Technology - Google News

How To Get Mario In Google Maps This Week
Apple May Be Working on High-End Headphones and a Cheaper MacBook Air
Hands-on with Android P—Is this the beginning of a new design language?

How To Get Mario In Google Maps This Week

Posted: 10 Mar 2018 06:09 AM PST

Credit: Nintendo

Mario makes his way to Google Maps to celebrate Mario Day.

Today is Mario Day, a day celebrating video gaming's most famous plumber.

That's because today is March 10th which you can abbreviate to MAR 10 which, if you look closely, spells Mar10 or Mario, basically.

To usher in this auspicious occasion, Nintendo has partnered up with Google to add Mario Time to Google Maps (It's Mario time!) This might have something to do with the upcoming mobile version of Mario Kart, or it might just be a fun promotion, kind of like when Google Maps has turned into Pac-Man in the past. We've also seen our navigation arrow turn into a Tie-Fighter in celebration of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The Mario version of Google Maps won't be quite as exciting as Mario Kart but it's still pretty neat. Your navigation arrow transforms into Mario in his kart and helps steer you to your destination. Other drivers will not be able to hurl red shells or fireballs at you. You won't suddenly find ink all over your windshield. And should you be at the front of a line of cars, you won't have to worry about blue shells crushing your dreams.

How to get Mario on your Google Maps today.

The Mario-themed Google Maps app will run for a full week on both Android and iOS phones. It's very easy to get started:

Make sure your Google Maps app is up to date.
When you load up Google Maps and enter a destination, instead of pressing start press the yellow "?" icon. This summons Mario.
If you are really bored, press the yellow "?" 100 times to hear it make the 1-up sound from the Super Mario Bros games.
Let's a' go!

(P.S. If none of this works try blowing into your phone really, really hard.)

And that's pretty much it. Just remember not to stare too long at the little guy in his little kart. Eyes on the road, drivers. Driving is no game. Unless, that is, you're actually playing Mario Kart.

Speaking of which, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was one of 2017's top-selling games.

You can see what new games are coming to the Nintendo Switch here. The most exciting new Switch title just announced by Nintendo is a new Super Smash Bros releasing this year.

If you're looking for a Mario game to play to help with your Mario Day festivities, you can get a really good deal on Super Mario Run today also.

Credit: Nintendo

Mario makes his way to Google Maps to celebrate Mario Day.

Today is Mario Day, a day celebrating video gaming's most famous plumber.

That's because today is March 10th which you can abbreviate to MAR 10 which, if you look closely, spells Mar10 or Mario, basically.

To usher in this auspicious occasion, Nintendo has partnered up with Google to add Mario Time to Google Maps (It's Mario time!) This might have something to do with the upcoming mobile version of Mario Kart, or it might just be a fun promotion, kind of like when Google Maps has turned into Pac-Man in the past. We've also seen our navigation arrow turn into a Tie-Fighter in celebration of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The Mario version of Google Maps won't be quite as exciting as Mario Kart but it's still pretty neat. Your navigation arrow transforms into Mario in his kart and helps steer you to your destination. Other drivers will not be able to hurl red shells or fireballs at you. You won't suddenly find ink all over your windshield. And should you be at the front of a line of cars, you won't have to worry about blue shells crushing your dreams.

How to get Mario on your Google Maps today.

The Mario-themed Google Maps app will run for a full week on both Android and iOS phones. It's very easy to get started:

Make sure your Google Maps app is up to date.
When you load up Google Maps and enter a destination, instead of pressing start press the yellow "?" icon. This summons Mario.
If you are really bored, press the yellow "?" 100 times to hear it make the 1-up sound from the Super Mario Bros games.
Let's a' go!

(P.S. If none of this works try blowing into your phone really, really hard.)

Speaking of which, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was one of 2017's top-selling games.

You can see what new games are coming to the Nintendo Switch here. The most exciting new Switch title just announced by Nintendo is a new Super Smash Bros releasing this year.

If you're looking for a Mario game to play to help with your Mario Day festivities, you can get a really good deal on Super Mario Run today also.

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Apple May Be Working on High-End Headphones and a Cheaper MacBook Air

Posted: 10 Mar 2018 06:01 AM PST

Apple has some big plans for the future—and headphones may play a big role in it.

Over the last several days, we've been hearing rumors about Apple's future plans. The company is reportedly hard at work on a new line of high-end, over-the-ear headphones that could improve the music-listening experience. There's also a chance that Apple could unveil a new version of its diminutive MacBook Air with a cheaper price tag.

This is Fortune's latest weekly roundup of the biggest Apple news. Here's last week's roundup.

Meanwhile, this week, Apple published its Supplier Responsibility Report, a look at working conditions at its supplier facilities, with some elements of good and bad in it. And as it has each week for the past few months, Apple has once again been faced with reports that its iPhone X isn't selling well.

Needless to say, it's been a busy week for Apple and for those who keep a close eye on the company. Here's a look at some of the biggest Apple headlines from the past several days:

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Apple is working on a new MacBook Air that may be released sometime in the second quarter, according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In his note to investors, Kuo said that the MacBook Air would come with "a lower price tag" than previous models, but he didn't say how much it may cost. The notebook computer might also come with some internal upgrades from its predecessor in processing power and other components.
The iPhone maker is working on high-end, over-the-ear headphones, a report said this week. The headphones would wirelessly connect to iPhones and other music players and would likely cost significantly more than the $159 AirPods wireless earbuds, according to the report. Apple is reportedly hoping to release the headphones later this year, but could delay them if it can't address some technical problems it's dealing with. The report didn't say exactly what those technical problems were.
Cracking iPhones protected by passwords and biometric data like your fingerprint or face can be difficult. But a company believed to be run by a former Apple security engineer is now charging law enforcement $15,000 for a way to unlock iPhones without the owner's consent. The $15,000 fee is available on up to 300 unlocks. The company, Grayshift, is charging $30,000 for an unlimited number of iPhone unlocks.
In a note to investors this week, Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson released the results of a survey of 1,500 iPhone owners who revealed why they haven't upgraded to an iPhone X. Olson reported that 44% of those respondents balked at an upgrade because their current "iPhone works fine." Thirty-one percent of respondents said that Apple's $999 iPhone X is too expensive.
If you've had your Apple ID stolen, it's likely being sold on the Dark Web for about $15. According to a new study from the website Top10VPN, hackers who have stolen Amazon usernames and passwords are able get about $10 for each stolen credential.
Apple this week released its 2018 Supplier Responsibility Report, a product of hundreds of audits at Apple supplier facilities to check working conditions and address areas of concern. The company found that compliance among suppliers to its workplace requirements has risen (only 1% of them are considered "low performers"). But it also found that "core violations" doubled compared to the prior year to 44 instances. Core violations include everything from the use of underage workers to managers intimidating workers.

One more thing…Famed rock musician Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses this week called Apple CEO Tim Cook "the Donald Trump of the music industry." He didn't say what he meant by it, but Rose is a Trump critic, suggesting he may not be happy with Cook and Apple.

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Hands-on with Android P—Is this the beginning of a new design language?

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 09:40 AM PST

Android P Developer Preview is out this week, and the whole Android community is combing through it looking for changes. When Android P is released later this year, it will bring an all-new notification panel, new settings, official notch support, and a ton of other tiny changes.

We already did a rundown of the features announced in Google's blog post, but now we've actually gotten to spend some time with the next major version of Android, so we're here to report back. What follows are some of the more interesting things we discovered.

Material Design 2?

Rounded rectangles are everywhere in Android P, like here on the notification panel and lock screen notifications.
Dialog boxes get rounded rectangles, too.
Same for the volume and power menus.
In the Google feed, type something into the search box, and the right image shows google search results. Everything lives in a white, rounded rectangle.
The new Google Pay app. Again, everything is a rounded rectangle.
The horizontal app transition.
Notifications expand to fill the screen.

In the lead up to the release of Android P, there were numerous rumblings that big design changes were coming from Google. A February report from Bloomberg said Android P would feature a "dramatic redesign" of the OS, and as more and more parts of Android P trickle out, this report is looking more plausible. Android P brings big changes to the notification panel, ambient display, and settings, along with lots of home screen tweaks. Outside of Android P, there's a continual drip of redesigned apps arriving through the Play Store that seem to slot nicely into this new design. By the time the September-ish launch rolls around, we could be looking at a software package from Google that looks nothing like the Android of last year.

The main motif we can pick out of this new design is "white and round." All over Android P we see white backgrounds with rounded corners and icons, which look distinctly different from Google's current "Material Design" design language. The most obvious implementation is the all-new notification panel, but this also extends to the power and volume menus, all the dialog boxes, and little things like the rounded search bar in settings. Outside of Android P, the Google app seems to fit nicely into this design, too, with rounded rectangles used for the news feed, search box, and even the search results on Google.com. One of Google's newest apps, Google Pay (formerly Android Pay) fits right in with this motif, too.

All of these interfaces are also getting a heavier dose of Google's "Product Sans" font, the same font used for the Google and Alphabet logos. The font is now used for buttons all over the OS in notifications and dialog boxes. It's used all throughout Google Pay, and in the past year the font has taken over the Google Assistant, the Pixel's initial setup screens, and the update screen. While Roboto is used by default all throughout Android and is available to third-party OEMs, Product Sans is limited to the Pixel theme and other Google products.

If you want a possible new name for this design, it might be "Material Design 2." Earlier this year, XDA Developers spotted a commit in the Chromium source mentioning "the new Google Material Design 2 standard." While Google hasn't said anything official about a design revamp, it sounds like something that might be publicized during Google I/O 2018. For now, it's hard to not connect wide-ranging Android design changes with this mention of a new design standard.

Android P features a ton of new animations, too, mostly having to do with transitions from screen to screen or app to app. Launching an app from a notification now makes the notification expand vertically to fill the screen and transition to the app. App-to-app transitions are probably the most interesting. When launching one app from another app or when pressing and sliding back to move through previously opened apps, you'll trigger a horizontal sliding animation. It seems inevitable that Android will eventually come up with a fully gesture-based navigation system to match the iPhone X, and a horizontal sliding animation like this would be great for a "back" gesture.

Under the hood, there's a new permission that allows for an app to "control remote app transition animations," so it seems that Google is working on some kind of app-to-app animation coordination system.

The new notification panel

The notification panel is all new! Everything gets a solid white background with rounded corners, and the buttons now live in circles that light up blue when they are on.
Ron Amadeo
Expanded quick settings. If you have more buttons than can fit on the screen, there will be vertical scrolling instead of pagination.
Ron Amadeo
This looks familiar.
On to notifications: you now get a message history in the notification panel.
Ron Amadeo
Android P's notification-blocking recommendation service in action. Sometimes the little red minus buttons get a little overzealous, like in the last picture.
Ron Amadeo
Dark mode is still here.
Ron Amadeo
The new ambient display.
All of these Quick Settings menu panels are gone, but this is what they looked like in Android 8.1.
Ron Amadeo

The first new feature Android P users are likely to notice is the all-new notification panel, which has a revamped design and better messaging notifications. As we previously mentioned as a possibility, Google's renders were not entirely accurate. Google's original picture lacked a date and time, but, in the actual Android P build, it turns out date and time both live in the status bar area. Eventually the notification panel will support "Smart Replies"—Google's machine-learning-generated custom replies to messages—but for now the feature doesn't work.

The new design is here, though, and I think it looks great. The pure-white design is a big upgrade over the ugly transparency introduced in Android 8.1, and the new buttons look nice and clean, if a little bit like the iOS control center.

Google seems to mess with the Quick Settings in every Android version, and again there are big changes in Android P. Before Android P the Quick Settings panel confusingly had two functions: some buttons would be power toggles, and others would open extra options panels for things like connecting to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices. From version to version, Google has flip-flopped on how this should work, hiding panels behind a long-press in some versions, or adding little drop-down buttons to launch panels in others. In Android P, the option panels are totally gone—nearly every Quick Settings button is a power toggle, while long pressing will dive into a related settings page.

If you have too many buttons to fit on-screen, Quick Settings will now scroll vertically instead of being horizontally paginated. There's also a new "Alarm" quick settings panel, which oddly doesn't turn the alarm on and off; instead, it just opens the alarm clock app. It's basically an app icon.

The way brightness works has been totally revamped in Android P, and it might be my favorite change: there is now nearly full-range auto-brightness, and it works wonderfully. Step into a dark room and Android will automatically reduce the screen brightness to near minimum levels. Walk out into the light and it will increase to max. You can watch this in real time by leaving the Quick Settings panel open, where the brightness slider will autonomously move left and right with the changing light levels. Moving into darkness is really fun—the slider will quickly zip down to 10 percent and will then spend the next few seconds getting even darker, as if it's meant to account for the slowly changing light sensitively of the human eye.

I haven't seen this last feature anywhere else on the Web, but for some reason I get little red minus circles on certain notifications. Tapping on these will bring up a message that says "You usually dismiss these notifications. Keep showing them?" and then it offers to block the notifications from the app. It seems like Android P comes with an automatic notification-blocker recommendation. The feature doesn't seem well-polished yet—in a multimessage Gmail notification, it tries to stick a red icon next to every line of the message, which results in the circles getting cut off and overlapping the text.

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