Chrome tried the Safari re-design first

🏀 good morning! The best thing about Space Jam 2 wasn’t the movie, but all of the animated trailers for kids’ movies. Not that I could even vaguely understand what was going on. Boss baby vs ninja babies? I have no idea. But it looked like a lot of fun …

A former Google employee shared why Chrome abandoned a mobile user interface redesign years ago, similar to iOS 15 Safari.

• In short, Chris Lee, who was the Staff Interaction Designer at Google Chrome around 2016, advocated and led the effort to redesign Google Chrome on mobile.
• It was called Chrome Home and it was something that made it stable in Chrome on mobile if you checked the flag until it was pulled.
• Lee says his pitch to try a new approach was twofold:
• “1. Telephones kept getting bigger and we had the opportunity to innovate in creating a gestural, spatial interface that could still be operated with one hand. “
• “2. Mobile Chrome also grew in terms of functions – but since its minimalist user interface kept everything behind a “three-point menu”, these functions were underused and difficult to access. “
• Ultimately, after a series of tests, Google heard “a mix of reactions”. Tech freaks loved it, but: “… For some mainstream users, the change felt confusing. Chrome serves billions of users around the world with diverse technical backgrounds. I became more and more convinced that introducing Chrome Home wasn’t going to be good for all of our users. “
• Interesting. Chris Lee says he then spoke out in favor of dropping it, briefly mentioning that Safari in iOS 15 looks like it has “similar ideas and criticisms”.

Safari iOS 15 Beta:

• Here is MacStories Editor-in-chief Federico Viticci struggles to order food because the new bottom bar gets in the way in the beta version of Safari (Tweet), in a video with 74,000 views.
• YouTuber Quinn Nelson also complained about it a few days later.
• Which led people to speculate that there is no way Apple will release it as it is, or if Apple does it will wreak all sorts of new havoc. Especially hungry people who hope to add meals to their shopping cart.
• And asking the entire internet to redesign mobile websites for iOS 15 … probably won’t happen.
• Given that iOS 15 is a “Fall 2021” release, likely in September, and everything is a preventable issue, you’d bet that Apple would change its final design rather than destroy it all.
• Chris Lee’s gentle post on Google’s decision not to start tells us he hopes so too.

📆 Motorola announces August 5th event, Edge 20 series expected (Android authority).

⌚ Oppo Watch 2 was leaked ahead of its July 27 launch, but it’s unclear whether it will run Wear OS (Android authority).

📉 Why Samsung phones failed in China: From market leader in 2013 to less than one percentage point of market share. Samsung is either in the lead or in second place in most of the other countries where it competes (TechAltar / YouTube).

🥽 The new experimental API from Oculus connects VR with the real environment (Gizmodo).

🏹 Robinhood’s IPO is this Wednesday, and the company’s unusual public IPO roadshow that aired over the weekend had some weird things (the question was, your favorite planet was chosen). What else? Retirement accounts come through IRAs and Roth IRAs (The edge).

💵 With the US back on the streets (and worryingly avoiding public transport), parking apps are cashing in (Blumenberg, $).

🔊 Acoustic tweezers can pick up objects with sound waves – without physical contact (SciTechDaily).

🔴 Scientists have just ‘looked’ inside Mars with a seismograph and found a large but light core and a complex, warm crust (Ars-Technica).

🚁 Also on Mars: Ingenuity’s successful tenth flight means it has now flown more than a mile in the air of Mars. It has already taken 76 days longer on Mars than its original mission (Gizmodo).

⚾ MLB will attempt to use encrypted transmitters and bone conduction to stop sign theft (The edge).

⚡ Researchers are testing magnetized concrete that could charge your electric vehicle while driving (Engage).

🔋 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS first driving report: “It’s a really big deal,” says this test report (CNET).

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🎮 “Which video game would you like to play again for the first time?” (R / askreddit).