Kangxi Radical 119, 米, is the character for the Chinese word for rice: “mi”. The Chinese brand Xiaomi (“little rice”, or “millet”) uses this character in its logotype. Xiaomi has a smartphone sub-brand called Mi, which they say stands for “mobile internet” or “mission impossible”.

A short but sweet email this week, dominated by Apple’s latest hardware announcement. To be honest, more things might have happened last week but I was on holiday and only kept half an eye out.

Apple Event

Apple’s annual hardware announcement showed off three new phones: the dual-camera iPhone 11, and triple-camera 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. The event put heavy emphasis on computational photography. Also announced was Watch Series 5, with always-on display, and an updated iPad.

Away from hardware, Apple also launched its two new subscription services: Apple Arcade, for games; and Apple TV+, for TV (ofc).

I recommend reading Benedict Evans’ Apple, services and moats for some strategic insight into the announcements.

All iPhone 11 variations also have a new feature which wasn’t announced on stage: Ultra Wideband (UWB), a low-power, high-accuracy wireless protocol which can replace Bluetooth LE. It’s very useful for pinpointing lost items, a feature which Apple were supposedly going to announce in their keynote but pulled at the last minute for some reason.
computerworld.com/article/3438837/new-tech-inside-iphone-11-is-the-future-of-everything.html

XR

Google updated its augmented reality toolkit, ARCore, with face detection for iOS, more robust Cloud Anchors for sharing experiences, and a limited test of a new feature to make persistent Cloud Anchors—which they describe as “a Save button for AR”.
developers.googleblog.com/2019/09/arcore-updates-to-augmented-faces-and.html

Mars Foods has teamed up with Google to provide contextual recipes, nutrition information, and videos for Uncle Ben’s products when inspecting the packets with Google Lens.
9to5google.com/2019/09/12/google-lens-ar-grocery/

Assistants & Voice

Amazon publicly launched Alexa Answers, its service to augment Alexa’s knowledge base with responses submitted by users.
fastcompany.com/90402924/exclusive-amazon-will-let-anyone-answer-your-alexa-questions-now

A new version of Alexa Auto for developers brings better offline support, useful for driving through areas where data connection is poor.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/0dfa897d-8545-4ff9-ab9b-9cab853b7f68/enabling-offline-access-to-alexa-in-vehicles-with-local-voice-control-extension-to-alexa-auto-sdk-v2-0

Amazon will hold a hardware announcement event on 25 September. Having just announced new FireTV devices, it’s likely this will focus on Echo and connected home devices.
theverge.com/2019/9/12/20862734/amazon-hardware-event-september-25-echo-fire-tv

Everything Else

Google teased Play Pass, which seems like it’s going to be a subscription service for games from the Play Store, very like Apple Arcade.
twitter.com/GooglePlay/status/1171177740160163847

Google Photos will start showing automatically-generated compilations of past events and dates in the Stories format.
blog.google/products/photos/relive-your-best-memories-new-features-google-photos/

Google is offering more options to webmasters to better describe the outbound links from their sites, with the existing “nofollow” joined by “ugc” and “sponsored”.
webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html

Firefox is reintroducing its Test Pilot experimentation programme, starting with a VPN to protect web traffic of US users.
blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/10/firefoxs-test-pilot-program-returns-with-firefox-private-network-beta/

Spotify has acquired Soundbetter, a marketplace for music production specialists, as it continues to broaden its revenue beyond streaming.
techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/spotify-acquires-soundbetter-an-online-marketplace-for-sound-engineers-and-producers/