Alaska Air Dumping Kiosks for iPads; Today only 6 EVs Qualify for Full Federal Tax Credits; Google May Unveil Pixel Fold and 7a May 10th; Samsung Looks at Switching from Google to Bing

Alaska Airlines is going to remove its airport kiosks, in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and LA and replace them with iPad based stations…claiming it will get passengers through airport lobbies in 5 minutes or less. Geekwire.com reports that the iPad self-serve stations will let fliers scan their boarding passes quickly to print out bag tags, instead of entering a confirmation code or the like. Also, they plan to move to automated bag drops that use facial recognition to identify passengers, streamlining the bag-drop process…which means each station won’t be staffed by Alaska agents. That part seems iffy…it may end up with one agent covering 4 or 5 stations like the self-check outs at retail stores that often hang up or don’t work right. Right now, about 70% of passengers check in ahead of getting to the airport, and most use mobile boarding passes on their smartphones. 

As of today, only a handful of EVs qualify for the full $7500 federal tax credit. According to engadget.com, those are Cadillac Lyriq, Chevy Bolt, Chevy Bolt EUV, some Tesla Model 3 versions, some Tesla Model Y versions and Ford F-150 Lightning. This is due to strict new guidelines relating to EV batteries and to cutting out China as an approved trading partner. There are some other models that may qualify for a half tax credit of $3750, but if you want the full tax break, now you know what you will need to buy when moving to an EV. 

Rumors point to Google rolling out their Pixel Fold phone at the I/O developer conference coming up on May 10th. Bgr.com says that the phone may be available for preorder from the Google Store that day. It may be a long waiting period…right now the release date to the public is supposed to be June 27th. The Pixel Fold will run $1799. Also coming at the developer conference…the Pixel 7a, the more affordable Pixel phone. Those should be showing up in stores within the next 2 weeks or so. 

On the subject of Google, there is apparently a degree of shock and panic as word has gotten out that Samsung is thinking about dumping Google as their search engine in favor of Bing and ChatGPT. Arstechinca.com notes that it would be a huge blow to Google to lose one of Android’s biggest manufacturers. This is why Google has rushed ahead to release Magi, their own AI powered search engine tool…the first wave of features will be out in May, as we reported here earlier. With the carrot dangling from Magi, the Samsung and Google search contract “is under negotiation, and Samsung could stick with Google.” Samsung did use Bing as their only search engine way back in 2010, but after a couple years, Samsung switched back to Google. 

I’m Clark Reid, and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.