Month: July 2021

Enlarge / Google Chat, in just some of its many form factors. (credit: Google)

Google Chat officially launched for consumers recently, and that means the time has come to dive back into everyone's favorite subject: Google messaging services!

Google Chat is the latest in Google's long and prodigious line of (usually) short-lived messaging applications, but this one is a bit more important than most of the others. While the "~2 years and under" club is packed full of losers—like Google Wave (2009-2010), Buzz (2010-2011), Disco (2011-2012), Google+ Messenger (2011-2013), Spaces (2016-2017), Allo (2016-2019), and YouTube Messages (2017-2019)—one continual throughline has been original Google Talk users. Google Talk was Google's inaugural chat application that started in 2005 (it's often unofficially nicknamed "GChat"). In 2013, Google Talk got an in-place upgrade to Google Hangouts, which was (mostly) compatible with Google's OG chat service. Now, Google Hangouts users will be seamlessly upgraded to Google Chat, resulting in 16 years of turbulent-but-functional Google messaging.

These days it feels like all I do is spread doom and gloom about Google's latest shutdowns or dead-on-arrival messaging app rollouts. But know up front that Google Chat is actually pretty good! Needing to be compatible with Google Hangouts—to date, Google's best-ever messaging app—means it's also a worthy successor to Google Hangouts. This app has lots of client support, online accounts instead of the limited phone number system pushed by Google Pay and Google Allo, and a smooth transition process for your existing chats and contacts. It's not as fully featured as more stable chat systems that have been around for years, but if you're looking for the basics across tons of devices, this 1.0 version of Google Chat is truthfully not bad.

• 

  A labeled mock-up of the new model shows where everything goes. [credit: Nintendo ]

Where is my 4K “Switch Pro” upgrade?

The most surprising thing about the Switch's newly announced "OLED Model" might just be what it's missing. Namely, it's missing a new chipset that bumps up the processing power above what's available on existing Switch hardware.

That lack of improved internals is surprising mainly because of a number of reports that promised the next Switch would support a bump to "4K graphics when paired with TVs," as Bloomberg phrased it is as recently as March. Bloomberg's reporters tend to be reliable when it comes to this kind of insider Nintendo reporting, including an early 2019 report that predicted a "lower-priced" Nintendo Switch Lite months ahead of its announcement. Bloomberg also got the other details right about the OLED Model, including the 7" OLED screen that maintains the original Switch's 720p resolution and the general timing of when manufacturing would begin.

Maybe Bloomberg's reporters just got ahead of themselves on this one detail and assumed 4K support that was never really in the cards. More likely, though, is that Nintendo just changed its plans for a processing-power boost at some point after Bloomberg's sources first leaked the information.