The Keyword: “Nearby Share for Windows on Android is now available”

Nearby Share for Windows, available as an app download on PCs around the world, has now been installed by more than 1.7 million people. With photos and videos being the most popular file types to send, we’ve seen over 50 million files transferred between PC and Android devices since launch. No need to search for any cables or cords – sharing media to your own devices or with nearby friends and family is possible with just a few clicks.

Today marks the official launch of Nearby Share with Windows, offering improved performance and new functionality that can make it even easier for you to share content and stay productive.

Ronald Ho

I have never been quite satisfied with most methods to share files between phones and PCs. The initial way of connecting them with a USB cable has the fastest transfer speed, so it’s great for backing up photos (especially because I shoot RAW on my smartphone as well) and other files, but for a small number of files it’s unwieldy to gather the cable and navigate folders to locate the files. Uploading them to OneDrive or other cloud services can also be time-consuming, as the app sometimes logs you out and you still have to search for the files. I could never get used to Microsoft’s Phone Link, as in its earlier iterations it failed to connect more often than not and newer versions were obnoxious with its constant notifications and permissions requests – not to mention I simply don’t need most of its features.

Engadget: “Apple Vision Pro hands-on, redux: Immersive Video, Disney+ app, floating keyboard and a little screaming”

Dana: Sitting up close in the center of Apple Immersive and spatial videos reminded me of Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s A Wonderful Life: I was both an insider and outsider at the same time. In one demo, we saw Alicia Keys performing the most special of performances: just for us, in a living room. In a different series of videos — these meant to demonstrate spatial video — we saw the same family at mealtime, and a mother and daughter outside, playing with bubbles.

As I watched these clips, particularly the family home videos that reminded me of my own toddler, I felt immersed, yes, but also excluded; no one in the videos sees you or interacts with you, obviously. You are a ghost. I imagined myself years from now, peering in from the future on bygone videos of my daughter, and felt verklempt. I did not expect to get teary-eyed during a routine Apple briefing.

Cherlynn Low & Dana Wollman

Apple’s Vision Pro is nearing launch, and last week we saw another round of hands-on reporting from various tech journalists. I enjoyed this one from Engadget the most, as I think it hits the main points of contention in terms of user experience:

Semafor: “The incredible shrinking podcast industry”

Apple has quietly tightened its reporting of how many people listen to podcasts, sending shock waves through an embattled audio industry still reeling from the end of the COVID-era production bubble.

The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

But while few users noticed the shift, some of the biggest podcasts in the world saw their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Long-running shows that publish frequently were hit particularly hard. A user who listened to a show like The New York Times’ The Daily a few times, subscribed, but stopped listening would continue to count as a download indefinitely. Even better under the old rules: For people who listened to a show, dropped off for a while, but started listening again later, Apple would automatically download every show in between. The arrangement drove big download numbers, a crucial metric for ad sales and a sign of the vast reach of podcasts as a medium.

Max Tani

The title is somewhat misleading, as podcasting hasn’t suddenly shrunk overnight, but was instead revealed to have been smaller than previously reported. Not exactly a novel issue, as I have written before on this blog, but a reflection of the constant hyping and inflated expectations that is associated with basically every new trend in tech circles.

The New York Times: “Apple’s Newest Headache: An App that upended its Control over Messaging”

Since it was introduced on Dec. 5, Beeper Mini has quickly become a headache and potential antitrust problem for Apple. It has poked a hole in Apple’s messaging system, while critics say it has demonstrated how Apple bullies potential competitors.

Apple was caught by surprise when Beeper Mini gave Android devices access to its modern, iPhone-only service. Less than a week after Beeper Mini’s launch, Apple blocked the app by changing its iMessage system. It said the app created a security and privacy risk.

---

The Justice Department has taken interest in the case. Beeper Mini met with the department’s antitrust lawyers on Dec. 12, two people familiar with the meeting said. Eric Migicovsky, a co-founder of the app’s parent company, Beeper, declined to comment on the meeting, but the department is in the middle of a four-year-old investigation into Apple’s anticompetitive behavior.

The Federal Trade Commission said in a blog post on Thursday that it would scrutinize “dominant” players that use privacy and security as a justification to disallow interoperability between services. The post did not name any companies.

Tripp Mickle & Mike Isaac

The ‘green bubble’ iMessage situation in the US is beyond absurd. I can’t quite decide which is worse: grown people caring so much about kindergarten-level status signaling, or Apple being eager to exploit this social dynamic to grow iPhone sales. Actually, I guess I can: when you have Tim ‘buy your mom an iPhone’ Cook openly deriding Android users on stage it’s abundantly clear that Apple’s entire strategy is to degrade the experience of anyone daring to venture outside their ecosystem.

Artifact News: “Shutting down Artifact”

We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product. We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. It’s easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved. The biggest opportunity cost is time working on newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach many millions of people. I am personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be. We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless.

Kevin Systrom

I could have told you that a year ago, Kevin… Most of what I wrote back then as the app was gearing up for launch has been confirmed after I started using it.

The Guardian: “Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done”

Uruguay imports its oil, so it had a problem. Demand for energy in the country had grown by 8.4% the previous year and household energy bills were increasing at a similar rate. The 3.4 million-strong population was becoming restless. Lacking alternatives, President Tabaré Vázquez was forced to buy energy from neighbouring states at higher prices, even though Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay had a mutual aid agreement in case of emergency conditions.

To escape the trap, Vázquez needed rapid solutions. He turned to an unlikely source: Ramón Méndez Galain, a physicist who would transform the country’s energy grid into one of the cleanest in the world.

Today, the country has almost phased out fossil fuels in electricity production. Depending on the weather, anything between 90% and 95% of its power comes from renewables. In some years, that number has crept as high as 98%.

Sam Meadows

A good illustration of how to turn a crisis (the Oil Shock of 2007–08) into an opportunity to overhaul energy generation towards multiple goals: drastically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, while at the same time cutting dependence on fossil fuels and their volatile prices. There is considerable effort involved (from finding land for wind farms to connecting new plants to the grid and securing backup energy sources when renewable power generation is lower than demand), but solutions are available. Once renewable systems are up and running the ongoing costs are lower and the country can develop without being affected by future energy shocks. The key ingredient is evidently vision and political will, to get the process going and to see in through – something that is sorely lacking in the US…

Sight and Sound: “Saltburn review: a black comedy designed to shock”

Cycling to class one day, Felix gets a flat tyre – and who should be there by the side of the road, ready to sacrifice his own steed but Oliver? A bike loan is, apparently, all that is required to secure intimate friendship with the most popular man on campus. This is the first jarring example of the story’s superficial treatment of its characters, an issue that becomes increasingly ruinous as the film swings for psychodrama territory, with the fatal flaw that the script offers caricatures rather than people. The central relationship between a beautiful, rich, golden boy and a homoerotically yearning nobody calls to mind The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and the comparison does Saltburn no favours. While Anthony Minghella’s film thrums with shifting psychological currents that build an overpowering tension, Fennell undercuts every suggestion of genuine drama with pop-culture-savvy punchlines to the point of diminishing returns.

Sophie Monks Kaufman

I came across Saltburn on the front page of Prime Video; the description sounded intriguing enough and I saw a couple of offhand mentions on social media as well, so I decided to watch it. I can’t report the level of shock or outrage that some expressed at the explicit scenes, nor the enthusiasm other critics displayed. It was just a bad movie without direction or purpose that elevated excessive images to conceal its hollowness.

Reuters: “Apple warns India’s EU-style charger rules will hit local production target”

India wants to implement a European Union rule that will require smartphones to have a universal USB-C charging port, and has been in talks with manufacturers about introducing the requirement in India by June 2025, six months after the deadline in the EU. While all manufacturers including Samsung have agreed to India’s plan, Apple is pushing back.

Apple has for years offered a unique lightning connector port on its iPhones. The EU, however, estimates a single charger solution would save about $271 million for consumers, and India has said the move will reduce e-waste and help users.

In a closed-door Nov. 28 meeting chaired by India’s IT ministry, Apple asked officials to exempt existing iPhone models from the rules, warning it will otherwise struggle to meet production targets set under India’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, according to the meeting minutes seen by Reuters.

Aditya Kalra & Munsif Vengattil

Typical example of Apple’s arrogance and entitlement: they want to receive fiscal incentives from the government for investments in local manufacturing, but also special exemptions from an upcoming USB-C regulation to keep selling older – and by then cheaper – iPhone models on the Indian market. Ironically, this issue was brought on by Apple’s own obstinance and greed, as the company kept the Lightning port around for so long to collect licensing fees from accessories manufactures.