Google could be bringing its Quick Share tool to iOS and macOS. The convenient and fast file-sharing tool may need to play nicely with Apple’s restrictive policies.

Why is Quick Share missing on Apple iPhones?

Formerly known as Nearby Share, Quick Share arrived in 2020. It’s a file-transfer service that lets users quickly move any number of files over a local network connection.

iOS is one of the leading smartphone operating systems that’s exclusive to iPhones. Still, Quick Share isn’t even available as a standalone app on the Apple Store. Android users have to find another solution if they want to share files with anyone who has an iPhone.

Apple is quite restrictive about iOS and the backend processes. In other words, iOS and macOS are closed-source or proprietary operating systems. This could be one of the reasons why tools such as Quick Share don’t work on these platforms.

Google porting Quick Share to iOS and macOS, reveals code

Quick Share is one of the best and easiest tools to move files between Android phones. It is also available on Chromebooks and even Windows PCs can utilize Quick Share after installing the tool.

Quick Share is built on top of Nearby Connections, which is a peer-to-peer networking API that lets apps “easily discover, connect to, and exchange data with nearby devices in real-time, regardless of network connectivity.” The source code for Nearby Connections is easily and openly available on GitHub under Google’s Nearby repository. Google engineers improve the platform, fix bugs, and add new features to Quick Share regularly.

In one of the bug fixes, Android Authority discovered references to iOS and macOS. Mishaal Rahman spotted a potential clue suggesting that Google is working on bringing Quick Share to iOS and macOS.

Google hasn’t made any official announcements about Quick Share coming to iOS and macOS. Moreover, the company would have to make several changes to integrate Quick Share into Apple’s ecosystem and work in accordance with Apple’s App Store and privacy policies.

Interestingly, OnePlus has already laid the groundwork. According to Phone Arena, in the recently introduced OxygenOS 15, there’s a feature called “Share with iPhone”.

OnePlus essentially created a dedicated iOS app. While installing yet another app could be a minor convenience, it dwarfs in comparison to the possibility of easily transferring files between an Android device and an iPhone or MacBook computer.

Audible is offering a sweet promotion as an early Black Friday deal, allowing new users to sign up for three months of its Premium Plus plan for just $3. That breaks down to $1 per month. It’s only for new users, so anyone who has previously dipped their toes in the Audible waters are out of luck.

This offer starts today, but is available all the way until midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’s only for US customers and, as usual, the subscription will automatically renew after the three months, so be vigilant about smashing that cancel button if it’s not working out. The regular price for Audible Premium Plus is $15 per month plus tax.

Amazon

Audible Premium Plus is the top-tier offering for listening to audiobooks. A membership provides access to the entire catalog plus a monthly credit to purchase nearly any title outright. Subscriptions also offer discounts on other newly-released titles. All told, there are thousands of books to choose from, along with podcasts and Audible Originals.

To that end, there’s a whole lot of original content here for fans of different literary genres. James Patterson has an Audible Original that features a stacked voice cast, with Cobie Smulders and Reid Scott headlining. There’s also unique fare like sleep meditations and the like.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

Palo Alto, CA — October 2024 — Following its successful Series A funding round in August 2024, where DevRev secured $100.8 million and reached a $1.15 billion valuation, the company continues to drive forward its mission to revolutionize customer support and product development. Led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Mayfield Fund, Param Hansa Values, U First Capital, and several accelerators, family offices, and angel investors, this investment highlights the growing potential of AI-native enterprise software.

Fueling this mission is DevRev’s AgentOS platform, which is rapidly advancing GenAI adoption in enterprises. By offering seamless 1-click data migration from legacy systems and deploying lightweight AI agents, DevRev is setting a new standard for how businesses integrate and benefit from AI. 

A visionary approach to developer-customer interaction

DevRev, founded in October 2020 by Dheeraj Pandey, former co-founder and CEO of Nutanix, and Manoj Agarwal, former SVP of Engineering at Nutanix, aims to remodel how businesses connect developers directly with customers and revenue. The company was born out of a simple yet powerful realization:

“Today, every company is a software company, yet we isolate developers from customers and revenue…Our mission is to break down these barriers and empower developers to create customer-conscious products and businesses.” — Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of DevRev

DevRev’s knowledge graph powers its AgentOS, delivering AI-native solutions that streamline customer service, product management, and software engineering. The platform is already trusted by customers across all major geographies, various industries, and numerous company sizes, including many of the global leading players across AI, SaaS, and financial services.

By analyzing structured and unstructured data — from customer conversations to session analytics – the platform’s unique approach allows developers to connect their code directly to production issues and customer interactions. From there, DevRev’s AI-driven agents are able to automate enterprise workflows to reduce manual effort, enhance operational efficiency, and accelerate response times.

“We have invested heavily in the generative AI sector. We’ve noticed that to fully harness the potential of AI, the underlying data and knowledge infrastructure must be reimagined and rebuilt. DevRev is at the forefront of enabling AI adoption in enterprises, thanks to its innovative product architecture. Furthermore, DevRev is pioneering a new vision for organizational structure by breaking down internal silos, fostering greater collaboration and efficiency across the company.” — Dr. Ekta Dang, CEO of U First Capital

AI agents on knowledge graphs

Organizations today suffer from technology complexity that siloes around departments and their respective apps, data, and workflows, which results in poor customer experiences, delays in product development, and often building the wrong software.

DevRev believes that this complexity can be meaningfully resolved by AI-on-Knowledge Graphs, which combines the emerging power of GenAI and an organization’s own systems mapped into Knowledge Graphs. While AI is proving to be powerful, organizations are realizing that without Knowledge Graphs, they either end up with AI copilots on single apps or AI copilots on vast data lakes with little-to-no context or definition.

The solution begins by creating an organization’s Knowledge Graph by ingesting data from 2-way real time integrations with an organization’s CRM, support, and engineering applications, along with the underlying code repositories. By doing so, the Knowledge Graph understands the product (software), the customers (users), the people (employees), and the workflows involved, along with unique elements to the organization, such as security and customizations. Once mapped, customers and employees can run queries through AI Agents to not only return more accurate search results, but also power systems of action quickly across the organization. This is the productivity promise GenAI holds, which is only enabled by the contextual mapping that Knowledge Graphs provides.

With DevRev’s Knowledge Graph platform and data from major system of record applications that are ingested real-time into DevRev, DevRev creates an interdependent network of customer, user, product, employee, work and usage records.

Put simply, DevRev comprises both the front-end applications and the back-end Knowledge Graphs to analyze, contextualize, and act on enterprise data, enabling organizations to:

• Gain Deep Organizational Insights: spot emerging trends and linkages across customers, products, and employees to better inform strategic planning
• Increase Focus: connect the dots between product / engineering roadmaps and customer impact to better prioritize and allocate resources
• Boost Operational Efficiency: streamline operations by identifying bottlenecks, eliminating redundancies, and automating workflows across the organization
• Enhance Customer Experience: gain a comprehensive understanding of customer interactions and feedback, leading to more personalized and effective service

About DevRev

DevRev’s mission is to help build the world’s most customer-centric companies, embracing the principle that “less is better.” Founded in October 2020 by Dheeraj Pandey and Manoj Agarwal, DevRev is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in seven global locations. For more information, visit DevRev’s website.

About U First Capital

Led by two technical PhDs based in Silicon Valley for over two decades, U First Capital’s focus is to invest in stellar founders. The firm has invested in over twenty five category-leading companies like Anthropic, Cohere AI, Rubrik, Worldcoin, Pensando, Palantir, Uniphore, and Nile. For more information, visit U First Capital’s website. 

The reviews for Hyundai’s little electric SUV that could are trickling in, and it’s clear that the Inster is a delightful way to move about town — regardless of its lack of quickness compared to other similarly-sized EVs. The Inster’s top speed for the long-range version is about 93 miles per hour (or 150 km/h), and it has a zero to 62 mph (100km/h) acceleration in 10.6 seconds, according to the specs Hyundai published today.

Hyundai also revealed more details about the Inster’s price, with European reviewers saying it’s expensive compared to similar competition at £23,495 (about $25,477). In the US, however, that’s a price we can only dream about since our most affordable options include the $35,000 Chevy Equinox EV or the hope Tesla will deliver a cheaper car for around $25,000.

One newer compact EV that has made it to the US is the Fiat 500e. At 143 inches in length, it’s only about 7 inches shorter than the Inster at 150.59 inches. However, the Inster has more internal storage since it’s SUV-shaped, plus it has a range of about 230 miles WTLP on the long range 49 kWh battery compared to the 500e’s, which is under 200 miles.

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Wordle hints and answers, Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too.

In the US, Google TV products have access to over 150 free (ad-supported) channels, which is great. Recently, Google improved the experience of enjoying these channels with a new Google TV Freeplay, which includes a useful live guide. However, the Google TV Freeplay app has been disabled due to unexpected technical issues.

Google TV Freeplay app’s new features were causing crashes, so Google disabled it

Google began the rollout of the revamped Freeplay app in early September. The update made it much easier to use than before, where the experience of searching for channels and shows was quite cumbersome. The mere presence of a programming guide totally changed the reality of the app. Sadly, it seems that the guide was causing crashes on some devices.

As spotted by 9to5Google, the Google TV Freeplay app disappeared from all Google TV devices this week. The only product where it is still active and working without problems is the latest Google TV Streamer. The reason for the app’s disappearance was unknown, as not everyone was aware of the crash issues. However, an official statement from Google shed more light on what’s going on.

“While rolling out the new Google TV Freeplay guide, we discovered an issue that can increase crashes for some users. We have disabled access to the new guide on affected devices until the fix is ​​in place. The fix will begin rolling out soon, and the updated guide will be available for all Google TV devices in the coming months,” a company spokesperson said.

Freeplay could be back soon without the live guide

So, given the facts, by “affected devices” Google is referring to all Google TV products except the latest Streamer. While the company claims that the fix will be available “soon,” they also mention that the guide will be available “in the coming months.” So, possibly the Google TV Freeplay app will return in a few days, but without the latest improvements to the user experience. Let’s hope that a fixed version of the app with all the new features won’t take long to arrive.