Physical Apple Card & Leather; Future Google ‘Nest Mini’; Gmail To Autocorrect Typos & Grammar; Bose Portable Speaker Runs Alexa AND Google Assistant

Documentation from Apple warns not to keep your new physical Apple card in a leather wallet or in denim…as either may cause ‘permanent discoloration that will not wash off.’ According to arstechnica.com, the titanium card is painted white, and this warning purely relates to the cosmetic appearance, you may want to store it in a sleeve or in a wallet or bag made of soft material. Apple also warns about slotting it with other credit cards, which can demagnetize the magnetic stripe…but that’s true of al credit cards. You can clean it with a gentle swipe of a soft, microfiber cloth and a bit of isopropyl alcohol. Maybe they should have just left it bare titanium….

Google is readying an updated Home Mini which will be rebranded the ‘Nest Mini’. 9to5google.com reports that it will feature better sound quality and louder available volume, a wall mount, and a 3.5 mm stereo jack. The leak doesn’t specify if the jack is for audio input, or is an output jack for an additional speaker or headphones. Of note: the Nest Mini will apparently have some sort of proximity awareness like the Nest thermostat and Hub. No word on pricing, but a good guess is that Google will stay close to the $49 price point of the last model. The Nest Mini is expected to bow at the Pixel 4 event this Fall.

Gmail is going to get an update that will feature autocorrect for grammar and typos. Thenextweb.com says the update is rolling out now for G Suite users on the web, and it uses AI to spot the errors. Small spelling errors will be corrected for you on the fly. If it detects a grammar error, you’ll see a squiggly blue line under the phrase or sentence. The features are being ported over from Google Docs, which got them back in February.

So far, Bose has just had relatively inexpensive portable speakers. Now, that changes, with a new model named (rather plainly) Portable Home Speaker. According to techcrunch.com, the $350 speaker comes with a handle that swings up like on a bucket, so it can be toted from room to room. It’s smaller in diameter than the Apple Home Pod, and the killer feature (without hearing it of course…the audio sound should be in that category for $350!) is that the Bose rocks two mics and runs Google Assistant AND Amazon Alexa. It also has AirPlay2 and Spotify connectivity baked in. The Bose Portable Home Speaker bows September 19th.