News archive (11 / 2020)

As more and more companies, websites and net-based services rely on cloud computing, the risks have also increased dramatically. Yesterday, we saw what happens when such services go crashing down.

Amazon is the dominant player in cloud computing, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) having 45 percent market share, crushing the competition, most notably, Google and Microsoft.

Yesterday, AWS experienced major outage, that lasted for several hours. The outage was mostly isolated to AWS's one U.S. region, dubbed as us-east-1 region. Despite the limited geographical scale, the services that relied only on that AWS datacenter, were hit badly.

Some of the largest services that were deeply hit included Adobe's cloud services and Roku streaming services. Amazon's biggest clients, such as Apple and Netflix, didn't experience outages - probably because they use several different AWS datacenters and were able to re-route their traffic to other locations.

Most interesting outcomes of the outage were experienced by users who had adopted various smart, connected home appliances. For example, Roomba robotic vacuums stopped working through the iRobot Home app.

Electronic payment apps and NFC shopping has been available on both major mobile platforms for a while now. Apple wasn't happy with just offering an app for payments but also introduced a credit card to replace the one you already have.

Google isn't far behind, and now wants to replace some of your bank's functions too. Improved Google Pay "helps you save money and gives you insights into your spending." In 2021, you'll be able to apply for a new digital bank account.

Spending is divided into three sets of conversation-like dialogs: people, groups, and businesses. It will make it easier to keep up with the IOUs, deal with splitting the bill, and paying for services. There's also support for coupons and promo codes.

Google's cloud storage service for photos is undoubtedly one of the better photo storing options, especially for Google phones. In fact it's such a good service, they've often used it against iPhones in ads.

One of the better aspects of the service is that you don't even have to own a Pixel phone to get unlimited storage space. You just need to set the quality to "good" instead of "original", and you are free to backup unlimited amount of photos and videos.

Even better, there isn't even any compression if they are at most 16 MP images or Full HD video. The free 15 gigabyte storage would almost never end then, although it is shared with your Gmail and Drive.

However, now it seems that people aren't buying Google's new subscription-based cloud service Google One, since Google is removing the free unlimited storage next year.

Starting on June 1, 2021, Google will start counting all the megabytes and gigabytes of even those "good quality" photos you upload. This means that you'll likely start running out of cloud storage pretty fast, depending on your rate of upload.

It is worth noting, though, that pictures and videos uploaded prior to June 1 aren't counted, so if you have to digitize your childhood photo albums, you might want to do it before the change.

Google's struggles in the subscription video business are well known. The company own the largest video platform in the world but hasn't really been able to transition from ads to more lucrative subscription model.

Obviously things like YouTube Premium, with all its predecessors, and YouTube TV are around but people seem to enjoy free YouTube a little too much.

Now Google is trying to lure you in with a bundle that combines YouTube Premium and cloud gaming platform Stadia. The deal was initially available only in the UK, but has now expanded to include the US and Canada. According to XDA, it will be available in other European countries soon too.

If you have YouTube Premium subscription and would like a free Stadia Premium package, you might have already spotted the offer on your phone's YouTube app. If not, worry not, you might be able to acquire it by visiting this link.

The deal seems to last until December 31, so you should have plenty of time to collect your reward.

It is noteworthy that according to reports, you will need to have had a YouTube Premium membership before November 7th to qualify for the deal.

If there's one device in Apple's Mac lineup that isn't a laptop and would benefit the most from the new M1 chip it's certainly the Mac mini.

People weren't necessarily expecting Apple to announce a new Mac mini, not because it doesn't make sense – it does, a lot – but it just isn't among Apple's most important products.

However, for those that enjoy a tiny computer, it's really nice to see a refresh after two years of silence. The new Mac mini with M1 has massive improvements in terms of performance while retaining its minimal footprint.

Compared to the previous generation Mac mini, the new one offers three times the CPU performance and up to six times the GPU performance. Machine learning performance gets an even bigger boost thanks to a dedicated Neural Engine.

Apple's yesterday's press event gave us the first Mac silicon, namely the Apple M1. While announcing the chip was big news, the company also had already some M1-equipped devices to unveil as well. Here's a look at the most powerful of them, the new MacBook Pro.

According to Apple, the new MacBook Pro with M1 is much more powerful than the predecessor and outperforms competing Windows PCs in both processing power and battery life.

Apple likes to throw around numbers like 5x the performance, but at this point there weren't any exact benchmarks or the company didn't disclose exactly to what they were comparing the devices to. Needless to say, however, that according to them, the new devices offer much more performance and especially efficiency than competitors.

This is evident in battery life claims, which are perhaps the only good and accurate measures Apple revealed. MacBook Pro with M1 comes with up to 17 hours of wireless web browsing and an insane 20 hours of video playback.


Perhaps the biggest con of the new MacBooks with M1, especially this one geared towards professionals, is that you cannot change or upgrade the RAM because it is integrated into the SoC. It also means that getting 16GB instead of the default 8GB will cost you a very premium $200.

Apple first M1 product announcement yesterday was the most popular 13-inch laptop in the world, MacBook Air. MacBook Air is the perfect device for Apple's new Mac silicon, thanks to its size.

If you think about the Apple M1 like a amped-up version of the A1 found in iPhones and iPads, which is pretty much is, the first device you'd put it in is the lightest and least power-hungry of the Apple laptops, and that is exactly what Apple did.

According to Apple, the MacBoook Air with M1 offers 3 times the performance of a comparable Windows laptop – whatever that is – and only the top 2 percent of Windows laptops sold in the past year are faster than this ultra light from Apple.

The figures are even more impressive when compared to the previous generation MacBook Air. M1 gives the new one 5x the CPU performance and 3.5x the GPU performance, although all of these performance claims seem worth a very close revisit when the devices and benchmarks are out.

Even the SSD is said to be twice as fast.

Apple had revealed earlier this year already that is going to start transitioning the Mac lineup from Intel chips to their own silicon. Now it is official as Apple announces their first chip, Apple M1.

Yesterday's official launch marks the introduction of Apple silicon into Mac computers. The company's first take at it is a ARM-based SoC (system-on-chip) that hosts many of the more important components underneath one cover.

It is basically a bigger and better version of smartphone SoC's like the Apple A chips found on iPhones and iPads.

The company said that M1 includes the world's fastest CPU and GPU, and ones that are far less power hungry than the Intel (and AMD) chips used in competing PCs.

In terms of spec you are looking at eight CPU cores, four of which are high performance and four low power cores, with 16 billion transistors. GPU is also an octa-core chip.

Netflix has ventured into a new business model where they partner up with and ISP for a bundled service. The first package like this comes from Finland where Netflix and one of the countries largest ISPs DNA have started offering a combined service.

This is indeed the first time Netflix has offered their service bundled into a internet service under the same invoice. With the deal in question you'll be offered a broadband connection and 4K Netflix subscription.

The bundled service, DNA Netti + Netflix Perhe (DNA Internet + Netflix Family), starts at 37.89 euros a month (saving you a few euros a month compared to non-bundled prices) for the first two years and offers a 200 MP connection and a four-device Family subscription of Netflix.

As the competition starts to really heat up around Netflix, thanks to fairly recent additions like Disney+, the company has more pressure to diversify and add options. Recent reports about the first linear content on Netflix (read: traditional TV channel) could also in the mix for Netflix.