{"id":24524,"date":"2020-04-20T10:30:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T10:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/20\/week-in-review-facebook-hardware-finds-pandemic-market-fit\/"},"modified":"2020-04-20T10:30:32","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T10:30:32","slug":"week-in-review-facebook-hardware-finds-pandemic-market-fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/20\/week-in-review-facebook-hardware-finds-pandemic-market-fit\/","title":{"rendered":"Week in Review: Facebook hardware finds pandemic market fit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hey everybody, welcome back to Week in Review. The world of COVID-19 is our new reality, so I\u2019ll continue to include links to some positive updates on research, but I\u2019ll be shifting back the focus to covering tech\u2019s movers and shakers of the week.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>, and follow my tweets\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/h2>\n

The big story<\/h2>\n

One thing that\u2019s been interesting to see over the past few weeks is how our relationship with screen time has changed. For many, screen time is now all the time and while we haven\u2019t stopped using too many gadgets, there are some we\u2019ve taken out of drawers and closets and added to our repertoire.<\/p>\n

For some, it\u2019s been cooking gadgets. While I\u2019ve yet to open up the sous vide gadget I received over the holidays, I was very tempted by my editor\u2019s review of the Ooni gas-fired outdoor pizza oven<\/a> this week. For me, I\u2019ve strangely seemed to spend a lot more time with the two gadgets I own that are made by Facebook. The currently sold-out Oculus Quest and Facebook Portal are the twin pillars of Facebook\u2019s hardware strategy, but it\u2019s been a bit interesting to see how much more that strategy seems to thrive when we\u2019re all stuck at home.<\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, Facebook\u2019s hardware feels built for a quarantine.<\/p>\n

The Quest spent a lot of time in my closet when I was out in the world pre-quarantine, but now that I\u2019m in my house most of the day, it spends a good amount of time strapped to my face. When VR was a more hyped technology, there was a broader conversation of whether it encouraged isolation, something promoters of the tech pushed aside, noting that it enables rich shared experiences over the web. As we all host Zoom birthday parties and visit each other\u2019s Animal Crossing islands, it\u2019s becoming clear that with the absence of available physical connections, we can turn a lot of things into rich shared experiences.<\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, the Quest is a reminder of what I\u2019m missing out on. The walls of my SF apartment feel less containing when I can hop into a VR workout or jump between games. For the first time, the technology has felt transportive in the way that the ads sold it, but it\u2019s not that the experiences have gotten better, the world has just gotten much worse.<\/p>\n

In the same way that VR allows us to re-skin isolation, the Portal allows us to commiserate in it.<\/p>\n

My Portal usage has spiked in the past weeks as well. Before stay-at-home orders, coordinating a call with multiple family members was a logistical nightmare and FaceTime calls made it more likely we\u2019d get in touch with each other, but none of my siblings are wandering far from their Portals these days.<\/p>\n

We are all still on our phones, but for those of us working from home, mobile we are not. It\u2019s always been fascinating that a tech company which has wildly succeeded at capturing the nuances of mobile computing has been so devoted to selling hardware meant to move us around the internet while staying in place at home. Now, that we are all at home, we are all always there and the Portal really lives up to its name.<\/p>\n

Facebook has designed gadgets explicitly built for home use, and more than that, they\u2019re designed devices built around session-based use cases. While Amazon Echos and Google Homes have fit into a persistent IoT platform that are always there for us, Facebook\u2019s gadgets are more high-maintenance, designed for people to fully commit to. For a company that\u2019s focused on the universal nature of its software, its hardware has been built for almost no one\u2019s needs, instead designed to pull people into a future Facebook imagines.<\/p>\n

For now, I put the Quest on my face and sometime I tell the Portal to call my sisters, but will these quarantine oddities form tech habits I hold onto after this is all behind us? In these historic times, we are at home and we are craving connections, and, for the time being, the Facebook future feels good.<\/p>\n

\"jeff<\/p>\n

Trends of the week<\/h2>\n

Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:<\/p>\n