ClintonFitch.com

After a year and a bit of talking, not talking, talking again, not talking again, and finally talking, Sprint and T-Mobile have agreed to merge as one company known as T-Mobile.  The $26.5 billion all stock transaction still has to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) here in the United States but it is likely to happen.  The new merged company will put serious pressure on the two biggest mobile carriers here in the US, AT&T and Verizon, as the new company will be focused on delivering 5G.

“This combination will create a fierce competitor with the network scale to deliver more for consumers and businesses in the form of lower prices, more innovation, and a second-to-none network experience – and do it all so much faster than either company could on its own,” said John Legere. “As industry lines blur and we enter the 5G era, consumers and businesses need a company with the disruptive culture and capabilities to force positive change on their behalf.”

The merged company is expected to be a boon for consumers too.  It is likely that plans will drop for existing Sprint customers as the companies come together over the course of 2018.

The Camera app for Chrome OS has been updated in the Chrome Web Store and brings the ability to record videos using your built-in web cam.  The new build is version 5.0 and technically, because it is a Chrome web app, it could be installed on a Windows PC or Mac if you have Chrome installed.  Why you would want to do this, I have no idea…. but you can.

Functionally, beyond adding the ability to record videos, there isn’t much new in the update.  The will record your videos in the maximum resolution of your web cam and will store them to your local storage on your Chromebook.

A fifth and somewhat surprising Chrome 67 build has been released to the Chrome OS Dev Channel.  For readers new to Chrome OS, the Dev Channel is what would be considered the Alpha channel for the platform.  Build 67.0.3396.19 (Platform version: 10575.17.0) comes just two days after the fourth build was released and brings the update to all devices.  The released on April 25th, build .17, was noted that it was for some devices.

From a feature or fixes update, there isn’t much to report.  This is basically the same build but has had a few underpinnings that allow it to get it out for all devices.

Update – Now Live in the Stable version

A new and pretty exciting feature is making its way to Microsoft Authenticator for iOS.  The feature will allow the app to keep a user’s credentials so they don’t get locked out of their accounts when they move to a new device.  The feature is a long requested feature by users and should make the migration from one phone to another more simple.

Today, if you migrate to a new phone, you have to pre-configure the Microsoft Authenticator app on your new phone prior to wiping your old one.  If you wipe the old one prior to doing this pre configuration, you run the risk of losing access to your two factor accounts – which is a gigantic pain, let’s be honest.  This new feature should make it a lot easier.