TechFirst with John Koetsier

I was not a fan of App Clips when Apple announced them for iOS 14. And wow ... was I wrong. This story is also available in my Forbes column here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/28/apples-ios-14-app-clips-seemed-stupid-theyre-awesome/ And, usually, transcripts show up on my personal site here: https://johnkoetsier.com

I happened to see my wife’s screen time analytics on her phone recently. She’s spending an average of over seven hours a day on her phone. And she’s not alone. Apparently, I'm not too far behind, when you add in time from other screen, watching sports and a few TV shows. Full story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/09/26/global-online-content-consumption-doubled-in-2020/

Amazon's new flying home security drone does not have lasers. Nor can you mount a gun on it, much to the dismay of many, apparently.  But will you buy it? To chat about the Ring Always Home Cam and Amazon’s other announcements we have repeat guest Brian Jackson, who is an analyst, researcher, and consultant with the Info-Tech Research Group.

A week ago Facebook announced it was working with Ray-Ban on a multi-year deal to build and ship smartglasses. Mark Zuckerberg says they’re “the next step on the road to augmented reality glasses.” So why does Irena Cronin say they fail? She is the CEO of Infinite Retina, an xR consultancy, and a co-author of "The Infinite Retina: Spatial Computing, Augmented Reality, and how a collision of new te...

Want to work at Tesla? Apple? Reddit? Netflix? You’re not alone. Most people want to work for a company that is doing amazing work in the forefront of their field. And while we typically think of a brand as something that is relevant to customers and buyers, it’s also critically important to companies that are looking to hire the best available talent. So Hired surveyed 4,100 tech professionals ab...

This is episode 100! Thank you so much for subscribing to TechFirst. I very much appreciate it. In a year we've taken this podcast to a top-100 podcast in the tech category in the U.S., and much higher in some other countries (#4 in Austria!) :-) That's because of you, and what you've done. Thank you! I've decided to celebrate by doing a 100th-episode giveaway ... check the details in the podcast....

iOS 14 is a game-changer in more than a few ones. One of them is definitely privacy. I've been writing a lot about privacy, Apple, and what Apple's been doing with the IDFA (identifier for advertisers), so I was invited to speak at the Mobile Growth Summit about it. Here we talk about what's changing, why, what the implications are, and what Google will do as a result. What I chat about: Why Apple...

Is iOS 14 fundamentally changing what kinds of apps can be successful? And … with iOS 14 … is Apple building a fundamentally different future for software? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Nick Hobbs, the former head of Google’s iOS app. Hobbs says that iOS 14 is fundamentally different and that it will benefit certain kinds of apps while de-prioritizing others. We cha...

Literally five minutes ago I updated to the new version of Safari, version 14. Then I browsed Forbes, hit up Techmeme, checked Twitter briefly, went to Fox News (first time, I think), clicked over to Slashdot, and finally read a story on ZDNet. Oh, and I checked for a picture for this story on Unsplash. In that five minutes, Safari prevented 90 trackers from profiling me. Let me repeat that. Five...

Could smart contact lenses grant millions the gift of sight? In this episode of  TechFirst with John Koetsier with chat with Andrés Vásquez Quintero, a professor at Ghent University in Belgium, where researchers have just presented an artificial iris embedded in a smart contact lens. It has an artificial iris, an all-day battery, an on-board ASIC, or application-specific integrated circuit, a...

I used to think that Apple Music was an enormous treasure chest filled with amazing things that you could never really get out. And I used to think that Spotify’s biggest advantage over Apple Music was not its free tier, but its user experience and playlists. Not any more.

Consumer Report says extensive testing on Tesla’s “full self-driving” capability shows that it falls short of its name, isn’t worth the $8,000 price tag, and actually makes Tesla drivers less safe. “Tesla has repeatedly rolled out crude beta features, some of which can put people’s safety at risk and shouldn’t be used anywhere but on a private test track or proving ground,” says William Wallace, m...

It’s been a little challenging to get fitness equipment lately, hasn’t it? Scammers have noticed too. That’s why there’s been a proliferation of scammy-looking fitness product ads on Facebook lately. I’ve personally seen literally dozens of ads for fake Bowflex products, often from “stores” with unpronounceable names and obscure but extremely similar websites. So I bought some fake Bowflex weight...

When you generate economic activity on an iPhone, Apple wants a piece.  That’s not changing in the new App Store review guidelines Apple released this morning. What is changing is that Apple cracked open the door to off-platform purchases. The question will be whether that applies to everyone, or only smaller developers. Apple and Epic, makers of the hit game Fortnite, have been locked in a b...

How do you automate risk 8 billion times a year? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we chat with Anjali Dewan, American Express’ VP of Risk Management.  Credit card companies have some serious challenges ... with trillions of dollars in transaction volume, they’re target #1 for fraud. But customers expect everything to work perfectly every time. So American Express started managi...

We talk a lot about self-driving cars. But what about autonomous robots, doing work that isn’t safe for people? We’re talking environments like mines a mile deep … nuclear reactors … remote locations.  In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we're chatting with Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies. Exyn is building robots that have to think for themselves and communicate with each oth...

TransPod, a four-year-old company with roots in Canada and France has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Alberta to study the feasibility of linking the provinces two major cities, Edmonton and Calgary, by a hyperloop-like system. Top speed would be over 1,000 kilometers/hour, or about 620 miles/hour, and the Hyperloop would be an above-ground enclosed tube. Since Edmonton...

Are smartwatches becoming table stakes for modern health? Chatting with Fitbit's VP of product, Larry Yang, about the new Fitbit Sense. Arguably the first smartwatch was invented in 1927 ... you could buy little map scrolls and find your way around. The first digital watch came out in 1972 … calculator watches in the 1980s … and fitness trackers on your wrist launched in the early 2010s … includin...

The safest country in the world for COVID-19 is now Germany, according to a recently released ranking. Germany is followed closely by New Zealand and South Korea. Switzerland, which was first, has dropped back to fourth. Japan is fifth, and Australia and China are sixth and seventh.  The United States now ranks number 55, still behind Hungary, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and Bulgaria.  The...

The history of advertising recently has been one of identity ... specifically, knowing identity across sites and apps.  That’s changing: the third-party cookie is dying, Apple’s identifier for advertisers is going opt-in, and Google's GAID might as well. What does that mean for the future of advertising? And … what does it mean for the ad-supported services we’ve all come to enjoy? In this ep...

Covid-19 was the 'digital accelerant of the decade,' pushing brands' digitization strategies up an average of 6 years. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we're chatting with Twilio chief customer officer Glenn Weinstein about a major report Twilio put together on digital transformation. COVID-19 is clearly a medical and economic disaster, but it also vastly accelerated technological...

In iOS 14, Apple is making the IDFA opt-in. Is this a privacy power move or a cash grab?  The IDFA is a device identifier that advertisers use to know who's engaging with their ads. It also helps ad networks target ads. In previous version of iOS, the IDFA has been default on, but users can turn it off. In iOS 14, keeping the IDFA on now means that each app must ask individually for permissio...

Late last week Amazon announced Halo, an AI-powered health service. In doing so it beat Apple to exactly what Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly told us the company was focusing on over 18 months ago. Oh, and Amazon wants your underwear selfies. Plus, recordings of everything you say.

Today Elon Musk unveiled more about his mysterious brain-to-computer interface company Neuralink, showcasing a pig named Gertrude with a “Link” installed and sharing that Neuralink has received a “Breakthrough Device” designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One of the abilities he teased was being able to summon your self-driving car — a Tesla, of course — with a thought. But Musk’...

How do you build 10X products and 10X startups with the potential for exponential growth? In this special episode of TechFirst, we chat with the chief product officer of Asana, Alex Hood. Asana has over 75,000 customers including customers like Google, Slack, Twitter, Harvard ...  So today we're chatting with Asana's chief product officer Alex Hood about his playbook for building high growth...