Technology - Google News

Don’t be fooled — Amazon’s Astro isn’t a home robot, it’s a camera on wheels - The Verge
Apple says the iPad mini's 'jelly scrolling' problem is normal - Engadget
Google tells EU court payments to phone makers gave Android a chance against Apple - Reuters

Don’t be fooled — Amazon’s Astro isn’t a home robot, it’s a camera on wheels - The Verge

Posted: 29 Sep 2021 06:44 AM PDT

Yesterday, Amazon announced its "home robot" — a wheeled device named Astro that has a display, an array of sensors, and a camera that periscopes out the top of its body like a mast. In advertisements for Astro, Amazon presents the device as an engineering breakthrough and the realization of a long-held sci-fi dream: to build a robot that can help around the house.

This is rubbish, of course. What Astro is — for better or worse — is a camera on wheels.

The physical limitations of Astro are obvious. It has no arms or manipulators; no way to interact with the world other than bumping into objects at shin height. It can't navigate steps, and, according to employees who worked on the robot and spoke to Vice, it is fragile and prone to self-destruction. "Astro is terrible and will almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs if presented the opportunity," one told the publication. (Oh, and it absolutely cannot get a beer for you — a recurring meme when companies try to hype home robots).

But Amazon is still offering customers quite a bit with Astro, and for those worried about the privacy implications of this technology, the basic usefulness of the device needs to be reckoned with. Amazon says Astro will use facial recognition to identify people in your home and recognize intruders. (Again, though, Vice reports that this feature works poorly in the real world.) The bot can be set to "patrol" your house at night and can be activated and steered remotely, letting you peek through its periscope camera via your phone. In Amazon's ad, a couple use this feature to double check they turned the stove off.

This is silly stuff, but it's useful, too. These are features many people will want. Everyone cares about keeping their home safe and, if you're already investing in home surveillance but don't want to put a camera in every room, then Astro may seem like an attractive solution. (Whether people will pay $999 for the pleasure, and whether Astro will actually work as promised, are open questions.)

It's also worth remembering that although many people distrust or dislike Amazon because of its consistently appalling mistreatment of workers, its union-busting, and its tax avoidance, the company actually remains fairly beloved by the American public. In a survey The Verge ran in 2020, Amazon had the most favorable impression in the US of any tech firm and was judged to be second-most trustworthy after Microsoft. So the fact that Amazon is selling this roving camera won't necessarily put people off the product.

Astro is also important for Amazon's grand strategy. The company's vision for tech is one of ambient computing — of rigging together a network of sensors, smart speakers, cameras, and digital assistants that are integrated into users' homes. The company wants to provide convenience by organizing customers' lives, ideally for a recurring subscription fee, just like with its Prime delivery service. And since it acquired video doorbell firm Ring in 2018, home security and surveillance have been an increasingly important part of this offering. So while many will complain that Astro is essentially a surveillance device, that suits Amazon fine.

Personally, I think Astro is a half-baked concept and part of a dangerous trend of ubiquitous and unthinking surveillance. Although I accept the fact that many people want this sort of technology in their home, Amazon in particular has repeatedly shown a lack of care and honesty in how it develops this sort of tech. In the past, the company has sold racially biased facial recognition systems and hackable security cameras; it aggressively partners with law enforcement and uses scare tactics to push its products on consumers. Looking at this history, I'm not sure why anyone would trust Amazon to oversee these sorts of systems.

But this is where Astro's guise as a "home robot" becomes useful. For many people looking at Astro, it may appear to be just a novelty — indeed, it's already drawn comparisons to robot "pets" like Aibo. But I think, like Facebook's camera-equipped Ray-Ban glasses, the purpose of Astro is not to solve any particular problem but to neutralize the underlying concept: to get people used to having a camera that moves constantly around their home. Astro isn't a home robot, it's a camera on wheels, and that's just what Amazon wants.

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Apple says the iPad mini's 'jelly scrolling' problem is normal - Engadget

Posted: 29 Sep 2021 12:30 AM PDT

Shortly after the new iPad mini was released, people started complaining about seeing a weird "jelly-like" effect on their screens while scrolling. It appears as if one side of the screen scrolls at a different rate than the other, making it look like the screen is wobbling. Those who were hoping for a fix to the problem would probably be disappointed by Apple's response, because the tech giant has told Ars Technica that the device's screen wobbling problem isn't a problem at all.

A spokesperson told the publication that the jelly-like effect people are seeing is typical for LCD screens, because they refresh line by line. As such, it's normal for the lines at the top of the display to refresh at a different rate than the lines at the bottom. Ars Technica insists, though, that the effect is much more noticeable on the iPad mini than it is on other 60Hz LCD iPads, including the latest entry-level model that was released with the mini. Further, there's a visible line dividing the screen in the middle when the tablet is in portrait mode.

It remains to be seen whether Apple would do something about this jelly scrolling effect in the future, considering people are airing complaints about it. For now, it looks the tech giant's stance is that it's par for the course for an LCD screen and that users will just have to get used to it.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Google tells EU court payments to phone makers gave Android a chance against Apple - Reuters

Posted: 29 Sep 2021 05:38 AM PDT

A sign is pictured outside a Google office near the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 8, 2019. REUTERS/Paresh Dave

Google says payments merely a promotional opportunity
EU says they are pinnacle of illegal interlocking practices
EU court judgment likely next year

LUXEMBOURG, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Payments to phone makers to pre-install only Google Search on their devices were not aimed at preventing competition but were necessary for Android to seize market share from Apple (AAPL.O), Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google told Europe's second-top court on Wednesday.

Google was addressing the General Court on the third day of a week-long hearing as it tries to get judges to dismiss a record 4.3-billion-euro ($3.7 billion) EU antitrust fine and a European Commission order to loosen its search engine grip on Android devices.

The EU competition watchdog had taken issue with two kinds of deals made with phone makers, one being payments for only pre-installing Google Search on their devices known as revenue sharing arrangements (RSAs) because these shut out rivals.

This was not the case and the payments were just to encourage phone makers, which were already generating money from other apps, to give Android a place, Google lawyer Assimakis Komninos told the court.

"Google had to offer an offsetting revenue stream. An incentive to convince them to open up and adopt the Android platform. At the same time, the RSAs also helped them to keep prices down and compete more successfully with Apple," he said.

"And obviously, Google was getting in return a promotional opportunity, sole preinstallation, which allowed it to invest in a free OS (operating system), a free app store and so on."

On top of that, the RSAs only covered 5% of the market, Komninos said.

Commission lawyer Nicholas Khan rejected the claim.

"What concerned them was competitors gaining traction," he said and the RDAs were "the pinnacle of Google's interlocking practices".

A verdict is likely to come next year. The case is T-604/18 Google vs European Commission

($1 = 1.1714 euros)

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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