G Suite Admins Informed of New Gmail Rollout Timeline

Google has notified G Suite domain admins of when the new Gmail experience will begin rolling out when it goes to General Availability (GA) next month.  Currently, for G Suite, the new Gmail experience is in the Early Adopters Program and organizations can chose to participate in the program – or not.  This is the same for consumer too, but that will be changing when the experience goes GA in July.

Once the new experience goes GA, admins will have the option to switch everyone over immediately, allow users to switch themselves, or have users wait four weeks before they are opted into the new experience.  The latter of these will be the default behavior.

June 2018 Android Security Update Patches Released

With it being the first Monday of the first full week of June, as expect, the Android team within Google has released this month’s Android Security Update patches.  The full builds along with the OTA builds are now available for those who want to sideload while devices should be getting the update via the System Update settings on their phone later today.

As usual, there are two patches in this month’s update.  The first, date June 1, 2018, consists of 22 total patches, five of which are considered critical.  This patch mostly deals with the base Android platform itself and the patches address things like Media Framework and System level patches.

Microsoft Acquires GitHub for $7.5 Billion

After being rumored for much of this past weekend, Microsoft has confirmed their acquisition of software development platform GitHub.  The all stock transaction is estimated to be $7.5 billion with the Redmond, Washington company committing that development platform will remain open source.

And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future.

The acquisition puts Microsoft in a strong position when it comes to software development in general and certainly a key player in the open source development community.

Google Pixelbook Sale Extended to Amazon

Over the weekend I posted about the special pricing running on the Google Pixelbook.  Now that special pricing has been extended on Amazon.  The online retailer now has the Pixelbook at the same $749 price you will find at the Google Store, B&H and other retailers.

The discounted price also applies to the Pixelbook with the Pixelbook Pen bundle too.  Right now that bundle is down to $831, which is $68 less than the best price on the Pixelbook only prior to this mark down from Google.

Dear Pixelbook Pen, I Owe You an Apology

Back in February, I reviewed the Google Pixelbook and the Pixelbook Pen. My love of the Pixelbook that I expressed in that review remains the same today. It is the single best Chromebook I’ve ever used and probably one of the top three laptops I’ve ever used in general. But if you read that review, you know I was less than impressed with the Pixelbook Pen.

My general issues with the Pixelbook Pen came down to two key areas.  First, I did not like the AAAA battery that runs the Pen.  I thought at the time, and still do, that it creates unneeded battery waste.  Second was the price point.  At $99, I still think it is too expensive.  So if I still stand by my two primary issues with the Pen, why do I owe it an apology?  Simply put, I started using daily.  And I love it.

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