Year: 2018

Andy Rubin’s Essential has acquired CloudMagic, makers of the Newton email app, for an undisclosed sum. The news, first reported this morning, has since been confirmed by TechCrunch.

An Essential spokesperson offered the following admittedly open ended statement, “We are always on the lookout for companies with great technology and talent to help accelerate our product roadmap.” 

What precisely that roadmap looks like is anyone’s guess. CloudMagic The shuttered its premium email offering in September, leaving some 40,000 paid subscribers in the lurch. Likely the app will work its way into Essential’s hardware offerings, via the next iteration of its handset, or the currently MIA home hub.

The news comes at the end of a rocky year for Essential. The startup reportedly shipped few handsets in the past year, with rumors persisting surrounding Rubin’s plans to sell the company. In October, Essential laid off around a third of its staff.

That same month, Rubin was the subject of a bombshell New York Times piece about sexual misconduct during his time at Google. The Android co-creator later took to social media to call out the piece’s “numerous inaccuracies” and “wild exaggerations.”

The acquisition could point to a newfound path for the company, which has long denied rumors that it was looking to sell, instead “putting all of [its] efforts towards future, game-changing products, which include mobile and home products.”

Pivotal has always been about making open source tools for enterprise developers, but surprisingly up until now the arsenal has lacked a serverless component. That changed today with the alpha launch of Pivotal Function Service.

“Pivotal Function Service is a Kubernetes-based, multi-cloud function service. It’s part of the broader Pivotal vision of offering you a single platform for all your workloads on any cloud,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the new service.

What’s interesting about Pivotal’s flavor of serverless besides the fact that it’s open source, is that it has been designed to work both on-prem and in the cloud in a cloud native fashion, hence the Kubernetes-based aspect of it. This is unusual to say the least.

The idea up until now has been that the large-scale cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft could dial up whatever infrastructure your functions require, then dial them down when you’re finished without you ever having to think about the underlying infrastructure. The cloud provider deals with whatever compute, storage and memory you need to run the function and no more.

Pivotal wants to take that same idea and make it available in the cloud across any cloud service. It also wants to make it available on-prem, which may seem curious at first, but Pivotal’s Onsi Fakhouri says customers want that same abilities both on-prem and in the cloud. “One of the key values that you often hear about serverless is that it will run down to zero and there is less utilization, but at the same time there are customers who want to explore and embrace the serverless programming paradigm on-prem,” Fakhouri said. Of course, then it is up to IT to ensure that there are sufficient services to meet the demands of the serverless programs.

The new package includes several key components for developers including an environment for building, deploying and managing your functions, a native eventing ability that provides a way to build rich event triggers to call whatever functionality you require, and the ability to do this within a Kubernetes-based environment. This is particularly important as companies embrace a hybrid use case to manage the events across on-prem and cloud in a seamless way.

One of the advantages of Pivotal’s approach is that Pivotal can work on any cloud as an open product. This in contrast to the cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft who provide similar services that run exclusively on their clouds. Pivotal is not the first to build an open source Function as a Service, but they are attempting to package it in a way that makes it easier to use.

Serverless doesn’t actually mean there are no underlying servers. Instead, it means that developers don’t have to point to any servers because the cloud provider takes care of whatever infrastructure is required. In an on-prem scenario, IT has to make those resources available.

Even after a few minutes behind the wheel, it’s easy to forget the Audi e-tron is electric. The SUV is not outrageous or radical, but rather pedestrian and effortless. Audi didn’t invent something new with the e-tron. The German car company stuck a competent electric powertrain in an SUV, and, in the process, created a fantastic vehicle that should resonate with shoppers.

The Audi e-tron is the new benchmark in electric cars. Some EVs are larger, faster and have a longer range, while some are smaller and more limited. The e-tron sits in the middle. Priced at $74,800, the e-tron is a great size, has a moderate range and features faster charging than a Tesla Model X, Jaguar I-Pace or Chevy Bolt.

I spent a day in an Audi e-tron and drove it hundreds of miles over Abu Dhabi’s perfect tarmac, around winding mountain roads and through sand-covered desert passes. The e-tron performs precisely how a buyer expects a mid-size Audi SUV to perform. On the road, the e-tron is eager and quiet, while off the road, over rocks and through deep sand, it was sturdy and surefooted.

Just like the 1980 Audi Quattro normalized all-wheel drive, it’s clear the German car company hopes the e-tron does the same to electric power.

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Driving the e-tron

The car zipped down an Abu Dhabi highway. On this quiet morning, the traffic was light. Abu Dhabi’s police recently installed speed cameras at regular intervals, so with the cruise set at 140kmh, and Masdar City fading in the background, the mountains on the Oman border grew larger. The drive was uneventful; it was a regular commute. The e-tron’s electric motors served up power in an effortless fashion.

This is likely how many Audi e-trons will spend their life. While the vehicle has capable off-road abilities, most will probably never hit anything more than a parking lot flowerbed. Like most SUVs these electric vehicles will likely be used as people movers, ferrying people to and from work and school. In this task, it’s comfortable and familiar, but there’s so much more to Audi’s first EV.

Drop the e-tron’s pedal to the floor, and the mid-size SUV jumps to life. The new Audi electric AWD system provides the traction needed to launch the vehicle forward. There are 400 horses available, and the torque is instantaneous and plentiful even at highway speeds. Audi says the 0-60 time is 5.7 seconds and that’s quick enough for most buyers.

The e-tron’s capability was put on display racing up a mountain road. The jaunt took about 20 minutes, but that was more than enough time for the e-tron to show off. As it whipped around narrow roads, the e-tron held tight to the pavement and handled the winding road with decisiveness. To be clear, the e-tron is not a Pike’s Peak racer. The body roll was on par with other sports SUVs; it wasn’t offensive, but noticeable. At speed steering is tight but lacked informative feedback — a theme I discovered continued with the all-wheel drive system.

The e-tron is heavy. At 5489 lbs it’s 661 lbs heavier than the smaller Jaguar I-Pace and 68 lbs on the larger Tesla Model X 75D. This isn’t noticeable while driving but is worth noting. The battery and electric motors are situated at the bottom of the vehicle, which likely contributes to the sturdy feeling.

Audi built a complex battery regeneration system into the e-tron, and it seems to work as advertised. At the start of my road trip in Abu Dhabi, the vehicle said it had an available range of over 210 miles while driving with the AC blasting at full strength. During highway cruising, the range decreased precisely as advertised. During city driving, the regeneration mode recuperated more range than I expected, slightly extending the range. On the lively 20 minutes decent around mountain roads, the system gained over 10% of its range thanks to the system recovering power from the breaking and rolling resistance.

The US’s EPA has yet to release official numbers for the e-tron, and I didn’t spend enough time with the vehicle to declare an average range. What’s clear, however, is the e-tron can easily surpass 200 miles on a charge and under certain driving conditions, can go much farther. And thanks to the fastest recharging system in its class, the e-tron batteries can be recharged quicker than others — 80 percent in 30 minutes.

The e-tron accepts a charge up to 150kw. This allows the batteries to be refilled to 80 percent in 30 minutes. But Audi doesn’t have a network of chargers like Tesla. Instead, the car company partnered with Electrify America and e-tron owners are granted 1,000 kWh of power.

Compared to competitors, the e-tron can recharge at a quicker rate than others. But only at specific chargers. Interestingly, the e-tron has recharge ports on both sides of the vehicle.

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The battery regeneration serves another purpose central to Audi’s brand: all-wheel drive. The sophisticated system that extends the range of the vehicle also assists the vehicle in providing the appropriate power to each wheel. Like traditional AWD platforms, this lets the vehicle remain surefooted across rain, snow, and sand. And in the desert, there was plenty of sand to test out the system.

I took the e-tron through sand drifts and over blind rocky dunes. The electric AWD system never disappointed. Compared to traditional AWD, this platform seemed to respond quicker in a much more subtle fashion. When climbing a dune where logic stated the tires were spinning, I couldn’t feel the tires spinning yet the vehicle continued to climb. When racing over 2-foot sand drifts covering gravel, the vehicle would drift in a squirrelly fashion yet the tire spin wasn’t felt through the pedals. This disconnect is a side-effect of the move to electric and is something drivers will have to get used to.

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Creature comforts

The e-tron’s cabin is nicely adorned with familiar materials and Audi’s latest technology package. A large digital cluster sits in front of the driver while two screens reside in the center stack and are used for the infotainment system and climate controls. This is the same system in the new Audi A6 and A7, and I find the layout much easier to use than the giant screens in Tesla and a growing number of other vehicles. Radio on the top, climate on the bottom. It’s a logical layout.

When needed the bottom screen is used for character input, and there’s a wide wrist rest placed below the screen to allow the user to steady their hand. This makes a difference. Instead of using a shaky hand hovering over a giant screen, users can rest their wrist on this pad and easily input an address.

There are odd concessions in this luxury SUV. The sun visors do not slide on their mounting pole to extend their reach, and this feature was noticeably missing during my drive through the desert. The steering column doesn’t have power adjustment. A sunroof isn’t an option. For a vehicle with a starting price of $74,800, these features are oddly absent.

I spent the day in a European variant of the e-tron, and it was equipped with digital side-mirrors. US buyers will not get this option, and that’s fine with me. I never got used to them. Instead of employing a piece of glass for side mirrors, there are cameras mounted on small, futuristic-looking stalks. Inside the cabin, there are small LCD screens mounted under the window. This virtual mirror isn’t worth it. The screens are too small and have too low of a resolution. The driver cannot move their head to gain a new perspective like what’s possible with traditional mirrors. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my mirrors to be made out of mirrors.

This e-tron SUV is essentially the self-titled album for Audi’s line of electric vehicles. Audi’s roadmap is clear, and it’s full of future models with the e-tron nameplate.

Next year Audi plans on releasing two more EV vehicles: the e-tron Sportback, a sporty SUV, and e-tron GT, a sports sedan developed with the help of Porsche . Audi is teasing a smaller e-tron vehicle for 2020.

Audi is building the e-tron brand around key innovations in recharging the battery both through regeneration and direct charging. As of right now, this is where the e-tron stands apart from its peers. It had the most sophisticated regeneration system and the fastest charging time. As batteries improve, these two platforms are primed to take advantage of larger batteries.

Against the competitors

There are only a few EVs on the market making the competition clear for the Audi e-tron. The new Jaguar I-Pace is priced slightly under the e-tron and has a similar range, but is smaller and recharges slower. If buyers are willing to ditch the e-tron off-road chops and luxury badge of Audi, the Chevy Bolt offers similar cargo capacity, technology, and range for much less. The Nissan Leaf is another good low-cost option for those looking for nothing but an electric people mover.

Tesla is Audi’s closest competitor in the space. The Tesla Model X offers a bigger SUV and a quicker 0-60 time though a slower recharge time. The base Model X offers a similar range for $10,000 over the e-tron’s price and for more money the Tesla can be configured for a longer range.

On a dragstrip, the $84,000 base Model X is much quicker than the Audi e-tron, and the $140,000 Model X variant is as nearly quick to 60 as the fastest Audi super sports car. That doesn’t mean the Tesla is better than the e-tron. During my day with the e-tron, either while passing vehicles or taking off from a stop light, I found the e-tron to have an abundant amount of acceleration — quick enough to thrill though not in a ludicrous, tire-shredding fashion.

The Tesla Model X offers something not found in the Audi e-tron: Recognition. A Model X looks like nothing else on the road where the Audi e-tron looks like another crossover. Compare the two vehicles’ technology packages, and Tesla’s self-driving Autopilot feature stands tall. The e-tron only has lane assist and adaptive cruise control, a far cry from Tesla’s system.

Questions about Tesla’s future persist and could be on the minds of savvy shoppers. Will the automaker be around to service its vehicles through their life? Will Tesla be able to scale its mobile repair crews to be able to match the number of vehicles it’s shipping. The upstart automaker lacks the massive dealer network of Audi and its parent, VW, which for all their faults, at least provide numerous location for owners to service their vehicles.

Audi isn’t trying to define the look of the vehicle by the powertrain. Onlookers would be hard pressed to tell the e-tron is electric in the same as fashion as is evident with a Tesla or Toyota Prius. It’s a different strategy than what’s employed by other, and Audi seems to be banking on it to increase adoption of its electric vehicles.

The verdict

The Audi e-tron is fantastic. For the foreseeable future, this is the electric vehicle that makes the most sense for most people. It’s not radical. The e-tron is familiar. The e-tron is plentiful and comfortable while the cabin is loaded with the standard electronic acquirements buyers expect from the luxury brand.

The Audi e-tron makes electric cars attractive to more buyers by removing variables. It looks and feels like its gasoline counterparts. Inside and out, it’s normal. That’s the point, and it works.

The year is 1940. Through the use of arcane atomic technologies, the Axis have brought back modern technology from the year 2018. Their main prize? This amazing Enigma Pocket Watch. This tiny watch, created by a maker calling himself asciimation, uses an Arduino Pro Micro and a small OLED screen to recreate the Enigma machine in pure code.

Asciimation previously built an Enigma wristwatch and he is working on an 3D-printed Enigma machine. The Enigma was a seemingly unbreakable encoding machine used by the Germans during World War II and was about the size of a small briefcase. Stuffing all of the logic into a tiny watch case – of WWII vintage – is an amazing feat.

Luckily the aforementioned time travel device was never built and this wild little pocket watch never made it into enemy hands but we can only imagine the havoc it would wreak if some Panzer captain somewhere had one of these on his belt. You can read all about the build on Asciimation’s site.

Rapper 2 Milly is suing Epic Games over Fortnite’s use of his dance move, the Milly Rock.

The lawsuit claims direct infringement of copyright, contributory infringement of copyright, violation of the Right of Publicity under California Common Law, among other things.

From the filing:

Defendants capitalized on the Milly Rock’s popularity, particularly with its younger fans, by selling the Milly Rock dance as an in-game purchase in Fortnite under the name “Swipe It,” which players can buy to customize their avatars for use in the game. This dance was immediately recognized by players and media worldwide as the Milly Rock. Although identical to the dance created, popularized, and demonstrated by Ferguson, Epic did not credit Ferguson nor seek his consent to use, display, reproduce, sell, or create a derivative work based upon Ferguson’s Milly Rock dance or likeness.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen the Milly Rock. Rock dwellers can check it out below:

On Fortnite, the dance is called The Swipe It, and it looks like this:

Back in July, around the time that Fortnite unveiled the Swipe It dance, Chance the Rapper pointed out that Epic Games tends to use dance moves popularized by famous artists in the game. These emotes cost money, and heavily contribute to the hundreds of millions in revenue that Epic Games pulls in on a monthly basis via its free-to-play game.

Moreover, the default emote on Fortnite is the relatively famous little routine from actor Donald Faison on the show Scrubs.

This lawsuit is particularly complicated considering that it’s over a dance move, which is difficult to lock down with copyright. The Verge reported that this lawsuit is the first of its kind, in that it challenges the gaming industry’s use of pop culture as for-profit virtual items. NPR reports that the U.S. Copyright Office “can’t register short dance routines consisting of only a few movements or steps with minor linear or spatial variations, even if a routine is novel or distinctive.”

That doesn’t mean there is no way to protect choreographic works. Those works, however, must be defined as “a series of dance movements or patterns organized into an integrated, coherent, and expressive compositional whole,” according to NPR.

Concluding the 22-page filing is a request for injunctive relief, which would bar Epic Games from using 2 Milly’s likeness in the game, as well as financial compensation for the use of the Milly Rock dance.

We reached out to Epic Games and will update the story if/when we hear back.

IBM announced last night that it is selling the final components from its 1995 acquisition of Lotus to Indian firm HCL for $1.8 billion.

IBM paid $3.5 billion for Lotus back in the day. The big pieces here are Lotus Notes, Domino and Portal. These were a big part of IBM’s enterprise business for a long time, but last year Big Blue began to pull away, selling the development part to HCL, while maintaining control of sales and marketing.

This announcement marks the end of the line for IBM involvement. With the development of the platform out of its control, and in need of cash after spending $34 billion for Red Hat, perhaps IBM simply decided it no longer made sense to keep any part of this in-house.

As for HCL, it sees an opportunity to continue to build the Notes/Domino business, and it’s seizing it with this purchase. “The large-scale deployments of these products provide us with a great opportunity to reach and serve thousands of global enterprises across a wide range of industries and markets,” C Vijayakumar, president and CEO at HCL Technologies said in a statement announcing the deal.

Alan Lepofsky, an analyst at Constellation Research who keeps close watch on the enterprise collaboration space says that the sale could represent a fresh start for software that IBM hasn’t really been paying close attention to for some time. “HCL is far more interested in Notes/Domino than IBM has been for a decade. They are investing heavily, trying to rejuvenate the brand,” Lepofsky told TechCrunch.

While this software may feel long in tooth, Notes and Domino are still in use in many corners of the enterprise, and this is especially true in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) AP (Asia Pacific). Lepofsky said.

He added that IBM appears to be completely exiting the collaboration space with this sale. “It appears that IBM is done with collaboration, out of the game,” he said.

This move makes sense for IBM, which is moving in a different direction as it develops its cloud business. The Red Hat acquisition in October, in particular shows that the company wants to embrace private and hybrid cloud deployments, and older software like Lotus Notes and Domino don’t really play a role in that world.

The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval processes, is expected to close in the middle of next year.

According to a new report from Reuters, Amazon is looking at several top U.S. airports for potential locations for its cashier-free Go stores. The service cites public request records from airport operators suggesting meetings with the head of the retail service. Both the San Jose and Los Angeles airports have confirmed Amazon’s interest. Dallas appears to be on Amazon’s list of potential spots, as well.

Amazon has been slowly rolling out the model across the U.S. over the past couple of years, beginning with locations in its native Seattle and adding Chicago and San Francisco along the way. Go initially appeared as a kind of proof of concept for a retail future where check out is primarily handled by merchandise monitoring (cameras, sensors, et al) and apps.

A move toward airports, however, could find the company viewing Go as part of a more earnest push into brick and mortar. Airports certainly make sense for the kind of quick convenience model Amazon is pushing here.

Of course, Hudson News likely doesn’t have too much to worry about, short term. Amazon’s been very deliberate in its expansion, primary relying on the novelty of the business model to help drive traffic to a handful of Go locations.

Spotify has made some significant moves to bypass record labels and work directly with artists, and there are signs that Apple could be eyeing up a similar approach to get a bigger share of original content.

According to a report in Music Business Worldwide and also confirmed by us with sources close to the deal, Apple has acquired Platoon, a startup out of London that works primarily with musicians — but also other creators like writers — to produce, distribute and sell their work, using analytics to source talent, and figure out the best way to target and market that content: the modern-day tech equivalent of A&R services.

We have reached out both to Apple and Platoon to try to confirm the acquisition. (Sometimes Apple’s deals are not full acquisitions but involve hiring people, such as in the case of a music startup, working in analytics, called Asaii — but our source tells us this is “definitely an acquisition.”)

Platoon was founded in 2016 by Denzyl Feigelson, Ben Grabiner and Saul Klein.

Feigelson is a music industry vet. Previously an executive at Apple in iTunes, he describes himself as a “long-term advisor” to the company in areas like Apple Music and live events.

Before Feigelson’s 15-year stint at Apple, he founded AWAL — Artists Without A Label, which eventually was acquired by Kobalt. (Ironically, Kobalt, the Google-backed startup that helps musicians collect royalties across digital streaming platforms, also operates label services.)

Grabiner and Klein, meanwhile, have a double connection into Platoon through VC firm Local Globe, which appears to have been the only investor in the startup, which has raised around $600,00, according to PitchBook, and was last valued at a modest $3.78 million.

Grabiner left Local Globe to become Platoon’s GM; Klein, a co-founder of the VC who is still active there, is on the Platoon board.

As sales of iPhones have been slowing down — part of a bigger global trend resulting from mobile phone saturation across a number of countries — Apple has expanded its focus into more services that run on its hardware.

Its media, and specifically music, operations have been a key beneficiary of that, with some of Apple’s largest acquisitions being made to grow that business. Those have included acquiring Beats and Shazam, expanding the remit of what Apple Music provides to artists on its platform beyond simple access to music tracks (including adding in more analytics, which was the focus of Asaii, which was coincidentally also founded by Apple alums).

It makes sense both in terms of Apple’s own focus on its music business, and also in terms of providing services comparable to that of its closest competitor, Spotify, to address all segments of the music industry.

Labels — especially large labels — continue to reign supreme, but the massive shift to digital distribution and streaming has opened the door for a wider range of channels for musicians to connect with listeners, and to make money through that experience.

And it’s no surprise that they want to: musicians collectively only made 12 percent of the $43 billion generated by the music industry last year.

Apple potentially making a stronger move into services for artists plays into both sides of the marketplace. On one side, it could find itself helping the labels source up and coming talent. Indeed, a number of Platoon’s early finds are now signed to major labels. (They include Billie Eilish and Jacob Banks at Interscope, Stefflon Don at Universal/Polydor, Jorja Smith at Sony.)

On the other hand, for those who do not make that leap and those who do, Apple can find a route to becoming their digital home (potentially exclusively, but potentially across a number of platforms) by giving them a range of tools to create and distribute their work, providing Apple more access to a catalogue of original content, and maybe even a cut when it’s listened to somewhere else. It’s a potential hit one way or the other.

We’ll update this post as we learn more.

Walmart’s acquisition spree continues. Only a couple of months after picking up apparel and lingerie brands, ELOQUII and Bare Necessities, respectively, the company on Thursday announced its plans to acquire the assets from online art and wall décor retailer, Art.com. The all-cash deal is expected to close in early 2019, and includes Art.com’s catalog, IP, trade name, and U.S. operations.

Walmart did not disclose the amount of the deal, but Walmart says it’s in line with its other deals made over the past couple of years, in terms of size.

Art.com has been doing more than $300 million in annual sales, according to CNBC.

In its announcement, Walmart describes Art.com, originally founded in 1998, as the “world’s largest online retailer in the art and décor category.” It also notes Art.com’s wide-ranging assortment includes two million curated images that customers buy as posters, prints, and other art pieces for their home.

The site offers on-demand and customization capabilities, with the majority of its inventory being printed on demand at the time of ordering – that’s useful, as it means Walmart won’t have to house large stores of inventory for this home décor business, as most of it is made-to-order. All the servicing is also done on-site, including custom framing and mounting on canvas and wood, Walmart says.

Art.com’s site includes technology like visual search and a way to visualize the art on your own walls, and it offers financing through Affirm and installation through another Walmart partner, Handy.

Walmart says the plan is to operate Art.com’s assets as a standalone and complementary site. It will also add Art.com assortment to Walmart.com, Jet.com, and Hayneedle.com, in the future. By doing so, customers will have access to “millions of additional choices for art, wall décor, and personalized print-on-demand capabilities,” says Walmart.

More organizational information will be available in the coming weeks, Walmart told TechCrunch, including which leaders from Art.com will be joining Walmart. The business will become a part of Walmart’s U.S. E-Commerce Home team, led by Anthony Soohoo.

The retailer has been steadily expanding its assortment in long tail categories, like home décor – one of the areas of focus with the Walmart.com website’s redesign, which rolled out earlier this year. The updated site offers a more modern, cleaner look-and-feel, deeper personalization, improved recommendations, and the addition of speciality shopping experiences in areas like home and fashion.

Art.com is now one of many acquisitions Walmart has made to capture more of the e-commerce market across those categories and others, with deals for ModCloth ($75M), Bonobos ($310M), Moosejaw ($51M), ShoeBuy, Jet.com ($3B), and Hayneedle, in addition to the more recent additions of ELOQUII and Bare Necessities.

If you’re reading this post, you probably want to watch the first trailer for the new Avengers movie. So go ahead, watch it. I’ll wait.

The trailer doesn’t show much that viewers of “Avengers: Infinity War” hadn’t already guessed (spoilers!): Namely, that the galactic warlord Thanos has succeeded in his plot to eliminate half the population of the universe, including a big swath of the Avengers cast. But Captain America and the remaining heroes have a desperate plan to get everyone back.

The trailer doesn’t end with the usual montage of CGI explosions. Instead, the footage consists of just a handful of ominous scenes, reinforcing that this will be the final adventure for some of the best-known Avengers — the footage opens with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man reminding us that “part of the journey is the end,” while beyond the trailer, Chris Evans has confirmed that he’s done playing Captain America.

And then there’s the title. Marvel has been remarkably cryptic about it, leaving everyone to talk about the “still-untitled Avengers 4” for months. Even the trailer’s YouTube description withholds this information — clearly, Marvel was hoping you wouldn’t find out until the very end of the video.

So. After all that build up, we learn that the fourth Avengers movie will be called … “Endgame.” Which is fine! Really, it’s a perfectly fine title for a movie that’s meant to wrap up this chapter of the Avengers story. But I have to admit that when the words came on the screen, my first response was: That’s it??

Anyway, I’m still feeling optimistic about the movie. I found “Infinity War” a bit overstuffed, but hopefully by (temporarily) pushing so many characters offstage, it gave its sequel the space needed so the original team gets the sendoff it deserves.

“Avengers: Endgame” opens on April 26, 2019.