Lexus to Begin CarPlay Rollout in New Vehicles in September

Lexus has announced that its first vehicle with CarPlay will be available in September 2018 at dealerships across the United States.

2019 Lexus ES
That vehicle will be the new 2019 Lexus ES, equipped with an eight-inch touchscreen through which CarPlay can be controlled. The sedan also features Siri Eyes Free and Amazon Alexa voice control, but lacks Android Auto support. An optional navigation system with a 12.3-inch widescreen display will be available.

CarPlay will also be a standard feature in the all-new 2019 Lexus UX crossover, but that vehicle doesn’t go on sale until December 2018.

Lexus has previously said its CarPlay implementation is wired, so an iPhone must be connected via USB. BMW remains the only automaker to offer wireless CarPlay in new vehicles, despite the functionality being introduced in 2015. Alpine Electronics sells an aftermarket wireless CarPlay system for other vehicles.

Lexus and its parent company Toyota first announced plans to offer CarPlay in January, after years of holding out on the platform. Toyota’s rollout will begin with the 2019 Avalon, available in May at dealerships in the United States, to be followed by the 2019 RAV4 and 2019 Corolla Hatchback later this year.

Toyota and Lexus plan to expand CarPlay to several other 2019 model year vehicles with Entune 3.0 and Enform 2.0 systems respectively. The rollout will likely include the yet-to-be-announced 2019 Camry and 2019 Sienna, given the 2018 models of those vehicles are already equipped with Entune 3.0 systems.

A spokesperson for Toyota and Lexus previously told MacRumors that they do not currently plan to offer CarPlay in pre-2019 vehicles.

Related Roundup: CarPlayTags: Toyota, Lexus
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YouTube Remix could mean the end of Google Play Music

Google will reportedly shutter Google Play Music as part of a long-rumored audio and video cleanup. According to Droidlife, the subscription streaming service — a rival to Spotify, Apple Music and others — will be replaced by YouTube Remix later this year. The new offering will reportedly offer both on-demand music and video clips sourced from YouTube. In short, it’ll be Play Music and YouTube Music (the fate of which is still unclear) mashed together. YouTube Remix has been teased since mid-2017 and was slated for a March 2018 release by Bloomberg last December. (Obviously, that didn’t happen.) Droidlife is now reporting that Google Play Music users will be forced to migrate by the end of 2018.

The death of Google Play Music will be a disappointment to some. It’s a capable service with smart, personalized playlists, a decent web interface, and a “locker” system for streaming your personal library. The latter feature is quite rare — Amazon is ending its equivalent service, leaving Apple Music as the only realistic alternative. For diehard record collectors, this could be a huge problem if Google decides to axe its own locker system with the introduction of YouTube Remix. Still, the rumored app is (another) opportunity for Google to simplify its music and video services. It’s unclear, though, if that will be enough to close the gap with Spotify.

Source: Droidlife

Twitter sees another profit as user numbers grow

Three months ago, Twitter was able to tell the world that, for the first time in its 12-year life, it had made a profit. The company can now say that those good numbers weren’t a blip, since it has now notched a first quarter profit of $61 million. That’s down a little from the $91 million it made in the previous three months, but the news is good enough to get the champagne corks popping in San Francisco.

At the end of Twitter’s 2017 financial year, the company had 330 million monthly active users, of which 68 million were based in the US. Three months later, and the figure has leapt to 336 million, of which five million users came from overseas, with the remaining million signups coming from locals. Twitter has also claimed that its (otherwise secret) daily user numbers have grown by 10 percent this quarter, down a little from the holidays, but still healthy.

Twitter attributes this growth to a number of factors, including the addition of several new products like bookmarks and video timestamps. Efforts to create “new, curated timelines of tweets around breaking news events,” are also helping to drive engagement, and eyeballs. The company is also saying that it’s seeing results in its information quality and safety work: euphemisms for a crackdown on malicious bot-and-troll activity.

In the last 16 months, we have made more than 30 individual changes to our product, policies and operations, all with the goal of making Twitter safer, and improving information quality on our service. #TWTR

— Twitter Investor Relations (@TwitterIR) April 25, 2018

It is almost never a slow news day on the internet anymore and, like Facebook, Twitter cannot simply hide behind its role as a platform. It has become used as a method to quickly spread propaganda and misinformation, especially after a breaking news event. Earlier this month, the company said that it is trying to tackle those who are “deliberately manipulating” conversations in the wake of tragedies. In the aftermath of the YouTube shooting, Twitter says it began asking people to take down tweets that violate its policies.

The recent crackdown on bulk tweeting from multiple accounts, known as Tweetdecking, has seen the use of fake accounts fall by around 90 percent. Twitter also says that it has spent the last three months killing nearly 150,000 apps that had connected to its APIs for the use of bulk tweeting. The company said those apps were responsible for “130 million low-quality tweets,” and their removal should improve things in future. Twitter has also said that its ability to track malicious, automated and spam users has “improved significantly” over the period.

And all of these positive signs are showing on the balance sheet, where advertising revenue and money generated from data licensing grew year-on-year. Twitter made revenues of $665 million, and after expenses, the aforementioned $61 million profit. The company also explained that last year’s tax cuts helped slash its tax rate from 37 percent to 24 percent. Consequently, $21 million that would have otherwise gone to state and federal government is now in Twitter’s back pocket.

A big driver of all of this growth has been video, which now accounts for more than half of all Twitter’s advertising revenues. The company also said that Japan has become the second-largest market for revenue, and expects Asia-Pacific profits to overtake the US in the near future. Video revenues are set to increase this summer, too, after Twitter signed a deal with Fox Sports to broadcast highlight clips from this year’s World Cup.

Looking forward, Twitter expects its revenue figures to remain relatively flat going in to the next quarter at around $245 million. Given that the company managed to under-promise and under-deliver on those figures this time around — at least in the eyes of Wall Street — it may repeat the trick in the second quarter.

This breaking news story is developing, please refresh for more information.

Source: Twitter (.PDF)

Dell 2-in-1 has an unknown Intel and AMD ‘Pro’ graphics chip

Dell has unveiled its new professional PC lineup, and among them was the intriguing 15-inch Precision 5530 2-in-1. Dell calls it the “world’s smallest 15-inch 2-in-1 workstation,” and it packs a lot of nice specs into a small, 4.36 pound body. Most interestingly, though, it comes with up to Intel’s Core i7-8706G with “Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL graphics” — the first mention of a “Pro WX” version of Intel and AMD’s new compact chipset.

Other specs include 32GB of RAM max, up to 2TB of SSD storage, two Thunderbolt 3 and two USB-C 3.1 ports (that also charge it), and an all-new InfinityEdge 4K with 10-point multi-touch, optional active pen support, and 100 percent Adobe RGB coverage. In other words, the Precision 5530 2-in-1 is aimed at graphics professionals, not gamers.

The new Pro WX Vega M graphics might be identical, hardware-wise, to the regular version but with more stable, professionally-oriented drivers, rather than all-new chips. As a reminder, AMD Radeon Pro RX Vega M GL graphics offers performance about equal to NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 Ti graphics, but below the GTX 1060. At the same time, it’s much more compact and power-friendly than NVIDIA’s offerings, allowing for smaller discrete-graphics laptops with better battery life.

Dell also unveiled the regular Precision 5530 (above), with a similar screen and memory options, but in a smaller 3.9-pound package and with Intel 8th-generation Core i7 or Intel Xeon CPUs and up to NVIDIA Quadro P2000 graphics. There’s no word on pricing for the Precision 5530 2-in-1, but the regular Precision 5530 starts at a pretty decent $1,449 for what we imagine is a fairly bare-bones version. That model will be available on May 22nd, but you’ll have to wait for the July/August 2018 time frame for the 2-in-1.

Source: Dell

Google Rolls Out Gmail Redesign for Web Browsers, Featuring Email Snoozing, Confidential Mode, and More

Google launched its redesigned Gmail web interface today, introducing several new features including some the company trialed in its Inbox for Gmail app. The launch is a phased rollout, so not all users will have immediate access to all the changes listed below, and those who do will need to opt-in to them.

The major visual difference comes in the form of a new right-hand sidebar that provides multiple options for customization. Users can choose to add Google Calendar, Google Keep, or Google Tasks in the side window, or collapse it completely and focus only on their inbox. Likewise, the left-hand panel can be collapsed now, too.

The inbox view has also been updated with the ability to perform actions on messages without opening them. Hovering over an email with the mouse cursor displays buttons to archive, delete, mark as read, and a new “snooze” feature.

Opting to snooze an email hides the message until later in the day, tomorrow, or later in the week. The function has been brought over from Inbox for Gmail, but currently there doesn’t seem to be any way to activate it for an email that’s currently open.

Google has also introduced a new AI-powered feature that “nudges” the user to follow up and respond to messages it thinks are important, offering up quick reminders for them to take action. Also, the smart reply function has been brought over from the Gmail mobile apps, allowing users to respond to emails quicker.

In addition, Gmail is rolling out a number of security/privacy features in the coming weeks, one of which is a new confidential mode. This lets the sender set a time-limit in which a message can be accessed, should the email contain sensitive information. It works by sending a link to the content in your inbox that the recipient clicks, rather than sending the content in the email itself.

There will also be a new two-factor authentication (2FA) option for confidential individual messages, which means recipients can be asked to authenticate with a passcode via SMS message before they’re granted access to the content of an email.

Elsewhere, Gmail now includes integrated rights management (IRM), which allows business users to block the forwarding, copying, downloading, or printing of specific messages, offering a welcome extra line of defense against accidentally sharing certain emails.

Also new under the hood are a series of machine learning algorithms to help protect users from phishing scams. The user-facing element of this redesign comes in the form of warning banners and color-coded alerts.

In tandem with the web interface redesign, Google is also launching a new Goole Tasks mobile app later today on both iOS and Android. For more information on the new Gmail web features, click here.

Tags: Google, Inbox by Gmail, Gmail
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Amazon renews ‘Jack Ryan’ months before it premieres

Amazon is confident that Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will be a success — so confident, in fact, that it’s not waiting for initial viewings to declare it a hit. The company has already renewed Jack Ryan for a second season despite a months-long wait for Prime Video show’s August 31st premiere. If you ask Amazon, it’s a combination of its reaction to watching the show (generally a good idea) with early hints of customer interest. Reportedly, there was a 400 percent jump in watchlist additions for Jack Ryan following Amazon’s Super Bowl ad campaign.

There’s very little to say about season two at this stage, although Amazon noted that Ryan will go to a “new, exciting and dangerous world.” You can presume he survives the first season, then.

The renewal bodes well for the series, although we’d take Amazon’s hype with a grain of salt. It’s not exactly shocking that watchlist additions would surge for a show when it gets one of the most coveted ad spots on the planet. And the watchlist doesn’t guarantee that people will watch the season at all, let alone every episode. Think of this as an experiment on Amazon’s part — it’s betting that a strong presence in show queues will translate to strong audience numbers. If that bet pays off, viewers won’t have to wait as long for the follow-up as they would if Amazon had been more conservative.

Via: AFTVnews

Source: Amazon

OnePlus 6 to be announced on May 16 in London, first sale kicks off May 21 in India

Tickets are on sale now and start at $21 USD.

There’s been plenty of talk regarding the OnePlus 6 over the last few weeks, but soon all those rumors and speculation will be laid to rest with the phone’s official unveiling. Today, OnePlus announced that it’ll be showing off the phone on Wednesday, May 16 in London.

The event will kick-off at 5:00 PM BST, and in addition to the press/media, it’ll also be open to any OnePlus fans that are willing and able to attend. Tickets are available for purchase now, with Early Bird pricing starting at just $21 USD per ticket. Those will be on sale until 8:00 PM BST on Friday, April 27, and from 8:01 PM onwards, Standard Tickets will cost $41.

OnePlus is also selling Plus One tickets that allow you to get two tickets at a lower rate. You’ll need to purchase two tickets in a single transaction, but you’ll pay just $27 per ticket for a final price of $54 for two people to attend.

OnePlus is touting this as its “biggest ever community event” with over 1000 tickets up for grabs, and in addition to being among the first to try out the OnePlus 6, visitors will also receive a swag bag that includes a OnePlus backpack, t-shirt, stickers, a mystery gift when buying the OnePlus 6, and more.

If you can’t physically be at the London event but still want to watch everything as it unfolds, you can sign up for the livestream here.

Like previous years, OnePlus is hosting dedicated launch events in China and India, which are scheduled for May 17. OnePlus will start selling tickets for the event in Mumbai from May 8, and those attending the launch will walk away with Avengers merchandise.

As for availability, India will be one of the first markets where the phone will go up for sale, with Amazon Prime customers in the country able to pick up the device in an early access sale on May 21.

See at OnePlus

OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5

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• Join the discussion in the forums

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Gmail’s massive redesign is now live: Here’s a look at the new features

Gmail picks up a new design and a host of new features.

Google announced earlier this month that it would revamp Gmail’s design on the desktop, and the changes are going live today. Gmail is getting a significant design overhaul that makes in more in line with its Android counterpart, and Google is introducing a whole host of new features centered around security and ease of use.

There’s a new confidential mode that lets you set an expiration date for a particular email, smart replies, easier options for snoozing emails, an offline mode, high-priority notification setting that cuts down on the push notifications, and much more. Here’s a look at all the new additions in Gmail.

Confidential mode

The major new feature in Gmail is confidential mode, which allows you to set granular controls for sensitive emails. Confidential mode lets you remove options to forward, copy, download or print messages, and you can also set the message to expire at a specified time. There’s also an option to revoke access entirely.

Google is able to offer these controls by limiting access to the content itself. When you send a message in confidential mode, Gmail essentially creates a link to the content, and delivers that to the recipient. Upcon clicking that link, the recipient will be able to view the content as if it were a normal mail, provided they’re using Gmail. For other email providers, the link will redirect to a Google-hosted site where the content will be viewable until the specified date.

Google is also introducing two-factor authentication for individual emails, which will require recipients to key in a passcode delivered by SMS before they can open a message.

Google is hoping that the new additions like confidential mode and 2FA on a per-message basis will cut down a hacker’s ability to access sensitive information, particularly at large organizations. Speaking to TechRepublic, Google’s lead product manager for Gmail Jacob Baker said:

What we’ve seen, especially in business scenarios, is that lots of these leaks happen accidentally or near accidentally. They didn’t realize they weren’t supposed to forward the email, or they saw ‘Do not forward’ but they didn’t think it applied to them and hitting the forward button was just so easy.

Email snoozing

With the redesign, Google is offering easy options to snooze emails. You’ll be able to access the snooze option — along with commonly used options like archive, delete, and mark to send — via a new hover menu. Just hover over an email, and you’ll see all the options highlighted.

Another change on the UI front has to do with attachments — you’ll see thumbnails for the attachments under the mail, allowing you to open an attachment without having to load the message itself.

Integration with Calendar, Tasks, and Keep — and nudging

Gmail is now getting a right-hand side panel that integrates Google Calendar, Tasks, and Keep seamlessly into the email client. The panel allows you to copy or paste content from Gmail into other apps, or just quickly jot down a note or add a task.

Gmail is also getting anuidge option, where Google will bump messages it deems important to the top of your inbox. It will leverage its machine learning smarts to surface messages that may need a response, with Baker noting:

We don’t nudge very often, but when we do it can save people from missing making a really high consequence mistake.

Smart replies

Smart replies debuted last year on the Android app, and now they’re making their way to the web client. The feature works the same way it does on Android, giving you a few options for canned responses based on the content of the mail.

New security features

Google will also start rolling out phishing warnings within emails, displaying colored banners at the top of the email in red, yellow, or grey based on the perceived risk factor. Gmail had these options for some time, but Baker said that prominently highlighting them at the top of messages will better inform users of the risk:

So we undertook a massive effort to redesign all of our warnings within the UI. If you see this message at the top of the email, you’re not going to click the link inside of it, both because the warning is very prominent and impossible to ignore, and explains to the user in plain language what the attacker might be trying to do.

Native offline mode

Google will also offer a Gmail offline mode that has the same UI as the online version. You’ll be able to continue working in Gmail even when offline, and the changes will be synced the next time go online.

High-priority notifications

While most of today’s features are focused on streamlining Gmail on the web, Google is introducing a high-priority notification settings for mobile users that drastically cuts down on push notifications. With the option enabled, Google will only deliver push notifications for messages that are deemed important or urgent, with Baker noting that the feature will cut “97% of all push notifications across Gmail users.”

When will I be able to use it?

Confidential mode will be available in the coming weeks, but if you’re looking to get started with using some of the new features right away, head to the Cog wheel icon in the top right corner of your inbox, select Settings, and select Try the new Gmail.

The option isn’t available for everyone right away (I couldn’t access it), but Google says it will roll out the changes internationally in a phased manner over the coming weeks and months.

What do you make of Gmail’s new features?

Xiaomi Mi 6X offers upgraded cameras and Snapdragon 660 for just $250

The Mi 6X is the phone that sets the foundation for Xiaomi’s upcoming Android One device.

Xiaomi is once again doing what it’s good at — launching products that offer incredible value for money. The manufacturer unveiled the Mi 6X at a media event in China, with the phone likely to make its way to global markets as the Mi A2, the successor to the Android One-based Mi A1.

Just as the Redmi Note 5 Pro was the first device to introduce the Snapdragon 636 to the $200 segment, the Mi 6X is the first phone for under $300 to feature the Snapdragon 660. The rest of the specs aren’t all that bad either: you get a 5.99-inch FHD+ panel, up to 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB of storage, microSD slot, IR blaster, Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and a 3010mAh battery.

On the software side of things, the Mi 6X runs the latest version of MIUI 9 atop Android 8.1 Oreo. Another welcome change is the addition of USB-C, as well as the inclusion of Quick Charge 3.0.

On the camera side of things, the Mi 6X offers a dual 12MP (Sony IMX486) + 20MP (Sony IMX376) camera setup at the back, along with a 20MP (IMX376) sensor at the front. The front camera has a Selfie LED light module, and the latest version of Beautify.

Xiaomi is increasingly focusing on AI-assisted features to get the best out of the camera, and the Mi 6X also has the same features that we’ve seen on the Mi Mix 2S. The AI will automatically switch the shooting mode based on the subject and lighting conditions.

Xiaomi will offer the Mi 6X in five color options — red, blue, black, gold, and rose gold — and three models. The base variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage will retail for ¥1,599 ($250), and the version with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage will cost ¥1,799 ($280). The model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage will set you back ¥1,999 ($315).

The phone will go up for sale in China from April 27, and as of now there’s no word on international availability. The Mi A1 was a successful device for the brand, and if the Mi 6X makes its way to global markets as the Mi A2, it will be able to take the fight to the Nokia 7 Plus.

OnePlus 6 will make its debut on May 16th

OnePlus hasn’t exactly been shy about hinting that its next phone is right around the corner, and now you know just when to expect it. The company has announced a OnePlus 6 launch event in London on May 16th at 5PM BST (that’s noon Eastern). And to guarantee a packed house, it’s selling roughly 1,000 tickets to fans who want to attend in person (starting at £16/$21 if you order before April 27th, £30/$41 after that). There’s naturally a livestream for those who prefer to watch from home. Despite the hype, though, this may be little more than a formality — many of the phone’s details have been made public well in advance.

As with many other 2018 flagships, the OnePlus 6 is expected to center around a virtually-all-screen design — in this case, a 6.3-inch 2,280 x 1,080 display with the seemingly obligatory notch. It won’t represent a radical break from the 5T on the inside, although the Snapdragon 845 chip and doubled maximum storage (up to 256GB) will help. And to no one’s surprise, leaks have the OnePlus carrying dual cameras (16MP and 20MP) on the back. This is an evolutionary phone, albeit one you might like if you’re either a fan or just don’t like the higher prices of OnePlus’ rivals.

Source: OnePlus (1), (2)