Light Start: Is Apple Card biased? Japanese S(u)pider-Man will join the Spider-Verse, Microsoft is merging Office and here’s the most boring game ever
Marcé
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The new Apple card system is sexist?
Last year, Apple rolled out another, stranger piece of hardware — a titanium credit card. And since launch, many in the US have flocked to use the Goldman Sachs-backed credit facility, and everything seemed hunky-dory. Until this weekend that is. Tech entrepreneur David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted that the Apple Card gave him a credit limit 20 times higher than that of his wife. The tweet went viral almost immediately, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak weighed in. He said that the same happened to his wife. While we know credit allocations can rely on a variety of variables, both mentioned that their financial standings are similar to that of their wives’. On the contrary, Hansson said that his wife has a better credit record, and was allocated a much smaller credit facility than him. “In an email, Goldman said Apple Card applicants were evaluated independently, according to income and creditworthiness, taking into account factors such as personal credit scores and personal debt,” Reuters reports. The company holds full that they do not discriminate according to gender, and that an investigation will be done to figure out what happened here.
We might see another friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man in the Spiderverse
We cannot wait for the second installation of Sony’s brilliant technicolour Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie. The first saw an unexpected band of Spider-men (and women) head out to save New York, and the world. Now it looks like we’ll see another friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man join in the action — Japanese Spider-Man. The movie’s producer, Phil Lord, kind of confirmed (read: this is not super official) that the character will appear in the movie by replying to a tweet. Yeah, we know it’s not the most official method to announce things, but we live in 2019 and it’s very possible this could be true. A fan on Twitter requested a shot at designing Japanese Spider-Man for the film, and Lord replied: “He’s designed!” That’s good enough for us… though we’re not sure how much screen-time the gun-loving weirdo will get. The sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is set to release after 2020, so we’ve still got a long way to go before we’ll see any indication of actual confirmed characters.
Word, Excel and Powerpoint will merge into one app for mobile
We all need to do some document-editing on-the-go sometimes. And our smartphones are more powerful than most computers were ten years ago… so why not make Microsoft Office more mobile-friendly? Microsoft has announced that it will start testing a new version of the Office app that combines Word, Excel and Powerpoint into one. According to CNET, the new app is now available as a public beta on Android and on Apple’s iOS Test Flight program. At the time of writing, we’re not sure if South Africans can access the beta yet. What makes it so cool, though? The app will allow users to create new documents, presentations and spreadsheets as well as edit and view existing documents. All in one spot. “You’ll also be able to ‘snap a picture of a document’ and make it into an editable Word file, create and sign PDFs, or ‘transform tables from a printed page into an Excel spreadsheet’,” CNET explains. The full app will probably be available to everyone on both Android and iOS ‘in the first half of next year’.
The most boring game in the world will launch soon
From the network that brought us The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, we bring you the (supposed) most boring game ever, called Airplane Mode. Yes, it is made by a TV network and is an aeroplane simulator. Of sorts. Only this time, you’re a passenger and don’t get to fly the plane. We’re betting that this could take the cake as the most boring game ever because no-one likes sitting on long-haul flight IRL, why would we want to do it virtually too? Features in the game include a chance of inclement weather and turbulence (even delays), the possibility of bad of no WiFi access, there’s an overhead reading light and complementary aircraft information card, a carry-on bag stocked with a book, headphones and charging cable and an in-flight magazine filled with travel articles, crossword and sudoku. Those should keep you entertained throughout the virtual flight, right? The game will be developed by Hosni Auji, that describes the game more as social commentary than entertainment. It will launch sometime in 2020 and… we’ll probs give this one a miss. Unless there are snakes as well.
