Mobile News - Week of July 26, 2021

Within a listing, you will see a summary from the developer on what kind of data an app collects, so you can make a decision whether to install it or not. You’ll also see safety details the developer chooses to highlight, such as whether an app encrypts your data, whether it’s suitable for children and families and whether it’s been independently validated against a global security standard.

Facebook has launched its cloud casual gaming service on iOS using Safari, after Apple refused to let it in the app store. Apple has strong strategic reasons to do this, but none of the security and privacy justifications it normally uses for barring things from the store apply here - this is pure self-interest.

On the other hand, the fact that Facebook and Microsoft can launch on iOS anyway somewhat weakens the ‘app stores are monopolies’ attack. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s new foundry will produce 2-nanometer chips. Construction on the plant in Hsinchu, southwest from Taiwan’s capital of Taipei, is expected to start as soon as early 2022. This isn’t great news for Intel, which yesterday said it would reach process parity by 2024 and leadership by 2025. TSMC’s 3nm tech is reportedly expected to be put into production in late 2022—meanwhile, Intel will be rolling out 7nm chips toward the end of 2022 and into 2023.

Google has looked at iMessage with envy for a decade, and had various failed projects to use RCS as Android’s messenger and as a judo move against Apple (and Facebook), somehow in partnership with telcos. Now they’re all trying again, with Google plus the big three US MNOs all committing to making RCS the default. Maybe that would mean Apple would have to support it. Or maybe this doesn’t solve any consumer problem anymore and it will be lost in the sand like all the others. 

Following the standard textbook for platform ecosystems, Roblox now has a fund to invest in people making games and apps for its platform. No word on total size but they will write >$500k cheques.