radarthekat

Google makes some good, even great, services.  Web search is so useful, has been for going on two decades.   Mail, maps, etc. 

It’s just a shame that these things can exist only due to the desperation of companies worldwide to reach an audience with their advertisements.  Google is smart, I guess, to take advantage, bringing useful products to the masses funded by satisfying the desires of every brand on earth to reach an audience.  

The problem comes in not separating the church and state, so to speak; it becomes too tempting to plaster advertisements on thick everywhere there’s a bit of space to do so.  And to push the line of how information gathered is utilized to better target audiences.  It’s the reason Apple talks about privacy invasion, the reason FB is called before congress and Google has a certain ‘reputation.’  After all these years why is it that Google has not attempted to build, in parallel, a different business model that supports its services, but instead has raced to stay ahead of the Facebooks and others in directed advertisement?   A company with the model ‘do no evil’ should at least give some credence to the notion of providing a path to its services that doesn’t involve the seduction of extreme data gathering about its customers lives.  How about a new slogan, ‘be less creepy.’  Why isn’t Google disassociating itself with the whole notion of advertisement-funded services?  It’s a hard idea to wrap itself around, I suppose, with so much money to be made continuing with the status quo. 

My John Oliver impression...

Last week Samsung introduced a future-thinking folding phone.  Future-thinking in that nobody at present can think of a single reason why we’d want a phone that when folded has a small narrow display and is nearly two and a half times thicker than an iPhone.  Future-thinking in that someone, someday, might think of a reason we want a small square tablet with a screen that when touched reminds us of a giant 1980’s membrane switch.

I know, I know, my Apple wool is preventing me from seeing the brilliance of Samsung’s move.  All I’m able to perceive here is an attempt to be first.  On that score Samsung has won yet another round, another pyrrhic victory for their side of the ledger.  And yes, Apple may follow, but not down the same trail Samsung is blazing.  For Apple to offer a foldable phone, there still exists some real challenges:

Appropriate hardware technology would have to be available.  

First, the display would need to be covered with a non-malleable and scratch-resistant surface; there’s little chance Apple would return to a malleable and markable plastic display cover.  The challenge is that the necessary display properties are, of course, incompatible with folding and are likely to remain so.  

Next, the phone when folded will need to be as ready to hand, and pocket, as current iPhones, to which any foldable iPhone, in folded configuration, will be ruthlessly compared.  The rumor that Apple may bolster battery capacity in the 2019 models could result in thicker iPhones, which would help in a comparison of a future foldable model.  Apple would be settting the stage for a thicker handset with a meaningful enhancement to justify it.  But it would still be a significant challenge to then add a second screen layer and not significantly increase the thickness.  Perhaps a flattened battery on one side of the fold and all the electronics and cameras on the other fold.  Not sure if Samsung did that, or if it’s even viable.

Next there’s the reliability aspect.  iPhones, and high-end Android phones, are all very solidly constructed these days, with few or no moving parts.  But that doesn’t imply even today’s phones are free of physical wear and tear or immune to extreme conditions.  Extreme cold or heat will be significant issues to account for in selecting materials and designing folding phones to yield a similar lifespan compared to their non-folding counterparts.  For iPhones that implies a five- or six-year lifespan.  Not to mention tensile stresses of the folding process itself.

The only viable solution my limited brain can conceive is two separate displays, each pressed up hard against a lip on a hinge to prevent dust or cookie crumbs intruding.  As the phone unfolds, at the last part of the arc, that lip recedes, allowing the two screen edges to come together perfectly, leaving not a single pixel width gap between.  How incredibly precise would such a mechanism need to be... boggles the mind.  But if it worked, every time, for five or six years, it would allow two glass-covered displays to perfectly come together as one, without a visible seam.  

Finally, Apple would need to do one more thing that Samsung has not yet accomplished.  Apple would need to determine the reason such a needlessly complex handset should exist.  That’s where I take my bet off the table.  I’m betting Apple goes a different direction. 

ihatescreennames said:

Well, I hope all the effort they're putting into AR comes to fruition in a worthwhile product. For all the talk about how great it is the experience on iPhone/iPad so far is pretty lackluster. Sure, the Measure app is cool and works fairly well, but I hope there's more to AR than a virtual measuring tape. 

I've been saying this since ARKit rolled out in iOS 11, most of what is available or has been teased during keynotes is kinda useless or something that could just be done in 3D with no AR required (like the really cool but also kinda silly model of Apple Park at the visitor's center. It's a good demonstration of the tech but why can't I just download an app at home and get a virtual tour in 3D the same way? I don't see the reason I have to walk around a physical model to see an overlay on my phone).

Also, I've noticed that all the comments of "wait for developers to figure this out" have pretty much disappeared. Which I find a little funny as, way back in 2017, when I made similar comments I was told "not to crap on it" before we saw what developers will do. It's coming up on two years...

Fact is, there may not be compelling AR apps for a small screen you hold out in front of you.  It’s been speculated, and I find it compelling speculation, that ARKit on iOS is merely the laying of groundwork for AR glasses.  The trouble is, even after 40 years of shrinking technology to fit in smaller forms, it’s still an incredible thing to imagine the needed smarts and power added to the frames of a normal pair of glasses, even considering much of the processing and rendering will likely be handled by a paired iPhone.  Look to the Apple Watch, AirPods and Pencil to see the progression of miniaturization and shared-with-paired-iPhone processing that will lead to Apple iWear (you heard it here first).

gatorguy said:

fred stein said:

Note: Google takes 45% of the ad revenue on YouTube.

A fair bit different than Apple and Google taking a 30% cut of independent apps in their storefronts, but still a good mention that some aren't aware of. 

This is popcorn being eaten in Apple’s Theater.  As far as I’m aware only Apple devices run iOS, and iOS does NOT belong to you, the consumer.  It’s licensed, and therefore remains Apple’s property.  And so that means that all the APIs apps call to interact with the hardware are Apple’s property.  So every app that does anything under iOS is constantly making use of Apple’s APIs, and if Apple chose to make such an argument, they could well make a strong argument that it’s not merely the App Store (and its marketing power) and not merely the purchase transaction, that constitutes justification for its 30% cut, but also the ongoing development and maintainanve of iOS and it’s APIs, which provide the secure, privacy protecting, smoothly functioning and stable platform upon which those apps run.  

Like when you buy food at the movie theater consession stand, there’s both an extra cost versus the same food you could buy outside and also a prohibition on bring in and consuming food from outside while attending a movie on the theater’s property.  iOS is Apple’s property.  The videos you watch, via YouTube or any other source, and the apps and media you run, are all being run via calls to Apple’s API’s.  This is also true for Windows, et al; the fact those other OS vendors chose not to prohibit externally sourced apps does not argue that Apple has no right to do so.  It’s how they maintain a superior experience.  It may not be possible to do so if they didn’t lock it down as they do.  Witness Android... 

avon b7 said:

anantksundaram said:

avon b7 said:

anantksundaram said:

Al_ien1 said:

The US has been doing the same thing for decades. There is a Foriegn Technology Division in WPAFB in Ohio whose purpose is to reverse engineer Foriegn Technology! China has invested untold Billions of dollars in technology while the US has SPENT untold Billions on the military. If America had created the 5G technology first they would be pushing it to countries around the world (for spying as well ) and no one would have heard of Huawei. 

OK, you China trolls that are showing up in spades. Here's a simple question that I invite any one of you to answer: Name one -- not two, not three, not four, just one -- product or service created/innovated by China in the past, let's say, three decades that has become a global product or service. I dare you to name one.

I'll wait.

That reminded me of the 'what have the Romans ever done for us?' in the Life of Brian. LOL.

But if we are ignoring what the Chinese gave to the world centuries ago and limiting scope to the last few decades, I'd say China is leading the way in technologies related to facial recognition and exporting them with success but what is perhaps more noteworthy is the progess it has made in innovation and technology during the last 30 years:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w22854.pdf [.pdf]

And I suppose Chow Mein doesn't count ;-)

Joking apart, let's not forget that Huawei is going to be a major player in 5G and everything associated with the technologies that branch out from it.

Ah, I knew that ridiculous stuff like centuries old "chow mein" -- heck, I'll even grant you paper, porcelain, and gunpowder -- would be trotted out.

The only example you can come up with is a yet-to-be proven "..leading the way in in technologies related to facial recognition and exporting them with success...." How exactly are they leading the way except in building the surveillance state? Who are the companies doing this? What are their revenues? To whom are they exporting? What is the value of their exports? How does it compare with their $500B in Chinese exports to the US of other stuff that the rest of the world created or innovated?

Btw, do you know who came up with facial recognition technology, and where? (Hint: It's not China).

That's all you can come up with?! Did China come up with.... let me throw out a few random things from just the last 30 or so years... Laptops? Email? E-commerce? Search? Social networking? GUI? MRI? Flash memory? Lasers? Robotic surgery? DNA testing? RFID? Barcodes? Stents? Smartphones? Tablets? Biofuels? ATMs? LEDs? LCDs? GPS? Large scale wind turbines? PV cells? Digital photography?

If you go back a bit more, did China come up with world-changing things like Airplanes? Fiber optics? Internet? Software/programming languages? Automobiles? The internal combustion engine? Rockets? Satellites? Penicillin? The germ theory of disease? Open heart surgery? Semiconductors? Want me to go on? Want 20 more such examples? 50 more? 100 more?

Name ONE innovation from China -- OK, I'll expand it to the last 100 years -- that's in the same league as any of these. ONE. (I don't wish to single out China -- I'll take any Asian country as an example in the same league of innovative ability, if you can provide it).

Pathetic... please just slink away...

As I said, what is far more important is how they have progressed and where they might be heading over the coming decades. The document I linked to is quite informative. Especially the section on patents

Facial recognition technology is not something people want to speak openly about but Chinese tech is currently in testing or being used around the world in both the public and private sector. HiSilicon is also developing (well it has already deployed) custom AI silicon to advance the technology even further.

Facial recognition wasn't the only thing I mentioned. I also mentioned 5G and the possible developments arising from that.

You don’t even know that the correct term is Face Recognition.  Google a bit to discover how the huge body of technical research papers (hundreds of them) use the terms.  

FACIAL recognition is not FACE recognition.  It can be used as a step in a face recognition process, but facial recognition is simply the process of identifying each feature of a face; eyes, nose, mouth, smiling, frowning, etc, but not used to determine whose face it is.

Facial recognition returns the result, here is the mouth and it is smiling, which is useful to map that feature onto the face of an avatar or game character, or useful in mapping an overlay onto the person's actual face, ala Memoji.  But facial recognition does NOT return the result, 'this is Phil Schiller's face.'  That biometric identification step is done by a method called face recognition.  I know, I know, they sound the same.  But facial recognition and face recognition, and face detection, are all three different things:

Face recognition is the term used to describe the process of identifying a specific person, such as from a database of known persons (no fly list, for example).  This is face recognition.

There's also face detection, which is the process of detecting a human face, or faces, within a scene.  This is typically a precursor to application of face recognition algorithms.

Then there's facial recognition, which is the process of detecting specific facial expressions (smiling, frowning, sadness, etc).  This term is often used in the medical world to characterize specific inabilities of patients to recognize meaning in human faces.  Or, I suppose, one could use the term facial recognition to mean the detection of someone who has recently come from a spa treatment appointment.  (Kidding.)

And now you know the reason Apple calls the feature Face ID, and not Facial ID.

And by the way, if you want to know the origins, they date back to the 70s and 80s.  My own brother filed a patent advancing face recognition as part of his Master thesis, applying blurring techniques and Fourier transforms that today are still used in the implementation of the function.