#83 - 📱 The iPhone as a Webcam & Youtube without frills
Greg Taieb · · 5 min read
Hello,
I hope you are well.
It’s summer and this newsletter will slow down slightly in August. I haven't forgotten you and you can already listen to me every week on a new episode of my podcast.
And if you prefer writing, check your emails, my newsletters will be less regular but I'm still preparing a few small topics for you.
Happy reading and above all happy holidays!
🎦 How will the iPhone become the best webcam?
Covid had an advantage, it saved 5 or 10 years for video in the professional world. What was used on the margins until now became the practice when it became for several months the only way to see colleagues.
😓The problem?
We weren't necessarily well equipped to make video calls! The cameras integrated into laptops are crap and good webcams cost several hundred euros.
Except that if you think about it, there is a very good quality camera that you always have with you: your phone!
Several applications have been developed to transform the smartphone into a webcam but once again Apple has just killed the game with a simple software update.
This feature is called Continuity Camera and it is just crazy!
🧐How does it work?
First of all, for the magic to work you need to have an iPhone and an iPad equipped with the operating system versions which will be released next September (and which I have been testing in beta for a few weeks).
Once you have that, there's nothing to do! If the 2 devices are on the same wifi network, your iPhone will automatically be recognized as a new webcam and that's magic! Basically you have a Webcam as good as the rear sensor of your iPhone and that changes everything!
All without any wires of course!
A very small example to show you the difference.
On the left the iPhone on the right the Webcam of my laptop
In short I am a fan of the result I just need a support to clip the phone to the Mac and I would be on top!
Must be tested at the start of the school year if you have an iPhone and a Mac.
📺 YouTube sans frills
We're not going to lie, the experience on YouTube is a disaster! Between the trends that don't interest you, the relative videos that waste your time and an interface that is too busy and the abundance of ads, it has become very unpleasant to spend time on the platform.
And yet I have a solution to drastically improve the Youtube experience
🚀 What is it?
This extension (Google Chrome, Edge or Firefox) will "clean" everything that pollutes the Youtube interface!
Once the extension is installed, you just define what you want to hide and...that's it!
Concretely when you open YouTube you only have a search bar and if you open a video directly... you only see the video!
It's magnificent and we rediscover the pleasure of using the platform
💡 Who is it for?
Those who want a minimalist interface displaying only the content they came to look for.
Controlled consumption.
💸 How much does it cost?
It's perfectly free and better, it will save you a lot of time by not falling into the rabbit hole from YouTube.
🚘 Is the future of the automobile subscription?
Today you pay a subscription for your films, your music and certainly a bunch of other services but there were certain areas that seemed so far spared by this trend.
I am thinking in particular of automobiles and I am not talking about leasing. Until now when you bought a car, you had access to all these features without limits.
Let it be said, this period is over and you will now have to pay to use options (which you already pay for when buying your vehicle) 🤪.
And against all expectations the offensive comes from the manufacturers who need it the least.
A few months ago BMW charged its customers $80/month to use the Apple Carplay system. A system available free of charge from all manufacturers. Faced with the outcry, the manufacturer backtracked...only to come back with even more devious techniques.
Latest “innovation”, charging $18/month for heated seats and sometimes more for other options.
A technique that makes customers cringe but who cares, ahead of time? the jackpot that this represents, it is likely that manufacturers will increase the number of paid options.
General Motors claims to have generated a turnover of $2 billion last year with paid options and is targeting 25 billion by 2030.
To see if the solution is tenable knowing that cars are more and more expensive and that the transition to electric vehicles is not going to help things.
Or else completely change the business model of cars by lowering purchase prices to subsidize the vehicle thanks to the subscriptions that we attach to it. This is clearly what happened in the 2000s with the takeoff of the cell phone...
To be continued.
🎧 The podcasts that you missed
Summer is in full swing but that doesn't stop us with my sidekick Remi to offer you a new episode of our Podcast every week: Another Tech Podcast.
Here are the last 2 episodes and exclude the subject of this week's episode.
- The (new) race to the Moon: Nasa vs SpaceX - s02e31: How the space race has started again with incredible opportunities (and a nod to a series we love)
- The lockscreen revolution - s02e32: how the place where we spend 25% of our smartphone time will reinvent itself in the coming weeks.
This Thursday we'll tell you tells the continuation (and end) of the tech episode of the year: The failed takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. Finally failed...it all depends on whether Elon ever really wanted to buy Twitter.