For MobileViews Podcast 571, I'm joined by guest co-hosts Sven Johannsen and Don Sorcinelli. We discuss:

Matson, Hawaii’s largest ocean cargo carrier, has ceased accepting electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles for transport to and from the islands due to mounting safety concerns over lithium-ion battery fires at sea, a move expected to severely impact Hawaii's car market. In a brighter tech development, RapidRAW, a new open-source RAW image editor, was introduced as a high-performance, lightweight alternative to Adobe Lightroom®, impressively developed by an 18-year-old with Google's Gemini AI models and boasting GPU-accelerated processing and AI masking. Meanwhile, Google’s NotebookLM, an AI-powered personalized research assistant, was praised as a "game-changer for productivity" due to its source-grounded nature that minimizes "hallucinations"; it proves valuable for streamlining tasks, managing finances, and facilitating passive learning via "Audio Overviews" generated from user-fed sources. Its enhanced NotebookLM Plus offers higher limits and a 50% student discount, complemented by new curated "featured notebooks" on expert topics like Shakespeare. Beyond specific applications, broader shifts in operating systems include Google’s potential merger of Chrome OS and Android into a unified platform, and advancements in tablet interfaces like Apple’s iPadOS 26 developer beta with its touch-first windowing capabilities, alongside the anticipated Android desktop mode (similar to Samsung's Dex) for lightweight travel setups, though consistent user concerns about effective file management across these diverse platforms persist. Finally, the Oura Ring was highlighted as a screen-less fitness tracker alternative, capable of monitoring parameters like pulse and oxygen, and suitable for restricted environments due to its lack of Wi-Fi/cellular/microphones/cameras.