Tech Roundup: Meta Quest Pro, Microsoft Designer & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Meta debuts $1,499 'Quest Pro' mixed reality headset that's aimed at "making the metaverse a reality"; comes with improved touch controllers that contain embedded sensors, allowing for better hand tracking, and new lenses for improved reading experiences, as the company readies to bring avatars to Reels, Messenger and WhatsApp for video chats.
• Microsoft partners with Meta to bring Teams, Office, Windows, and Xbox Cloud Gaming to VR, enabling users to "securely stream the entire Windows experience, including all the personalized apps, content, and settings" via a capable VR headset; to integrate Zoom and also partners with Ray-ban on creating new augmented reality glasses.
• Meta says the Quest Store has generated US$ 1.5 billion revenue to date from apps and games.
• Twitter begins prompting users to "add your date of birth to your profile" to view sensitive content as part of its safety efforts.
• Google teams up with Coinbase to let customers pay for its cloud services in "select" cryptocurrencies starting early next year; announces new Chromebooks tuned for cloud gaming (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now and Amazon Luna) in collaboration with Acer, Corsair, HyperX, Lenovo and SteelSeries as it retires its own Stadia service.
• Google adds automatic English transcriptions to Meet, with support for French, German, Spanish and Portuguese coming in 2023; expands smart chips (i.e., @-mentions) to support third-party apps from AODocs, Asana¸ Atlassian, Figma, Tableau, and Zendesk, and launches Meet add-on SDK to integrate third-party capabilities to Google Meet, as well as launch the video chat service from third-party apps like Asana and Figma.
• Google unifies all of its business intelligence products under the Looker umbrella, a data analytics startup it acquired in June 2019.
• News websites in the E.U. switch to a new "cookie paywall" roadblock that urges users to pay for a subscription or accept to be tracked via cookies. (While cookie consent popups have known to be full of dark patterns, the latest development is a sign that privacy – a fundamental right – comes with a price tag.)
• The U.S. government proposes new legislation that would require companies like Uber and Lyft to give gig workers new benefits and protections, including minimum wage and overtime.
• Apple, Google and Samsung to release 5G support software updates in India after telecom carriers Reliance Jio and Airtel begin offering 5G services in the country.
• Privacy-oriented messaging app Signal to phase out SMS and MMS support from its Android app; says the removal is motivated by the fact that "plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure."
• Microsoft debuts Surface Laptop 5 (US$ 999), Surface Pro 9 (US$ 999 for Intel and US$ 1,299 for Arm models), combining the Pro X and Pro lines, and 28-inch Surface Studio 2 (US$ 4,299) laptops; partners with Apple for better Music, TV, and iCloud photos integration in Windows and Xbox.
• Microsoft rebrands its built-in Office apps on Windows to Microsoft 365, and unveils Teams Premium with AI-based smart features like meeting recaps and live translations; launches Designer, a Canva-like graphic design app, and previews Places, a new app to help companies address hybrid workplace challenges, as part of Microsoft 365 business subscriptions.
• Microsoft announces Edge Workspaces, which lets users share a set of browser tabs for collaboration with a single link; brings typo protection for website URLs to the browser and adds support for disabling just-in-time JavaScript compilation when surfing unfamiliar websites.
• Mozilla expands Firefox Relay's features to support phone number masking, allowing users to share an alias number when signing up for online services.
• Twitter debuts Link Spotlight for business and professional accounts in the U.S.; also begins testing Community Spaces, which combines its Communities and Spaces features into one, letting mods to host audio Spaces in their Communities.