Thank you for tuning in to the various radio programs I appear on, I really appreciate you listening. We might not have and time to go through all of these topics on each show, but here’s what was submitted, each host chose from what they felt would fit into the time available.

1. Apple iPhone 15 rumours

All four iPhone 15 models are expected to feature the iPhone 14 Pro’s “dynamic island”, a section at the top of the screen is smaller than the notch from previous years, and which houses the FaceID security scanner and the front facing camera.

The dynamic island area is a true innovation, as it is a resizable display area that can intelligently show additional information in a way that doesn’t intrude on other things you’re doing, such as show how far away an Uber is, the music or radio station you’re listening to, when you start charging or using wireless earbuds, when you have a timer or stopwatch on, and more, and the dynamic island can also show you two pieces of information at once when it makes sense, such as when you’re listening to something but also have a timer on.

The image above is the iPhone 14 – the bezels should be slimmer with the iPhone 15 range later this year, and all iPhone 15 models should have the Dynamic Island as pictured.

If you haven’t seen and more importantly used the dynamic island, you don’t really understand how useful this extra bit of visible information is, without need to tap, swipe or do anything to see it, and from this year’s new models onwards, it should be standard for all new users.

  • The black bezels or borders around the iPhone’s screen will shrink from the current 2.2 millimetres to 1.5 millimetres, something Apple already did with the Apple Watch Series 7 from two years ago, using “low-injection pressure over-folding” technology, known as LIPO, which means the screen sizes will be the tiniest bit larger as well.
  • A new titanium frame, with titanium stronger and 45% lighter than steel
  • A new “action button” that can be programmed to do a range of tasks, such as turning on the torch, or muting, or taking lap times on the stopwatch, or any number of other actions.
  • More RAM or memory for the iPhone to “think” in, as opposed to storage space where photos are stored
  • Volume and power buttons that don’t physically get pressed down but are “solid state”. This means the elimination of more spaces water could get in and fewer moving parts. Already the trackpad on Apple laptops has been “solid state” for a long time, the feeling of pressing down is actually a haptic vibration.
  • The long-awaited new USB-C port, a faster main processor, better Wi-Fi and more.
  • Prices are expected to rise, given inflation has affected everything, and Apple is using more advanced technologies that cost more to produce.

2. Apple launches second public betas of iOS and iPadOS 17 for iPhones and iPads, but the public should still stay away.

Yesterday, Apple launched a revised version of the 4th version of its developer operating system betas for iPhones and iPads, which are more rough and ready than the beta test versions specifically aimed at the public.

With only five to six weeks to go before the new iPhones are launched and then made available to the public, We should now, in theory, be seeing new developer and public betas every week until the new iPhones launch.

The 4th version of the betas actually arrived last week, with the second version of the public beta mysteriously not appearing, and with people reporting last week’s developer beta appeared to introduce some new bugs, rather than getting rid of them.

Given Apple has invited end-users who signed up to Apple’s beta program in the past, to try the first public beta, it’s not good for end-users if a 2nd version of the public beta is fiddlier and buggier than the first public beta that arrived two weeks ago.

So last week didn’t see a 2nd public beta, which arrived yesterday.

Those who tried the betas in the past received an email in the last few hours, titled “Try out the new public betas”, given the second version of these betas have appeared.

Apple says: The iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma, tvOS 17, HomePod software version 17 and watchOS 10 public betas are now available. As a member of the Apple Beta Software Program, you can help shape Apple software by test-driving pre-release versions and letting us know what you think.”

In small print we see: “This is beta, time-limited Apple software meant for evaluation and development purposes only. This software may be incomplete, may contain inaccuracies or errors, and should not be used in a commercial operating environment or with important data. You should back up all of your data before installing this software and regularly back up your data while using it.”

So if you’re brave, or preferably if you have a secondary iPhone or iPad and don’t mind putting up with buggy behaviour, you can try the public betas if you want, but if you prefer a stable experience, it’s around 6 weeks before the finished versions are released.

3. Comparison site Finder’s new survey says 5 million Aussies get new phones every 2 years or less, a quarter because of battery issues, but some people wait 6 or more years before upgrading!

  • Nearly 1 in 3 Australians upgrade their phone within 2 years
  • 24% got a new phone because of battery issues
  • 21% of Samsung users wait 6 or more years before they get a new phone, compared with 14% of Apple users
  • Look for deals before switching to get double the storage spare, free or discounted smartwatches etc
  • Alex’s comment: buying a replacement battery for your existing phone is an inexpensive way to solve battery issues!
  • Alex’s 2nd comment – don’t forget refurbished phones as well, these can be a very inexpensive way to upgrade

More stats below:

A Finder survey of 987 respondents with a mobile phone revealed nearly 1 in 3 (29%) Aussies – equivalent to over 5 million people – are getting a new one every two years or less.

The research shows 20% of Australians are switching over their devices every two years, while a further 7% are doing so annually.

A small percentage (2%) admitted to waiting just 6 months before getting their next phone.

Mariam Gabaji, telco expert at Finder, said frequent phone upgrades can come with a high price tag.

“A new phone launch can be tempting but think about what features you’re actually getting with your upgrade. For the average mobile user, the difference between the two most recent models is often minimal. Your best bet is to wait a few models between upgrades – you’ll typically notice a big difference between your new and old phone and save yourself thousands of dollars in the process.”

Finder’s survey found more than two thirds (69%) of Aussies cited performance issues as the main reason for their last upgrade.

The research found that 30% got a new phone because theirs was broken or damaged, 15% felt their phone was too slow, 12% experienced total death of their battery and a further 12% said their battery life was poor.

Other reasons included their contract being finished (8%), seeing a new phone they liked (7%), being offered a new phone by their telco (6%), getting a hand-me-down (5%) and losing a phone (2%).

Gabaji encouraged Aussies to shop around when looking for their next phone.

“Upgrading your phone can be a huge hit to your hip pocket. Buying outright will be cheaper in the long run, but if forking out more than $1,000 in one go is too much, compare your options for buying on a plan. If you do get a new phone on a plan, make sure you’re happy sticking it out with that provider for anywhere between 12, 24 or 36 months. You can always cancel your plan earlier but you’ll have to pay off the remaining cost of your phone in one go. Before you buy, look out for bonus offers. You could score double the storage space, free or discounted watches or tablets, and/or bonus data.”

Samsung owners are slightly more likely to stick with their phones longer than Apple users – with 72% saying they hang onto their device for more than 2 years compared to 69% of current Apple users.

Moreover, an impressive 21% of current Samsung users surveyed said they wait 6 or more years before getting a new phone compared with just 14% of current Apple users.

4. Provide your family with Bible-based games and Christian content they love, while you enjoy a safe platform with no ads, in-app purchases, or chat features to worry about.

Christian Entertainment Platform Launches Gaming and Digital Experiences for Kids – TruPlay Makes High-Quality, Biblical Based Games, Videos and Comics That Kids Want to Play

TruPlay, a Christian entertainment company that creates transformative digitized content for children, announced today the launch of its world-class platform that contains games, comics and cartoons designed with excellence to bring God’s truth to its youngest consumers. In a world of toxic content for children, TruPlay brings inspiration and hope to the youngest generation and is a safe and trusted platform for children to explore multiple games all in one app.

The average child is on a screen 52.5 hours per week. According to an Ofcom report, 95% of children play video games in some capacity, and three out of four children between ages 4-5 have played games on a tablet. Many games today feature violence and other illicit activities that are linked with depression and mental health problems. While 62% of Americans over 40 in this country believe in God, only 32% of our nation’s children do. In TruPlay’s games, God’s truth and values are told throughout the stories and dialogue of the games, comics and videos

TruPlay provides families with beautiful, fun and inspiring digital experiences, so their children can enjoy a safe platform with no ads, in-app purchases or chat features for parents to worry about. TruPlay believes that every child should have the opportunity to play safely and to experience non-toxic multimedia experiences that strengthen their faith.

“We’re parents just like you who care about our children’s future, mental health and souls. If our kids are going to be entertained online, then fun, uplifting content needs to be there too,” said Brent Dusing, Founder and CEO of TruPlay. “Parents make the best parents. By supporting TruPlay, you’ll see more Christian content made with excellence that will affirm your values and lead to a change for an entire generation of children. Parents desire games with positivity, hope and God’s truth.”

Built by a team with deep industry experience, TruPlay’s content does more than just entertain. The new interactive games, digital comics and animated shorts invite children into an engaging world of hope and biblical truth.

The exciting and creative storylines help children explore their faith in games like “RhymVerse,” a place of endless adventure and other Bible-based games, like Stained Glass and the Action Bible comics. The RhymVerse is a fantastical world based on the Bible and where the characters encounter adventure, danger, mysteries and monsters.

Players will journey from the depths of the sea to outer space and everywhere in between. Gamers will get to know Maple, Lucas, Ava, Benjamin and other featured characters, as they navigate real-world issues children go through today like bullying, friendship, belonging, identity and isolation with the power of God’s truth.

“As a father, godparent and consumer of digital entertainment, I see the urgent need to harness the advancements in the gaming industry for good,” said Hollywood actor and TruPlay advocate, Dean Cain. “You don’t have to compromise on fun or quality to enjoy the world of digital entertainment. You just have to choose your sources wisely.”

TruPlay’s digital entertainment platform is available on phones and tablets on Apple iOS and Google Android nationwide and is a subscription service. For more information, go here.

5. Room Temperature semiconductors – is it real or a hoax?

In March 1989, the world got excited by the announcement that “Cold Fusion” had been discovered, with Fusion the process that the Sun uses to create enormous amounts of energy, but sadly, it was not able to be replicated. Late last week, a claim of a room temperature superconductor exploded across the Internet, with scientists attempting to replicate the claim and the technology, so what is super conductivity and why is this such a big deal if real, with the jury still out on whether this is legit or not?

Ok, I’m not a physicist, so I’m going to explain this in simple terms. According to Kiddle.com, a superconductor is “a special type of material that conducts electricity without resistance. That means that electrons (tiny particles with negative charge) can flow very easily through the material. This can be achieved only at very low temperatures. The critical temperature at which a material becomes superconducting varies from material to material. Most materials are not superconductors.”

Over the last few days, South Korean physicists say they’ve created a substance called LK-99, a new material that is a combination of lead, copper and other materials, which could change the world: a room-temperature superconductor. If real, this means the scientists could have discovered a new material that conducts energy without resistance, so no energy is lost, and if it is confirmed, true and commercialist, it would help the creation of fusion energy, next-generation batteries, and quantum computing.

Superconductors already exist, but they need to be cooled to very low temperatures, to much, much colder temperatures than the freezer in your kitchen. We see them in medical MRI machines, which are very expensive, and they are used in Maglev trains which levitate magnetically.

We’ve all felt our computers and phones warming up when charging, we’ve all felt an extension cord plugged in warming up, so if this energy loss alone could be stopped, it would be huge in itself, but a room-temperature superconductor would help the creation of spaceships… and all the sci-fi future we’ve all seen in movies but current tech doesn’t yet enable.

Sceptics have abounded saying the material is simply “diamagnetic”, a kind of magnetism characteristic of materials that line up at right angles, rather than exhibiting any room temperature superconductivity, but the tests continue, and given some scientists claim to have replicated the effects, the jury is still out.

I’m hopeful that it is real though as it will make even more science fiction into science fact!

6. Norton releases a new AI-powered app for iPhones, browsers (and soon Android phones) to see if the text message, website, social media post, email or website is a scam or not. It’s called Norton Genie and it’s free!

Introducing Norton Genie – Real-Time AI-powered Scam Detection at Your Fingertips. Norton Genie early access is available now in Australia on Norton.com and the Apple App Store, with more info at genie.norton.com

Scams are one of the most pervasive Cyber Safety threats of our time. The sheer volume is staggering – people are collectively wading through 3.4 billion phishing emails on a daily basis – and scams are becoming more sophisticated and harder to spot without help. Today, Norton, a leader in Cyber Safety and part of Gen, is inviting people to join in the fight against scams by offering early access to Norton Genie, a real-time AI-powered scam detector, to provide an easy, fast and free way to check if texts, emails, websites and social media posts are a scam.

“Every day, we’re inundated with messages and scams that have become so believable that anyone, even the savviest of us, is just one wrong tap from becoming a scammer’s next victim,” said Ondrej Vlcek, President at Gen.

“We want to give people Digital Freedom – the freedom that can only be achieved when you’re safe and empowered online. Genie is an always on, easy-to-use, trusted advisor that helps you stay ahead of highly convincing scams. By bringing together best-in-class scam intel from Norton with advanced AI, we can empower people to take full advantage of the digital world safely, privately and confidently.”

Norton Genie is a brand new innovation from Norton designed to be as simple as asking for advice from a friend that’s available 24/7. With just a few clicks or taps, Genie will give immediate guidance on whether the message, email, link or post is potentially a scam and what to do next. Genie is powered by a unique combination of Norton expertise and advanced AI that’s trained on millions of scam messages and the red flags to watch for. As scammers adapt to new technology to make their attacks more convincing, now more than ever, people need AI on their side to help stay ahead of today’s ever-evolving scams. Norton Genie is constantly improving to help stop scammers in their tracks and help fight today’s scams and tomorrow’s.

Norton Genie is a comprehensive mobile app and web-based service providing scam detection with the following key features:

  • Fast, free and easy: You can upload a screenshot or copy and paste the text of a suspicious message and Genie will instantly tell you if a message or site appears to be a scam.
  • Norton technology: Genie combines advanced AI with best-in-class cybersecurity data and technology to help identify scams before you engage. As part of Gen, Norton tapped into the company’s investment and application of AI research and innovation, decades of experience uncovering and remediating scams, phishing attacks, and sketchy websites, and extensive library of known threats to create Genie.
  • Protection that evolves: The more people use Genie, the smarter it gets. Our AI powering Genie will continue to learn and adapt to detect new scams and help protect against emerging threats. While Genie gets better and better with scam detection in messages, emails and social media posts, we will be hard at work developing additional ways Genie can protect people from other types of scams they could fall victim to.
  • Trusted advice: Beyond telling you if a message is likely a scam, Genie takes it one step further by answering your most pressing follow-up questions. How did it know the message was a scam? What should you do next? Like a trusted advisor, Genie empowers you with the information you need to be safer in your digital life.

Norton Genie is still learning and in an early access phase. Genie is available now in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States, for free at Norton.com and the Apple App Store. Norton Genie is compatible with iOS 14.0 or greater, Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Firefox. Norton Genie is expected to become generally available, expand platform availability to Android, and enter additional markets later this year. To learn more, visit genie.norton.com.

7. Google reportedly changing Google Assistant to use the conversational generative AI we see with ChatGPT and Google Bard, as Amazon is also reported to be rebooting Amazon Alexa with similar capabilities

Tech news website AXIOS has reported that Google is reorganising its Google Assistant team to behave much more like ChatGPT and Google Bard.

Here’s the leaked internal email:

Subject: Assistant vision and team changes

Hi team,

Since we launched Assistant seven years ago, we’ve built great experiences for the hundreds of millions of people who use it every month. And we’ve heard people’s strong desire for assistive, conversational technology that can improve their lives.

As a team, we need to focus on delivering high-quality, critical product experiences for our users. We’ve also seen the profound potential of generative AI to transform people’s lives and see a huge opportunity to explore what a supercharged Assistant, powered by the latest LLM technology, would look like. (A portion of the team has already started working on this, beginning with mobile.)

To do both of these things with speed and focus, we are making some changes in the organization:

We’re combining the Services and Surfaces teams, which will be led by Unni and Bryant.

The Mobile team will operate separately under Minni and Zaheed.

The NLP team will now be led by Xiaonan and Lisa. Sincere thank-you to Michelle, who — on top of her day job leading infrastructure — stewarded the NLP team over the past 4 months. Michelle will now lead infrastructure at 100% capacity.

Speech will continue supporting Assistant and other products, and Françoise will now report to Sissie.

As part of this update, we are also eliminating a small number of roles within the team. We have already let these teammates know and we will provide dedicated support to help them through this transition. Everyone impacted will have a minimum of 60 day internal search period, based on local requirements. These have been incredibly difficult decisions, so please support teammates who are processing this news.

Duke and I will host a town hall tomorrow to go through the org changes in more detail and take your questions. (We know tomorrow is a holiday in Zurich, so we’ll also host an EMEA-friendly option on Wednesday.) Some teams will host town halls next week — stay tuned for those calendar invitations. We remain deeply committed to Assistant and we are optimistic about its bright future ahead.

Thanks,

Peeyush and Duke

8. San Francisco orders X to take down its sign – the brightly glowing X that was supposed to mark the spot of X Corp’s headquarters has been taken down.

The Elon Musk company, formerly known as Twitter, took the sign down after the city building department logged 24 complaints about the sign.