Dropbox is introducing a variety of new features across its product stack. Of all the tweaks the company announced today, the most intriguing ones involve its automatic backup utility for photos you take with your phone. Most notably, starting today that functionality is now available to all Basic users — that is, those who don't pay for the service.
The company says it has also made backend changes to make uploads faster and “more reliable.” Additionally, on iOS, you can specify the exact folders you want to back up. That functionality is coming soon to Android as well. Lastly, there’s a new option to tell Dropbox to delete a photo after it has uploaded it to the cloud. Notably, these features come after Google recently stopped offering unlimited free uploads to its Photos service.
Dropbox
In its web client, meanwhile, Dropbox is introducing several interface tweaks. The most significant of those changes is the addition of a new tool that allows you to convert files to different formats without leaving the client, with JPEGs to PNGs as one example. Elsewhere, Dropbox says a redesigned details pane makes it easier to see important information about your files. The company claims it has also made it faster to jump between different folders with a new side navigation bar.
As part of today’s update, Dropbox is also introducing a handful of new features to its password manager. Available to free users as of earlier this year, the tool can now store debit and credit card information. Dropbox has also added support for password sharing. Oh, and you can now download a free browser extension, making it easier to input and save passwords when you’re browsing the web on your computer. On their own, the changes Dropbox detailed today are small, but when you add them up, they make for a more compelling service.
It's taken the better part of half a decade, but the Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol finally has a path to ubiquity in the US. Following similar announcements from T-Mobile and AT&T earlier in the year, Verizon (Engadget's parent company) said today it's working with Google to bring the next-generation SMS replacement to all of its customers.
By the end of the year, existing Verizon subscribers who use the carrier's Message+ app will get full access to the RCS suite, including real-time typing indicators and read receipts. Then, starting next year, all of the company's phones will come with the Messages by Google app preinstalled. Once that happens, RCS perks like end-to-end encryption for one-on-one conversations and the ability to send full-resolution photos will be an app away.
To say today's announcement is a significant milestone for Google would be an understatement. The company has been pushing RCS for years, and at times it seemed like the project was fated to languish like so many of Google's past mobile messaging efforts. Due to the need for carrier buy-in, the protocol didn't "just work" like iMessage, at least not initially.
In the early years, even if you went out of your way to download Google Messages, there was no guarantee you would get any of its promised benefits. That's because, more often than not, it was likely the person you were texting didn't have an RCS-capable app installed on their phone, nor were they with a carrier that was onboard with the platform. That meant most Android chats defaulted to SMS. With Google Messages now the default on most new Android phones in the US, that's a situation that should be the exception, not the norm. Today's announcement also leaves Apple in an odd position. Once an innovator in the space, the company is now on the outside looking in at a more broadly adopted ecosystem.
Venmo has grown into much more than a simple payment platform, and the company has redesigned its app to reflect that. The company has introduced a revised app for Android and iOS that focuses not just on its budding social element, but on plugging the rapidly ballooning list of new features. Venmo has tossed the global feed in favor of a friends feed that shows what's happening with your close connections.
The new bottom navigation section, meanwhile, is built to expose features you might not have considered before. A Cards button plugs both credit and debit options, while a dedicated Crypto button unsurprisingly invites you to start cryptocurrency trading.
There is a strictly practical improvement. You now get a "complete" view of your wallet, activity and settings through your personal feed. Venmo is also eager to point out recent privacy upgrades, although those won't change much with the redesign. New payment types and widened purchase protections unveiled last month should start rolling out this week, too.
It may take a few weeks for the refreshed Venmo app to reach your device. It's too soon to say if the interface changes will be more helpful to you or to Venmo. There's little doubt they reflect the firm's shifting priorities, though — money transfers represent just one part of a larger strategy to handle as much of your financial life as possible.
Google has been giving Wear OS some much needed attention of late. In the lead up to the launch of its new smartwatch software collab with Samsung, Google has been focusing on apps. First it made YouTube Music available on Wear OS and now it's making apps easier to find and download.
As part of a new Play Store update for Android phones and smartwatches, users will see new search filters and category pages on handsets that highlight "watch" apps or "watch faces." You'll also be able to remotely install your chosen software or visuals.
Meanwhile, the Play Store on Wear OS is getting a new look in keeping with Google's Material You design. The aim is to make navigation more simple in the display's restricted surface area. As a result, Google is placing important info in cards to make it easier to read and make a selection. If you decide to buy, the Play Store will also prompt you to open a purchase page on your Android phone or the web to complete the purchase.
Google said the updates will roll out in the coming weeks to Android phones and watches running Wear OS version 2.x and up.
With its 360 by Deezer app, Deezer decided to adopt Sony's 360 Reality audio format rather than Dolby Atmos. That format delivers surround sound not just on headphones but Chromecast-enabled speakers like, say, Sony's 360-enabled SRS-RA5000 and RA3000 models. Now, Deezer has announced that it is supporting those two very models with its new casting feature.
If you subscribe to Deezer's premium HiFi tier and own either the Sony RA5000 or RA3000, you'll just need to get the latest 360 by Deezer app, pick a track and select the "cast" button in the top right hand corner. Though it's just a single speaker, you'll here different parts of the song as different independent sound "objects," Deezer said, with vocals and instruments "placed in positions in a virtual auditorium to create a truly immersive experience for the listener."
Deezer originally launched the app in 2019 with 1,000 tracks, and said that library is growing with new albums from David Bowie, Doja Cat and Alicia Keyes. You can now find dedicated 360 editorial playlists in the app's recommendation page, including Deezer's "360 Sessions" playlist with live performances from Dua Lipa, Anne-Marie, Circa Waves and others.
Sony's 360 Reality Audio was already available on the RA5000 and RA3000 speakers via Chromecast on Amazon Music and Tidal. Now that it's on Deezer as well, Sony has a pretty solid base of streaming services using its surround sound tech.
Starting today, everyone with a compatible iPhone can update their device to iOS 14.7. The latest public release of the firmware adds a few useful but relatively minor features, such as support for the new MagSafe Battery Pack on iPhone 12. There's an option to merge two Apple Cards into a co-owned account with a combined credit limit.
The Home app now has a way to manage HomePod timers, while users in Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, South Korea and Spain will now see air quality info in Weather and Maps. On the audio front, there's a filter in the Podcasts library that allows you to see all shows or only the ones you follow. You can update your iPhone to iOS 14.7 by opening the Settings app, tapping General and then Software Update.
Elsewhere, tvOS 14.7 is now available, bringing general performance and stability boosts to Apple TV. Apple Watch users in 30 more countries can now use the ECG app after Apple released watchOS 7.6.
Fakespot, an app that analyzes Amazon reviews to determine which ones are fake, is no longer available for iOS. Amazon has successfully convinced Apple to remove it from the App Store after the company raised concerns that the application provides misleading information and creates potential security vulnerabilities. The e-commerce giant has confirmed to Engadget that it reported Fakespot for investigation. One of its biggest concerns, Amazon told us, was that the redesigned app Fakespot launched in June "wraps" and injects code into its website.
"Wrapping" would make it possible, in theory, for the app to collect data and put customers' sensitive information, including credit card numbers, at risk. The e-commerce titan told us it got in touch with Fakespot directly to address its security concerns and that the app developer didn't take action.
Amazon said in a statement:
"Amazon works hard to build a shopping experience that delights customers, and a selling experience that empowers brands and sellers to build and grow their business. The app in question provides customers with misleading information about our sellers and their products, harms our sellers’ businesses, and creates potential security risks. We appreciate Apple’s review of this app against its Appstore guidelines."
Fakespot founder and CEO Saoud Khalifah has admitted to CNBC that his company collects some user data, but he said that it doesn't sell information to third parties. Further, he denies Amazon's claim that the app presents security risks. "We don't steal users' information, we've never done that. They've shown zero proof and Apple acted on this with zero proof," he told the publication. Apparently, Apple didn't give his company adequate warning before the app was taken down and didn't even give it a chance to rectify any issue the tech giant may have.
While Apple has yet to issue a statement that would clarify why exactly Fakespot was pulled down, Amazon pointed Engadget to two App Store guidelines, in particular. One of those guidelines states that an app that displays content from a third-party service must secure permission from that service. The other prohibits applications from displaying false information.
Back in early 2020, Amazon went after another add-on used to track prices and discount: Honey, a $4 billion PayPal acquisition. People using Honey saw a warning on Amazon's website that said the extension "tracks [their] private shopping behavior, collects data like [their] order history and items saved, and can read or change any of [their] data on any website [they] visit."
Instagram is running a new test to tell users about another app they might want to check out: Facebook. The photo sharing app is experimenting with a notice at the top of users’ feeds that encourages them to check out features that are “only available” on Facebook.
“We’re testing a way to let people who have connected their Instagram accounts to Facebook know about features only available there, such as how to find a job, date online, buy and sell goods, or catch up on the latest news,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
That the company is using one of its billion-user apps to promote another billion-user app might not seem to make a lot of sense, but it’s only the latest (and perhaps most aggressive) way the social network has used Instagram to drive people back to its main app. The company has been steadily bringing the two apps closer together and has been encouraging users to link their accounts. (A book published last year reported that Mark Zuckerberg was “jealous” of Instagram’s success and worried the app could eventually “cannibalize” Facebook. Tensions between him and the app’s founders ultimately led to their departure in 2018.)
Facebook points out that only “a very small group” of Instagram users who have previously opted to link their accounts will see the messages, which can be dismissed. But even if it never expands, it would suggest that the company is far from done with its attempts to get Instagram users to spend more time on Facebook.
When visually impaired music producer Jason Dasent decided to buy a collection of instrument plugins from Arturia about four years ago, he did so despite his suspicion that the company’s tools wouldn’t be accessible. He was right. “At that point I couldn’t browse and use the software,” he said. “I pretty much couldn’t do anything.” He had spent some $500 on Arturia’s V Collection 5, a set of virtual instruments that included recreations of some vintage synths he wanted to use. It was cheaper than spending hundreds of thousands on actual synths, he told himself.
But because Arturia’s preset manager Analog Lab wasn’t built to accommodate the visually impaired at the time, Dasent had to drop even more cash. “I would have to hire someone to come in for maybe three days to save these presets,” he said. For between $500 and $1,000, this person would export the presets to a format that would work in Avid’s Pro Tools, which had the accessibility features Dasent needed. It was a tedious and expensive process, he said, but even after that he could only choose presets. He couldn’t tweak cutoffs, envelopes, parameters or adjust the brightness. “I had no choice but to just stick with the presets,” he added.
In 2019, Dasent presented at the Audio Developers Conference (ADC) in London, where he was approached by Arturia’s then director of software development, Kevin Molcard. Moldcard wanted to make Analog Lab accessible, and asked for Dasent’s help. After the company set him up with the V Collection 7 and a key lab, Dasent started playing around. Eventually, Dasent was introduced to Arturia product manager Pierre Pfister, who wanted to learn more about what Analog Lab was missing.
Two months later, Dasent said, he got a call from Pfister. “I have something to show you.” What Pfister then shared with Dasent was an early version of a new accessibility toolset in Analog Lab V. “It’s as if my eyes are now open,” he gushed. That kicked off a months-long back-and-forth between Dasent, Pfister and the Arturia as they worked on the prototype, culminating in the launch of a new update today. The company is announcing a new accessibility mode to Analog Lab V, which will enable all users to turn on auditory feedback and screen reading. It also brings various “ergonomic improvements and bug fixes.”
With this new accessibility mode, the company's Keylab controllers now communicate with the Analog Lab software and a computer's text-to-speech engine. "Basically, as I press a button on Keylab, or I turn a dial or change a value, it sends notifications out to the system voice, allowing me to know exactly what's on the keyboard," Dasent said in a video describing the update. Now, when he tweaks faders and encoders on the keyboard, "I can know exactly what the values are as I tweak the parameters." As he turns a knob on the controller to scroll through a list of instruments, a voice reads out the name of each item he lands on.
Since Dasent is familiar with Arturia's devices, he has the layout of buttons and dials memorized. But he added that "the layout of the keyboard is very well thought out, so it makes learning where everything is very easy."
The most challenging part of getting the software accessible for visually impaired users, according to Pfister, wasn’t necessarily implementation or programming — it was figuring out how best to communicate with the system’s text-to-speech. Since a lot of music software (and many creative products in general) aren’t designed with accessibility in mind, there aren’t many best practices to pull from. Arturia almost had to start from scratch. “The hardest part was knowing what we should do and how we should make a product accessible,” Pfister said.
Once they figured it out and showed Dasent the first prototype though, the results were gratifying. “His reaction made everything worth it.”
Arturia
Pfister and his team know there’s more work that needs to be done. He acknowledged that Arturia is a small company and there’s “a lot of things we don’t know.” The plan for now is to continue listening to and soliciting feedback to “identify what most of our users would like to be able to do.” Whether that means getting all of the Analog Lab program fully accessible or to make all its individual instruments accessible, Pfister said the goal is to continue improving what it’s done with Analog Lab.
Like most of the tech industry, music software developers have, until now, largely overlooked the needs of people with disabilities. In a 2019 blog post for competing music company Native Instruments, UK technologist Chris Ankin said: “Historically, music software offered poor accessibility with existing screen readers.”
Even the leading digital audio workstation (DAW) Pro Tools struggled with keeping its software accessible through years of updates in the 2000s. At the time, in an effort to keep up with the latest versions of Apple’s desktop software, Avid offered newer plug-ins and features in its OS X version that those using older editions of Pro Tools did not get. The problem is, while the pre-existing Pro Tools HD (which launched in 2002) was “almost entirely accessible,” according to audio engineer Slau Hatlyn in an article on Avid’s website, the software for OS X wasn’t usable even after Apple introduced its VoiceOver screen reader in 10.4 Tiger in 2005. The only thing Hatlyn could access was the menu bar. “No other windows were readable.”
It took until Pro Tools version 8’s launch in 2008 for the software to regain accessibility, a long time considering “the previous accessible version was 5.3,” according to Hatlyn. Even so, the conversation continued, with Hatlyn calling out changes that broke accessibility between versions 10 and 11.
Arturia
And this is one of the industry’s most widely used DAWs. While Apple’s Logic is lauded as accessible, other music software companies that build assistive technology into their products are a rarity. Brands like Ableton and Image Line don’t appear to have comprehensive tools for the visually impaired in their products Ableton Live and FL Studios, at least based on the comments ontheir forums. A spokesperson for Ableton highlighted a Zoom Display feature, as well as recent updates to improve contrast, reduce automatic colors and adjust grid intensity as tools in Live for visually impaired users. The spokesperson added “We’re aware that there is much more to be done here.” Image Line has yet to respond to our request for comment.
Will Butler, the vice president of company whose app, Be My Eyes, connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers, wrote a LinkedIn post about the accessibility of music software. In it, Butler asked blind music producer Byron Harden to anecdotally rank the accessibility of popular music software. While Harden placed GarageBand, Pro Tools, Audacity and Logic in the top four, awarding them passing scores out of ten, Ableton Live and FL Studio came in near the bottom with one point each.
Butler also highlighted Native Instruments for its efforts. In 2019, the company expanded support for Mac’s VoiceOver, as well as Narrator and the Speech API in Windows. Prior to that, Native Instruments had made keyboards with touch-sensitive rotary encoders and buttons with auditory feedback. With those, its software “can detect when the user’s fingers are resting on them, then give auditory feedback – synthesized speech – of the current value, and do so continuously as it’s adjusted.”
That auditory feedback is one of the features Arturia is bringing to Analog Lab V that Dasent is most grateful for. “One thing they got right: quality of feedback,” he said. Say for example you load a preset. When you hit the load button in Analog Lab V, it will say “Loaded” and read out the name of the pack. Dasent said that software can sometimes offer too much feedback or use overly lengthy sentences and phrases to communicate. It would be like a sighted person having to read 20 lines of text to get one little piece of information that a single sentence could have conveyed.
As Pfister recalled his first call with Dasent, he was amazed and shocked by the amount of effort Dasent was willing to expend to use Arturia’s instruments. “If they are willing to put in that much effort, why don’t we do a little bit to make their life so much easier?”
Indeed, while there are frontrunners in making music software more accessible for people with disabilities, the industry as a whole could benefit from a published set of best practices. This way, they could be disseminated to smaller companies entering the space and make it easier for them to build accessible products. Ultimately, as with the development of most assistive technologies, that would benefit all users regardless of able-bodiedness.
For years, IK Multimedia has given guitar players the ability to build the rig of their dreams or try their hero's setup without cramming a bunch of gear into their apartments — or emptying their savings account. The company's AmpliTube modeling software offers the ability to use popular effects, amps and cabinets via digital modeling rather than the hardware itself. But the app resides on computer or tablet, so it's not exactly the most convenient thing to take on the road. Today, IK Multimedia is debuting the AmpliTube X-GEAR line: a collection of four guitar pedals equipped with versions of the same effects available on the robust desktop software.
The AmpliTube X-GEAR pedals offer options for distortion (X-DRIVE), modulation (X-VIBE), delay (X-TIME) and reverb (X-SPACE). All four pedals are loaded with 16 different effects and IK Multimedia developed new algorithms for both reverb and delay. The company says that despite giving users a different set of tools, each of the X-GEAR devices uses the same hardware and digital signal processing (DSP).
IK Multimedia
Because these are based on powerful software, IK Multimedia says the X-GEAR pedals work well in both the studio and on stage. With the desktop app (AmpliTube SE is included with the pedals), you can make changes and save settings, including up to 300 presets, back to the hardware pedal as needed. Thanks to up to 192kHz internal processing and oversampling, the company says the X-GEAR pedals can give you the same "realism and response" as AmpliTube on the desktop.
Each X-GEAR pedal is housed in an aluminum shell with 24-bit/192kHz converters to keep noise at a minimum and 5Hz–24kHz frequency response. IK Multimedia says the frequency response combined with an analog dry path and selectable true or soft bypass will allow your guitar's tone to come through unfiltered. When it's time to record, the X-GEAR pedals can serve as a USB interface with a digital audio workstation (DAW). You can select between wet or dry signals, use a stereo output for monitoring and employ full MIDI compatibility. On stage, pair any item in the X-GEAR lineup with an expression pedal and you'll get even more control of each of the parameters on board. There are also five cabinet options on each pedal so you can connect them directly to a PA if needed.
The X-GEAR pedals go on sale in August for $300 each, but you can pre-order them now from the company's website. That price puts IK Multimedia's latest gear just below multi-effects options like Strymon's BlueSky and Mobius pedals. A key difference though is that IK Multimedia is known for mobile audio interfaces, MIDI controllers and software plug-ins while companies like Strymon are well-respected in the guitar world thanks to their established track records. This is really the first time IK Multimedia has built what many would consider "real" effects pedals, so it will be interesting to see if the company successfully leveraged its software expertise for this new hardware.
