Apple has been dropping tons of new releases for its most popular product lines like the M4 iMacand M4 Mac mini this week, but one of the biggest surprises was the tech giant relaunching three of its most well-known peripherals — Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad — now equipped with USB-Type C compatibility.
However, when looking at the list of Apple-branded accessories currently available, it all feels a bit…lacking.
Where are the webcams and the headsets? The mechanical keyboards? Gaming mice? These are major accessories that would target a sizable chunk of the Apple market.
For instance, Apple has been growing its gaming sector by not only bringing in more titles through studio collabs and ports, but has also made developing on Mac devices much more accessible. As such, launching peripherals meant for gamers would be a smart next step in that direction.
Advertisement
Apple could make it big with new peripherals
Webcams are perfect for gamers who stream, while many pro gamers use mechanical keyboards and gaming mice due to their superior specs. A headset is a no-brainer as well since most pros need enhanced audio.
But many of these peripherals can easily be repurposed for the wider non-gamer market. Webcams for those in need of better visual quality during conference calls. Mechanical keyboards are excellent for office workers who often type non-stop for hours on end, as the designs tend to be more ergonomic and longer-lasting. Gaming mice are also more ergonomic and easier to move due to their lighter weight.
As for headsets, Razer has proven you can release multi-purposed ones for gaming, productivity, and creative tasks like the Razer Barracuda Pro, to great effect. Simply combine a sleeker design, more comfortable earpads and headbands, and excellent audio quality to appeal to Apple buyers. A high-quality, wired headset would be especially useful for those who do video and audio editing, as air pods are insufficient for the level of precision required.
Another peripheral that could attract more of the creative market is a proper drawing tablet coupled with Apple’s stylus, similar to the popular third-party Wacom brand. Since one of the most widely known uses of Mac devices is for creative work like art and visual editing, an Apple tablet would be absolutely perfect.
Advertisement
Apple’s revitalization of its ‘Magic’ brand has put more eyes on its peripherals. As such, this is a golden opportunity for the tech giant to create more that can target a much wider market. A market that, to this day, has had to turn to third-party solutions to fill in the lack of accessory diversity.
X is trying to speed up its crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes. In an update, the company says it has “re-architected” the scoring system that powers the feature so that the user-generated notes can now appear less than 20 minutes after a post is published on its platform.
Community Notes, introduced in 2022, relies on other X users to fact-check or add missing context to posts on the platform. Contributors are required their sources, and other users then rate the “helpfulness” of the note. Creators are also for posts that get “community noted” in an effort to discourage them from trying to monetize misinformation. Now, that whole process should be able to move a lot quicker.
According to X, these new “lightning notes” can “go live in as little as 14m33s after being written, and 18m20s after the post itself was written.” The change could help address a long running criticism of the crowdsourced fact checking system: that it moves far too slowly compared with the speed of viral misinformation on the platform. For example, last year by Bloomberg found that it could take several hours for a Community Note to appear on a viral tweet and that, often, only a fraction of users see the fact check compared with the original post.
The new speedier system could change that, though it’s unclear how often the faster “lightning” version of the process will actually play out. Not all posts with incorrect information, misstated facts or AI-generated imagery are immediately flagged for review, if they are at all. X says it has more than 800,000 contributors to the program globally, but some posts will likely still take much longer to wind their way through the Community Notes process.
Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod and founder of Nest, took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how building the next generation of deep tech startups requires mission-driven a**holes. The entrepreneur and investor did not hold back on stage as he called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement and dunked on LLMs being “know-it-alls”, earning a wave of laughs and applause across the fully-packed auditorium.
Fadell explained why he believes “mission-driven a**holes are a good thing, and in fact, needed to create and ship world class technology products.
“People work with people who are very difficult, and those are the ones that create and change the world. But there are two types of a**holes. Everybody’s an a**hole, but you gotta understand why,” Fadell said. “If they’re an a**hole, because it’s their ego, they’re trying to push people down, that is an egocentric a**hole. But, if you are an a**hole on the details, you’re sitting there pushing on the details, you’re not criticizing the people, but you are critiquing their work and saying you can do better, that is a mission-driven a**hole.”
Fadell thinks it’s not a bad thing when someone is keen on the details and makes sure their team is getting things right. He believes that focusing on details is what you need to make great products, and when you have a manager who cares, that’s a good thing.
Advertisement
The entrepreneur and investor also called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement, making a joke about how startups aren’t hiring Googlers because “you’re lucky that they even showed up.”
“They just showed up on a bus, and they came in for lunch, and then took the bus home,” Fadell said. “They say ‘I worked today, I’m getting a massage, oh, where’s the yogurt?’ That’s why I don’t like any of our startups hiring most Googlers because they’ve got this culture thing.”
He noted that during his days at General Magic in the 90s, the team decided they weren’t going to hire people from the East Coast because of their demands.
“We said, we will never hire people from the East Coast,” Fadell said. “So this was IBM and Sperry and all that s*** because they had to have their driver, or they had to have their company car, and they had to have their corporate lunch and their special executive toilet. We’re like we’re never hiring any of these people, it’s just not going to work, it’s a culture clash. And now I wake up today and Silicon Valley has turned into that s***, and I’m like get me the f*** out of here, yeah? Entitlement everywhere!”
Advertisement
Fadell then went on to call out LLMs for being know-it-alls, joking that no one wants to hire a know-it-all. He believes LLMs are great for certain things, but that they can’t be adopted across the board.
He believes LLMs can be great for entertainment, like if you’re asking ChatGPT to write you a funny poem. However, Fadell says that since LLMs are prone to hallucinations, they shouldn’t be used in cases where people could be at risk. For instance, he thinks doctors shouldn’t be using ChatGPT to create patient reports because people could be harmed if treatment plans are entered incorrectly or drugs are misnamed.
“If you look at artificial-specific models, they work really well,” Fadell said. “They don’t hallucinate, but LLMs are trying to be this general thing because we’re trying to make science fiction happen.”
Canon has officially announced its new RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens, which features stereoscopic elements that have been squeezed into a body no larger than a traditional 2D camera lens. It was originally teased during the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote last June and is designed to work with a Canon EOS R7 as a more affordable tool for creators making 3D VR content for headsets like the Meta Quest 3 or spatial videos for the Apple Vision Pro.
The company hasn’t set a specific date for when the new 3D lens will be available, but it says it will be sometime in November 2024, with an “estimated retail price” of $449.99. That’s considerably cheaper than Canon’s existing dual-fisheye lenses designed to capture 3D video content, including the $1,999 RF5.2mm F2.8 L Dual and the $1,099 RF-S3.9mm F3.5 STM Dual.
Pairing Canon’s new 3D lens with the company’s 32.5MP EOS R7 digital camera — which itself starts at $1,299 — pushes the total price tag of the kit to over $1,700. However, that’s still cheaper than Canon’s higher-end 3D solutions, which start at $2,498 (and can go as high as $6,298) when paired with their requisite camera gear.
The lens is designed to be easy to use, with minimal controls.Image: Canon
Advertisement
Canon’s new 3D lens has an aperture range of f/4.0 to f/16, supports autofocus, and features a button and a control wheel for making separate manual focus adjustments to the left and right sides. What makes it so much cheaper than Canon’s existing 3D lenses is its limited field of view. Canon’s pricier lenses are capable of capturing 180-degree video and images — close to what the human eye is capable of seeing — while the new RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens only takes in about a third of that at 63 degrees.
The lenses on Canon’s new 3D lens are much smaller than the fisheye lenses on its pricier 3D lenses.Image: Canon
Using a standard Canon RF mount, the new lens has stereoscopic elements aligned in a straight optical path, resulting in its front lenses being positioned just 11.8mm apart compared to the 60mm gap between the dual-fisheye lenses on Canon’s existing 3D lenses. As a result, Canon says the strongest 3D effect will be experienced when capturing subjects or objects that are just 6 to 20 inches from the lens. When using it to capture something that’s farther away, the 3D effect will be less pronounced.
Images and videos captured using this lens need to be processed before they can be viewed using VR or AR headsets, either through the EOS VR plugin that’s available for Adobe Premiere Pro, or Canon’s own EOS VR Utility software, available for Macs and PCs. Both tools require a paid subscription but can generate 180-degree 3D, VR, or spatial video content.
Apple has long offered workshops and lessons in retail stores around the globe, from how to make the most of your iPhone to a bonafide summer camp – ‘Apple Camp’ – for kids, and as you might expect, they’ve cooked up an offering for Apple Intelligence.
Beginning Wednesday, October 30, 2024, at Apple Stores across the United States, there will be new bit-sized 15-minute drop-in sessions focused on Apple Intelligence. Both the features that shipped this week, iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, and a look ahead at forthcoming features like the contextually aware Siri, Genomji, and Image Playground. These new Apple Intelligence sessions join the more formal ‘Today at Apple’ workshops and other drop-in sessions.
So whether you’re confused about Apple Intelligence, unsure of where to begin, or have a specific question about how to use writing tools or clean up in photos, an Apple Store is a place to visit.
Unlike other workshops or ‘Today at Apple’ events, there is no pre-registration for these Apple Intelligence drop-in sessions. At larger stores with a proper video wall, like The Grove in LA or Fifth Avenue in New York City, you might find that Apple retail employees will use the theater with a teaser graphic to tee it up. At smaller locations, you might just congregate around a table to go through the 15-minute or so presentation.
Advertisement
(Image credit: Apple)
I got a special preview of the Apple Intelligence-focused workshop, and it feels a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure. The Apple specialist will walk you through key features like Writing Tools or Clean Up in Photos and tease out questions to get a sense of what might be the most helpful for the group attending.
If you have an iPhone, you can even walk through the Apple Intelligence features in real time. Demo devices will also be available if you’re tempted to upgrade but want to try it first.
Presenting Apple Intelligence in the drop-in Today at Apple format makes a ton of sense. It lets you go hands-on with many of the new Apple Intelligence features but doesn’t overwhelm you. Additionally, you can ask questions and get walkthroughs. If you don’t happen to walk in when one is going on, you can always ask an Apple retail employee for one-to-one assistance.
Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.
Advertisement
You can also read our iPhone 16 review to get a sense of the Apple Intelligence experience on that device. However, Genmoji, Image Playground, and a ChatGPT integration for Siri should arrive in December 2024 with iOS 18.2.
Update 10/29/24: We’ve started gathering Black Friday 55-inch TV deals because we’re already seeing some fantastic offers from retailers. There’s no assurance that these discounts will last though the shopping event, so if you see something that you like, you may want to proceed with your purchase immediately to avoid the chaos of the holiday season.
If you’re looking to buy a 55-inch TV, as that’s the perfect size for your living room or bedroom, then you’re going to want to check out these early Black Friday 55-inch TV deals. The shopping event isn’t going to start until November 29, but you can already take advantage of discounts on screens made by the most trusted names in the industry. These early Black Friday deals are insanely attractive, which means you have to hurry with your purchase while stocks are still available.
For those who want to look at other screen sizes, take a look at our roundup of Black Friday TV deals, You may also want to browse our favorite Black Friday OLED TV deals if you’re interested in this particular display technology. There’s a chance that bigger savings are in line once Black Friday officially starts, but these offers aren’t bad at all if you want to finish your shopping now.
The Insignia F30 Series 4K TV is very affordable, and it’s even cheaper following a 31% discount that slashes its price by $110. You’ll get 4K Ultra HD resolution and High Dynamic Range, and it runs on Amazon’s Fire TV platform for access to all of the popular streaming services and voice commands through Amazon’s Alexa and the included Alexa Voice Remote.
The Toshiba C350 Series 4K TV is another TV that’s powered by Amazon’s Fire TV platform, and it supports Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10 for realistic video. Toshiba’s Regza 4K engine further improves picture quality, while Game Mode significantly reduces input lag. You can get this 55-inch TV at 32% off, for savings of $120.
Amazon has rolled out its own TVs that run on the Fire TV platform, and one of its models is the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED Series 4K TV. In addition to 4K Ultra HD resolution and QLED technology, the TV also features adaptive brightness through its built-in sensor that detects the room’s lighting. Following a 25% discount, you’ll enjoy savings of $150.
The TCL QM7 Series 4K QD-Mini LED TV, featuring Mini-LED technology for more dimming zones to create superior contrast, is on sale at $300 off, which is equivalent to a 38% discount. The TV runs on Google TV to let you watch your favorite streaming shows, while the TCL AIPQ PRO Processor with Deep Learning AI will intelligently optimize everything that’s on the screen.
The Sony Bravia 3 4K TV is a steal with this 29% discount that brings its price down by $250. Sony’s 4K HDR Processor X1 will intelligently enhance the color, contrast, and clarity of each scene, while Triluminos Pro technology recreates over a billion colors accurately for lifelike images. This TV runs on Google TV, and it works with Google Assistant for voice commands.
The Hisense U8 Series Mini-LED ULED 4K TV will elevate your home theater setup to new heights with the higher contrast and crisper focus provided by its Mini-LED screen, and QLED technology that creates bright and accurate colors. The TV, which is powered by Google TV, also offers 144Hz Game Mode Pro for gamers. It will be yours at $301 off, or a 27% discount.
The Samsung S90D OLED 4K TV features OLED TV technology that delivers pure blacks, bright whites, and intense color for an impressive viewing experience. Samsung’s 4K AI Upscaling will transform everything that you watch to 4K Ultra HD quality, including the streaming shows that you watch through the Tizen platform. The TV is 32% off right now, for savings of $600.
If our guide on what size TV to buy says a 55-inch screen is the best for you, you should begin choosing among the Black Friday 55-inch TV deals by familiarizing yourself with the best TV brands. You can’t go wrong with any of these names, as they make reliable devices with the latest technologies. You can also take a look at our list of the best TVs for particular models that you’re going to want to keep an eye out for, in case their prices get slashed for Black Friday.
In selecting Black Friday 55-inch TV deals, you may also want to get a QLED TV for unparalleled brightness or an OLED TV for perfect black levels. Other features to look for include support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for a cinematic experience, compatibility with your preferred digital assistant and smart home setup, and a familiar operating system that will let you access your favorite streaming services.
With all of the Black Friday 55-inch TV deals out there, how did we narrow them down to our list of recommendations above? The answer is simple — we want you to enjoy amazing value. That could mean being able to buy an affordable TV for an even cheaper price, or getting a premium TV with a huge discount that knocks it down to your budget range.
All of the major retailers are rolling out their own Black Friday deals, so if you’re targeting a particular TV, it may be difficult to keep track of where you can get it for the lowest price. If you see it above, you can be sure that it’s the cheapest price available for it across all of the retailers, and we’ll keep checking to see if there are better offers. Drop a bookmark so you can stay updated.
Lawsuits against social platforms for failing to adequately protect underage users are becoming more and more common. TikTok has been constantly involved in these situations, although platforms like Instagram have also been in the spotlight of the authorities. Now, a consumer rights group in Brazil has sued Meta, TikTok, and Kwai on similar grounds.
Group sues Meta and TikTok in Brazil for lack of adequate protection for young users
Moderating young people’s use of social media has become a growing challenge for companies. Minors face multiple potentially dangerous and harmful situations. Studies have reflected things like addiction, mental problems, and even exposure to online predators. The lawsuit against both companies is based on the lack of clear warnings about these dangers.
The Collective Defense Institute is pushing the lawsuit against Meta and TikTok in Brazil. The group is seeking to have social platforms introduce clear and concise warnings about the dangers related to the use of their services. Currently, most social platforms do not offer such warnings upon registration, so this seems like a reasonable demand. The lawsuit also seeks damages totaling 3 billion reais (about $525.8 million).
“It is urgent that measures be adopted in order to change the way the algorithm works, the processing of data from users under 18, and the way in which teenagers aged 13 and over are supervised and their accounts created, in order to ensure a safer, healthier experience…as is already the case in developed countries,” said Lillian Salgado, a lawyer involved in the suit.
Advertisement
Meta and TikTok have implemented measures to protect young users
Both Meta and TikTok have been implementing measures to try to protect minors. For example, Instagram included mandatory privacy restrictions on accounts of users under 16. However, such privacy restrictions are not yet available in Brazil. TikTok, for its part, has integrated new features designed to protect minors. These features include screentime limits, family pairing, and others. TikTok also includes restrictions similar to those on Instagram’s accounts for those under 16.
“Young people to have safe and age-appropriate experiences on our apps, and we have been working on these issues for over a decade, developing more than 50 tools, resources, and features to support teens and their guardians,” Meta said in response to the accusations.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login