MobileViews Podcast 189: AirPods, new Chromebooks, & Happy New Year

Jon Westfall and I are back from our brief hiatus to start podcasting anew in 2017.

1. My 2009 Macbook Pro WiFi hardware died last week. So, I bought a $12 Aukey WF-R3 USB WiFi dongle. It works but is very slow: Maxes out around 6 Mbps down and about 0.7 Mbps up. Other devices are 50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up on the same AP.
2. First YoY sales decline for Apple since 2001. Ref: arstechnica.
3. Meanwhile, despite the Note 7 fiasco, Samsung Electronics fourth-quarter profits is up 50% YoY and is projected to be a 3-year high. Ref: Reuters
4. Amazon Echo as an IoT platform? Ref: Stratechery
5. New Samsung Chromebooks with touchscreens, stylus, and Android app ready. Ref: Engadget
6. ConspiracyViews: Japanese insurance company replacing 34 claim analysts with IBM’s Watson. Ref: Quartz
7. Jon’s thoughts on AirPods, and his “All Microsoft” semester.

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.