The Daily Crunch 11/14/16

The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar arrives to mixed response, and Samsung makes its move in the connected car space. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for November 14, 2016. And if you can't keep a secret, you're in luck because your favorite platform is coming back.

1. The new MacBook Pro is here

Apple's new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is now arriving for the first customers, and the reviews all hit this morning. The reception was surprisingly mixed, with many reviewers noting that while a lot of things about the new machines are big steps forward, loss of ports and other factors feel like backwards movements. The Touch Bar already has some nice tricks up its sleeve, however.

Our own Brian Heater found that it's a good machine for those who've been waiting a long time to upgrade, but that still doesn't completely make up for some of the new pain points introduced, like not begin able to plug an SD card directly into the machine. FWIW, I still bought one and I'm looking forward to getting it this week.

2. iPhone's China sales could suffer under Trump

One of China's state-run newspapers is suggesting that iPhone sales in the country could suffer considerably under a Donald Trump presidency if one of his pre-election policy proposals goes through. Trump said he'd put in place a 45 percent tax on imports from China if elected, and the newspaper editorial form Global Times said that in that case, auto and iPhone sales from the U.S. would pay the price.

3. Samsung just made an $8 billion bet on connected cars

Samsung was planning a move in the car supply chain after all, and it turned out to be an acquisition of Harman, the company that supplies a lot of in-car connectivity and infotainment technology. It's a very big bet, and one that also includes Harman's extensive catalogue of consumer electronics brands, including Harman Kardon, JBL, Infinity and more. The car piece is the headline news, however.

4. Seeing is believing

Speaking of cars, they're increasingly using computer vision in their driver assistance systems, but in case you weren't fully clear on what that actually is, Devin has you covered. Basically it's teaching computers to see in a way that's at least similar in desired outcome to how we humans do.

5. FB claims 99% authenticity, whatever that means

Facebook is under heavy scrutiny around its proliferation of fake news, especially as some are suggesting that it played a part in the election of Donald Trump. Mark Zuckerberg responded to accusations personally, saying that "more than 99% of what people see is authentic," which is a really hard statement to verify or even parse, since "authentic" itself leaves room to interpretation. Also today news came out that the measures Facebook took to try to appease critics who said it was suppressing conservative viewpoints also hampered its ability to get rid of fake news.

6. Did you hear Secret's un-shutting down?

Oh boy Secret – you had a tremendous flame-out the first time around, after your network of anonymous social posts quickly devolved into bullying. But now you feel the need to come back, because, according to founder David Byttow, it's "too important to not exist." He told Sarah Buhr that's because current social media products have too much in the way of blindsides because they don't allow for expression of "truth." Not sure anonymity is going to help with avoiding the rampant cyberbullying and spread of misinformation, though.

7. Spectacles un-review

Snapchat's Spectacles aren't being released like a typical consumer hardware product, with reviewer early access and a big retail push. So Matthew didn't review them like he would a typical consumer hardware product. But he tells you a lot about what it's like using them... in a review-ish way.