Thankfully, the mania of Black Friday is behind us and the tech news came thick and fast this week. Here are the winners and losers for this week in tech.
In the UK, there was the blockbuster news of a new biggest mobile network in town. The approval of the planned merger between Vodafone and Three creates the biggest provider in the United Kingdom.
We’re not sure whether that’s a win or a loss for anyone yet, but we’re not down to three providers with owned and operated spectrum in the UK EE, where there was once five. There’s now just EE (which was Orange and T-Mobile), O2, and this new Threedafone option. Traditionally speaking, less competition means higher prices, but we’ll see.
Wearable tech pioneer Oura will now tell smart ring wearers when they’re getting sick, while fans of the departed MacBook Pro Touchbar might be heartened by news of a new Kickstarter project going great guns. Sony also warned the benefits of AI in game development cannot be at the expense of the ‘human touch’.
With Max, the streaming world continued to get more like the television landscape it tried to replace, while on the music streaming side the major providers started issuing their roundups for 2024.
Keep reading to learn who we named our winner and loser in tech this week.
Winner: Google Pixel
If you’re the proud owner of a Google Pixel 6 or Pixel 7 series smartphone, or the original Pixel Fold you are a winner this week. Google surprisingly announced it is boosting the lifespan of these handsets with support for Android operating system and security updates for an additional two years.
The Pixel 6, for example, had officially ran out of road with Android 15, with Google only promising three years of updates following its launch in 2021. Now the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6a (love that) will get Android 16 next year and Android 17 the year after.
The Pixel 7 range and original Pixel Fold will now live to see Android 18.
It’s a great bonus for owners of those phones, especially those with the ‘a’ series handsets, which continue to be the absolute best value in the smartphone realm.
From the Pixel 8 onwards, Google now promises seven years of Android updates, but retrospectively adding two years of support to older phones is a classy move that’s sure to increase goodwill among users.
Loser: Spotify Wrapped 2024
Bad vibes around Spotify Wrapped this year. The usual excitement was replaced by criticism as the streaming giant chose not to furnish listeners with their favourite albums and genres of the year. Instead, it went with an absolutely infuriating list of micro-genres as part of so called “Music Evolution” throughout the year.
Apparently June was my “Psychedelic Beatlesesque Classic Rock season” and October was my “Indie Sleaze Skateboarding Punk moment”.
For others it was worse (see below).
What’s with this current bo****ks where everything needs to be assigned to an “era” or a “SZN”? Just tell me which band I listened to most this year and let me share it with my friends. Thank you.
It got even worse with the inevitable unwanted incursion of AI, where two bots talked through your year in music with the faux enthusiasm you’d expect from a commercial radio host who’d been told Monday morning was a Nickelback marathon. I’ve had more of a say on that front here.
Personally, I was disappointed with Wrapped this year, because it made me realise how narrow my horizons have become. I used to rely on Spotify as a music discovery tool, but now I feel it has gotten to know me too well and is simply playing more of what I listen to all the time. Or, as one Guardian columnist put it this week: “It’s Spotify Wrapped season: a reminder of how incredibly dull streaming services have made us”
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