Author: Clinton

A new report in the Wall Street Journal states that Apple is teaming up with Goldman Sachs to offer an Apple Pay branded credit card for customers.  The card is expected to launch as early as 2019 with customers being able to do in-store financing of new Apple gear.

The deal would end the current relationship Apple has with Barclaycard, which offers the Apple Rewards Visa today.  The Goldman Sachs card would replace the relationship and cared from Barclaycard.

Now that Google I/O has wrapped up for 2018, Android and Google fans are starting to turn their attention to the next hardware event for the Mountain View company.  Rumors are already starting to fly about the upcoming Google Pixel 3 phone series but a new rumor yesterday suggests that we could finally see a Pixel Watch in the mix too.

Wear OS by Google has, much like Android, needed a hero device to show the ultimate experience of what the platform can bring.  It is something I wrote about shortly after the name change from Android Wear and it looks like that could be happening.

YouTube has finally enabled HDR video support for the iPhone X.  The streaming content provider can now provide 1080p HDR videos for the flagship iPhone which has had a HDR display since its release.  For those that don’t know, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and provides amazingly accurate colors and depth of those colors.  Both the iPhone X as well as the iPad Pro lineup have HDR displays.

Youtube has been rolling out support for HDR video for sometime now for Android with several devices supporting it such as the Samsung Galaxy S9 lineup, the Razer Phone, and Google’s Pixel 2 lineup.

The new Gmail Smart Compose feature that was announced at Google I/O earlier this week has now gone live as an experimental feature in the new user experience for the service.  Once enabled, you will be able to use Smart Compose as you write emails and can use the suggested text of the email by simply tapping the tab button on your keyboard.

The feature is aimed to make writing emails faster and Google is using AI to look at the content of the email to determine what to suggest next.  It is similar to the Smart Replies found in other Google products, only it is more real time.  To enable it, go to Settings>General in the new Gmail experience and enable Experimental access.  Save your settings and then start composing an email.  You will see the Smart Compose option start providing suggestions as you type your new email.

A new report from Bloomberg states that Apple is planning on selling subscription services through the Apple TV app later this year with the eventual plan of having all of those services stream from the TV app.  Currently you have to subscribe to an independent service like Hulu or use your cable TV credentials in the app you want to use, like HBO Go.

In its current form, the TV app is essentially a hub for your connected services and when you select a service to watch, you are taken to that service’s app on your iPad or iPhone.  Eventually, Apple wants this to stream directly from within the TV app so you don’t have to bounce around between different apps or subscribe to them independent of Apple TV.

Apple is one of 10 companies to be approved for a US Department of Transportation project that will allow for the use of drones beyond the current FAA limits.  Apple, who will be using drones in South Carolina, has indicated that they will be using drones to capture aerial images for the improvement of Apple Maps.

The announcement yesterday by the DoT also named Microsoft and Intel as two of the other companies that had been approved.  In all, 149 companies applied for the project with only 10 selected.  Amazon was not selected for the program.