🪅 Heap Heap Hurray Ed. #141

Good morning! Let's make this Tuesday a productive one!

#WindowsIntelligence - Move over AI / Apple Intelligence. Taking a leaf from Apple’s marketing book, Microsoft seems to be rebranding it’s AI tools to be named “Windows Intelligence”.

#NoMoreTouchScreens - After Apple provided a dedicated button for camera control on the latest iPhone, designers are wondering if Touch Screens are going to soon fade away. Even automakers are realizing that providing a touch screen interface is not always the best and are falling back to actual manual controls.

#XRayRecaps - Imagine this - you started a show but then did not continue to watch it and after few days have forgotten what happened thus far. Well, Prime Video will start giving you AI “Recaps”. X-Ray Recaps uses AI to create “brief, easy-to-digest summaries” of entire TV seasons, single episodes or even portions of episodes. The company promises “short textual snippets of key cliffhangers and, character-driven plot points.

#GrokChatbot - xAI launched its AI chatbot, Grok, at the end of 2023 and it has remained exclusively available to X (formerly Twitter) premium users since. Now, one year later, GroK is seemingly coming to free X users in select areas. It always made headlines for the wrong reasons - and now that free users will get their hands on it… it’s not going to end up well is it?

Elon Musk’s Starlink Soon To Launch In India
Starlink, the satellite internet service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is forging ahead with the license application in India. It is reported that the company has agreed to comply with the government’Satellite broadband from a foreign player to a market that is dominated by ethernet-based broadband.

Jio's 5g Network To Save Up To 40% Battery Life, Improve Streaming Experience
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) just shared the Q2 financial Year 2025 earnings call report. The company claims that its Jio 5G network will help save up to 40% battery life on smartphones. This is all thanks to Jio adopting smart spectrum management and other advanced technologies.

Groww Overtakes Zerodha To Become The Largest Stock Broker In India
Groww is an Indian fintech company that offers online brokerage services, allowing users to trade in Indian equity, commodity, and currency markets. It's like Robinhood, but specific to the Indian market. Today, they announced that they have surpassed Zerodha, their main competitor, to become the largest stock broker in India with over 12.59 million active traders. This is a significant milestone, showing the company's rapid growth and adoption of online brokerage services in India.

Zomato's Food Rescue Initiative
Zomato is a popular food delivery and discovery platform, now venturing into food rescue to reduce food waste. Today, Deepinder Goyal, the CEO, announced a new initiative to rescue surplus food from restaurants and suppliers, and redistribute it to those in need. People can now purchase, at a discount, orders that were already prepared but cancelled by other customers.

Apple Ditches Repair Restrictions
Although this is currently applicable for US customers only, it may soon be rolled out to other countries too. Apple has begun selling repair parts for iPhone 16 and 16 Pro phones on its self-service repair store. That includes replacements for commonly damaged parts like cameras, displays, and back glass. It follows the release of official Apple iPhone 16 repair manuals in September.

Apple Halts Vision Pro Production Due To Unsustainable Pricing
Remember how excited you were when Apple launched their virtual reality (VR) headset, Vision Pro? Well, it's not exactly the success story it seemed to be. After almost a year since its release, Apple's decided to stop producing the headset due to poor sales. The main issue was the high price, starting at $3,999, which made it unaffordable for most people. Apple's admitting it wasn't designed to be a mass-market product, but it's a lesson learned for the company.

Next Validate Link | A tool that ensures all Markdown links in your Next.js app are valid and up-to-date.

Varse | A fast application config manager

Design Docs As Engineering Tool
The author of this blog, a Principal engineer says writing design docs is useful for all levels of software engineering. They say writing a design doc helps you see things that just plain don't make sense. They also say it's better to collaborate on design documents with other engineers.

How To Not Reset A Form In React
In this tutorial, learn how to keep the form state intact after a server action in React, especially in cases where the action fails. Using Next.js and a simple form example, discover how to prevent form reset by returning form data in the server action and setting default values of form elements.

LocalStack - How To Setup A Local AWS Environment
LocalStack provides a drop-in replacement for AWS, allowing developers to emulate AWS API functionality locally. With a simple installation process, users can start using LocalStack to test AWS services without the need for an AWS account or unpredictable billing. This has been especially helpful for the author as they explore System Initiative, a service that relies on AWS API functionality.