BBC News reported on Apple being sued over fatal ‘FaceTime crash’.

The lawsuit alleges that the firm should have introduced a feature that disabled use of the video-chat application while driving.

Does that mean drink-driving offenders should blame the alcohol breweries?

BirchTree reported on the difference between Google Assistant and Siri.

The tech narrative is that Siri sucks and Google Assistant is the second coming. I have been using Siri for years, and have been going 100% in on Android over the last few weeks and have given Google Assistant a solid effort. My experience has been a little different than the popular narrative.

I haven’t tried Google Assistant but Siri is so far good enough for my daily usage.

ReCode reported on Apple pulling the New York Times app in China.

“For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations,” Apple said in a statement. “As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.”

…

The New York Times already has its website blocked by Chinese sensors, but a redesigned iOS app allowed customers to bypass the firewall. The New York Times said in its article on the issue that the app will continue to work for those that have it, but that new users will have to find a way to get the app from another country’s App Store (which typically requires having a foreign credit card).

You can’t blame Apple for abiding by local laws. Locals who want access to such information would know how to bypass the firewall. NYT didn’t have to stick it’s head in.

Pocket Gamer on what Super Mario Run would look like as a free to play game.

“Why can’t it be free?” you ask a random passerby on the street. “Pokemon GO was free, so why isn’t Mario?” you scream, while angrily jabbing your finger at a Starbucks employee.

Many don’t realise free games aren’t exactly free.

Khoi Vinh wrote about what he learned about my iPhone after switching to the Google Pixel.

I also discovered something interesting about Google’s much vaunted strength in services: sometimes it’s no better than Apple’s. As an iTunes Match user, I’ve long bemoaned Apple’s inability to make automatic syncing of my music library between devices truly seamless and glitch free. It’s gotten better over the years, but it’s still prone to oddball errors and quirks which, in the past, always made me wish that Google was powering the service instead.

When I got the Pixel I figured I could use Google Play Music syncing for the same purpose—to get the contents of my music library to the Pixel. To my surprise, Google does an even poorer job than Apple. Among the problems I encountered: albums show up in multiple parts; tracks are missing; corrected meta information doesn’t get synced etc. To be fair, Google Play Music syncing is still mostly usable; it just failed to live up to my expectations for Google’s services prowess.

The grass is greener on the other side for some, that is, until they’ve crossed over.

Manton Reece wrote about the Dropbox, iCloud, and GitHub on the iPad.

The trend to new iCloud-first apps like Ulysses and Bear is fine. It doesn’t appeal to me, though. I use Ulysses on the Mac because I can sync with Dropbox. There are so many Dropbox-capable iOS text editors that I feel confident using my current favorite and switching whenever I want.

Although I was an avid user of Dropbox, moving to China has forced me to change how I use my apps, especially cloud services. Dropbox is blocked in China so I need a VPN to sync Dropbox.

Apple has an advantage in China because iCloud, well, just works. Until there is widespread support among apps for Aliyun, Baidu Pan or Weiyun, the big names in Chinese cloud storage, people in China will likely stick with iCloud. Even then, I don’t use hardly use these services so there is no push for me to move away from iCloud despite its shortcomings.