Tech Week Ahead: Feuding Companies

Audie Cornish and Robert Siegel look ahead to the week in tech news with Steve Henn. They cover spats between Twitter and Instagram, and Google and Apple.

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Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

I'm Audie Cornish. And it's time now for All Tech Considered

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CORNISH: First, our quick look ahead to the week's tech news with NPR's Steve Henn.

STEVE HENN, BYLINE: The first story I wanted to talk about was this spat between Instagram and Twitter.

CORNISH: You may remember back in April, Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for about $1 billion. Since then...

HENN: It hasn't played so well with Twitter, which has pretty much become a rival.

CORNISH: Most recently, Instagram disabled the ability to share photos on Twitter. Now, the tweeting bird is fighting back and not just in 140 characters or less. Twitter has announced that it will release its own photo features later this month, just in time for the holidays and all your plates of food.

SIEGEL: That little spat hardly compares, though, to another ongoing dispute between two giants of the tech world: Apple and Google. Earlier this year, Apple dropped Google Maps and created its own mapping system, much to the dismay of users and eventually perhaps Apple itself. CEO Tim Cook publicly apologized for the troubled service in September, and several people involved in developing it have since been fired.

Well, now, the mapping mishap has caused police in Victoria, Australia, to issue a warning. They've cautioned against using Apple maps to reach the city of Mildura because...

HENN: Apple has been directing people in search of the city into Murray Sunset National Park, and so police have actually had to rescue several of them.

SIEGEL: The park sounds pleasant enough, but..

HENN: Murray Sunset National Park is noted for its vastness and isolation.

SIEGEL: And that's our quick look ahead to the week's tech news with NPR's Steve Henn. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.