Tech News Today for January 13, 2017

Tech News for Friday January 13, 2017

Let's start with the story that has captivated Nintendo fans since last night, The Switch. That's the name of the much-anticipated 6.2-inch multi-touch screen portable gaming system from Nintendo. The Verge says with true portability combined with the ability to stream high res to your television already gets right what that WiiU gets wrong. The Joy Con is the controller and there's an option for a Pro controller. It'll cost $300 and be available on March 3. Is this something you're going to add to your home gaming collection?  Read more at theverge.com.

Consumer Reports says they will now give Apple's new MacBook's their coveted Recommended rating. Back in December the magazine said they could not recommend the laptops due to inconsistent battery life. Apple fixed the bug on January 9th. Consumer Reports retested the MacBook's and now they recommend them. The battery life in Consumer Reports testing was even higher than the 10 hours that Apple claims. The average battery life according to testing is 15.75 hours for the 13 inch with the touch bar 18.75 hours for the 13 inch without the touch bar and 17.25 hours for the 15 inch, which all come with touch bars.  Read more at consumerreports.org.

Facebook-owned Messaging tool WhatsApp is under the privacy microscope again, this time for what The Guardian is calling a backdoor that allows snooping, even on encrypted messages. Sources call the flaw a threat to privacy and a potential tool for government agency spying. However, security experts say the Guardian report is flawed and that the flaw is really a loophole that users can close by choosing to be notified when anyone who they communicate with changes their encryption key.  Read more at theguardian.com.

Microsoft just acquired a Toronto-based AI startup called Maluuba. In a blog post on their site, the creators of Maluuba say their focus is artificial general intelligence or creating literate machines that could think. Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence head executive Harry Shum says Microsoft will share their plans for Maluuba in the coming months, but it will most likely include some kind of AI for the enterprise.  Read more at fortune.com.

Megan Morrone is joined today by Georgia Dow from iMore.com. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.