Who the GoogleBook is For: Android Users - DTNS 5357

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3:38This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, September 21st, the 21st night of September. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand.

3:49Robb Dunewood: Today, the Google Books are out and Ron Richards got his hands on them. Should you look into getting one? I don't know, but I'm kind of thinking maybe. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Rob Dunwood. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.

4:07Robb Dunewood: Last week, Google invited folks to an event to show off the new Google Books, which we can now pre-order starting today. Android Faithful's Ron Richards was at the event and gives us the scoop on Google's new entry into the high-end laptop space. Ron Richards, thank you for joining us and relaying what happened so long ago last week when you were at the Google Book event. But pre-orders are available now. Give us the scoop. What can you tell us about the Google Book? Yeah, so the long-awaited Google Book, we finally, I held it in my hands. I saw it. I went last week in New York City, saw Samir Samad, as well as the rest of the team from Google, give a great keynote presentation where they walked us through all the details about the Google book.

4:50You might remember back in May around the time of Google I.O. and the Android show, they kind of unveiled the name of the Google book and they showed some stuff like the magic cursor and some very high level stuff, but they didn't mention any of the OEM partners. They didn't mention price point. They didn't mention any text specifics about the specs of the laptops. We got all those details and they rolled out all that today and it's all available for pre-order. You can go to the Google store or go to Best Buy and you can start pre-ordering them. They're going to start being available on October 4th, so in a couple of weeks.

5:25And you can get them in the U.S., October 4th in the U.S. and October 5th in Canada, the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia. All right, so where to start? Do you want to start on the software side or the hardware side? Start us on the hardware specs because I think that's what people are – we're interested in the software, of course, but everybody's like, yeah, but what's underlying these machines? What's the power here? So they went premium with these. So they're starting at$899 from a price point. So that's kind of the headline. And you've got five OEM partners with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

6:03and not terribly surprising if you follow Chromebooks and the partners that Google's worked with in the past in the laptop side. It's like, oh, hey, there's an Acer. Of course there is, right? But what's interesting is that they all kind of stick to their lanes in terms of what they've done in the past. Similarly with the Chromebooks, that's kind of one thing that I did notice. So, for example, the Acer is the convertible one, right? That's the one that is technically a Google Book flip that flips around to a tablet or a laptop, depending on how you want to do it, which Acer is – they love to live in that kind of – that zone.

6:42Dell went very – it's an XPS. It's very premium. It's very high-end, design-forward and that sort of thing. Lenovo went super productivity. The woman there from Lenovo spent a lot of time showing me the mouse and how well the mouse works with it. And one thing we'll get into is the fact that the glow bar is back. Oh, thank goodness. Yeah, of course. We all love something that glows. But Lenovo integrated the glow bar technology not only because the glow bar is an LED strip that's on the top of the laptop. So when you're using the laptop, you can't see it. But on the Lenovo, they put an LED strip on the mouse.

7:22And the glow bar effects happen on the mouse, too. So they were very proud of that. But that Lenovo has got a big 15-inch screen. The Asus was super light. It was like 2.2 pounds. So they all kind of bring their own little individual flavor to it. But the baseline spec for the laptops across the board was pretty strong, 16 gig of RAM at minimum, up to 32 gig on some of the models. Touchscreens up to 2.8K OLED. They've all got haptic glass trackpads. That was something during the keynote that they went into about how much thought went into the trackpads across all the laptops and the haptics and how you interact with it, especially on the software integration with Gemini and the Magic Cursor and all that sort of stuff.

8:09They got backlit keyboards. Batteries are rated up to 18 hours of video and 16 hours of web browsing. Inside the laptops themselves, they've got Intel Core Ultra Series 3s and Snapdragon X-Elites. so you've got some pretty good guts inside of it. And of course, as I mentioned, the glow bar is back. And if you don't know what the glow bar is, that's a little, they had that with the Pixelbook, I think one of the older laptops. It's a little strip of light that animates its startup. It shows your battery level and it also reacts when you interact with Gemini. But what they did say is that they're going to open it up to developers and developers will be able to tap into the glow bar.

8:49So they'll be able to do that. And there are some Easter eggs that you might be able to discover by using the glow bar. Listen, Tom, people love glowing stuff in the Android world. They really do. How many articles on Android Facebook we've covered about the Pixel Glow and the dumb highlight light on our Pixel phones. And so the glow bar is all part of that. Yeah. Okay. So they think the glow bar is pretty awesome. I think 16 gigabytes of high-speed RAM for$899 is pretty awesome. Starting at$899, by the way. Yeah. Starting at$899. Well, 16 gigabyte is the base RAM, right? So you're going to get at least that.

9:24And then the price goes up. Absolutely. Decent hardware. It sounds like this is decent hardware. And of course, the star of the show is new operating system. Hey, who this? This Google book. Tell us about the software. Well, yeah. So the whole thing of it was is that they and they keep it's funny because they're trying to not step on their toes at this. So the way they kind of positioned it was the fact that these are laptops built on Android's foundation. They keep saying that this is the laptop your Android phone has been dreaming of. But with all the learning and desktop pieces carried over from Chrome OS, right?

10:02So they're kind of merging Android and Chrome OS into one. They're very clear to say that Chromebooks aren't going away. Samir told us back when we talked to him in May and reiterated again that Chromebooks make up more than 60 % of the U.S. education market, so there's still a good fit there. Google Books are just aimed at higher-end users. And really, the way they're kind of positioning this is really kind of interesting. If you are an Android user, this is the laptop that you, they think this is the laptop that you should be using because of the Android integration, and it is really, truly paired to your phone in a way that's different than like a Samsung DeX or even Pixel desktop mode that allows you to take your phone and use it in a desktop mode.

10:45This is your laptop and your phone working in concert even more deeper than iPhone and Mac OS, I think from what I've seen. So it's interesting that. So what they did - What are some of the highlights of that integration that they gave us? Yeah, so straight up from the setup. If you've got that Android phone, if you're familiar with setting up your Android phone, The setup on a phone has gotten easier and easier to the point where your wallpaper loads and your passwords are all there and your Wi-Fi things are all that. All that has now been carried over the laptop. You log in with your Google account and bing, all your stuff is there.

11:17So that's a little bit of that Google magic, right? Yeah. It's all got end-to-end encryption and all that fun stuff. They have a bunch of integrations in the laptop itself, like continue on. So if you are on your phone and let's say I'm drafting an email to you and we're talking about important podcast business and I come home and I sit at my desk, I open up the laptop. It auto senses that I'm in mid draft on an email in Gmail. And there's a little icon in the taskbar with Gmail with the little continue on icon there. And I could tap on that and it seamlessly opens up the Gmail app to the email in draft where I left off on the phone.

11:55I see. So not just that the draft is still there, because of course it is. You're in Gmail, right? But it takes you right there really fast. It takes you right there. And you don't have to do it. You can ignore it and it will just quietly go away. It's all kind of context aware. And it's not like you have to tap something in the phone and say, continue it on my laptop and then click there to convert. It just all kind of magically appears. You know, the example they gave in the keynote was the guy working on music in BandLab and he's doing something on his commute. And then he, you know, sits down at his desk and opens it up and all the work he did is magically there.

12:27It's just there. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that being cool. Yeah. So the file explorer, basically the finder or file explorer for your Windows people, whenever, when you open up that window in the left side, you see your Google Drive, you see the laptop files, and you see your phone files. Right? So it's giving you access to all your files on all your devices in one central point. You don't have to connect to it. You don't have to do anything. It's all just kind of seamless there. And then, of course, they've got Cast My Apps. So you've got kind of two options. Because it's running Android, you can install apps from the Google Play Store on the Google Book.

13:08But they're going to be curating those apps in the Google Play Store to only be laptop-optimized apps. So they're working with the developers and they need to be laptop-utilized, the widescreen, all that fun stuff. So you're not going to see every app in the Google Play Store available in the Google Book version of the Google Play Store. So it's important to note. Um, and so let's say you're sitting at your desk and you want to order, you know, you want to order food and you want to, you know, you want to open up DoorDash instead of opening up your phone and opening up DoorDash because there's not a Google book version of the DoorDash app.

13:40You can actually in the, in the task bar, tap on your phone and it opens up a window of all your apps on your phone, tap DoorDash and the DoorDash app opens up in a window on your desktop. So you're mirroring without having to touch your phone. Exactly. You don't have to touch your phone, but you're casting the app from your phone to your desktop and you can use it that way. So very, very integrated between the phone experience and the laptop. It makes sense to me on paper where Google says, oh, we have this low end market that we're dominating with Chrome OS. Let's not get rid of that. Let's keep that going.

14:14But let's try to take a bite out of the higher end market. Let's go after Apple and Windows and see what we can do. I think for us, it's a little confusing of like, OK, so you're keeping Chrome OS. Why not just put aluminum, you know, if it's so integrated on Chrome OS, what's the big deal? But I guess there's some support costs that they don't want to carry on Chrome OS. Or maybe there's just the fact that everybody in the educational world and beyond is familiar with it, that they don't want to make them move over and they're going to slowly phase out. What's your take on that? Well, yeah, I don't know.

14:48I think it's a combination of the two. I think you're at a reflection point in terms of the technology, right? Because for the educational market, the important thing is the price point. They want to keep the price point down, right? So they want to keep those laptops affordable for the children, as the nun in Elf says. And so they want to keep that price point down. Additionally, one of the things they went really hard at in the keynote, which I was actually surprised by, was how well – how positioned this laptop was for developers. They did a whole thing about anti-gravity and how you can develop code and AI.

15:22And they mentioned Claude's CLI and all this agentic kind of stuff. and the depth of the processor and what it can do. So they are pushing this as a AI developer device, reference device that can be used, which requires more robust processing power, which doesn't equal low cost laptop, right? So there's a bit of, I think there's a bit of a crossfade that's going to happen. And what you'll probably see is that as the cost of these processors come down and what we see as a Google book today at$8.99 in three to five years becomes the$2.99 version. Then Chrome OS goes away and then education market gets the lower cost Google books and then they kind of move and then it fades away, right?

16:09And everything's Android based on both platforms anyway. So that makes that transition a little smoother. Yeah, I could see that maybe working. Google has no problem killing things. So eventually they will. And they push in addition for developers, they push that, you know, this is a desktop machine and it can run Photoshop, Lightroom, CapCut, you know, like they push creators. Yeah. And that's a branding reason not to have this be Chrome OS, you know, to be like, no, no, this is the more powerful version of what Google gives. And then they also went at gamers. They, you know, every purchase of a Google book includes a year of GeForce now.

16:46And Google said that are actually already half of the top 100 Google Play, the games in the Google Play Store are already optimized for keyboard, mouse, and big screens. So they're trying to push it as a desktop gaming thing. So they're trying to do like developers, productivity, gamers. This device can work for everybody from their point of view. Whether it's true or not, we'll see. It also comes with 12 months of Google AI Pro, which includes five terabytes of storage, three months of YouTube Premium, Photoshop, and CapCut. So just give it to everybody. Make sure you use it for this. We're going to give it to you.

17:19Yeah, exactly. And it's got all the Gemini stuff in there. Oh, the big thing before we break, the magic pointer. Oh, right. So you're using your cursor, using your laptop. If you wiggle the mouse, it then becomes the magic pointer. And you can highlight or you can create a box around anything. And it comes up with a little Gemini prompt. And it will auto-suggest things based on what you highlighted or put a box around. Or you can type in manually. You can also add files to that. So you can also pull in images and things like that. and then that spawns another window with the Gemini conversation and you can build on that as you're working.

17:56And so it's kind of like integrating the Gemini AI experience into whatever you're doing. And I know we kind of all like roll our eyes at it, but it actually was pretty cool to see. Yeah. One of the things I can say that Google seems good at is the proactive stuff at the operating system level. We're seeing that on the pixel and it sounds like we'll probably see that on Google book as well. Well, Ron, thank you for keeping us up to speed on this. I know there's a lot more coming around the Google book on Android faithful. What you got coming. Yeah. So we're going to go even more deeper on Android faithful this week, this Tuesday.

18:26So tune in, check it out. And also we're going to go behind the scenes. We're going to have an exclusive interview with one of the leaders on the product team at Google on the show tomorrow. So tune in for that. And we'll get lots of answers to your questions about the Google book. Fantastic. Thanks, Ron. Thank you, Tom. What do you think, Rob? He's coming for a decks. He's saying,

18:47Robb Dunewood: So I am in the Google ecosystem. This is, you know, I like Android. I like my Samsung phones. The question here, though, is that can this replace, if I were to get, you know, one of the higher end, one of these devices, could it replace my Dell XPS 15? That's the question for me. I heard Ron say Photoshop and Lightroom. Didn't hear him say DaVinci Resolve. I didn't hear him say Ableton Live. I didn't hear him say these things. So my question is that how quickly will Google be able to get developers of these big platforms that I need an actual computer to use to access? How long is it going to take for them to come over?

19:26Robb Dunewood: Because I'm thinking about my tablet. I have a ridiculously good tablet that runs hardly no apps. I wouldn't want that to be the case for something that could cost$600 to maybe$1 ,000 more than the tablet that I'm using to where I've got this device. but I still need to use a PC to get to DaVinci. I still need to use a PC to get the Pro Tools or a Mac to get the Pro Tools. I need to use other things to get to the apps that actually allow me to do my job on a device that costs this much. Whereas on a Chromebook, a Chromebook to me is just a Chromebook. It doesn't replace anything. It's just a Chromebook.

20:05Robb Dunewood: I'm looking at one of these Pixelbooks, however, that this needs to replace something because of the cost. So that is the concern for me. Um, now the techie in me, I definitely want to test one of these things out, but the consumer in me says, ah, let me wait a year and see what the developers do on the support. Yeah. And it's going to be more capable because it's Android underneath. If that got lost on anyone, Chromebook does Android emulation to run Android. Uh, this has Android running. It has an isolated Linux environment with a full terminal as part of the OS Android apps run natively. We were focusing on the Android integration, which I think is actually the biggest selling point here.

20:45But in addition to that magic cursor that Ron talked about, there's also a create your widget feature coming and Rambler where you can just talk and then it'll make sense of your rambling. Regular updates for up to 10 years. And just breaking today, MediaTek's Dimensity CXC10 Max chip will be in an upcoming Google book from Lenovo. So the ones we're seeing today are not the last of the Google Books. If you're like, I don't know if any of these form factors work for me, there should be more coming and maybe some more price points as well. Thank you again to Ron Richards for that. I appreciate him jumping in on it.

21:21DTNS made possible by you, the listener. Big thanks to Matt Zaglin, Jeff Wilkes, Tim Deputy, Bjornar Sandvik, and brand new patrons, the Griffiths family. Thank you, the Griffiths. And welcome to the whole family into the tent.

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24:21Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get today at business.att.com.

24:27Robb Dunewood: Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments.

25:04Robb Dunewood: You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. All right, there is some non-Google book news to talk about today.

25:51Let's get to the briefs. iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are available, and iFixit has its teardown on what's inside and how repairable it is. As always, read their whole report. It's very good. Here are the highlights. The top line is iFixit gives both 18 Pro models a provisional repairability score of 7, which is the same score as the 16 Pro and the 17 Pro before it. One of the big downsides is that all the repairs have to go through the screen, which makes them time consuming and of course risks damaging the screen. IFIX said it broke the plastic frame behind the display on three of the four models it tested.

26:30And Apple doesn't sell that part individually. So if you were to break it, you have to get a whole new display module to replace what you broke. If you don't use the plastic frame, the display isn't going to sit flush with the body. So those are your choices. The score of seven is provisional, partly because they're still trying to figure out whether they could have avoided damage to the screen that they caused in their tests. It's the same part as they tested in previous years, and they never broke it before. And other people testing this who are doing teardowns haven't broken it. So they're finishing that to figure out if there was something they were doing wrong.

27:04Also finishing all their parts pairing checks. But iFixit regularly gives Apple points for their repairability program. So I would expect this will stay at seven. unless they find some problem with that plastic piece. Also, the variable aperture on the main camera is made of six tiny mechanical blades. You may remember Apple talking about that, how it automatically can close and open. iFixit says that is an aperture only repair isn't going to be feasible. So if you were to break those mechanical blades or they were to break, you're gonna need to buy the whole new camera array. On the plus side though, battery is screwed in, not glued.

27:41That makes it much easier to replace once you get to it. And one other note, if you buy a model with a SIM card slot, which is available outside the US, you get a slightly smaller battery than the eSIM model. It's less than 200 milliamp hour difference, but just something to be aware of. But, you know, sounds like the new iPhone is just as repairable as the old one or just as not repairable as the old one, depending on how you look at it.

28:04Robb Dunewood: Yeah, it definitely seems that way. It also seems like there's a whole heck of a lot of people that still go to Apple stores to get those devices the first day that they're available. Just happened to be at the Barclays Center Apple Store, or the Apple Store right around the corner from the Barclays Center right there in Brooklyn. And it was a line. It was hundreds of people in line outside. There were hundreds of people. They were probably breaking fire codes with the number of folks inside. And someone said, it's kind of always like that. And I was like, it's always a couple hundred people in line to go get a phone.

28:34Robb Dunewood: But there's a lot of people who seem to be interested in it. Yeah. iPhone lines still happen. I was shocked to hear that from you. That's pretty interesting. Reviews are in for the late 2026 Mac Mini and M5 Ultra Mac Studio. And here's a summary of what most people said. For the Mac Mini, on the good side, it has strong performance for both single and multi-threaded operations, with some folks even mentioning decent gaming performance. The store's performance is faster as well. It still has good port selections with two front USB-C ports, three rear Thunderbolt ports, as well as HDMI and 2.5 gigabyte Ethernet.

29:11Robb Dunewood: And that small footprint is also a source of praise. On the downside, however, it is not much of a value anymore. The Mac Mini starts at$899 versus the$599 price it started at a year ago. It's also expensive if you want to add more memory and storage when you buy it, something you need to consider since you can't do internal upgrades later. and this may not be the device for folks who want to use it for agentic purposes. The M6 version cannot be daisy-chained into compute clusters because it has Thunderbolt 4, does not have Thunderbolt 5. It doesn't have an SD card slot and the power button is still on the bottom in the back left corner.

29:52Robb Dunewood: It's just kind of a weird place to put it. But overall, the reviews are pretty positive except for the cost because that's a bit of a stretch here. Now let's look at the Mac Studio. Most reviewers got the more powerful M5 Ultra. The good sides, it's fast. Everybody raved about the performance. Tom's guy called it the most powerful computer I've ever reviewed. The solid-state drive is also much faster, with some reviewers calling it the biggest upgrade of the bunch. With all that performance, it still runs quiet and cool, and most reviewers praise the ports, especially the four Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back.

30:25Robb Dunewood: Generally speaking, everyone agrees that it's perfect for local on-device agentic use. Downside, it's also expensive. The M5 Ultra starts at$5 ,500, and the cheaper M5 Max model starts at$2 ,500. And of course, that's the starting price before you add any expensive RAM or storage, which you can't upgrade internally either. Mac Studio, generally speaking, is praised as excellent if you need to run local LLMs or agents, do high-end video or 3D work, but otherwise probably overkill for anybody else. Yeah. So that's a powerful machine. And rightly so at that price, it better be. Whereas the Mac Mini, I think it's still a pretty good value relative to other machines you might get that are similarly specced, but now it's equal instead of...

31:16In fact, maybe I shouldn't say it's a good value. It's equal to other machines you would get at that spec.

31:23Robb Dunewood: And on the high-end ones, Those are the ones that maybe I kind of have a little problem with that. It's like if I'm spending 5 ,500 on something starting, I want to be able to upgrade the RAM in it. Yeah. It's like, you know, three years from now, that device may still be something I'm using. And just a nice refresh on the RAM would keep it something that I could use for another couple, three years. Not, you know, having to decide that up front with these RAM prices, that makes that, for me, that makes that a hard buy. Yeah, especially for those of us who grew up replacing RAM and stuff, right?

31:50It's hard to get used to the fact that the Apple Silicon just doesn't work that way, especially when it's confused with the fact that Apple has always made it difficult for you to upgrade RAM and charged you a lot out of the gate. But I used to replace RAM in my MacBooks now, so it's a new thing to get used to. Real quickly, we have a good read to point out for you. Professor of Machine Intelligence Alessandro De Nuovo and Senior Lecturer in Robotics and AI, Samuel Vinanzi, both from Sheffield-Hollum University, wrote an article for The Conversation assessing their view on the existential risks from AI.

32:29You can read it at theconversation.com. But the highlights are they point out that most doomsday scenarios out there require physical access that large language models don't have yet. They cannot pipette a sample to make a virus. Safety and control systems in nuclear power plants are air-gapped, meaning they have no internet connectivity. They point out that the Stuxnet attack on Iranian facilities in 2010 needed a human to put a USB stick into an air-gapped system. They say that even inside a robot, AI is going to need help from humans for the foreseeable future. Here's their conclusion. It means the danger is more mundane than the doomsday framing suggests.

33:14infrastructure that needs guarding judgment we are quietly handing away and warnings that often serve the interest of whoever is issuing them maybe humans are the ones we need to watch not machines at least at this point still so i just need to be clear does shia laboove actually

33:33Robb Dunewood: have a twin it always comes back to that for you i know do you finesse shia laboove's twin brother to go do stuff. Yeah. And I don't think they're saying that AI is harmless. What they're saying is there are more mundane immediate risks to pay attention to, and that a lot of times they involve humans. And we shouldn't ignore those because of some other potential risk in the future. Well, folks, we do live streams every Friday where we answer the big tech question of the week. Catch them by becoming a subscriber at youtube.com forward slash daily tech news show.

34:14Robb Dunewood: This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

35:11Robb Dunewood: They keep your connectivity reliable so you have one less thing to worry about. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com.

35:26Let us get to the quick headlines. These are the ones that will make you a human smarter.

35:32Robb Dunewood: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent from accessing Amazon.com to shop on behalf of users. It also filed an amended complaint against perplexity's ability to have its comment agent access Amazon.com against its wishes. Now, Tom, I got a question. Yeah. Can a human's assistant go and access a website under my credentials and get in? Yeah. Does that mean that the agent can't or how would they know? Particularly in perplexity's case, they were copying session tokens over and then trying to claim in court, we're not accessing Amazon's service. So there's a lot going on in that one. Uh, they're also saying that, that the muse agent isn't respecting all the terms and conditions, uh, that they have for software accessing its site.

36:16I think they'd have less of a problem if this thing was very mindlessly going in, but it's like replacing the recommendations. If you hire a human to go buy something, they'll see the recommended items. Maybe they'll pass that along to you. Muse is not doing that. Uh, so it gets a little fuzzy on that, but it's, it's similar to, uh, in and out telling Uber Eats, you can't send people to buy In-N-Out hamburgers and deliver them on Uber Eats without our permission. It's exactly the same kind of thing. Because I could hire someone to go buy In-N-Out for me. They just don't want the system involved in that.

36:52Robb Dunewood: Makes sense. Yeah, I guess so. Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Google 403 million euros for infringing rules on processing location data, or at least the way it used to process location data. Google said it stopped the infringing practices back in 2019. A U.S. class action lawsuit has resulted in a website at www.smartphoneaisettlement.com where U.S. customers who purchased an iPhone 15 Pro or any model of the iPhone 16 for purposes other than resale between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025 may receive from$25 to$95. Apple was sued for misleading customers with ads that showed Siri capabilities, but did not ship.

37:34Robb Dunewood: Apple did not admit fault. I believe I will be getting$25 at the very least. Add Gemini to the long list of models that have disclosed breaking out of safety testing containment. Gemini broke into other networks in three instances in May during testing by Irregular. Most of these breakouts are happening during testing by Irregular. Irregular notified Google of the instances in July. The models did not cause harm. And And interestingly, in this case, each Gemini intrusion ended as soon as the model determined that the company was real and not a dummy company set up for the safety test. So they thought it was fake.

38:12They got in. They're like, whoa, this looks like a real company. And then they backed out.

38:16Robb Dunewood: The Clix Communicator Android phone with a physical keyboard will ship starting in December. You can reserve one for$499, though the price will rise to$649 on October 1st. This will not be an accident. It's not a thought. I'm getting one of these right after the show. Fantastic. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says his sources say Apple's going to introduce a home hub with a screen as early as next month. That's October. So we might be getting Apple October announcement after all. OnePlus showed off the OnePlus 16 design, which is similar to the OnePlus 15, but with new color options, pre-reservations for the phone have opened in China.

38:57And the Xiaomi 18 Pro and Pro Max phones are going to launch on September 23rd. Big week launches in China. Vivo launching the X500 today on Monday. Oppo's Find X10 series launches Tuesday, September 22nd, and then Xiaomi on September 23rd. All new flagships in China by the end of this week, basically.

39:16Robb Dunewood: Mobile security firm Zemperium is warning of Android malware called Rat Hat that uses a fake Google Play store to trick users into installing what looks like a legitimate app, such as WeChat Pay or Alipay. The app asks for accessibility permissions for navigation and then uses those to unlock wireless debugging. It then uses that to give itself shelf permissions that it uses to install an agent that steals information. Malwarebytes can detect the malicious app, but if you find it, you'll need to factory reset your device. Yikes. Sony PlayStation is selling limited edition DualSense controllers with Lisa from Blackpink's eyes on the touchpad and her signature on the back.

39:57So you pick up the controller and she says, Salwa Dika. The controller is$85 for pre-order October 2nd, launching October 30th.

40:05Robb Dunewood: The International Federation of Robotics estimates that 7 ,000 humanoid robots were sold worldwide in 2025 for industrial and professional service use. However, China's securities regulator advises humanoid robot companies to avoid IPOs until they can show recurring revenue. Reuters says at least six humanoid robot companies in China have put IPO plans on pause. Chinese manufacturers accounted for more than 90 % of global humanoid shipments in the first half of 2026. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspective. Lots of folks responded to Patrick and Roger's weekend episode about what cables can to keep.

40:46Robb Dunewood: Ryan and Kome both shared what they do. Yeah, it was like car tech, but for cable management. Ryan wrote, I loved this discussion so much. I'm writing this now from my studio where the closet 15 feet away has a peg wall full of assorted cables of questionable age and origin. I work in pro audio doing small mobile event production. I've become a hoarder of cables because it's striking how many legacy devices are still serviceable in the field and how many contemporary devices still use dated connections. I have Blackmagic SDI to HDMI converters that use micro USB power supplies. Many DJ controllers and audio interfaces still use USB 2.0 type B connectors.

41:30My church's PreSonus StudioLive AI audio desk uses Firewire 800 for multi-track recording, which unfortunately only no longer works because of the lack of software compatibility with newer operating systems. And the amount of spare 3.5 millimeter and RCA cables and adapters in a tackle box in my back and in my toolbox is just criminal. But when one bites the dust out on the road, I'm so glad to have the backups on hand. And then Kome added, I also have a huge collection of cables that include RS-232, VGA, and parallel printer cables. My organization's strategy is to fold them in half and hang them all along the wall.

42:10Makes it easy to find them and takes less space than keeping them in boxes or drawers?

42:15Robb Dunewood: I too have tons of cables. My system's a little different. I have a giant tote, like one of those Rubbermaid totes. What I do is I take a picture of the cable before it goes into the tote of where I will probably never go into again to get that particular cable. But just in case I need to take a picture of it, then add that to my second brain. So I can just go to my notes to find out, do I have this cable? Then I'll go through and spend 30, 40 minutes digging through the unorganized collection of cables that I've probably - But it's worth it knowing you're like, it's in there. I know it's in there.

42:46I know I got it. I know I had it. That's great.

42:49Robb Dunewood: Well, folks, we want to know what you're thinking about. So if you've got some insight into a story, please, please, please share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big show for a Monday. Thanks to Ron Richards, Ryan, and Kome for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show as well. You're the folks who keep us in business. Please become a patron if you're not already. Patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll welcome you by name. Do it. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

43:29Robb Dunewood: This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Hey, everyone. It's Chris Guillebeau here, host of the Side Hustle School podcast. This episode is powered by AT &T Business.

44:06Robb Dunewood: In my early days, I did some of my best work in parked cars or coffee shops. But when I landed my first big contract, I realized I couldn't bet my future on a public connection that cuts out if someone turns on a blender. As a small business owner, you're already wearing at least 10 hats. You shouldn't have to be your own IT department as well. That's why I rely on AT &T Business. They keep your connectivity reliable so you have one less thing to worry about. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com.