support for 9 languages. 

Like Bolo, Read Along also leverages Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech to help kids learn to read.

The app includes a built-in reading assistant named Diya. As kids read aloud, Diya detects if the child is struggling with a passage and can jump in with positive reinforcement or help. At any time, the child can ask Diya to help them read a sentence or pronounce a word they don’t know.

As children progress in the app, they’re presented with mini word games and earn in-app prizes as they improve their skills.

Google says the app was built with children’t privacy in mind and is able to work without either Wi-Fi or data. The voice data is analyzed in real-time on the device, and is not synced, stored or analyzed on Google’s servers. The company also stresses that it’s not using a voice sample from the kids to make the product better.

The app doesn’t include advertising or in-app purchases, either. Parents can opt to connect to the internet if they want to download additional stories, but there isn’t a charge.

At launch, Read Along offers around 500 stories and the catalog is continually expanded with new books.

Since its debut as Bolo in March 2019, Google says feedback from parents was encouraging, prompting it to bring the app to new markets. While in India, “Bolo” is broadly understood to mean “speak,” Google rebranded the app to Read Along to resonate with parents and children around the world. The app has also been updated with an enhanced library, new games and other user interface improvements since launch.

The new Read Along app is now globally available, except in the Philippines, Colombia and Denmark and offers stories in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The app is a free download on Google Play for children ages 5 and up.

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Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch review

With the new MacBook, Apple closes one of the more unfortunate product chapters in its history. The upgraded 13-inch mercifully marks the end of the failed five-year experiment that was the butterfly switch.

I won’t go into too much detail here. If you’ve purchased a MacBook in the past several years, you almost certainly know what I’m talking about — the keys that stuck, the others that seemed to fire at random. I had at least one compressed air emergency myself, while setting up to liveblog at a competitor’s press event.

After a few attempts to salvage the technology, Apple finally scrapped it, going back to basics and returning to the trusty old scissor switch. I’m typing on it now, and it’s seriously making me reconsider upgrading my four-year-old machine. Honestly, the laptop is in perfect shape otherwise, but man, those keys. It always felt too much like typing on a flat surface.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro gets Apple’s much-improved keyboard

With this week’s news, the 13-inch becomes the third and final member of the MacBook family to get the new keyboard. It’s not “Magic” as the name implies (Apple really does love the M-word), but improvements are immediate and vast. The experience is considerably softer to the touch and quieter than previous versions, and the one millimeter of key travel is much easier on the hands.

There are other nice touches, here, including the addition of a dedicated Escape key. It’s a small but welcome consolation that the Touch Bar can’t do everything.

I realize I’ve just spent the first several paragraphs focusing on the keyboard. Silly, I know, but why bury the lede? After all, without it, the new MacBook would be a fairly standard MacBook upgrade (nothing wrong with that, but that’s just how these things work). With it, it’s a far more compelling invite for those who have been on the fence about an upgrade.

MacBook Pro 16” first impressions: Return of the Mack

The system is visually identical to earlier models. Same familiar unibody metal design in silver or space gray. Same 13.3-inch, 2560 x 1600 Retina display. It’s also, for that matter, same as you’ll find on the Air, though the 13-inch’s is 500 nits vs. the Air’s 400. It’s brighter and easier on the eyes, if a bit tougher on battery life. Rumors had the company upgrading the device to a 14-inch, inline with the larger 16-inch model and further distinguishing it from the Air, but that was not to be this generation.

Same ports (4x Thunderbolt 3/USB and headphone jack). It’s a solid laptop that’s become a daily driver for so many of us. Really, the only complaint I would level against it is that the company hasn’t done a lot to distinguish the outside of the machine from the $300 cheaper Air (the Air starts at $999, the Pro at $1,299), beyond port count.

Of course, it’s what’s inside that counts. That’s what my mom tells me, at least. Curiously, the Air ships with a 10th-gen Core i7, which the entry-level pro has an 8th gen, upgradable to 10th gen. Of course, the Pro’s processor is quad-core by default (versus the Air’s dual) and 1.7GHz (to the Air’s 1.2). Our system as configured sported the 2 GHz 10th-gen quad-core i5. 

Apple MacBook Air review

That’s $500 more than the entry-level model, at $1,799. For another $200, you can bump that up to 2.3GHz. Our  system clocked 5520 and 18228 on GeekBench 4’s single and double-core tests. That’s a nice bump over the Air’s 5244 and 14672. 

The system also sports 16GB of RAM and 500GB of storage. The lines are a bit more blurred between the Air and the 13-inch Pro on this front, with both systems starting at 8GB and 256GB. The Pro, however, goes all the way up to 32GB and 4TB, while the Air stalls out at 16GB and 2TB.

In a lot of ways, the systems start from a similar place, but the the Pro can be specced out for better performance more befitting the Pro moniker. If you’re opting for the Pro over the Air, it’s likely you need more processing power for things like video editing or perhaps some gaming, so you’ll want to upgrade over the base-level to make sure you’re covered. The Pro’s battery life is rated at up to 10 hours, to the Air’s 11. Out of the box, I got several hours of life, doing work and listening to music, but like the Air’s claims, 10 hours is definitely a stretch here with everyday usage.

Again, the biggest drawback of the 13-inch Pro is that the improved Air blurs the product lines in a number of ways. But that device is thinner, lighter and $300 cheaper. The case for choosing the pricier device isn’t as clear as, say, the decision between the 13-inch and 16-inch models.

For most users, the Air should be plenty for most tasks. For those who need more power without breaking their backs or banks, however, the 13-inch model is still a strong and safe bet that’s now much easier on the fingers.

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