Technology

There's a popular narrative in tech media right now that Android upgrades are really, truly getting better — that for all the time device-makers take to send out updated software, they're nevertheless improving and making strides toward a more reasonable standard.

I've been tracking Android upgrade performance closely for years now, and I'm hesitant to buy into such a narrative — especially when it seems to be based mostly on limited-scope, anecdotal perception and maybe the occasional marketing department nudge. So now that my Android 10 Upgrade Report Card is complete, I thought it'd be interesting to take a careful look at the actual data surrounding Android upgrades to see what the cold, hard numbers reveal.

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With the future of WWDC 2020 increasingly in doubt, therelittle surprise that interest in whatcoming in iOS 14 is beginning to intensify, particularly if Apple is forced to provide a remote version of the conference. Herewhat we think we know about iOS 14 so far:

New product hints inside the code

The leaked iOS 14 builds seem full of new product hints. Not only does it seem to confirm that iPhone 9 will boast Touch ID and Express Transit, but also seems to show that the iPad Pro will indeed feature an iPhone-like triple-lens camera and time of flight sensor.

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Microsoft last week said it would eliminate one of the diagnostic data collection settings in Windows 10 and change the naming of two others.

The Redmond, Wash. developer cited a 2019 effort designed to give enterprise customers more control over what data Microsoft harvested. "As part of the Microsoft initiative to increase transparency and control over data, we're making some changes to the Settings app and Group Policy settings that will start showing up in Windows Insider builds this month," wrote Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program manager, in a March 5 post to a company blog.

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Autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles are making serious progress — and the mobile communications capabilities of those cars are also rapidly growing, perhaps too fast for their own security good — but they are going to run head on into a massive obstacle: human trust. It's a big deal for someone to let go of the steering wheel and brake and trust a computer to make all of the right calls. (Heck, I am still trembling from when I taught our 16-year-old daughter to take over the wheel. And you're asking me to trust the same operating system that crashes at least five times a week? Really?)

Two recent developments both increase trust and rip it apart. And off we go.

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