This Week in Tech News

The annual consumer electronics show, known as CES, will be virtual this year with presentations via Zoom. Does Leo say "why even bother?" More companies are doing their own thing and doing it year-round. So why even waste the time? Let companies do their own thing.

Facing a downward trend in the last few years, 2020 brought a surge of audio and eBooks as people looked for ways to pass the time during the Pandemic. The result was a 17% increase in sales. Leo also says it could signal a seed change back to people reading.

Leo says that Apple's new $550 Airpod Max Headphones are too cheap for high-end headphones, and too expensive for just about everything else. But he says that while these fit into a gray area that's going to use computational audio driven by 10 core processors. So customers have a supercomputer in each ear. It will support things like surround sound and will take an imperfect stream of audio and make it better. But Leo will never buy them, even though while they are pricey status symbols now, they may end up being worth the price down the line as the technology improves. 

During a four hour stream for its annual Investor Day, the Walt Disney Company executives previewed their slate of new content for Star Wars, Marvel, Disney, and National Geographic. Leo says the huge takeaway here is that Disney's upcoming slate is 80% streaming content. That's huge. 

A few days later, it was reported that Disney+ streaming service will be raising its rates in 2021.