Tag: iOS

Today’s Deal is a great one for those of you looking to pick up a powerful external battery.  The Poweradd Pilot X7 20000mAh Power Bank is down to $16.49 today only over at Amazon.  Normally this dual USB port pack is $49.99 so this is a solid deal. 

The Poweradd Pilot X7 is powerful enough to charge a Samsung Galaxy S8 up to four times while it can charge an iPhone X about 4.5 times.  For those of you who have an iPhone 7 or 8, you can get 8, count ’em, 8 charges out of the pack before it needs to be recharged.  

After accidentally leaking the news over the weekend, Google has officially announced that audiobooks have come to Google Play Books.  The update requires that you have the latest version of the Play Books app for both Android and iOS, which is version 4.0 for those on Android.  Once you have it, you will be able to listen to your books on your phone or tablet.

Even better, Google has fully integrated the experience with Google Assistant and Google Home, meaning you can tell Assistant to read a book to you and it will read it on your Home.

If you missed out on picking up the beautifully styled Harman Kardon Invoke, powered by Microsoft Cortana, for $99 this past holiday season, now is your time.  Right now at the Microsoft Store you can pick one up for that special price, saving $100 in the process.

I posted my review of the Invoke in December and as I put in that review, it is one of the most stylish smart speakers out there with stunning audio quality as you would expect from Harman Kardon.  At the heart of the Invoke is Microsoft Cortana which, much like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, is a voice command away to help you with tasks or get information.

Of all of my Google devices, Google Home is quickly becoming my favorite.  I use it for everything from catching up on the morning news, listening to music or podcasts, and getting information with a simply command.  With Google Assistant built-in and Google continually adding functionality, we are only now seeing the tip of the iceberg of what Google Home could be doing for us and our smart homes in the future.

Normally Google Home is $129 but through the month of December, at the Google Store, you can pick one up for $79.  That $50 savings would effectively let you buy a Google Home Mini (nearly two in fact) so you can have Google Assistant available to you in multiple rooms in your home.  The Home Mini is down to just $29 right now at the Google Store.

For those of you who use Google Assistant on your iPhone, you can now have it play music from your Apple Music account.  Just like other music services, you can link your Apple Music account via a toggle switch in the Music section of the Settings for Assistant.  Once linked, you can use Assistant to play music from the service by saying, “Play Rush on Apple Music“.

The functionality of Google Assistant on iOS is somewhat limited as you cannot have it as your default Assistant.  That still is reserved for Siri and is unlikely to change (on Android, you can change the default Assistant app).  That means that the functionality of this new feature is going to require you to fire up Google Assistant and give the command.  In other words, it isn’t as smooth a user experience as Siri… but it is Google Assistant which is documented at being superior Siri in accuracy.

Google has announced support Movies Anywhere, the service that allows you to synchronize your movies across multiple devices along with movies that you have purchased from other digital stores.  The concept behind Movies Anywhere is to give you one repository for all of the movies you have bought from Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu and now Google Play.

Today, we’re taking it one step further by adding support for Movies Anywhere, allowing you to bring together your movies from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes and Vudu into a single library that you can access on any of your devices, regardless of where the purchase was originally made.

The addition of Google Play is a real win for consumers as you don’t have to go to multiple places on your devices or try to remember where you purchased movies in the past.  They all show up in one app now.