Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED
Technology
When an Android user sends a text message to an iPhone user, their chat bubble shows up in iOS shaded green rather than iMessage's default blue. This color coding signals to the iPhone user that the incoming text is arriving from outside the Apple ecosystem. But the divide goes beyond simple aesthetics. Photos and videos shared between the two mobile platforms don’t come through at full resolution. Neither do rich interactions like read receipts, typing indicators, and tapbacks. Group chats between the platforms are a total mess, filled with dropped messages and hurt feelings. A new app aims to bridge that blue-green bubble gap and make texting more seamless—and more secure with full encryption. It even turns Android texts blue! It’s what we’ve always wanted … right?
This week on Gadget Lab, we talk about Beeper Mini, the app trying to make our text conversations easier. WIRED features editor Jason Kehe joins us to campaign against the trend of interoperability on our phones. As Jason sees it, these friction-free communication mechanisms are causing us to slip into bad habits, become more isolated, and feel less inclined to put down our phones and have a real experience.
Show Notes:
Read Lauren’s story about the new Beeper app and the teenage coder who helped make it work. Read more of Jason’s various other controversial opinions.
Recommendations:
Jason recommends piracy, and also a few works about pirates like the show Our Flag Means Death and the book Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly. Lauren recommends the new BlackBerry movie. Mike recommends pizzelle Italian cookies. Buy ‘em or make ‘em.
Jason Kehe can be found on social media @jkehe. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
C’ES la Vie
Abortion Pill Orders Are Soaring
Live on Stage: Reid Hoffman and Fei-Fei Li
Oops, All Recommendations!
Taylor Swift’s Pro-Russia Doppelganger
Journalists in Studio Getting Coffee
Geoffrey Hinton: ‘It’s Far Too Late’ to Stop Artificial Intelligence
How Three Teens Broke the Internet
Oh, the Humaneity
Happy 1-Year Muskiversary
23andMe and You
Misinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It
Business Wars: Living in an Artificial World
Searching for a Better Google
Meta’s Sound and Vision
Alexa Gets an AI Makeover
Your Life, Your iPhone
We Robloxed So You Don’t Have To
I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Insight Story: Tech Trends Unpacked
Zero-Shot
Fast Forward by Tomorrow Unlocked: Tech past, tech future
The Unbelivable Truth - Series 1 - 26 including specials and pilot
Lex Fridman Podcast