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The Apple Ecosystem

The Apple Ecosystem - Explained!

Ecosystem

We all know apple makes a ton of devices such as

iPhones

iPads

Airpods

Apple Watch

Mac Book

Mac Desktop

Apple TV

Home Pods

But they also make a lot of software and proprietary technology that ties them all together such as

Airplay

Airdrop

iCloud

These software-based products can draw you into the ecosystem.

Somewhere one of their devices lets say an iPhone, for example, you get an iPhone like many people do, then they can lure you to spend more money on other apple products because they just work so well together. now, most companies have a family of products that's not new it's not like Apple is the only one doing that but what makes this a unique ecosystem so successful may be the most successful ecosystem ever. is not only how they work together but the walls they have built up around those things. living inside this ecosystem is sort of like we call a walled garden, you may have heard that expression before, meaning everything that's in the garden in these walls is a beautiful luscious garden everything is green. It's everything you could ever want. but, these walls on the outside are really tall and they kind of don't want you trying to climb out or trying to explore beyond those walls. Just look at all the great stuff in here basically once you get a couple of Apple devices you start to get into the ecosystem. let's say you get an iPhone and a MacBook just those two things they make it as easy as possible.

You start using iMessage you start getting text messages on your phone then, you can reply to them on your MacBook super easy.

You web browse on your phone then you sit down in your MacBook and it shows up for you to pick up exactly where you left off.

You have iCloud drive so many files on one are always on the other anything showing up Airdrop peer-to-peer sharing legendary.

You have tethering so the MacBook has always iPhones internet where ever you go want to make a video call? FaceTime is right there you can answer it on either device.

You ask Siri to remind you for something it will put in the reminders app every time.

Smart Watch

Now you are in the market of smartwatch well, you just get an Apple watch you can answer texts on your watch answer calls on your watch, there's FaceTime still, ask Siri to set reminders on the watch it will put them in the reminder app. Everything works together so beautifully.

Now you are in the market for the smart speaker.

It's a pretty new market, a couple of options out there. It seems it makes perfect sense to just go with Apple one.

Airpods

Now suddenly wireless headphones are gaining steam.

You are in the market for some wireless stuff, Earbuds/Airpods are right there works perfectly.

All these services and products are designed to be as good as possible, but they are also designed to be these hooks to keep you in the Apple ecosystem to keep you giving them information to keep you buying more Apple products as long as possible and the way to keep you using those products is to make those products as good as possible within the ecosystem and those are keywords within the ecosystem.

Homepod

The existence of so many apple products that on the surface or from the outside from behind those walls can seem kind of limited or pointless or dumb especially, in a new market where there's just the beginnings of competition like why does the home pod exist in 2019 a smart speaker that only uses Siri. It only uses apple music that does not connect to Bluetooth. It does not connect to anything that's not an iPhone. It does not have a headphone jack because for that guy who uses apple music and has iCloud account and has an iPhone it's kind of perfect.

What About Leaving?

What about getting out of ecosystem well in apple's case pretty much everything is tied to your iCloud account and if you want to get out of the ecosystem you have to rip that information out of your iCloud and sort of import it into that new service, a lot of times much easier said than done.

The more closely tied to iCloud that device is the more hooks it has into other parts of the ecosystem.

That makes it harder to take out so accessories like Airpods, for example, you know they work perfectly with things like your iPhone your iPad and your MacBook because of the W1 chip they pair effortlessly, we all know It just kind of works the apple, but if you want to switch to another pair of headphones it's just one hook in and you can move to another pair of wireless headphones and get away with it now if you use Apple music and want to switch to Spotify because it's clearly better, again is like one hook but good luck trying to switch your entire library between the platforms.

Entire companies have been born trying to make that process easier but trying to leave the iPhone to go to another phone that's not in the ecosystem. It's tough because there's a lot of hooks into this.

All of your app purchases are gone. FaceTime is gone. Your Earpods become useless. Your Homepod becomes useless. You can't use your reminder app anymore. Your apple watch becomes a paperweight and iMessages is gone. Then the iPhone holy grail for shepherding people into this garden is had to leave so that a new phone could come along with a better screen. Better battery. No notch. A better camera. Better battery life. A headphone jack and iPhone users would still skip it because of that ecosystem though...

My only suggestion would be don't isolate yourself to just one Ecosystem don't lock yourself in or if you already locked in maybe take a peek over those walls before it's too late. Thanks for reading:)

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

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Redmi K20 Pro New Flagship Killer

Redmi K20 Pro

Redmi K 20 Pro depending on who you are. You have either heard a ton of hype around this for a while now or this is literally the first time you're ever hearing about it right now.

I feel like this phone picks up right where the PocoPhone left off. It's very similar to PocoPhone in more ways than one but instead of just nailing a few key specs for a super low price this Redmi K20 Pro feels like as super complete all-around basically Flagship level phone.

It has essentially everything for $400. And that's why it's blowing up. It's definitely more expensive than the $300 PocoPhone, which is absolutely crazy.

But this in this package is definitely a better all-arounder phone. You'll see what I mean.

Redmi K 20 Pro depending on who you are. You've either heard a ton of hype around this for a while now or this is literally the first time you're ever hearing about it right now. I feel like this phone picks up right where the PocoPhone left off. It's very similar to PocoPhone in more ways than one but instead of just nailing a few key specs for a super low price this Redmi K20 Pro feels like as super complete all-around basically Flagship level phone. It has essentially everything for $400. And that's why it's blowing up. It's definitely more expensive than the $300 PocoPhone, which is absolutely crazy. But this in this package is definitely a better all-arounder phone. You'll see what I mean. Redmi K20 Pro turns out it’s just an upgraded version of the K20.

This has the Snapdragon 855 the K20 has a Snapdragon 730, which has a global version called the Xiaomi Mi 9T which is an upgraded version of the Xiaomi Mi 9. If you follow all of that, but none of that really matters. What matters is the K20 Pro deserves the attention is getting because it legitimately tries to include literally everything you could possibly expect out of a flagship but at a lower price now, it's not all the highest quality. It definitely has a quantity. It has almost everything but it's still a $400 phone.

Body and Design

So, aesthetically, first of all, it's pretty unique looking with the colors sort of dancing down the sides and then depending on how the light hits it this shimmery pattern changes. It's pretty cool, but it's actually also still glass and still a fingerprint magnet but this thing is already starting off with a leg up you typically expect budget phones to have plastic and cheap materials. This one is legit metal and glass.

Hardware/Specification

USB type-c, You got it. A slight curve to the back glass, You got it. A headphone jack, you got that. A full-screen display from top to bottom thin bezels, you got it. Pop up Selfie camera, you got it. A built-in LED light fingerprint reader underneath the glass, you got that too. 4000 milliamp-hour battery, you got that. Snapdragon 855. It's all here.

Pretty much the only Hardware thing. This guy's missing if you're comparing it to flagships is water resistance and wireless charging. So, you know, it is a glass back with no wireless charging I said before, if you're going to do that just go with the high-quality plastic so you avoid being breakable, but oh well, so like I said the list of things that this phone has as you've heard is kind of amazing, but the actual quality of all these different things varies not all specs are created equal the natural place to start is a display and it's pretty nice, to be honest. It's a 6.4 inch 1080p AMOLED no Notch thin bezels, and it's pretty bright it's visible outdoors with fairly decent colors, maybe a little big if anything, but we're so used to seeing so many budget phones with either big chins and big bezels or smaller screens or Notches, this one is just clean and it's Flat.

Display and Fingerprint Reader

This is the best display in any mid-range phone and then underneath that display glass, there is a fingerprint reader which again that's pretty impressive for a mid-range of the fact that it's there in the first place. but this reader itself is not that fast so you can kind of get used to it. It's a little bit of a delay when you press it, but it's in this weird place where it's slower than most other in glass fingerprint readers on great phones, but also slower than the capacitive ones are used to but at least it's cooler.

Pop up Selfie Camera

Pop up Selfie Camera is under the screen and then like we've also seen lately to achieve the full-screen design pop up Selfie camera, and this one has a light on it. I don't know if that achieves anything other than looking kind of cool, but the mechanism is decently fast. It's rated for 300,000 opens and closes. You can't use it for RGB Face Unlock, but I don't recommend that and even has automatic Free Fall detection. So if you're taking a Selfie and you drop the phone. It has a free fall. It actually closes the camera app and shuts it to avoid damage if it lands on it.  a low-key but pretty important part of it is that light in the selfie camera actually shines through the top of it. so, it can act as a sort of a notification LED so you can see if you're plugged in and charging. It lights up to tell you and when you're finished charging that changes.

Camera

The one thing I really don't like about this selfie camera is, the photos it takes which are straight garbage like this is possibly the worst selfie camera.

There's absolutely no dynamic range. The colors are pretty terrible. Very very soft detail. Yes, beauty mode is off. Like I just don't know why it's this bad. But you know, it makes it even crazier how good the back cameras are.

K20 Pro again has yet another Flagship looking spec and an array of triple cameras on the back of the 48-megapixel main camera and 8-megapixel telephoto and a 13-megapixel Ultrawide. So that means the sensor is a Sony it's an IMX 586. So it's the same sensor that we've seen in a couple of other Honor and Vivo phones that have performed pretty well. It'll shoot 4K 60fps video with any of the camera lenses. So yes, you can shoot video with the ultra-wide camera, unlike the OnePlus 7 Pro. It'll even shoot 960 FPS slow motion now it's not a high resolution at all. But, you know, definitely more of a gimmick, but that's still pretty cool, of course, expecting maybe some average photos some that maybe look better if they're in great light and I was very impressed. Obviously. If you give it a ton of light you're going to get the best out of the sensor. It was working pretty great. But even the ultra-wide camera has given me some nice shots. The color reproduction wasn't too oversaturated or overdone with the process. Sometimes you see too much sharpening in these phones. That wasn't here. I was more impressed often than I thought I would be it's not the fastest camera in the world, but overall the image quality not bad and even at night like in dark environments where you expect it to fall apart. Yeah, it totally does the noise reduction goes Super overboard and everything is super soft and it looks terrible. But if you happen to have a subject that will sit still for you and you turn on night mode you get some of your sharpness back in the dynamic range actually improves like that's pretty good. That's not bad.

So really the only thing left is using the phone every day. And again, as I said technically on paper it has all those things you'd expect from a flagship Snapdragon 855. 6or8 gigs of RAM and up to 256 gigs of storage. So it's running MIUI 10 on top of Android Pie and this is not my first choice, but it's growing on me. So, aesthetically this is why it's not my favorite, but functionally it's not lacking at all the app drawer with the search bar at the bottom is nice to reachability actually has a nice clean brightness slider that I've liked for a while it's like always available but the glassiness of it all and the icons just certain things are a little too much for me and that's kind of their aesthetic right now, but overall performance I'd say was about a B and this is something I actually expected to be better when you have these high-end specs but the animations weren't really smooth all the time.

I got occasional hiccups with the keyboard and with opening stuff minor things, but stuffy, I don’t really expect to see from a phone with a 1080p display and a high-end chip. So it's still fast but not really that smooth if that makes sense, but that battery though that 4,000 milliamp-hour battery they put in this phone gives it a battery life that is right up to bar with the other flagships. Sometimes better than the OnePlus 7pro I've been using and not only does it have a really large battery and supports fast charging but it also comes with a fast charger in the box and it has this sweet charging animation. So the battery life situation is pretty great on this phone. Look I'm gonna tell you right now for the price Redmi K20 Pro is a great phone.

I think it gets you the closest to forgetting that you spent half. What you could have spent on a high-end phone it gets you the closest to that but a lot of this is easy to just point out on paper when you actually use it. There are certain things that keep reminding you that it is a cheaper phone vibration motor for example, pretty cheap pretty loose not very good. And when you feel that all the time you've reminded also the single mono speaker at the bottom is super easy to block and that's pretty bad. So if you do audio all the time, you've reminded the selfie camera, as I talked about is just absolutely comically awful. And even little things like the slower fingerprint reader, you might not know it's slow if you haven't used a more expensive phone, but I definitely did notice it but for the most part the important stuff the big stuff your specs your overall solid build quality your solid performance headphone jack is a nice touch and the display being better than I'd expected sort of fits this where the PocoPhone left off, which is a really really great value and kind of like that PocoPhone. Even if you never buy this Redmi K20 Pro or even the Xiaomi Mi 9T, this is still a testament to how good these mid-range and budget phones have gotten lately. So maybe I can't say good phones are getting cheap anymore. Maybe we'll put a little strikeout through that one. But I definitely can say cheap phones are getting good. I'm glad this one exists to be a part of that movement.

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

Follow me:

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Is Netflix Going Down?

Is Netflix Going Down?

Netflix Has begun to lose subscribers in the US for the first time in eight years. The last time they lost subscribers in the US was when they were transitioning from the DVD service to the actual on-demand service like the digital service and people were a little skeptical about the idea of splitting those two Services up. They wanted it all in one. That's the last time they lost subscribers.

This is very significant. So they missed their targets in both, of course, the domestic market but also the international market where they were supposed to be adding a boatload it can't a boatload to users in the international market with the expectation.

It didn't happen to the degree to which they had originally imagined the company on Wednesday reported a loss of a hundred twenty-six thousand domestic paid subscribers domestically in the US compared with analysts' expectations of a 352K user gain.

That's what they were expecting to take place instead they got 162K drop in users. They also missed their own forecast for Global subscriber growth of 2.3 million users. Of course, Netflix going into territories going to places like India big populations big potential for new customer growth and they miss that number as well. Now. The reason is competition.

It's always there that's, but Netflix themselves, they say it's their content. They say they're not happy with their contents late and they're going to improve it. They apparently haven't been seen as much success with their original as they have in the past or what they expected to see with the exception of stranger things. the stranger things is the big hit for them giving them a little boost but some of their other stuff less.

So at least this is coming from them directly.

I think competition is Big there are so many competing contents streams out there ways to spend your time, you and I YouTube natives how many hours pass that you could just binge on YouTube and not even think about Netflix?

I would say when Netflix launch eight years ago that wasn't necessarily the case when we Netflix launch and through the last few years. It was hard to spend hours and hours on YouTube because the content wasn't really there and I think it's improved quite a bit and I think we're seeing that now potentially reflected in these numbers right here also important to know they increase their prices, which is always that moment at which a customer considers whether or not they're getting value out of the content that they're paying for and when they increase the prices, I think a lot of people second-guess that subscription and thought now would be a good time to cut it off. So they're also blaming the price increase to a certain degree.

In quarter one of 2019, for example, the forecast was north of 8 million new paid additional user and they beat that forecast in close to 10 million new users in quarter one. We're now sitting in quarter two, and they had forecast a dip as you would different quarters different customers Behavior. They before passing it differently, but the actual number is even substantially below the forecast to get. s,o the global users not adding their inventory of monthly subscriptions as Netflix imagine. They reported International net additions of 2.8 million subscribers their estimates analyst estimates were as high as 4.8 million. So Netflix coming on hard times here. is their Netflix in the future? Netflix is a big player, all the billions and billions of dollars that they've received from customers over the years to build up this inventory of original. is Netflix here in 10 years? I don't think so. I think we might get acquired. I could live without Netflix quite easily in fact, and that's never a good thing for your company. If people feel they can move on, they will.

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

Follow me:

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Android vs ios

Which Operating System is Best?

As of May 2019, the market share for phone operating systems is really only a two-horse race, iOS, and Android. with Android controlling just over 75% of the market and iOS with just under 23%. KaiOS and some others like Nokia's OS Were next with a negligible market share. It's become a matter of fact that in this world. There are Android fans and iOS fans and people don't tend to cross over to the other side.

We all know folks who would never give up their iPhone for say a Samsung and we all know people who tell you iPhones are overpriced in more of an accessory than a necessity but which operating system is really the best that's what we'll try and find out for you before we get to the pros and cons of each system.

Let's first have a look at the history of these two operating systems.

We'll start with the Android, the company Android Inc was founded in 2003 by a bunch of guys, but the one you've most likely heard of is Andy Rubin at first the idea was an operating system developed for a digital cameras, not phones, but soon the Creator's changed their minds and announced that their technology would soon rival Microsoft Windows mobile.

Now many people believe that and it wasn't easy getting this company going. In fact, it's been reported that they were so broke. They couldn't afford to pay for their office space and even the founder's closest friends didn't really believe they were onto something.

Google, however, did believe in Heroes and acquired it from Android inc. along with key members of the company. There was a lot of secrecy surrounding Android and its acquisition, but the rumors started to get out that Google was developing its own software for mobile phones and little did we know how quickly this software would be in most of our pockets, then in 2007 Apple dropped a bombshell and released its iPhone prior to this Google's operating system was developed only to run on standard phones, not ones with touchscreens when the iPhone came out the Android team knew they had a lot of work to do.

The same year a group called The handset Alliance came together and made the Bold statement that they would create the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices members of this Alliance were Google, Samsung, HTC, and Motorola as well as others. They weren't just full of hot air either and soon. We saw a bunch of different versions of Android. These were Cupcake Donut Declares in Froyo. Later, We got KitKat you might be wondering why computer software was named after things that you eat and Google later answered that saying it was because of the mobile devices running the software made life sweet.

The first Android phone was the T-Mobile G1 or HTC dream. It was called outside of the USA. The reviews were mixed. But many people did say that the OS had a lot of potentials.

Now for the iPhone and iOS in 2005, the one and only Steve Jobs had a huge job to do shrink the mac and make the perfect handheld device in 2007.

Apple announced this new phone along with its operating system. The first of the system was called the iPhone OS 1 and unlike Google Apple didn't go for sweet-sounding names and just kept counting up and numbers, So far, we have only mentioned phones but as you know, both operating systems ran on various mobile devices.

The first iPhones were praised as a spectacular device and only added to the Mystique of jobs who for some was like a techno God. You just have to read those early reviews to find fawning praise about how the iPhone was Sleek fantastic Innovative a superb device for surfing the web like nothing else before it. Gizmodo wrote I'm thumbing through my own iPhone like a teenager with his first Playboy.

It was in a league of its own. It wasn't perfect and lacked a few features. But hey, no one was saying negative things about this device except perhaps one thing this was the fact that it was so darn expensive coming in at a base price of $499 compare that to the first Android phone which launched at $179, but the price didn't matter to many as iPhones were being hailed as the future of mobile devices.

That's kind of been the story ever since but as we've seen in the years since many high-end Android phones are also now very expensive. They might have cost a lot of cash, but that didn't stop people from buying the iPhone.

If you look at the best selling iPhones of all time, you'll see that it stopped by early Nokia phones and it makes sense. You can throw them against a wall and they wouldn't break in the battery lasted longer than any human could stay awake that said the third phone on the list is the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus and it beats any Android phone a Long Way, 220 million people bought that phone which is more than impressive.

The best selling Android phone of all time is the Samsung Galaxy S4. And that's all just 80 million units a long way behind. It Ran Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean but then just below that you have the iPhone 5 and iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus which sold 70 and 65 point nine million units respectively the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are too far behind that while various versions of the Samsung Galaxy have done ok too if you look at the Historical market share of operating systems, you'll find in 2009 Android was barely getting out of the blocks, iOS was in front.

The operating system called Symbion used by some big manufacturers like Nokia was ahead of them both, but that soon changed what you see in the years ahead is Microsoft mobile taking a huge nose, dive, and Android rocketing to the top.

We will say though that over the years iOS is taken some small dips and Rises, but mostly it stayed quite stable.

Only lately has the iPhone been in a bit of trouble that might say something about its dedicated users over the years, but since about 2013 Android has enjoyed an 80% market share give or take a little now and again, no one can deny that Apple has very devoted fans, but it's impossible to contest that Android is King of the market. However, just because something sells more doesn't mean it's better.

As we know, the iPhone is very expensive, which we're sure puts a lot of people off I went to an article by a fast company and not But the website some designers and Technology big thinkers talked about what phone they thought was the best of all time. The article was released in 2018. And you know? what the list of phones selected was mostly populated by various versions of the iPhone some old-school phones such as the early Blackberry got a mention as did the popular Motorola flip phones in Old Nokia's we couldn't even find it Android phone on the list.

Maybe these guys were just fond of the good old days or maybe there just hasn't been an almost. Perfect Android phone yet. What about 2019 we look to see what people were saying we're the best phones you could buy in 2019.

Well, now it seems Samsung phones running Android top the list. Although some lists do include the iPhone Xs. It doesn't matter where you look Samsung Galaxy phones top two lists right now with various types of Galaxy phones filling out most of the top spots give or take the old Huawei phoner some of the top 10 lists right now don't even include the iPhone which is surprising given a similar list.

You would have found it published a few years ago from what we could see it. Do the experts Android phones whether Huawei Samsung Xaomi or OnePlus are favored over the iPhone while the iPhone was almost always at the top of her views not that long ago these days people are talking about the fall of the phone that seems to have begun in 2018.

It looks like these days that Sleek design is just too expensive for some people and they think you can get a better machine for a cheaper price with an Android phone still. This still doesn't tell us which is the best operating system though. Again, the experts have chimed in not just about which phone is best. But what operating system is best.

The first thing most people point to is that Android gives the consumer more variety. That's why it sells better. They're just so many phones out there with all kinds of features and at all prices, but it's more than that. The number of apps available for Android is approximately 3.5million while for iOS it's 2.5million wait though because while there are freer Android apps in a greater variety at least one reviewer says Apple has the better quality apps, especially if you play games some people also, Say that Apple is better at weeding out questionable apps than Android and the App Store is better to navigate than the Play Store. Another big deal is Maps. We looked at a few comparisons of Apple maps in Google Maps and not one person said Apple Maps was better most reviewers did say that Apple Maps is getting better and better and isn't far behind but in the end, you just have to go with Google.

What concerns a lot of people is the battery life of their device. It's a huge thing as no one likes to see their battery run out on them when they really need that phone working again. It's all about the variety. The iPhone doesn't have a bad battery at all, but you can find many Android devices out there with the superior battery the experts in the public agree on this one. It's looking like Android wins in most areas, but we're apple looks to be superior is offering updates when it comes to adding a new features some bug fixes and also security updates apple is ahead to other things talked about are how you can customize your phone and how easy it is to use in terms of customizing Android just has more options as you'd expect when there are so many phones.

But in terms of sheer Simplicity, most people seem to think that Apple wins here, but what if you want to sell your phone and buy a new one which system holds its value better, there's only one answer to this and no one disagrees. It's the iPhone you can still get a fairly decent amount of money for a phone two years old. You might also know people using iPhones even older than that which still work very well in the end. It seems like most people said that it's all about personal preference and there's no definitive better OS if you prioritize volume of choice and range of customization, then you have to go for Android but if you value design and ease of use then you can't go wrong with an iPhone if you could afford it.

Let me know which is your favorite heroes in the comments Android or iOS or one of the other weird ones and be sure to check out my other Blog apple vs Samsung which is better. Thanks for Reading.

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

Follow me:

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The Problem With Facial Recognition

Is Facial Recognition a Problem?

This is gonna sound weird but a few years ago the NYPD used facial recognition to catch a shoplifter and they didn't even have a clear picture of his face.

The clerk said the guy kind of looked like the actor Woody Harrelson, so they just pulled up a photo of Harrelson and put it in the system. It worked. They caught the guy it turns out he really did look like Woody Harrelson the facial recognition systems were never built to be used this way and an instance like this raised the question of whether police should have this technology at all.

It's not the only time something like this has happened. this past year Georgetown University conducted a study of some of the use cases and they're pretty wild some police departments have actually pasted in different facial features in effort to get the system to produce a match if the left eye is blocked in your picture just paste in a new left off if the suspects mouth is open paste in a new Mount disclosed.

These are delicate algorithms. But in most cases, there are no strict rules for how Police use the algorithms and whenever the machine produces can be used as grounds for a police stop. Okay, but before we get into that, let's talk about how facial recognition really works. Its core facial recognition is about tracking key facial landmarks from photo to photo the distance between your pupils the angle of your nose the shape of your cheekbones, basically all the details of your face that make a distinctive that works best from a straight-on photo with at least 80 pixels between the pupils think like a passport photo or a driver's license, but once you've got that basic pattern sophisticated programs to recognize the same features an angle, it can even work with part of your face has blocked as long as there are two pupils and enough other features to be sure vendors like NEC Morpho and cognitive pioneered these systems selling their software local and federal police forces, but in the past few years Amazon and Google have been building it into their Computing clouds to which makes it a lot easier to get with a couple hundred bucks and some coding skills.

Almost anyone can create a facial recognition system. These programs work of accuracy thresholds the tighter the match the higher the number but there's no firm rule about how high the number needs to be which means that the same time the police are playing with the photos. They upload to the system.

They're also playing with the standard for what counts as a match. So if you look like Woody Harrelson, even a little bit and officer could adjust the accuracy threshold until it registers as hit and then if you ask why you're being stopped they can just say the machine said it was you. if you talk to the people making these tools you're really not supposed to do any of this. It's like steering a car with your feet. You can make it work, but it's bizarre and dangerous and with police, the end result of all of that is stopping someone maybe for no reason that's even worse because the algorithms are less accurate for women and people of color it's not totally clear why that's true.

A lot of people think it's just a result of algorithms that are mostly trained on white men. But Government testing shows it really consistently across the industry. The NYPD says that no one has been arrested on the basis of facial recognition alone. And that's true. But facial recognition has been involved somehow in more than 2,800 rests in the five and a half years. The program has been running.

Even when there's no arrest at all false matches can still lead to a police stop which has dangers of its own. There's supposed to be a clear legal bar for making those stops. But facial recognition is short-circuiting that now Defenders official recognition will say that despite the problems. It's still an effective tool for police to protect their communities Detroit's project Greenlight is a network of connected surveillance cameras recently upgraded the facial recognition and it's credited with a 23% drop in crime in the city, but it's still controversial some community members say there's no transparent oversight and the flood of new tips is overwhelming the police force the fights gotten really heated.

So heated that one of the city's police commissioner's was actually arrested at a hearing trying to speak out against the system other cities have passed local laws banning the use of facial recognition by police for just that reason San Francisco home to some of the largest tech firms in the world Bandit last year, San Francisco supervisor. Aaron Peskin was particularly critical calling it big brother technology but, this isn't a tech problem, fundamentally, san Francisco is saying the government just can't be trusted with this technology. Not because it's so bad but because we don't have enough oversight over how police departments will actually use it. that's a problem that goes much deeper than just recognizing faces. and we find more powerful ways to peer into the average person's life, it's a problem that's not going away.

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In-Display Finger Print Reader

In-Display Finger Print Reader - Explained!

So for unlocking our phones lately for the last couple years we've gotten used to fingerprint readers, Touch ID became that standard and pretty much every phone that comes out has somewhere on it this fingerprint reader for unlocking it.

But lately, they've gotten shoved to like the back of the phone or the sides or just off of the front entirely to accommodate these full-screen phones the Bezel-less Revolution the infinity display.

Not personally love the idea of shrinking bezels and I can see that feature smartphone being completely Bezel-less as all screen, but that does, of course, come with a couple sacrifices one of which being where do we move the fingerprint reader?

You can put it on the back like we've seen a lot you could put it in the power button on the sides. There's a couple of possibilities. You can even go the Apple route and totally remove it. iPhone X of course, has no fingerprint reader and they've moved over to facial recognition or face id.

But Synaptics has been hard at work on their own solution. And that's called clear ID, but whatever the name doesn't really matter. What matters is it's a fingerprint reader underneath the display glass. So the sensor itself is called the FS 9500 it's made by Synaptics and it's being shown in this Vivo phone called The X 20+ UD. It's a pretty weird name, but it's on sale and everything is the first phone that has this fingerprint sensor in it. So it doesn't work in the exact same way that all these previous fingerprint readers have in the past.

So you enroll your fingerprint in the software just like any other fingerprint reader you can do more than one finger if you want and I notice I didn't scan my finger until a little indicator light turns on. This is kind of how you know, it's ready to scan and where to put your finger and then this is literally an optical sensor.

So it's a CMOS sensor the same type you'd find in a camera or in the smartphone camera itself actually.

So in order for it to work number one, it has to be an OLED display. It'll only be found in phones with OLED displays and number two, it has to be shining a light on your Fingerprint to reflect back under the glass and read it.

So when I put my finger on that indicator, which is basically a helper for guiding my finger to the right place. You would see a light shines for a second sort of a pulse that's long enough for it to read the reflection of my fingerprint on that Optical sensor. It's literally lighting up my finger for the sensor to see.

So you go from the screen off to raising the phone which lights up the indicator touching your finger to it, pulsing the light and reading the fingerprint reader plus this pretty slick animation all in under a second and a half which is not bad.

So all that's pretty impressive and it usually brings a couple of main questions to mine. Number one being does it affect the performance of the screen in any way, No. and number two, Can you see it like in the display at all? If you tilt it to the right angle. Can you see the sensor? and that answer is Yes.

If you look hard enough and while the screen is off at the right angle with just the right amount of light you can see the little rectangular sensor under the display, but it's definitely so subtle that you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it and of course Once you turn the display on, light up any pixels around it even at the lowest brightness is completely invisible.

So this is definitely a really promising. I was personally impressed trying it myself and I think the biggest thing obviously for it to improve is that speed. like I mentioned it's all about a second to a second and a half to do everything. It's faster than face ID, but it's slower than Touch ID. It's thought of it as like a first-gen of a new Touch ID in the future though consider this because this is just the first generation of what we're looking at. It doesn't just have to be in that exact area. It's not limited to just a little rectangle in the middle. That's just where we're expecting it. So that's where they put it but it's Unlimited in size. It could be the bottom third of the phone. It could be the bottom half of the phone. It can even be the entire display. All of the glass could have a huge CMOS sensor underneath it that reads your fingerprint.

So I can see a phone in the future where you just take it out your pocket and just touch it anywhere and you're unlocked because you touch the screen but anyone else trying it wouldn't get in that's kind of like the ideal biometric authentication is what face id want it to be.

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

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Google vs Apple

Google vs Apple - Which is More Successful?

The meteoric rise of computer technology might not trouble the average millennial, but for those of you who remember the days before we were all hyper-connected, our Reliance on modern technology might seem somewhat problematic at times.

Where will we be in another 50 years?

Iconoclastic entrepreneur Elon Musk has said if we don't get a handle an artificial intelligence, we may create something will sorely regret, perhaps the most frightening depiction of tech dystopia isn't a television series Black Mirror, which exposes a world lacking in empathy where what once were dreams have turned into living nightmares.

Even now the media argues over automation. Will it mean a laid-back life for the masses or mass unemployment under a technocracy?

Innovation is Unstoppable, and there are a handful of tech companies at the Forefront of this Innovation.

We will look at two of them today in this episode of the infographic show Google versus Apple.

Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 with both men pushing to create the ideal personal computer, Jobs was forced out of Apple after what has been called a failed boardroom coup the company. However, lacked a great leader and jobs was brought back to eventually become CEO.

It was shortly after this that Apple grew into the Innovative Tech Giant it is today. The world was equally impressed when Apple came out with the easy to use and beautifully made iPod three years later, two years after that came the iTunes music store, but we're really shaking things up was the release of Apple's flagship product, the iPhone. that was in 2007.

The iPad came in 2010. And since these products came onto the market Apple has arguably Ruled The Roost of consumer gadgets as for Steve Jobs.

He's now treated like a technology demagogue.

But, where would we be without Google the company behind the search engine that most folks can't live without Google Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995.

It said the two did not agree on many matters, but one thing they did agree on was the creation of a search engine that ranked pages by their importance on the world wide web.

This search engine was actually first called backrub, but then fortunately for the pair, they saw the light and made the change to Google.

Google incorporated was born in 1998 and soon Venture capitalists were poised to invest in the small outfit Google just kept growing and soon billions of searches would be made every day on its search engine the company created its headquarters the Googleplex, which would soon become synonymous with the avant-garde kind of tech workplace we see all over today.

The company has since ventured into all kinds of markets including the smartphone business renewable energy self-driving cars Enterprise Services artificial intelligence and machine learning and all manner of smart devices.

If we can get through life without becoming part of apples sometimes criticized ecosystem.

It would be difficult to not be a consumer of a Google product because Google has its fingers in so many pies. It created a parent company that goes by the name alphabet Inc. This is what we call a conglomerate now.

Let's get straight to Money Matters as we said before some critics have said these companies are too big for our own good, if we take a look at the most recent Forbes world's biggest companies list, Apple is a ninth place.

That is the highest-ranked tech company on the list. And for some time now, the media has been telling us Apple will become the world's first company to be worth a staggering 1 trillion dollars. Forbes has Apple’s sales on its latest list at $217.5 billion dollars.

Profits at $42.5 billion and Assets at $331.1 billion and a total value of $752 billion dollars.

The next tech company down the list is Samsung electronics, and in 24th Place is Alphabet Inc.

Forbes puts the Alphabets sales at $89.9 billion dollars of profits. at $19.5 billion, assets at $167.5 billion and net worth at $579.5 billion dollars, but 2018 is past now and so we must wait until Forbes creates its new list as Fortune rights in 2018, while Apple generates bigger profits. It is only slightly ahead of Google in regards to which company will become the world's first company with a valuation of over one trillion dollars.

Fortune puts Amazon as the third company in the running, with Microsoft also a contender and Facebook not far behind.

Tesla, It says is a dark horse but CEO Elon Musk seems to Big his company is on a similar trajectory to one of SpaceX's rockets.

Back to Google and Apple.

It's thought that Apple has around 123,000 employees, but to the chagrin of President Donald Trump Apple outsources much of its manufacturing to countries such as China and Taiwan apples biggest partner in the assembly businesses Foxconn and it has factories in a number of countries around the world.

Google has 73992 employees as of 2019 it outsources such things as IT functions to India, while it’s also been building its servers in Asia.

Well, that’s not easy to say, according to one engineer that has worked at both companies, Google is better if you want to solve big technological problems, as Apple is more concerned with design and Google with technology.

If you are a female engineer, where would be better? Google is currently being sued for pay discrimination based on gender. Whereas Apple has been shouting from the rooftops that it has solved the gender pay gap, which is the better company in general when it comes to controversy both these world leaders have been tainted more than a few times Apple has come under the gun for human rights abuses in its assembly factories in China and we all remember the news about those suicide Nets at its assembly plants, but more recently Apple has been skewered in the press for its offshore business in Ireland and late last year the billions It has saved from offshoring in the Tax Haven of the Channel Island of Jersey. CEO Tim Cook fired back stating that Apple was the USA's biggest taxpayer the last Google is no stranger to tax avoidance so much so that in the UK a Google tax has been mulled over to get something back from companies that funnel their profits through low-tax countries.

It seems there is no angel in this department. What about their products? Which company could you just not live without? while it may be some time before we being driven around in one of Google's autonomous vehicles. And even though we enjoyed a 30-minute dalliance with its machine learning Doodlebops. Google has a few things that we might take for granted.

That is arguably its search engine the Chrome browser its Android operating system Gmail and to a lesser extent its productivity Suite or Google Suite we might also mention that Google owns YouTube to give you an idea on Google Power its Chrome browser alone has an almost 60% share of the browser market.

The Google search engine has a 75% share of the search engine market and Android has a whopping 87% share of the mobile operating system market, but then we have those Innovative and sleep Apple products and also the Apple operating system iOS that Apple aficionados will tell you they cannot live without.

I never go back you hear many an Apple user safe. The question is which company has really done the most for mankind and looking into the future who will be at the Forefront of Tech Innovation. Both companies are making hay in the augmented and virtual reality space and both are very serious about Artificial intelligence. So who will be on top in 10 years' time?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Also. Be sure to check out my other Blog post called Android vs iOS. Thanks for reading :)

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

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Bluetooth 5.0: Explained!

Bluetooth 5.0: Explained!

So you have probably heard of Bluetooth and you may even know if your phone has Bluetooth 4.0 or 4.1 and 4.2 but generally, those different iterations of Bluetooth are just slight improvements to things like pairing time and low energy modes, etc.

It doesn't really change the way you use it. You just know your phone has Bluetooth.

But, Bluetooth 5.0 that's a pretty big new number that seems to signify a sort of a bigger change. So there's a couple of things you should know about that So what is new with Bluetooth 5.0.

There are three main things that all enable one pretty dope new feature.

2x Faster

4x Range

8x Data

2x Faster

So, Bluetooth pairing is generally not that quick of a process you have to do it very often, but it's pretty slow if you're still in me, who's connecting a lot of Bluetooth speakers as I use a bunch of them, then you know it's not super quick, but with Bluetooth 5.0 shows a direct advantage of data transferring twice as fast, which is the pairing process is a bit quicker and there's also less delay.

You ever watch a video on Bluetooth speakers or Bluetooth headphones and the audio is a little bit behind the video like someone's talking and then you hear it like a split second behind usually not too bad.

But that actually does get solved a bit with Bluetooth 5.0, that delay is a lot smaller.

So that's data speed.

4x Range

That's actually been a real-world weakness of Bluetooth, especially in my past. It depends on what pair of headphones use. But sometimes you can be listening to music in your headphones and you leave your phone another route you walk a little bit too far away and it starts cutting out and then eventually stops.

That happens like all the time the theoretical maximum range of Bluetooth 4.0 was about 50 meters with a direct line of sight but about 10 meters in everyday use through walls and around corners and around different rooms of the house.

So 30 feet tops. So that means you can't get very far away from your phone. If you're trying to listen to music or if you walk around the corner. It's going to cut out and that's kind of annoying.

But with Bluetooth 5.0 As I said quadruples that max range. So a theoretical maximum of 200 meters with a direct line of sight or about 40 meters around a house or indoors.

So that's a hundred twenty feet. That's a legitimate serious Improvement. So that's not just like downstairs and around the corner that's like you can walk out in your backyard while your phone's upstairs. You can walk to the front yard around the gym, whatever you got to do. If you get a lot further from your audio source with Bluetooth 5.0.

8x Data

So first of all, this is benefits Way Beyond just like audio, I'm talking about speakers because usually, that's what we use Bluetooth for, but Bluetooth can also be used for things like Bluetooth beacons and parking meters and small Wireless things.

Those can also be helped by more data throughput through Bluetooth 5.0,

but if you think about a Bluetooth stream like a highway, it used to be a two-lane highway going 40 miles an hour for 20 miles.

Now. It's a 16-lane wide Mega Highway going 80 miles an hour for 80 miles. It's a completely different story.

So having all these Lanes of data moving so fast enables a pretty sweet feature which Samsung calls and which we'll call since they're kind of first to it dual audio, which lets you output to two different Bluetooth speakers at the same time.

This used to be a lot more difficult to do like you've heard of Sonos Speaker right.

Sonos essentially made its living off a couple of things.

But mainly the fact that you could connect to a bunch of different speakers all around the house in different places at once you have to get certain Sono speakers and you have to have that Sonos app, and then you connect the app to the mesh Network that the Sono speakers create among themselves and when you plug that into those speakers then you will get the one audio Source among several so knows what you had to buy those very expensive Sono speakers to make that happen.

This Bluetooth 5.0 and this feature enables that Sono’s experience on any Bluetooth speaker.

So that is Bluetooth five more data more range and faster speeds, and it's got to know about a phone that you may potentially get later this year.

Hi, I’m Shahnawaz. I’m a blogger living in New Delhi, India. I am a fan of technology, photography, and travel. I’m also interested in writing.

Follow me: Instagram/Facebook/Twitter - @heyShahnawaz

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