Parallel 41: A Tech Year in Review

From the technology impacts of COVID-19 to the ways Apple succeeded and didn't, here's Parallel's sendoff of 2020.

From the technology impacts of COVID-19 to the ways Apple succeeded and didn't, here's Parallel's sendoff of 2020.

This episode of Parallel is sponsored by:
The Intrazone by Microsoft SharePoint: Your bi-weekly conversation and interview podcast hosted by the SharePoint team
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Guest Starring:

Jason Snell and Jonathan Mosen

Links and Show Notes: Round 1

We're all working from home

Using Gene Sequencing and mRNA to create a COVID vaccine

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/covid-vaccine.html
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/record-setting-speed-vaccine-makers-take-their-first-shots-new-coronavirus

Games for all

The year of Animal Crossing and Among Us: people gathered to play more casual games

Round 2

iOS People Detection

iPhone can now tell blind users where and how far away they are.

Apple makes Macs with its own processors

https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/11/m1-macs-review/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/mac-mini-and-apple-silicon-m1-review-not-so-crazy-after-all/

US politicians’ big tech regulation talk grows louder

https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/facebook-breakup-antitrust-instagram-whatsapp.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/tech/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-ftc-attorney-generals/index.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/google-and-antitrust-big-tech-s-first-target-could-face-more-legal-action/ar-BB1bP9c7

Round 3

Apple's broken public beta

Are blind people members of the public too? Apple releases a public beta of watchOS knowing it doesn’t work with VoiceOver.

Apple adds full cursor support to iPad, releases keyboard with trackpad

https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/the-ipad-cursor-is-here-no-wait-required/
https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/in-praise-of-the-ipados-134-cursor/
https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/04/magic-keyboard-ipad-pro-review/

The Failure of contact tracing in the US

https://www.govtech.com/network/States-Prioritized-Broadband-as-COVID-19-Took-Hold.html

Round 4 (the whimsical one)

With vinyl and even cassettes becoming fashionable again, what retro technology might be in vogue as this next new decade begins?

Is 2020 the year of Dungeons and Dragons?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/07/24/amid-pandemic-racial-reckoning-dd-finds-itself-an-inflection-point/

Who needs prestige TV when there’s comfort TV?

https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/peak-comfort-tv.html
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/10/comforting-tv-streaming-election

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