Here are a few of the tech stories that caught my eye over the last 2 days.
US Judge Provides Initial Ruling On Apple and Fortnite
In the first of many, many rulings in the Epic vs. Apple court battle, a US judge has ruled that Apple can keep Epic Games’ Fortnite off of the App Store, but that it cannot revoke Epic’s developer license, which would affect the Unreal Engine. The judge ruled that Epic could easily change Fortnite to come into compliance with App Store rules, and thus it does not have to be re-instated, but that Apple cutting off access to the Unreal Engine would cause significant harm to 3rd parties which are not part of this legal battle.
This ruling is not permanent, it is only a temporary ruling until the full hearing on this matter is heard in court in September.
Related to this, Epic Games has confirmed that Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 4 will not be available on iOS or MacOS. iOS was expected, as the company literally has no way of updating it, but Epic is choosing not to update the game on MacOS. There is nothing technically preventing them. This appears to be a simple business decision. Now, Fortnite’s user base on MacOS is probably very small comparatively, so it may not affect a significant number of users. But that is very interesting to me.
Fitbit Announces Versa 3 and Sense Smartwatches
Fitibit has announced updates to it’s smartwatch line, featuring replacements to the Versa 2 and Ionic watches. The Fitibit Versa 3 is a replacement for the Versa 2, and the Firbit Sense replaces the Ionic at the top of the lineup.
Both watches feature a very similar look to the Versa 2, with a square body and screen with rounded corners. The primary physical difference is the omission of a physical button on the side of the device, instead being replaced by a capacitive touch area that serves the same function. Both watches feature improved heart rate sensors that can now track a user’s heart rate 24/7, an improved 6+ day battery life with fast charging, up from 4 days on the Versa 2, and built in GPS, a first for the Versa line. Both watches now support the Google Assistant in addition to Amazon Alexa, and both now have a built in speaker to facilitate the voice assistants, as well as the ability to take phone calls via bluetooth on the watch.
The Sense offers a few more features not found on the Versa 3, mostly around fitness tracking. The Sense has an ECG sensor though it is not yet enabled, a stress management system, and can monitor a users’s skin temperature.
All these new features unfortunately means the prices have gone up. The Versa 3 is priced at $300, while the Sense is priced at $430.
These look solid, but the prices are quite high for the feature set compared to a Samsung Galaxy Watch or Apple Watch. The battery life is significantly better, and may be a big selling point for some, but that comes at the cost of worse integration with the platforms.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/08/25/fitbit-sense-versa-3-inspire-2-announcement/
Windows 95 Turns 25
Windows 95 was released to the public on August 24, 1995. That was the operating system that cemented Microsoft’s dominance with Windows, and provided what was at the time a revolutionary user interface that is still the basis of how Windows 10 works today. Windows 10 looks a lot different, but the basic user interface elements are very similar. That shows the staying power of that design, and just how good it was. It’s interesting to look back though. Windows 95 originally did not come with a web browser included. It was only an update to Windows 95 later on that added a built in web browser. What did we even do on our computers before the Internet?
https://www.theverge.com/21398999/windows-95-anniversary-release-date-history
nVidia Quietly Announces GeForce MX450
This is not huge news, but will still be interesting. The MX line of graphics processors from nVidia are low end parts designed for laptops. They often times find their way into Ultrabooks, and provide a bit more oomph than the integrated graphics on Intel processors. These won’t be powering the latest and greatest games, but are more geared towards lighter workloads, and provide performance improvements on apps that can take advantage of GPU compute like photo editing and video encoding. For a niche workflow, these are very good parts.
But to give an idea of how important these products are in nVidia’s overall portfolio, the company provided no announcement or press release. It only updated its product pages to include information about the processor.
It is likely we will see laptops with MX450 included when Intel releases it’s 11th generation Tiger Lake processors later this year.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-mx450-revealed
Asus Zenfone 7 Features Crazy Flip over camera
I don’t usually cover products that aren’t coming to Canada, but this one is worth talking about just because of how it differs from the smartphone norm. ASUS did not want to have a hole punch or notch in the display for the front camera, so it instead has created a system where the rear cameras literally flip over to face the front of the phone to take selfies or video chats. ASUS used the same funtionality on the Zenfone 6, but has refined the concept for the newer phone. I like this because it allows ASUS to have an uninterrupted front display, and lets users use the superior cameras that are usually on the back of the phone for selfie shots.