A diversified issue.

A diversified issue.
Photo by Paolo Giubilato / Unsplash

Hello there,

You are reading an archive of The Tech Garamond. This issue was not published via email and was a website exclusive. This article contains tech news from 6th March to 12th March. Have a good read :)

Between the 6th and the 12th of March, a lot of things happened. The highlight of the week is Apple had a launch event! Where they launched a series of devices and revolutionised the industry again. Well, but, this article is not about that. I already covered that in a different article — if you want to read more about it, have a look here. But hey, that’s not all! The new Studio Display works as a normal monitor with windows devices! I mean, yeah that kinda sounds obvious when I say it out loud, but I don’t know why it seems new to me. The new studio display will output in 5K resolution provided your windows machine supports it. And for obvious reasons, the flagship features such as centre stage and spatial audio will be restricted to Apple’s ecosystem.

Anyway, enough about Apple. On March 6th, Bloomberg reported that YouTube was supposedly paying podcasters to film their shows! And it wasn’t a small amount, the paycheck went up to almost $300,000! From what we know, YouTube has constantly been trying to improve the podcast experience over the past couple of months. In October, Google permitted all Canadian users to listen to podcasts with their screen turned off and the app closed — a feature which was previously only available if you had subscribed to YouTube premium. So, from what we can gather, YouTube is trying to penetrate into the podcasts market. That means we can expect cool features real soon ;)

Hovering over to Google. Chrome just launched a new update which claims to be faster than Safari! Up to 7% faster than Safari and 43% faster than last year. Google claims that it ran tests based on Apple’s WebKit framework on 14-inch and 13-inch maxed out MacBook. To be very honest, there were a lot of numbers included in this article about how Chrome beat Safari, but I’ll be honest. It doesn’t really matter. I use both of the browsers and it makes no difference. They are literally the same! However, an important thing to note down will be that Safari is way more efficient when it comes to power management. Chrome just hogs the battery! I just want to put it out there, you don’t need to base your entire experience on numbers. Just stick to what works best for you. Google also released a Pixel drop this week. And it added a bunch of new features that are absolutely staggering! Unbelievable! Let;’s start with the best feature. You don’t need to speak during calls. Yeah, you read that right. It’s so cool, I don’t even know how to explain it. Here is what happens — if someone calls you, you can turn on the text to voice feature and then, your phone will speak everything you type! How cool is that? Some other cool features include a ramped us At A Glance widget which will show you your battery information of the Bluetooth device you have connected to on your lock screen. Google has also added a battery widget that showcases the battery of all devices connected to your Pixel. This feature drop also added Night Sight to Snapchat making your photos look even better and gorgeous during nighttime. The last feature is somewhat similar to Apple’s SharePlay. With Google’s new feature drop, you can now watch movies and YouTube videos together via Google Duo. I mean, I don’t know how practical this is, but it sure is interesting.

Heading over to Microsoft. There is not a lot of stuff going on here but I have some good news. Microsoft’s File Explorer on Windows 11 will finally have tabs! I mean, yeah, for a lot of people that doesn’t sound like a big deal but these small features improve so many workflows and make life so much simpler! Another cool thing Microsoft is working on is a browser-based video editing app. Last year, Microsoft took over Clipchamp — a cloud-based video editing app. I am sure this app will be a replacement for Windows Movie Maker. This app would be way better and would feature some really advancements such as screen recording and advanced text to speech features! I am really looking forward to this and I hope some of you are too!

I often mention that my newsletter features some really cool apps. So here you go, this app is like a Clubhouse competitor by Amazon, but instead of chatting and sharing experiences, all the people in the room can become a DJ and play the music they love! This app is still in beta but you can check it out here.

Before I sign off, I need to address the boomers reading this email. Turns out Facebook is working on securing more and more accounts from unauthorised access and is forcing users to turn on Facebook Protect. This is an essential feature to prevent hackers from gaining control of your account. If you wanna figure out how to turn it on (if you haven’t already). Check out this article by The Verge. And that’s it for this issue. I will be publishing an article this Sunday, so make sure to read that :) Until then, remember to update your devices and I’ll catch you next time.

Cheers,
Tejas Tagra
6003 days old