Technology - Google News

Google Shopping gets a new design with price tracking and a personalized homepage - The Verge
Apple may have leaked new AirPods with noise cancelling in iOS 13.2 - The Next Web
Microsoft has a phone but it’s not a phone. Here’s why - Times of India

Google Shopping gets a new design with price tracking and a personalized homepage - The Verge

Posted: 03 Oct 2019 02:20 PM PDT

Google has launched a redesign of Google Shopping in the US across both the online and mobile sites, featuring a new personalized homepage, price tracking, and new Google Lens features for building outfits.

The new homepage is now more personalized to your specific shopping preferences, and will automatically suggest reordering products you've previously bought and recommendations based on your Google activity.

The redesign also integrates Google's local delivery service, Google Express, (which was absorbed into Google Shopping earlier this year) to offer a single, unified place to shop. The idea is that now, you'll simply search for whatever it is you're looking for, and then order it from wherever most makes sense, be it online, from a local store, or from retailers selling directly through Google.

There's also a new price tracker, which will let you track items you're looking for and ping you with a notification on your phone when the price drops (email notifications are also in the works for later this year).

Lastly, Google is expanding how Google Lens works when shopping for fashion items — now, when you upload or take a picture of an article of clothing, in addition to recommending similar items to buy, Google Shopping will show a new "Get Style Inspiration" menu. The new section shows off how other people around the internet are wearing the item you're searching for (and of course, offers links to buy the matching items in the outfit through Google).

The new Google Shopping features are available now in the US.

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Apple may have leaked new AirPods with noise cancelling in iOS 13.2 - The Next Web

Posted: 03 Oct 2019 11:12 AM PDT

An icon buried in the next iteration of iOS 13 suggests we might be getting a radical new generation of AirPods. If the info is correct, they'll have a new design and some new features to go along with them.

Guilherme Rambo of 9to5Mac discovered a glyph in the iOS 13.2 beta that looks uncannily like a pair of earbuds — and the small tail is very characteristic of AirPods. Rambo found the icon "in a component of the system related to accessibility settings" and are apparently codenamed B298.

Assuming this is what Rambo assumes it to be (and I'm not sure what else it could be), then it would be mean the next iteration of Airpods would look quite a bit different from what we're used to. For starters, they appear to have a tips that fit into the ear canal, which Airpods have never before had. They also look slightly thinner than the current generation.

But it's not just shape that'll apparently change. Rambo also says that clues point to the AirPods 3 having a noise-cancelling feature apparently called "focus mode." This dovetails with previous rumors: Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported last year that Apple was working on new AirPods with noise-cancellation. They'll also allegedly be water-resistant. The latter feature was corroborated by a note from analyst Daniel Ives reported by Philip Elmer-Dewitt.

The noise-cancellation feature would explain why the general shape of the AirPods is being redesigned. AirPods as they are currently don't really seal into ear well enough to make noise-cancelling work.

As yet, we have no idea when we'll be seeing the next generation of AirPods. An AirPods 3 prototype was allegedly leaked last month, but we have no way of confirming if it's anything like what we'll be getting. The ever-reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts two new AirPod models will go into mass production between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020. The report from Elmer-DeWitt suggests they'll be available by this year's holiday season, but it's already October and we've heard nothing official yet about new AirPods.

We've reached out to Apple and will update if we receive a response.

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Microsoft has a phone but it’s not a phone. Here’s why - Times of India

Posted: 03 Oct 2019 04:20 AM PDT

Microsoft made a bold — and rather strange — move yesterday. It launched a new phone called the Surface Duo but refuses to call it a phone. At its big hardware event, where the Seattle-based tech giant unveiled a slew of products, the biggest talking point was the Surface Duo. But it's not a phone. We aren't saying that. Microsoft's chief product officer Panay Panos categorically said it. His exact words were, "You're going to talk about it as a phone, and I get that. You're going to talk about it as a communication device, and it does both those things incredibly well. But make no mistake, this product is a Surface." It is a communication device and people are going to talk about it as a phone. But it's not a phone.
Surface Duo, interestingly doesn't run Windows. In fact, it runs on Android OS, which is the most popular smartphone OS in the world. But it's not a phone. Surface Duo has Google Play Store and is powered by Snapdragon 855 processor which is found in every powerful Android smartphone. But it's not a phone.
Just like Samsung's Galaxy Fold — but with different screen sizes — Microsoft Surface Duo has two 5.8-inch displays which when folded becomes a 8.3-inch tablet. But it's not a phone.
Microsoft showed a fancy promotional video where the Surface Duo is unveiled in all it's glory. In the video, a woman is show picking up the Surface Duo and says "Hello". But it's not a phone.
Microsoft has been — or rather was — in the smartphone business for a while. In the late 90s and early noughties, Windows Mobile was running on devices like Palm Treo, HTC, and even a Samsung smartphone. All was well until a calamity — for Microsoft — called Apple struck in 2007. The iPhone was launched in 2007 and suddenly Google also got active and launched Android. Microsoft did have some amount of success with Nokia phones but it eventually faded out. So, it's understandable why Microsoft is not calling the Surface Duo a phone. After all Microsoft and phones don't go well together. Microsoft quite deftly managed to pitch the Surface Duo as everything but a phone. But it IS a phone.

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