The chatbot era may have just received its obituary. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw — the open-source AI agent that took the developer world by storm over the past month, raising concerns among enterprise security teams — announced over the weekend that he is joining OpenAI to “work on bringing agents to everyone.”
The OpenClaw project itself will transition to an independent foundation, though OpenAI is already sponsoring it and may have influence over its direction.
The move represents OpenAI’s most aggressive bet yet on the idea that the future of AI isn’t about what models can say, but what they can do. For IT leaders evaluating their AI strategy, the acquisition is a signal that the industry’s center of gravity is shifting decisively from conversational interfaces toward autonomous agents that browse, click, execute code, and complete tasks on users’ behalf.
From playground project to the hottest acquisition target in AI
OpenClaw’s path to OpenAI was anything but conventional. The project began life last year as “ClawdBot” — a nod to Anthropic’s Claude model that many developers were using to power it. Released in November 2025, it was the work of Steinberger, a veteran software developer with 13 years of experience building and running a company, who pivoted to exploring AI agents as what he described as a “playground project.”
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The agent distinguished itself from previous attempts at autonomous AI — most notably the AutoGPT moment of 2023 — by combining several capabilities that had previously existed in isolation: tool access, sandboxed code execution, persistent memory, skills and easy integration with messaging platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord. The result was an agent that didn’t just think, but acted.
In December 2025 and especially January and early February 2026, OpenClaw saw a rapid, “hockey stick” rate of adoption among AI “vibe coders” and developers impressed with its ability to complete tasks autonomously across applications and the entire PC environment, including carrying on messenger conversations with users and posting content on its own.
In his blog post announcing the move to OpenAI, Steinberger framed the decision in characteristically understated terms. He acknowledged the project could have become “a huge company” but said that wasn’t what interested him. Instead, he wrote that his next mission is to “build an agent that even my mum can use” — a goal he believes requires access to frontier models and research that only a major lab can provide.
Sam Altman confirmed the hire in a post stating that Steinberger would drive the next generation of personal agents at OpenAI.
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Anthropic’s missed opportunity
The acquisition also raises uncomfortable questions for Anthropic. OpenClaw was originally built to work on Claude and carried a name — ClawdBot — that nodded to the model.
Rather than embrace the community building on its platform, Anthropic reportedly sent Steinberger a cease-and-desist letter, giving him a matter of days to rename the project and sever any association with Claude, or face legal action. The company even refused to allow the old domains to redirect to the renamed project.
The reasoning was not without merit — early OpenClaw deployments were rife with security issues, as users ran agents with root access and minimal safeguards on unsecured machines. But the heavy-handed legal approach meant Anthropic effectively pushed the most viral agent project in recent memory directly into the arms of its chief rival.
“Catching lightning in a bottle”: LangChain CEO weighs in
Harrison Chase, co-founder and CEO of LangChain, offered a candid assessment of the OpenClaw phenomenon and its acquisition in an exclusive interview for an upcoming episode of VentureBeat’s Beyond The Pilot podcast.
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Chase drew a direct parallel between OpenClaw’s rise and the breakout moments that defined earlier waves of AI tooling. He noted that success in the space often comes down to timing and momentum rather than technical superiority alone. He pointed to his own experience with LangChain, as well as ChatGPT and AutoGPT, as examples of projects that captured the developer imagination at exactly the right moment — while similar projects that launched around the same time did not.
What set OpenClaw apart, Chase argued, was its willingness to be “unhinged” — a term he used affectionately. He revealed that LangChain told its own employees they could not install OpenClaw on company laptops due to the security risks involved. That very recklessness, he suggested, was what made the project resonate in ways that a more cautious lab release never could.
“OpenAI is never going to release anything like that. They can’t release anything like that,” Chase said. “But that’s what makes OpenClaw OpenClaw. And so if you don’t do that, you also can’t have an OpenClaw.”
Chase credited the project’s viral growth to a deceptively simple playbook: build in public and share your work on social media. He drew a parallel to the early days of LangChain, noting that both projects gained traction through their founders consistently shipping and tweeting about their progress, reaching the highly concentrated AI community on X.
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On the strategic value of the acquisition, Chase was more measured. He acknowledged that every enterprise developer likely wants a “safe version of OpenClaw” but questioned whether acquiring the project itself gets OpenAI meaningfully closer to that goal. He pointed to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork as a product that is conceptually similar — more locked down, fewer connections, but aimed at the same vision.
Perhaps his most provocative observation was about what OpenClaw reveals about the nature of agents themselves. Chase argued that coding agents are effectively general-purpose agents, because the ability to write and execute code under the hood gives them capabilities far beyond what any fixed UI could provide. The user never sees the code — they just interact in natural language — but that’s what provides the agent with its expansive abilities.
He identified three key takeaways from the OpenClaw phenomenon that are shaping LangChain’s own roadmap: natural language as the primary interface, memory as a critical enabler that allows users to “build something without realizing they’re building something,” and code generation as the engine of general-purpose agency.
What this means for enterprise AI strategy
For IT decision-makers, the OpenClaw acquisition crystallizes several trends that have been building throughout 2025 and into 2026.
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First, the competitive landscape for AI agents is consolidating rapidly. Meta recently acquired Manus AI, a full agent system, as well as Limitless AI, a wearable device that captures life context for LLM integration. OpenAI’s own previous attempts at agentic products — including its Agents API, Agents SDK, and the Atlas agentic browser — failed to gain the traction that OpenClaw achieved seemingly overnight.
Second, the gap between what’s possible in open-source experimentation and what’s deployable in enterprise settings remains significant. OpenClaw’s power came precisely from the lack of guardrails that would be unacceptable in a corporate environment. The race to build the “safe enterprise version of OpenClaw,” as Chase put it, is now the central question facing every platform vendor in the space.
Third, the acquisition underscores that the most important AI interfaces may not come from the labs themselves. Just as the most impactful mobile apps didn’t come from Apple or Google, the killer agent experiences may emerge from independent builders who are willing to push boundaries the major labs cannot. IT decision-makers have to be asking themselves currently
Will the claw close?
The open-source community’s central concern is whether OpenClaw will remain genuinely open under OpenAI’s umbrella.
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Steinberger has committed to moving the project to a foundation structure, and Altman has publicly stated the project will stay open source.
But OpenAI’s own complicated history with the word “open” — the company is currently facing litigation over its transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity — makes the community understandably skeptical.
For now, the acquisition marks a definitive moment: the industry’s focus has officially shifted from what AI can say to what AI can do.
Whether OpenClaw becomes the foundation of OpenAI’s agent platform or a footnote like AutoGPT before it will depend on whether the magic that made it viral — the unhinged, boundary-pushing, security-be-damned energy of an independent hacker — can survive inside the walls of a $300 billion company.
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As Steinberger signed off on his announcement: “The claw is the law.”
Apple has marked its 50th anniversary, although arguably a year too soon but we’ll get into that, plus there’s good news for users of the Apple Vision Pro, hopeful news about Siri, and bad news for certain vibe coders, all on the AppleInsider Podcast.
Looking back at Apple’s history — image credit: Apple
The fiftieth anniversary celebrations are, quite reasonably, marking the half century since the partnership of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, was founded on April 1, 1976. But the Apple we know today, the corporation, was created in 1977. It seems unlikely that Apple will do another round of parties and events, but we’d be up for it if they did. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Brent Urke, program manager for L3Harris’ facility in Redmond, Wash., check out a model of the Orion spaceship that’s due to take four astronauts around the moon as early as this week. Cantwell is pointing to the model’s set of eight R-4D thrusters. An actual R-4D thruster, manufactured in Redmond, is sitting on the table at far left. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
NASA’s most powerful rocket is due to send four astronauts on a round-the-moon journey as early as this week, and although the launch team has to make sure everything goes right in Florida, the mission’s success will also depend on hardware that was built in the Seattle area.
During a visit to two of the contractors for NASA’s Artemis moon program on Monday, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said that when it comes to spaceflight, it’s important to get the little things right.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, well, we know how to build big rockets,’ right?” the Washington state Democrat said at Karman Space & Defense’s manufacturing facility in Mukilteo, Wash. “But do we know how to separate payloads and return them, and do all of that? That’s what we’re doing here in Puget Sound. … I think that’s the untold story that people don’t understand.”
NASA’s big story will focus on the first humans to go from the Earth to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Artemis 2’s crew won’t land on the lunar surface during what’s expected to be a 10-day mission. But because their figure-8 route takes them 4,700 miles beyond the moon’s far side, they’ll set a new distance record for human travel beyond Earth.
The first opportunity for liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is scheduled for 6:24 p.m. ET (3:24 p.m. PT) on Wednesday, with backup dates available through April 6. NASA plans to provide live video coverage of the countdown and launch via YouTube, starting at 12:50 p.m. ET (9:50 a.m. PT) on launch day.
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This will be the second launch for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which sent an uncrewed Orion space capsule around the moon for the Artemis 1 test mission in 2022. The Artemis 2 crew — including NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will be the first people to ride an Orion into space.
If all goes according to plan, Artemis 2 will clear the way for NASA to test the lunar landers built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space ventures in 2027, then for Artemis 3 to put astronauts on the surface of the moon in 2028. And that’s just the start. “Ultimately, Artemis is about returning to the moon and building a permanent moon base that can then be used for accelerating our travel to Mars,” Cantwell said.
One of the best-known of those Washington state suppliers is L3Harris, which is headquartered in California but operates a facility in Redmond that has built thrusters for nearly every NASA space program. (The facility was operated by Aerojet Rocketdyne until L3Harris acquired that company in 2023. Now L3Harris is in the midst of yet another corporate transition.)
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During her visit to the Redmond facility, Cantwell said L3Harris and other space companies exemplify the “engineering mindshare” that’s one of the strengths of the Pacific Northwest’s tech industry. “That is why people have called us the Silicon Valley of space,” she said.
L3Harris’ Redmond team manufactures thrusters for Orion’s European-built service module, Orion’s crew module and the Space Launch System’s upper stage. It’s also been given a leading role in the development of the main engine for future Orion spacecraft.
John Schneider, vice president of operations for L3Harris, acknowledged that most of the rocket engines built to send astronauts to the moon come from other places. “But if you want to come back, you need a Redmond thruster to bring you back and get you back to Earth safely,” he said.
Jonathan Beaudoin, chief operating officer at Karman Space & Defense, says he hopes we’ll never have to see the hatch release system activated for an actual emergency. “But if we do, it had better work,” he added.
Karman Space & Defense CEO Jon Rambeau, chief operating officer Jonathan Beaudoin and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell survey hardware for the Orion crew capsule. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Artemis 2 is currently focusing the space spotlight on the teams supporting the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft, but Washington state’s space companies are also involved in other aspects of the Artemis program. Blue Origin, for example, is getting its Blue Moon lander ready for missions to the moon and working on a system capable of turning moon dirt into solar cells and electrical wire.
“This is about cutting-edge technology. These guys out here aren’t waiting for somebody to describe to them what comes next. They’re out here solving a problem and then saying to NASA, ‘We’ve got a solution.’ And that’s really fantastic,” Cantwell said.
“Obviously, some of this they don’t want to show for intellectual property protection reasons,” she added. “But we’re just really, really proud that our region is so far ahead, thinking through the problems that we’re going to incur and what the possible solutions should be.”
A new version of the first iOS 26.5 beta has now made its way to developers, but what’s been changed is not clear.
The first developer beta of iOS 26.5 has received a revised release.
Following the full public release of iOS 26.4 on March 24, Apple started beta testing of the next major operating system, iOS 26.5. Monday saw the debut of iOS 26.5 beta 1, which inadvertently enabled Apple Intelligence for some iOS users in China. Apple has now deployed an updated variant of the first iOS 26.5 developer beta, which increases the build number to 23F5043k, up from the initial 23F5043g. The relatively similar build numbers suggest that the revised developer beta doesn’t include new features or additional changes. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
OPINION: The UK government has finally opened the doors to plug-in solar panels in the UK, saying that they’ll be available in shops ‘within months’. Self-installed, and just requiring a simple 13A plug socket, will plug-in solar start a revolution and will the savings stack up?
As of April 1, the price cap has come down, and electricity and gas bills have just got a bit cheaper. Well, until you look at what’s going on in the Middle East and know that this reduction in price is a false dawn, and, unless things change dramatically, energy prices could soar upwards.
No wonder, then, that the demand for solar power has risen dramatically. As I learned from my BOXT Solar review, solar panels are well worth it in the UK, provided you have the right conditions: the right type of roof, facing the right way, and you’re planning to stay in the home that you own for long enough to see the benefits.
That leaves an awful lot of people who aren’t in the optimal situation, including those in flats, those who rent and those who are only going to stay in a place temporarily. It’s for these kinds of people that plug-in solar offers a lifeline.
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What is plug-in solar?
With a fixed solar installation, the idea is to fit as many solar panels as possible onto your roof to generate as much electricity as possible. To use this DC current, you need a high-power solar inverter, which converts the incoming power into the AC power you use around your home. All this specialised equipment costs a fair amount, and then there’s professional installation on top of that.
Plug-in solar aims to make life easier, with self-install solar panels that you can hang over a balcony, put on a shed roof or even place in a small terrace or other outdoor space.
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These then connect to a microinverter, which plugs into a standard three-pin socket, with no additional installation required. Under the new government legislation, systems that generate up to 800W can be plugged in without needing an electrician.
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How much will plug-in solar cost?
The size of the system you buy and the types of fixing the solar panels buy all make a difference to the price. As you can’t buy many such systems yet, there’s not much to go on, but we do have some initial reports on the types of systems that will be available, and there’s European pricing, as plug-in solar is already available in a lot of other countries.
Initial reports suggest that plug-in solar systems will cost around the £400 mark, but smaller systems could be available at around £200, with the largest system with a battery maxing out at over £ 1000.
How much will plug-in solar save, and will it be worth buying?
Savings depend on the size of system you have and other factors. Most importantly, you still need to have an area suitable for solar panels: south-facing is ideal, with as much sun exposure as possible throughout the day. Essentially, you need direct sunlight; if you have a north-facing balcony, for example, or there’s a lot of shade where you want to put your plug-in system, you won’t generate a lot of power.
With those kinds of variables, typical energy savings could be from £70 a year, although EcoFlow says that you can save up to £115 per year with its STREAM Microinverter. This system is currently offered as a package with two 450W solar panels and a STREAM AC Pro battery (1.92kWh capacity) for £1049, marking a nine-year payback period (note that the current package requires an electrician to install, due to current legislation).
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As we get more packages and I’m able to run some reviews, it will be possible to get a better idea of what these kinds of systems can do. The short version is that plug-in solar can’t generate the same kinds of power as rooftop panels, but you’ll still generate free power that will knock your electricity bills down.
It will be worth doing some sums to work out whether it’s worth buying a battery, too. As with a full rooftop solar, whether a battery is worth it will depend on how much power you generate and whether you can use it while it’s being generated or not. This is the kind of information I plan to cover in reviews once samples are available.
Provided you have the right place to mount panels, plug-in solar is a simple way to get started with free electricity generation, and with prices looking like they’re going up, any saving is good.
Reliable technology now rivals pay as a core workplace expectation
Meeting failures continue disrupting workflows across both hybrid and office environments
Time loss from technical issues steadily erodes productivity during routine meetings
The modern British workplace has arrived at an uncomfortable crossroads where employees now rank reliable technology almost as highly as their monthly pay, new research has claimed.
A report from Owl Labs found good technology access is important to 89% of UK workers, placing it just behind compensation at 92% and a supportive manager at 91%.
This near-tie reveals a striking reality: seamless digital tools have become non-negotiable for the workforce.
Technical failures have increasingly become the primary source of frustration for workers participating in hybrid meetings across different environments
Three in four UK employees report experiencing challenges during these interactions, with 79% admitting they lose time to technical difficulties.
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Audio echo or distortion affects 78% of workers, while 74% find themselves missing crucial visual cues.
“When meeting technology fails, it doesn’t just cause mild annoyance — it undermines wellbeing and derails collaboration,” notes Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs.
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The report found the average worker wastes six and a half minutes per meeting simply getting equipment to function properly.
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Younger employees, despite their reputation as digital natives, are not immune to these struggles – 82% of Gen Z and 79% of Millennials report time lost to tech issues, compared with 73% of Gen X and 72% of Boomers.
Even more surprisingly, full-time office workers face the greatest difficulties, with 83% experiencing technical delays versus 77% of hybrid workers.
The physical office, supposedly designed for productivity, has become a source of unexpected friction, and to tackle these issues, employers are significantly investing in new hardware and AI tools.
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Over four in five workers say their organisation made office changes in 2025, including the introduction of AI tools (42%), increased IT support (38%), and upgraded meeting room equipment (35%).
Three-quarters of employees report that their company encourages AI usage. However, this spending spree has not yet solved the underlying problem.
“The UK is at a turning point,” Weishaupt adds. “The real value comes when those tools are intuitive, inclusive and trusted.”
The report noted that instead of investing in smarter meeting technology that alleviates setup challenges, employers are banking on systems that add further complexity.
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This suggests employers may be misreading what workers actually prioritise in their daily workflows.
For a workforce already stuck in a cycle of frustration, progress depends on removing friction rather than adding more software layers.
A supportive manager cannot fix a broken audio connection, but a properly functioning camera and microphone just might.
Anthropic is no longer offering a free ride for third-party apps using its Claude AI. Boris Cherny, Anthropic’s creator and head of Claude Code, posted on X that Claude subscriptions will no longer cover using the AI agent for third-party tools, like OpenClaw, for free. As of 3PM ET on April 4, anyone using Claude through third-party apps or software will have to do so with an extra usage bundle or with a Claude API key, according to Cherny.
Most of Claude’s workload may come from simple user questions, but there are those who use the AI chatbot through OpenClaw, a free and open-source AI assistant from the same developer as Moltbook. Unlike more general AI solutions, OpenClaw is designed to automate personal workflows, like clearing inboxes, sending emails or organizing calendars, but leans on external large language models, including Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Cherny replied to X users that this change is about engineering constraints and optimization. “We’ve been working hard to meet the increase in demand for Claude, and our subscriptions weren’t built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools,” Cherny explained on X. “Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully and we are prioritizing our customers using our products and API.”
If OpenClaw users still want to use Anthropic as its LLM, they will have to buy a usage bundle, which are currently discounted, or switch to another AI integration like xAI, Perplexity or even DeepSeek. Of course, Anthropic has its own alternative, which tackles some similar tasks as OpenClaw, called Claude Cowork.
LinkedIn might be doing a lot more than just showing you job posts and connection requests. If the latest reports are anything to go by, it’s also quietly peeking into your browser setup.
LinkedIn
A new investigation is raising serious privacy concerns, claiming the platform is scanning thousands of Chrome extensions and collecting device-level data in the background. And yeah, it’s as uncomfortable as it sounds.
LinkedIn may be scanning thousands of your browser extensions
According to findings from the BrowserGate report, LinkedIn allegedly injects hidden JavaScript into its website that scans users’ browsers for installed extensions, over 6,000 of them. The way it works is surprisingly simple (and a bit sneaky). The script checks for known extension IDs by attempting to access specific files tied to those extensions. If the file responds, LinkedIn knows the extension is installed, all happening silently in the background without any visible prompt.
LinkedIn gathering information about visitors’ devicesBleepingComputer
But it doesn’t stop there. Independent testing by BleepingComputer further confirmed that the platform is also collecting detailed device information like CPU specs, memory, screen resolution, language settings, and even battery status; essentially building a unique “fingerprint” of your device. And here’s the kicker: because LinkedIn profiles are tied to real identities such as your name, job, and company, this data could potentially be linked back to you directly, making it far more sensitive than typical anonymous tracking.
Why is this raising serious red flags?
The biggest concern isn’t just the data collection, but how quietly it’s happening. Users aren’t clearly informed, and there’s no explicit consent before the scanning begins. There’s also the issue of what this data reveals. Installed extensions can hint at sensitive details like job hunting, finances, or personal interests, making this kind of tracking far more intrusive than it sounds.
Souvik Banerjee / Unsplash
LinkedIn says it’s for security, but critics argue it goes too far. And honestly, it leaves you wondering how private your “professional” life online really is.
The Apple Vision Pro is being used to help patients in a UK hospital visualize upcoming surgeries, expanding the headset’s use in medicine.
A patient view from the Apple Vision Pro in a pre-surgery consultation – Image credit: Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
One of the problems with medical procedures is explaining what needs to be done to the patients, in a clear and understandable manner. To help some patients suspected of having endometriosis, the Apple Vision Pro is coming into play. An app developed by Medical iSight is being used in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, UK, in preparation for surgery, reportsBBC News. Patients wear an Apple Vision Pro, and are shown an AR model in pre-surgical consultations. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
We’re celebrating Apple’s 50th birthday with a week of content about the tech giant. It covers everything from personal recollections from our writers to the greatest — and worst — Apple gadgets as voted by you, and you can read it all on our 50 years of Apple page.
Apple might be responsible for some of the most famous and successful products in human history, but not everything the company touches turns to gold.
While billions of iPhones and millions of iPods and iPads have been sold, there’s a rogues’ gallery of Apple creations that had far less impact and ended up being consigned to the footnotes of tech history.
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Some you might have heard hushed mentions of, while others barely exist on the margins of the internet, but there’s a good chance you’ve never seen any in the flesh. How many do you remember?
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1. Apple Silentype (1980)
(Image credit: http://www.allaboutapple.com/)
Apple’s image has changed so much since it launched the iPod that it’s hard to imagine it making something as prosaic as a printer, but the Silentype wasn’t really an Apple invention at all.
It has become a bit of a cliché that Apple just takes existing products and packages them up in a more appealing way, but that is quite literally what happened with the Silentype.
Most printers at the time were big, noisy and expensive, but a company called Trendcom had a thermal printer that was much smaller, quieter and more affordable. Apple took the Trendcom 200, made some internal tweaks that offloaded some of the work to software inside the Apple II, and stuck an Apple logo on the front.
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The company stopped making printers at the end of the nineties when Steve Jobs returned and it began the move towards more glamorous products, which explains why people have forgotten about the Silentype and its successors, but it was an early example of Apple’s ‘think different’ ethos in action.
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2. Apple PowerCD (1993)
(Image credit: Blake Patterson)
The PowerCD was a bit like a supercharged Sony Discman, but significantly less successful.
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Essentially just a rebadged Philips CDF-100, the back of the box promised three separate uses. Plug it into a Mac and it would function as an external CD-ROM drive; connect it to your TV and you could use it to view your holiday snaps from a disc on the big screen; or plug in a pair of headphones or speakers and it could play music CDs.
The PowerCD could also run off six AA batteries, which technically meant you could take it out and about, but with its bulky frame and pointed corners you’d have to be wearing clown trousers for it to qualify as pocketable.
Its lack of a singular focus seemed to make it a hard sell, though, and it suffered from being a jack of all trades but master of none. A couple of years later it was discontinued.
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3. Apple QuickTake 100 (1994)
Kodak designed the Apple QuickTake 100 and the 150 (above), whereas the 200 model was designed by Fujifilm. (Image credit: Getty Images / Frederic J. Brown)
Back in the early ‘90s, Apple was not the world-conquering tech behemoth it is now, so taking a punt on an entirely new product was a brave move. The QuickTake 100 was one of the first digital cameras aimed at Joe Public and if it doesn’t look very typically Apple to you that’s because Kodak was responsible for the binoculars-meets-projector design.
With a 0.3MP CCD sensor and only enough storage for eight photos at the highest resolution (640×480), the convenience offered by the QuickTake didn’t make up for the lack of quality in comparison to a traditional film camera.
Still, Apple released three different models in the QuickTake range before Steve Jobs culled it in 1997. Work on the iPod project began shortly after, which was the start of the long road to the iPhone — a product that has arguably contributed to the downfall of the compact camera more than any other, even if the indestructible compact is still making a comeback of sorts.
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Did you also know Apple’s forgotten digicam secretly lives in your iPhone today? A feature called QuickTake is built into the phone’s shutter button, and let’s you quickly shoot both videos and a burst of photos.
4. Apple Bandai Pippin (1996)
Apple Pippin (1996) video game console platform – YouTube
Another one of Apple’s mid-nineties punts before Steve Jobs came back to steady the ship, the Pippin was designed by Apple but actually released by Japanese toy giant Bandai (of Tamagotchi fame).
Based on a Macintosh Classic II, Apple tweaked the fundamental hardware and Bandai packaged it in a very nineties-looking chassis. In some ways the Pippin was ahead of its time, with internet connectivity and a wireless controller called the Applejack.
But with competition from the Nintendo N64 and original Sony Playstation, plus a significantly higher asking price than both, and fewer games to play on it, the Pippin was always facing an uphill battle.
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It’s said that only 42,000 Pippins were sold worldwide, mainly in Japan, so it’s no surprise that Bandai was the first and last company to license its tech from Apple, and even less surprising that most people don’t even know it ever existed.
Rumors of a touchscreen MacBook have been circulating for ages, and may finally come to fruition this year, but did you know Apple has already made a touchscreen laptop of sorts?
Over a decade before the first keyboard accessory was released for the iPad, Apple launched the eMate 300 — a cross between a PDA (that’s a Personal Digital Assistant, not a Public Display of Affection) and a notebook that was designed by Jony Ive. It had a 6.8-inch greyscale screen, ran the same operating system as the Newton, and could last a whopping 28 hours on a single charge. Those were the days, eh?
The eMate 300 lasted less than a year, another victim of the great Jobs purge, but you might recognize its translucent shell from the iMac G3, which was released just a year later and had a huge influence on tech aesthetics, helping to turn Apple’s fortunes around in the process.
You’d have to have been living under a Microsoft Zune for the past 25 years to not know what an iPod was, but did you know that it was briefly possible to buy one with an Hewlett-Packard logo on it?
HP was known for making PCs, printers, scanners and other boring office stuff, but at CES in 2004 CEO Carly Fiorina announced that the company would be launching a range of branded iPods with an exclusive blue finish.
In return, HP would pre-install iTunes on all of its desktops and laptops. The blue version never made it to market, although you could download and print your own ‘tattoos’ for it from the HP website instead. No, we didn’t do that either.
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The partnership was short-lived, with HP announcing it was over just 18 months later, but if the reaction to U2’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence being added to all iTunes libraries is anything to go by, a lot of people would probably rather own an HP-branded iPod than one with the names of Bono and co inscribed on the back.
6. Apple iPod Hi-Fi (2006)
(Image credit: Getty Images / Peter DaSilva)
There’s an old urban myth in the UK that you’re never more than six feet away from a rat — and back in 2006 it felt like you could say the same about iPod docks.
Apple released one of its own in February of that year and promised to “redefine the home stereo system”, with Steve Jobs even claiming he was ditching his actual hi-fi in favor of one.
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The iPod Hi-Fi was certainly striking to look at, although once somebody points out that it looks like a milk crate it’s hard to shake that image. Still, as our three-star review pointed out, there was “no way that any sensible person would mistake this for even a budget hi-fi or mini system.”
It was discontinued about 18 months later and Apple didn’t make another speaker until the HomePod in 2018.
7. Apple Macintosh TV (1993)
(Image credit: Shutterstock / Anton_Ivanov)
The ugliest Apple product ever made? The Macintosh TV certainly has a strong case for that title — this monstrosity was effectively a 14-inch Sony Trinitron CRT mashed together with a Performa 520 and it was the first Mac that could display a TV / VCR signal.
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Unfortunately, the Macintosh TV came with a number of drawbacks that explain why only around 10,000 were ever made in its five-month lifespan. Firstly, you couldn’t sneakily watch TV in another window while you worked. Sadly, you also couldn’t record any of the shows or movies you watched, as it only came with a CD-ROM drive alongside its 160MB hard drive.
It was another case of Apple’s ambitions exceeding the tech of the time, then, but at least it laid the foundations for the Apple TV — and as the first black Mac, it’s also the distant ancestor of the iconic, matte-black MacBook which lived from 2006-2008.
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First, you can’t see why you’d ever want a Stream Deck for your Mac, then you try one, and you will never give it back. Out of all the different models, though, the Stream Deck+ is best, and here’s why.
Get a Stream Deck+ and you’ll never use a Mac without one again
Every Stream Deck is a Mac accessory that provides buttons to launch apps, perform entire sequences of tasks, or turn on your smart lights. You connect it through a USB-A or USB-C cable, and the difference in the models is chiefly in how many buttons you get and whether you also have dials. Get any of them. I’ve just set up a button that switches audio between my Mac and my headphones. I have one that opens all the folders for the books I’m writing. Another launches every app I need for AppleInsider, and positions them on the screen where I want. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
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