Episode 48 – Consumer Tech in Africa, Apple & AI

Our News Roundup covered three topics: Spotify's financials, which Jan wrote about earlier in the week; Microsoft's decision to exit the consumer smartphone market; and Twitter's planned change to the 140-character limit. Our Question of the Week piggybacks off Aaron's recent trip to Ghana, which is one of a number of trips he's made there over the last nine years. The question is "What's the state of consumer technology in Africa?" and we spent a good amount of timing doing a deep dive into this topic, based not just on Aaron's personal observations but on additional research (see the show notes for a couple of good sources). Our third topic this episode was Apple's efforts in AI, and a narrative that seems to have emerged recently about a perception that Apple is behind in AI, and that this will be problematic for the company. We talk about the pros and cons of this argument, how it relates to Siri specifically, and how Siri might evolve at this year's WWDC. Lastly, we have our Weekly Pick, which is actually a double recommendation from Jan this time around. As usual, head over to the website at podcast.beyonddevic.es for show notes including links to some of the related material discussed on this episode.