Apple might have discontinued the original, full-size HomePod smart speaker, but the company is continuing to add new functionality to it. The latest one relies on you also buying the new, second-generation Apple TV 4K, however. If you own both products, there’s now built-in support for HDMI ARC and eARC, which lets the HomePod play audio from other devices plugged into your TV — not just an Apple TV streaming box. Gaming consoles should work; same goes for Blu-ray players or even another streaming gadget.
The feature can be enabled in the “video and audio” area of the Apple TV settings menu. There you’ll see a field labeled “Audio Return Channel (beta),” where you can tell the Apple TV to route all television audio through HomePod speakers.
I haven’t tested this yet, so I can’t speak to any latency issues that could negate its appeal for gaming, but it’s nice to see the HomePod gaining new tricks even after Apple has officially brought an end to sales of the product. (You can still find them at retailers including Apple itself.)
This continued evolution of home theater features is also a hint that Apple could have more speakers in the pipeline. Bloomberg reported last month that the company is in the early stages of development on a product that combines an Apple TV, speaker, and camera. For now, the $99 HomePod Mini stands as the lone smart speaker that Apple is actively marketing. Unfortunately, that device does not support the new audio return channel feature described above.
Google’s Pixel range of smartphones looks set for a major refresh. Not only will Google bring back a high-end model missing from last year’s line-up (instead of ‘XL’ it should be called the Pixel 6 Pro), it’s also giving it a curved OLED screen.
That’s according to new renders that come courtesy of reliable leaker OnLeaks (via digit.in). They show the Pixel 6 Pro sporting a curved, 6.67in OLED screen, along with the first triple camera array in Pixel history. There’s no word on what refresh rate the OLED panel will have, but this being a high-end model, we would expect 90Hz or 120Hz.
The cameras include a wide-angle snapper, a periscope telephoto camera and one unknown camera, all arranged next to an LED flash. They are lined up horizontally across the upper rear of the Pixel 6, which is another change for the range. The colour strip across the top is also a new design element.
Top and bottom speakers should provide stereo sound when watching in landscape, while wireless charging should come as standard, as it did on the Pixel 5. And the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro could be the first phones powered by Google’s own chips – the search giant is rumoured to be working on an SoC (system on a chip) codenamed Whitechapel. Controlling both the hardware and Android software on the phone would ape Apple’s approach to its iPhones, and give Google greater control, which could lead to gains in performance and battery life.
Other renders from OnLeaks and @91Mobiles show the Pixel 6 looking like a smaller version of the 6 Pro, but with a flat screen instead of curved.
(Image credit: OnLeaks/@91Mobiles)
The Pixel 6 will have a dual camera set-up instead of a triple, and its screen is smaller – 6.4in to the Pro’s 6.67in. But it has the same wireless charging and in-display fingerprint scanner. This squares with previous Pixel 6 renders, which suggests this latest leak is on the money.
We’re expecting an official announcement sometime in the autumn/fall, but we’ll keep you up to date with all the latest Pixel 6 news, leaks and rumours as they emerge over the coming weeks.
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Photo by Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Image
‘We make this sort of heinous crime impossible to escape from’
As wildfires raged through Southern California last weekend, an app called Citizen offered an unorthodox bounty over livestream and in push alerts to local residents: “hunt down” the alleged arsonist, and we’ll give you $30,000 cash.
In the hours that followed, it became clear the app was mistaken. The man pictured had no connection to the fires, and once he was located by law enforcement, he was quickly released for lack of evidence.
“We are actively working to improve our internal processes to ensure this does not occur again,” the company said in a statement after the release. “This was a mistake we are taking very seriously.”
But according to internal communications obtained by The Verge, the bounty was personally mandated by Citizen founder and CEO Andrew Frame, who saw it as an opportunity to exercise the app’s policing powers and even offered to fund it with his own money.
On Saturday afternoon, before the livestream was broadcast, Frame wrote in a company Slack thread that he would pay a $10,000 reward personally to catch an arsonist still in the area “as a test.”
“Let’s find this guy, activate safety network completely,” Frame wrote, according to screenshots of internal Slack messages obtained by The Verge. “This is a great transition of Citizen back to active safety. We are not a news company. We are safety and we make this sort of heinous crime impossible to escape from. That needs to be our mindset.” The bounty was later raised to $30,000.
First released under the name Vigilante in 2016, Citizen had a rocky rollout. The app was pulled from Apple’s App Store over concerns that it encouraged users to directly take on crime themselves. It was relaunched as Citizen in 2017, providing information transcribed from police and fire dispatch audio. Users also have the option to livestream incidents on the app with guidance to “never approach a crime scene, interfere with an incident, or get in the way of police.”
The app now provides alerts about crime in more than 30 cities. Citizen’s website boasts that it has sent more than 4 billion alerts and has more than 7 million users. Critics have said the app creates false perceptions about the level of danger to its users and allows users to spread racism in chat replies. More recently, the company raised alarm for operating an SUV labeled as “private patrol” in downtown Los Angeles, although company representatives insist the vehicle is not engaged in security work.
The Saturday broadcast came through Citizen’s recently launched OnAir feature, which is intended as a means to broadcast public safety notices. It’s only the 16th time the feature has been activated, although it’s the first time a cash bounty has been put forward so aggressively.
OnAir has “strict validation protocols to limit the spread of misinformation,” a Citizen spokesperson said in a statement. “In the 15 instances it has been used before, those protocols were followed, unfortunately, in this instance, on-the-ground tips were used in place of the proper verification with public safety agencies.”
“We deeply regret our mistake and are working to improve our internal processes to prevent this from happening again,” the spokesperson continued. They did not address why the service chose to offer a bounty for the suspect in the case specifically.
Frame may have had a personal stake in the fire; property records indicate he is the current owner of a Bel Air mansion within 10 miles of the blaze, with little development in between. In the days following the alert, the fire has grown to 1,158 acres and is still expanding.
A Citizen spokesperson denied any personal motivation and said Frame’s current residence was not threatened by the fire.
The Palisades Fire was set by an arsonist in a steep canyon west of Los Angeles just after 10PM on May 14th, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The county ordered evacuations of the surrounding area the following evening.
It is not clear where Citizen first obtained information indicating an arsonist was responsible for the fire. On Saturday, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Jay Balgemino told the Pacific Palisades Residents Association that police were searching for an arson suspect. “It appears as though a homeless man living in our hillsides with a criminal past has planned out a wild rampage,” read a post on the association’s Facebook page just after 6PM. “We cannot take the risk of allowing more homeless in a neighborhood with such a fragile environmental landscape.” The association took the post down after an inquiry from Recode.
However Frame first saw the false identification, the Slack messages show he saw it as an “opportunity” for Citizen to fulfill its “true mission.”
“Those people all live there and their homes/families are being threatened,” he wrote in Slack. “There is a huge cohort of engaged users who want to help.”
Around 10PM that day, Citizen broadcast a livestream where it displayed a photo of the man and offered the reward for his capture, according to journalist Cerise Castle, who reported the event on Twitter. The hosts did not elaborate on the source of the information but encouraged users to “hunt this guy down.” Twitter users identified one of the hosts as Prince Mapp, Citizen’s head of community and culture, although Citizen declined to confirm the identities of the hosts.
“We know the guy is out there,” said one host, according to Castle. “We need our users to get out there and bring this guy to justice.”
But the man they identified was detained a short time later and released, sheriff’s Lt. Jim Braden told Kate Cagle, a reporter for Spectrum News. Braden said the deputies did not have evidence to charge the man with a crime. He called the actions by Citizen potentially “disastrous” and would only lead to someone getting hurt.
Citizen promoted the livestream on its Twitter account but later deleted the tweet. On Sunday morning, deputies arrested a different man on suspicion of arson.
And while Citizen said it plans to get it right next time, Frame suggested in a Slack message that it won’t be the last time Citizen offers a cash reward. “We need to build this into the product and we will,” he wrote.
Twitter’s getting ready for the launch of its Ticketed Spaces feature, and today, it’s previewing what users can expect when they go to host their first one. US users will be able to apply to host paid live audio rooms starting in the next couple weeks. Anyone who wants to charge has to have 1,000 followers, have hosted three spaces in the past 30 days, and be at least 18 years old.
The company is partnering with Stripe to handle payments, and it says users will receive 80 percent of revenue after Apple and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken. So if you sell a $10 ticket, Apple would presumably take a 30 percent cut, leaving you and Twitter to split the remaining $7. Eighty percent would go to you, and 20 percent would go to Twitter. The company says it’ll cover the cost of Stripe’s transaction fees. (Hosts will also need a Stripe account.)
You can see the full product flow below:
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A Twitter spokesperson says initial applications, when they open, will be processed within a few weeks, and the team plans to start with a small test group. Although only US users will be able to host these ticketed spaces for now, anyone around the globe can purchase access. Spaces just began allowing anyone with more than 600 followers to host and added the ability to schedule an event, and the company says it’s working on co-hosted spaces as well.
This live audio function is among the multiple ways Twitter has announced that it will help its users monetize. It’s planning Super Follows, too, which will let people pay for bonus content, like a newsletter subscription and more tweets, and it’s launching a communities feature. The company hasn’t said whether the 80 / 20 split will also apply to Super Follows.
Twitter also might offer a bigger subscription product called Twitter Blue, which could let people pay for additional features, like the ability to undo tweets. Although Twitter’s product has remained mostly stagnant for years, it’s issued a rapid-fire succession of consumer-facing product announcements this past year, seemingly all in an effort to diversify its revenue and build a more fully rounded place where people can consume a variety of content across text, audio, and video.
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Battery life has been the Achilles’ heel of smartwatches and fitness watches. While solid state storage and processing power have been evolving at a rapid clip, battery life has remained stagnant. This goes quintuple for watches that track your activity using GPS, which is a particularly power-hungry thing to do. And yet, somehow, the Garmin Enduro now exists. If you’re the type of person who likes to run until their kneecaps have been ground into a fine powder, this is the watch for you.
The $800 Enduro is a multisport fitness watch. And by multi, I mean pretty much all the sports. Built-in activities include: Run, Ultra Run, Trail Run, Treadmill, Virtual Run, Track Run, Indoor Track Run, Bike, Mountain Bike, Indoor Bike, Pool Swim, Open Water Swim, Triathlon, SwimRun, Hike, Expedition, Climb, Indoor Climb, Bouldering, Ski, Snowboard, Cross Country Ski, Cross Country Skate Ski, Backcountry Ski, Surf, SUP, Kayak, Row, Indoor Row, Navigate, Track Me, Pilates, Yoga, Breathwork, Cardio, Strength, Golf, and others (including downloadable options made by third parties) but honestly I’m tired of typing. Basically, it has all of the same activity modes as Garmin’s current multisport flagship, the Fenix 6 (starting at $550, up to $1,100), but there are some significant tradeoffs, which I’ll get to in a sec.
Let’s start with the body. Physically, the Enduro is a perfect twin of the larger Fenix 6X. (You can see a more in-depth comparison between the two on Garmin’s site.) It has a 1.4-inch transflective (sunlight visible) color LCD screen. It’s extremely easy to read, particularly outdoors (at night it lights up with the push of a button). The screen also doubles as a low-key solar panel, giving you extra juice when you wear it outside.
The body is just over two inches by two inches and 0.6 inches thick. In other words, it’s a bit chunky, and people with smaller wrists probably will not like it. I have weirdly big wrist bones, so I didn’t mind the way it felt, and it didn’t look like I was wearing a tablet on my arm. Despite its size it’s quite light, coming in at 71 grams for the steel version or 61 grams for the more expensive titanium version. That weight is partly due to the new, slightly stretchy nylon strap, which is comfortable and dries quickly. There are a lot of other strap options to choose from, should you so desire.
Like the Fenix and most other Garmin watches, the Enduro has five physical buttons which you use for navigating in lieu of a touchscreen. This is the most intuitive of any of the fitness watches I’ve used, and the UI has only gotten better with age.
The Enduro lacks a touchscreen but has five physical buttons.
In addition to being a training watch, it has basic smartwatch features, including displaying notifications from your phone. Android users (like me, I tested it with a Pixel 5) can quick reply to messages from the watch (unfortunately Apple has blocked this feature on the iPhone for any device except the Apple Watch, which seems pretty anti-competitive if you ask me).
From the main screen, pressing the bottom left button (the down button) gets you to a bunch of widgets that provide a lot of data at a glance. It’s just the right amount of information density. If you want more granular info, you can dive into the Garmin Connect app (iOS and Android), which has a lot of detail, but its design is very dated and it can be tricky to find what you’re looking for in it. It’s not bad, but it could benefit from a refresh.
In addition to daily tracking of things like steps, floors climbed, heart rate, sleep quality, and even respiration rate, the Enduro also has a pulse oximeter which uses a special red LED. In my testing, it was roughly as accurate as the finger-based (medical grade) one I bought toward the beginning of lockdown last year. You can choose to have it track your pulse ox 24/7, but that will take a big bite out of your battery life. You can also choose to just track pulse ox as you sleep, which might be good for someone who suffers from sleep apnea. If you don’t have any underlying health concerns, though, I’d just leave it off and check it on demand whenever you want.
The Enduro is primarily a training watch, and it has all of the excellent tools that the Fenix line has, including Body Battery (which surprisingly mapped quite closely to how well rested or depleted I felt), Stress, VO2 Max over time, as well as Training Status. There are some new features debuting on this watch as well. One of the most useful I found was Trail Run VO2 Max. It takes terrain into account, so if you’re running slower because of rocks, it won’t give you an artificially low V02 Max score. Garmin has also upgraded its ClimbPro features, which take ascend and descend into consideration in both your stats and your pace recommendations. The watch can even alert you before you get to a hill (you have to preload a route into the watch) so you can prepare yourself for a climb. There are also new Ultrarunning specific features which I was unable to test because I prefer other ways of injuring myself. It’s worth noting that these new features are also making their way to the Fenix line.
So, why might you want the Enduro over the Fenix? Capital B Battery life. That is really the one and only reason. The battery lasts more than twice as long as the Fenix, and the Fenix is one of the longest-lasting training watches I’ve tested. If you currently use an Apple Watch, you may weep when you read this, but here are the numbers the company claims:
Smartwatch mode: up to 50 days / 65 days with solar
Battery Saver Watch mode: up to 130 days / one year with solar
GPS: up to 70 hours / 80 hours with solar
Max Battery GPS mode: up to 200 hours / 300 hours with solar
Expedition GPS Activity: up to 65 days / 95 days with solar
That is absolutely unparalleled. It’s also conservative in my estimation. I wore this watch for a solid month, constantly using it as a smartwatch (checking notifications, checking my vitals, etc). That included 12 hours and 51 minutes of surfing (GPS tracked), four hours and three minutes of running (GPS tracked), and three hours and 16 minutes of strength training (non-GPS). I did not have to take the watch off to charge it at all. Not one single time. It is easily the longest-lasting training / smartwatch I have ever tested, and by a gigantic margin. Garmin claims that it didn’t do this by stuffing in a larger physical battery but by optimizing the underlying platform. I tried to get more details, but they were understandably tight-lipped about the secret recipe.
So, you may see that and think “well then, obviously this is an easy choice over the Fenix 6, right?” Well, not quite. There are some things the Enduro doesn’t have, and they aren’t insignificant.
Garmin’s app is functional but in need of a refresh.
The biggest thing the Enduro lacks is maps. The Fenix 6 has topographic maps of the entire US built right into it, and that’s been incredibly useful to me. It’s actually kept me from taking wrong turns while hiking on a number of occasions. You can still track back with the Enduro, bread-crumb style, but it will appear as a disembodied trail without any context or landmarks to help guide you. This also means the Enduro doesn’t have some specific cycling training and other navigational features.
The other big thing the Enduro is missing is music. The Fenix allows you to store songs on it and play them via Bluetooth earbuds, so you can leave your phone at home. The Enduro doesn’t. If you want tunes to go with your workout, you’re going to need to carry a second device. This brings up a somewhat frustrating point.
With those things missing, you might assume that it’s because the Enduro has less storage compared to the Fenix. It doesn’t. In fact, it has double the storage of the Fenix at 64GB vs. 32GB. As far as I can tell, the only reason the Enduro doesn’t have maps and music is because Garmin didn’t want to cannibalize sales of the Fenix 6, which is frustrating. If you compare the Enduro to the Fenix 6 Pro Solar edition (which has the same hidden solar-panel display as the Enduro), both watches are a wince-inducing $800. The Fenix is a bit more svelte and has a very slightly smaller screen, but otherwise they’re the same. You just have to choose, do you want maps and all the features they come with, or do you want double the battery life? Garmin could have easily given you both — and perhaps the Fenix 7 or Enduro 2 will have both, or a firmware update could bring maps and music to the Enduro — but for now it’s an either / or between two fantastic features.
The Enduro is the watch to get if you never want to worry about charging it.
It’s a strange dilemma. Ultimately, I think the Fenix 6 is the better, more complete watch, and so that’s the one I would lean toward recommending. You just have to remember to charge it three times as often. That being said, the Enduro is still an excellent watch, and being able to go on a very long trip and leave the (proprietary) charger at home is a real boon, and if you do any ultra-length activities, then this is absolutely the watch you want. For now, I’ll stick with the Fenix 6 in case I get lost, again.
Spotify is adding the ability to download playlists, albums, and podcasts on Apple Watch to play offline, the company announced Friday. Users will be able to stream audio in 96kbps, add and delete Spotify content on their phones, and sync with the Watch.
“Being able to download music and podcasts complements the existing feature of being able to stream your favorites from the watch, and now you don’t even have to take your phone with you,” the company said in its news release.
Spotify added the ability to stream music using an Apple Watch in November; until that point, the Apple Watch only worked as a remote for Spotify music playing on an iPhone or other Spotify Connect-compatible device. Spotify first launched its Apple Watch app in 2018.
The offline feature will be available starting Friday on Apple Watch Series 3 or later running WatchOS 6.0 or later, with WatchOS 7.1 and up recommended. A Spotify Premium subscription is also required. Spotify Premium memberships range from $9.99 per month for a single account, up to $15.99 per month for a family plan. There’s also a $4.99-per-month student account option available.
Another streaming music service, Deezer, beat Spotify to the punch, adding the ability to download music from its Apple Watch app earlier this week.
Also this week, Spotify said it was launching a new feature to allow Google’s Wear devices to download music and listen offline, without needing an accompanying phone. It hasn’t been released yet, but it’s in the works, the company’s product lead for wearables said during Google’s developer keynote on Tuesday.
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It’s so, so, so much better. But the moment Apple showed off the second-generation Siri Remote, it was obvious that this would be a huge improvement over its detested predecessor. It’s easy to tell which way is right side up when you reach for it. The clickable touchpad area that dominated the upper third of the prior remote has been replaced by a more intuitive D-pad. The Siri button has been pushed to the remote’s right side, almost guaranteeing that you’ll never unintentionally trigger Apple’s voice assistant. And now there’s a proper power button for your TV.
Listing all of these “upgrades” on the new $59 Siri Remote really illustrates just how disappointing the old one that somehow lasted six years on the market was. Before this big redesign, the most Apple did in that time was to try to cure the “which side is up?” confusion by adding a white rim around one of the buttons. “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.”
But this? This new Siri Remote is a very good remote. There’s nothing exceptional about it, but it’s functional, accessible, and painless to use. If you used those words to describe the original Siri Remote, you’d be in the minority.
It feels really nice, too. Apple makes the remote from a unibody aluminum shell that’s taller, heavier, and considerably thicker than the old Siri clicker. It’s slightly narrower than the black remote but still feels larger on the whole — and that’s a positive. The previous Siri remote was so thin that it was easily lost to the deepest reaches of the couch. I don’t see that being as much of a problem with the new, chunkier hardware.
The Siri Remote is in keeping with Apple’s renewed fondness for hard edges. With the remote gripped in hand, you never really feel the edges on the front, but you do at the back. The back metal is curved, but there’s still a hard edge at both sides. As long as you don’t squeeze the remote too tight, it should prove reasonably comfortable.
Apple has added power and mute buttons to the new Siri Remote.
Instead of putting what basically amounted to a trackpad on the top section of the remote, Apple has switched to a much more traditional directional pad. Within that circular D-pad is a touch-sensitive center button that still lets you swipe around content or move in any direction just like you could before. (And yes, you can still play with the subtle movement of app icons on the home screen by gently nudging your thumb around.) But some streaming apps didn’t work perfectly with that input method, so Apple is now including the far more precise D-pad.
This choose-your-preferred-navigation method — Apple calls it the “clickpad with touch surface” — has a very short learning curve. Initially, I would inadvertently activate the touchpad when I just meant to move my finger from down to up or vice versa on the D-pad. That didn’t last long, but if it winds up a bigger hassle for you, there’s an option in the remote’s settings menu to assign the center button to “click only,” which gives the D-pad all navigation duties.
Apple has also come up with a clever jogwheel function that lets you circle a finger around the outer ring to scrub through videos at faster or slower speeds depending on how quickly you’re thumbing around the circle. It’s a direct callback to the days of the iPod clickwheel and does a great job helping you land on an exact moment in a video.
But I must confess something: I had an embarrassing few hours where I couldn’t figure out how to make this work. Eventually, I learned the trick: after pausing a video, you’ve got to rest your finger on the D-pad momentarily before you start circling around it. An animation will pop up in the progress bar (with a little dot that indicates where your finger is) to let you know you’re in jogwheel mode. If you just pause the video and immediately start the circular movement, it doesn’t do the right thing. Don’t be like me and unnecessarily factory reset your Apple TV 4K because of this.
The buttons themselves all have a satisfying click and don’t feel the least bit mushy. The clickpad is quieter when pressed than the buttons below it, which are each significantly noisier than any other remotes I had to compare against, be it for a Roku, Chromecast, or otherwise. Again, it’s not a problem unless you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, but you’ll absolutely hear the volume rocker when you’re turning up a certain scene in a movie or show. The Siri button on the side is whisper quiet; you still have to press and hold it down whenever you’re doing a voice command.
You might also have to overcome some muscle memory challenges since the mute button is now where play / pause was situated on the old remote. The “menu” button has been rebadged as “back” but does the same functions as before, which means, in most cases, the new icon makes a ton more sense. The buttons aren’t backlit, but it’s easy enough to memorize them by feel once you’ve used the remote for a while.
There’s a circular D-pad with a touchpad in the center.
But as good as the new Siri Remote is, it feels like Apple missed some opportunities that frankly seem like low-hanging fruit. The most glaring is that there’s no way to locate the remote if you’re unable to find it. As I said earlier, the bigger dimensions should make for fewer instances where the remote gets misplaced, but some way of having it alert you to its location would’ve been nice. “Hey Siri, where’s my remote?” seems like such an easy thing to make happen, but that voice query won’t do you any good or make the remote beep. And unlike Apple’s recently introduced AirTags, there’s no ultra-wideband chip in the remote to help pinpoint its position in a room. If you’re finding that the remote goes MIA constantly, you might just have to settle for a case that combines an AirTag with the Siri Remote. But having a simple, straightforward remote locator feature is one area where Roku objectively beats out Apple.
A less impactful gripe is the lack of an input button for switching between HDMI sources; the Apple TV automatically becomes the active input when you power it on or wake it from sleep. But an input button would’ve at least made life easier for people switching between an Apple TV and an Xbox or PlayStation. As a result, I just can’t quit my LG TV’s remote, much as I wish I could. Most of my devices automatically grab the TV’s attention when they’re switched on, but a button is foolproof.
I can complain about buttons being absent, but I can also praise Apple for the same reason: there are no branded shortcut buttons whatsoever on the Siri Remote. Not even Netflix can lock down its own button, whereas you’d be hard-pressed to find another streaming box remote without that logo somewhere.
The Siri Remote still charges with Apple’s Lightning connector — despite now being thick enough to house a USB-C jack. USB seems more natural for this type of scenario, but what do I know? I’m just one man who’s elated to have a reliable, sensibly designed remote control again. Apple is going to keep doing Apple things. I was not able to test the new remote with third-party charging stands designed for the old one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that industry catches up with the new design in the near future.
The right choice is clear.
The gyroscope and accelerometer from the previous Siri Remote are history, so you won’t be able to use this one for Apple Arcade games that rely on those sensors. But it’s unlikely many people were gaming with it to begin with; tvOS now supports many third-party gamepads, including the latest Xbox and PlayStation controllers, if you hadn’t heard.
Any way you slice it, the new Siri Remote is a win on every level. It’s inconceivable that we put up with the last one for so many years, but its time has come. And the remote control taking its place is extremely good at doing remote control things. Much as how Apple’s M1 MacBooks would have earned perfect scores if they’d had competent webcams, the Siri Remote would be flirting with perfection if it just had some way of letting you easily find the thing. Or if the buttons were backlit. My review of the new Apple TV 4K is coming soon, but if you’ve already got the last model, this is the only real must-have upgrade to go for.
After launching its paid podcast platform last month, Spotify has announced it has teamed up with audiobook service Storytel to let subscribers listen to books in-app.
This partnership will allow users of both services to link their accounts and access a library of 500,000 titles from within Spotify’s platform. However, listeners will still need to pay for a Storytel subscription to play the additional content.
The move is part of Spotify’s goal to become a singular home for all types of audio, with music, podcasts, live conversations, and audiobooks now all accessible from within its app.
Speaking about the partnership Courtney Holt, Global Head of Studios, Spotify, said: “By utilizing the Spotify Open Access Platform, Storytel will be able to deliver its premium audiobooks offering using Spotify’s best-in-class platform, all while retaining direct control over their relationship to their audience.”
The service will roll out in 25 global markets later this year, but an exact launch date is still tbc.
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Remember the Google Chromecast Audio? It was a little dongle that made any speakers smart – just plug it in, and it would add wi-fi to the party, letting you stream online music through your phone, tablet or computer to your speakers.
Now Belkin has launched a similar device but with Apple AirPlay 2 wireless tech onboard. That means you can stream music from an Apple device to your old speakers that don’t have wireless streaming built-in.
The Belkin Soundform Connect plugs into your speakers using an optical or 3.5mm connection. Then you simply tap the AirPlay icon on your Apple device and your track will start playing from your speaker as if by magic.
AirPlay 2 is adept at multi-room audio, too. So plug Soundform Connect devices into speakers in different rooms and you can fill your house with sweet music. Use Apple’s HomeKit, and you can assign different speakers to different rooms, and create scenes and automations using the Home app.
You can also control playback using Siri voice control, so you can ask what’s playing in each room, adjust the volume, play, pause and more.
To use it, you’ll need an iPhone running iOS 11.4 or later, an iPad with iPadOS 11.4 or later, a Mac running macOS Catalina or later, or an Apple TV running tvOS 11.4 or later.
The Soundform Connect is small enough to fit in a pocket, so you can easily take it with you wherever you go. And it won’t break the bank, with a price tag of £89 ($99).
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Talk of a possible Spotify HiFi launch hit the headlines this week, but it seems the music streaming giant wants to focus on a new feature for Google Wear devices: offline listening.
In a keynote speech at the recent Google I/O developer conference, Spotify’s product lead for cars and wearables revealed plans to allow the company’s 350 million users to download music to their Google Wear smartwatch.
YouTube followed up with a similar announcement. The company’s YouTube Music app is also due to get an update that will let some 35 million users download tracks directly to their Wear OS watch.
Apple Watch users have enjoyed offline listening via Apple Music for years but Apple Watch does not currently support offline Spotify playback.
As yet, Spotify hasn’t said when new the offline listening feature will be available – only that the new Spotify app has been “rebuilt from the ground up for Wear”. YouTube Music is due to land on Wear OS devices “later this year”.
The announcements came as part of a major overhaul of Google’s flagging Wear OS. The latest version of the software was developed in partnership with Samsung and claims improved performance (apps open 30 percent faster, apparently) and a sleek user experience based on Samsung’s popular Tizen OS.
MORE:
Spotify HiFi is missing something – but will it matter?
Kensington’s StudioDock, the high-end $399.99 desktop hub for the iPad Pro that was released earlier this year, isn’t compatible with the new 12.9-inch model hitting stores today. A representative for Kensington confirmed the news to The Verge, saying it’s because the new iPad Pro is 0.5mm thicker than the 2018 and 2020 models.
The StudioDock uses a rotatable magnetic mounting plate to secure the iPad when it’s plugged in over USB-C, expanding its connectivity with extra USB-A, ethernet, and HDMI ports. Although the only difference between the StudioDock versions for the 12.9-inch and 11-inch iPad Pro is the size of that mounting plate, Kensington says it won’t be user-replaceable. Instead, the company plans to release an entirely new SKU to fit the 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
The new 11-inch iPad Pro should be unaffected, because its dimensions are the same as last year’s model. The 12.9-inch version, however, is slightly thicker because it uses a new, more advanced display with Mini LED technology. Apple itself has warned that its 2020 Magic Keyboard “may not precisely fit” the 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro due to this difference in thickness, although we found it worked fine in our review.
No such luck for the StudioDock — you’ll need to buy a whole new one if you want to upgrade your iPad. This wasn’t entirely unforeseeable, and I warned of the possibility when reviewing the StudioDock in March because new iPad Pro models did seem overdue. But the incompatibility is unfortunate for such an expensive product, especially since it was only just released.
CNA Financial, one of the largest US insurance companies, paid $40 million to free itself from a ransomware attack that occurred in March, according to a report from Bloomberg. The hackers reportedly demanded $60 million when negotiations started about a week after some of CNA’s systems were encrypted, and the insurance company paid the lower sum a week later.
If the $40 million figure is accurate, CNA’s payout would rank as one of the highest ransomware payouts that we know about, though that’s not for lack of trying by hackers: both Apple and Acer had data that was compromised in separate $50 million ransomware demands earlier this year. It also seems like the hackers are looking for bigger payouts: just this week we saw reports that Colonial Pipeline paid a $4.4 million ransom to hackers. While that number isn’t as staggering as the demands made to CNA, it’s still much higher than the estimated average enterprise ransomware demand in 2020.
Law enforcement agencies recommend against paying ransoms, saying that payouts will encourage hackers to keep asking for higher and higher sums. For its part, CNA told Bloomberg that it wouldn’t comment on the ransom, but that it had “followed all laws, regulations, and published guidance, including OFAC’s 2020 ransomware guidance, in its handling of this matter.” In an update from May 12, CNA says that it believes its policyholders’ data were unaffected.
According to Bloomberg, the ransomware that locked CNA’s systems was created by a Russian group with the Mr. Robot-esque name Evil Corp, though it’s always difficult to tell if the group that made the software is actually the one behind the attack.
Belkin’s new SoundForm Connect Audio is a $99 dongle that lets you turn any pair of speakers with either a 3.5mm or optical port into an AirPlay 2-compatible setup. In other words, it’s effectively an Apple version of the (now-defunct) Chromecast Audio.
As someone who actually likes AirPlay 2, it’s a very interesting concept, especially if you have older speakers or an audio setup that you’d like to get wired into the rest of an AirPlay system.
Setup is simple: just plug in the SoundForm Connect Audio to power (over USB-C, thankfully), and then plug in a 3.5mm headphone jack or optical cable from your speaker system’s input port.
Image: Belkin
Unfortunately, the SoundForm Connect Audio does come with a pretty hefty price tag for what it does. The Chromecast Audio used to cost $35, which made it a pretty nice option for hooking up an old speaker to your multiroom audio setup. An Echo Dot (which is also a full-fledged smart speaker) can be hooked up to anything with a headphone jack to use with Alexa and costs $40 to $50 — not counting Amazon’s frequent sale.
But the SoundForm Connect Audio costs $99 just to add a speaker to an AirPlay 2 setup. That’s between two to three times as much, or as much as Ikea’s entry-level Symfonisk bookshelf speaker (which also offers AirPlay 2 support).
Still, given that there hasn’t really been a solution for this kind of setup since Apple discontinued the AirPort Express (which offered similar functionality for the original AirPlay standard), the SoundForm Connect Audio is better than nothing. But the relatively high price means it’ll likely only be useful for owners of more expensive speaker setups.
The SoundForm Connect Audio is available to preorder now from Belkin’s website, with orders shipping later in June.
Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5 doesn’t seem to be a difficult concept to grasp; initial estimates suggest as many as 96 percent of US users are leaping at the chance to tell their apps, “No, you can’t track me across the internet.” Now, Apple is taking a victory lap with a full ad campaign, too, one that turns the feature into a selling point for the iPhone and furthers the attempt to pitch itself as the only tech company you can trust. And, if you ask me, its new ad spot “Tracked” is just about perfect.
Just give it a watch above. Who wouldn’t want to Thanos-snap ad trackers into dust? It’s no wonder Google is thinking long and hard about following Apple’s lead with an anti-tracking feature of its own.
Critics claim these moves will make the internet more expensive and potentially harm small businesses, and they are updating their apps to warn you about that — as well as the idea that ads might be less relevant if you opt out. But that’s a tough sell compared to the privacy fears that exist these days, and it’s hard to argue with Apple’s idea that users should get to choose for themselves. The company also launched privacy “nutrition labels” late last year.
Apple tells The Verge that its own ad platform and apps don’t track users and that the App Tracking Transparency prompt applies to its own apps as well.
MagSafe PopSockets are finally here, after the famous phone handle company announced they would be coming in January. The PopGrip for MagSafe sells for $30, which is two to three times more expensive than the adhesive versions, but the bigger question that people have been asking since the announcement is whether they’ll be as trustworthy. I decided it was time to find out.
The PopGrip for MagSafe is a retractable grip for your phone (as the name implies) that can also work as a stand for watching video or a hands-free video call. PopSockets has made versions of the PopGrip for years now (and if you’ve got a collection of fun design tops, this will still work with those), but they’ve traditionally used an adhesive to attach to your device. The MagSafe version uses Apple’s system of magnets that it introduced on the iPhone 12 models and is compatible with everything from the iPhone 12 Mini to the gargantuan iPhone 12 Pro Max.
There have also been some attempts by third parties to make MagSafe mounts that you can stick to your iPhone, then stick a PopSocket to, but the PopGrip for MagSafe is an integrated, first-party version.
PopGrip for MagSafe
$30
Prices taken at time of publishing.
PopSocket’s phone handle / stand, which now attaches using the magnets built into the iPhone 12 series of phones.
$30
at PopSockets
PopSockets makes it clear on the box that this shouldn’t be used with bare iPhones, and it’s easy to see why: the iPhone’s glass back doesn’t provide a lot of grip. But sometimes the question with accessories isn’t “what do the directions say” but “can I get away with using it like this?”
Goodbye!
Looks like the answer is no! Listen to PopSockets, and do not use this thing with a bare phone. If you put it on and shake it around a few times you may get lucky and think that it’s fine, but I promise it will come off very easily at some point. Probably while you’re on some sort of perilous precipice.
Pictured: a terrible idea.
That did make me wonder, though, what would happen if I had a plastic case that wasn’t MagSafe compatible. Would the magnets still reach through, and would the plastic be less slippery than the iPhone’s glass? I can’t answer the second question, because the answer to the first one is absolutely not. It basically just falls off, even with a reasonably thin MagSafe-less case.
Okay, well let’s give the PopSocket the best-case scenario: how well will it stick to Apple’s silicone MagSafe case, which has both magnets and a reasonably grippy texture?
I’d call that a pass!
As you can see, it’s not coming off — at least not until you want to pop it of to, say, wirelessly charge, in which case it’s actually very easy to remove. But maybe it’s just the specific way I was shaking it that let it perform so well. I will admit that I haven’t historically been a heavy PopSocket user, but I’ve been told that people put a lot of faith in the PopSocket adhesive. So that made me wonder what was the silliest thing I could do to really put the MagSafe case / PopGrip connection to the test.
And obviously the answer was karate.
Unlike my form after years of not practicing, my phone is still intact.
Make no mistake, if you want to dislodge the PopSocket from the phone, you can. If I’m holding the phone at a perfect parallel angle to the floor and shaking with all my might, it will eventually come off, but that doesn’t seem like a terribly realistic scenario and it’s been rock-solid in all my other tests.
It’s also worth noting that I wasn’t able to test the MagSafe PopSocket with other case materials, like Apple’s leather or clear plastic cases, so it’s hard to say if it would do as well. But it does seem that, with at least one of Apple’s cases, the MagSafe PopSocket can hang with the adhesive version. And if you use your phone with a non-MagSafe case, or no case at all? Well, you may have to stick with the sticky PopSockets, or buy a MagSafe case if you really want that sweet magnetic removability.
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