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Enlarge / Apple Vision Pro. (credit: Apple) After years of delays, preorders for the Apple Vision Pro are just a few days away. It’s been a long, winding road to get to this point, and the nature of the headset has shifted through numerous rumors, both true and false. Because of all that, this is a good time to clarify exactly what you can (and can’t) expect from Apple’s most ambitious new product in many years. Apple showed more or less what it had finally landed on at WWDC in June, and I got some hands-on time with it then, but I still had a lot of questions. Fortunately, a few relevant details have been clarified since. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Alexander Koerner) In December, we heard that job cuts might be coming for Google's ad sales division, and it's here. Business Insider reports Google is laying off "hundreds of employees" from the ad sales team. The cuts are mostly in the "Large Customer Sales" (LCS) team, which serves the company's biggest advertising clients. We expected this. The Information detailed that layoffs would come to Google's Ad division this month. That report said that many of those are being laid off or reassigned because AI is replacing them. Google has been packing Google Ads—its most important product—with tons of generative AI features lately. One is a natural-language chatbot that helps people navigate the large selection of ad products; another is a system that can just make ad assets like images and text on its own based on a budget and goals given by the ad purchaser. Google's generative AI ad system is part of a product called "Performance Max," which works by autonomously remixing and tweaking your ads using the click-through rate as an instant feedback system. Google used to have humans do sales guidance for its products, create art assets, and decide on text and layouts, but now AI can do it a thousand times a second. For Google, this is the latest in an increasing number of layoffs since last year. Last week, there were "hundreds" laid off from the hardware, Google Assistant, and AR divisions. Before that, there were layoffs in Google News, and before that, layoffs came to recruiting, Waze, Waymo, a robot division, and generally all across Google. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / Retro Games' THE400 Mini console. (credit: Retro Games / Benj Edwards) Last week, UK-based Retro Games, Ltd. announced a mini console version of the Atari 400 home computer, first released in 1979. It's called "THE400 Mini," and it includes HDMI video output, 25 built-in games, a USB version of Atari's famous joystick, and it retails for $120. But this release means something more to me personally because my first computer was an Atari 400—and as any other Atari 8-bit computer fan can tell you, the platform often doesn't get the respect it should. This will be the first time Atari's 8-bit computer line has received a major retro-remake release. My Atari 400 story goes a little something like this. Around the time I was born in 1981, my dad bought my older brother (then 5 years old) an Atari 400 so he could play games and learn to program. My brother almost immediately found its flat membrane keyboard frustrating and the Atari 410 cassette drive too slow, so my dad ordered an Atari 800 and an Atari 810 disk drive instead. This began our family's golden age of Atari 800 gaming, which I've written about elsewhere. I've often said if a modern game designer wants to learn how to make games, just dive into the Atari 400/800 game library. There are some priceless gems there you can't find anywhere else, plus others that play best on the platform. OK, I'll name a few: The Seven Cities of Gold, Archon, M.U.L.E., Wizard of Wor, Salmon Run, Star Raiders, The Halley Project, and so much more. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Series 9. (credit: Apple) Apple has developed a backup plan for if the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 are import banned again. As it currently appeals the US International Trade Commission's (ITC's) ruling that its watches violate a patent owned by Masimo, Apple has come up with a software workaround that strips its current smartwatches of their controversial blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. In January 2023, the ITC ruled that the Watch violated one of California-headquartered Masimo’s light-based pulse oximetry patents. The Apple Watch Series 6, which came out in 2020, was the first Apple smartwatch to use a pulse oximeter sensor. Facing a US import ban of the current Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2, both released in September 2023, Apple started pulling the smartwatches on December 21. But on December 27, Apple, which filed its appeal against the ITC’s ruling on December 26 (after US President Joe Biden declined to overrule the ITC ruling), received an emergency interim stay from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, allowing it to continue selling the Watch. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge (credit: Andrew / Flickr) Market research firm IDC has released some stunning smartphone market share numbers for 2023. The number one smartphone OEM is now Apple. The IDC says Apple hit an "all-time high market share" number for 2023 and that Apple has "the number 1 spot annually for the first time ever." The analyst group says this represents "a sort of shifting of power" in the smartphone market. That all-time high market share puts Apple at 20.1 percent for 2023, a 3.7 percent growth over 2022. Nearly everyone on Team Android is way down, with Samsung now in second place after losing 13.6 percent in 2023 for 19.4 percent market share on the year. Chinese firm Xiaomi is down 4.7 percent for 12.5 percent market share, and Oppo (the parent company of OnePlus) dropped 9.9 percent and is fourth, with 8.8 percent of the market. Next up is "Transsion," a company that is definitely not a household name but is big in emerging markets like Africa. Transsion is a big winner, with 30 percent growth from 2022 to 2023. With 8.1 percent market share, it takes the fifth spot. The IDC's market share charts for 2023. (credit: IDC) Apple is usually not first in sales because the average iPhone purchase is much more expensive than an average Android phone. Samsung's cheapest phones can be had for about $50, and while you can get a wildly expensive foldable that costs a lot more than an iPhone, Samsung's bestselling models are often the midrange "A" series, which are in the $200–$450 range. Other Android manufacturers are in the same boat, with low-volume halo products and high-volume cheap devices. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / Artist's conception of iOS developers after today's Supreme Court ruling, surveying a new landscape of payment options and subscription signaling. (credit: Epic Games) The Supreme Court declined to hear either of the petitions resulting from the multi-year, multi-court Epic v. Apple antitrust dispute. That leaves most of Epic's complaints about Apple's practices unanswered, but the gaming company achieved one victory on pricing notices. It all started in August 2020, when Epic sought to work around Apple and Google's app stores and implemented virtual currency purchases directly inside Fortnite. The matter quickly escalated to the courts, with firms like Spotify and Microsoft backing Epic's claim that Apple's App Store being the only way to load apps onto an iPhone violated antitrust laws. The matter reached trial in May 2021. The precise definitions of "games" and "marketplace" were fervently debated. Epic scored a seemingly huge victory in September 2021 when a Northern California judge demanded that Apple allow developers to offer their own payment buttons and communicate with app customers about alternate payment options. An appeals court upheld that Apple's App Store itself wasn't a "walled garden" that violated antitrust laws but kept the ruling that Apple had to open up its payments and messaging. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / The GeForce RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Judging by the comments on YouTube reviews, you'd think Nvidia's RTX 4070, launched in April 2023 for $599, was a terrible graphics card. The reaction wasn't as brutal as it was among commenters and reviewers for the 4060 Ti a month later (a "waste of sand," declared Gamers Nexus), but you'd usually find praise for its power efficiency but criticism of its price (high for a xx70 card) and its performance improvement relative to the previous generation (only about as fast as an RTX 3080, sometimes less). Those are all largely valid criticisms. But the 4070 is Nvidia's most popular RTX 4000-series desktop GPU, at least according to the (admittedly flaky and opaque) Steam Hardware Survey data for December 2023. It's not in the top 10—this is dominated by older midrange GeForce cards that have been out a lot longer—but it's doing better than Nvidia's other 40-series desktop cards and better than every one of AMD's RX 7000-series cards put together. The release of the RTX 4070 Super should help bring the enthusiast commentariat version of reality and the Steam Hardware Survey's version of reality into closer sync with one another. At the same $599 price—still more than the $499 of the 2070 Super or 3070, but not higher than the 4070—you get performance that Nvidia says is more in line with the RTX 3090. And the power efficiency remains quite impressive, though power use overall is up just a bit from the regular 4070. Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / The back of LG's DukeBox speaker with a transparent OLED screen. (credit: LG Global/YouTube) CES is a mixed bag featuring real products you might want, announcements about upcoming tech you may not see for years, and vaporware that makes you wonder, "Who would want this?" But the wacky, wild, and, at times, unrealistic are part of what makes CES, CES. With any hope, some of these developments could lead to innovative new products that consumers could benefit from. While some of the bizarre ideas feel mostly like ways for tech brands to show off, they are also ripe for ridicule. Either way, let's open our imaginations and check out the most outlandish displays, including concepts and real products, announced at CES 2024. Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge (credit: Future Publishing | Getty Images) YouTube appeared to be continuing its war on ad blockers, with users complaining that the company was slowing down the site for users it catches running an ad blocker. 9to5Google spotted this Reddit thread filled with users seeing poor loading performance with ad blockers enabled. A video at the top of the Reddit post shows what some users are seeing: A video with an ad blocker on can't load quickly enough to keep up with the playback speed (which isn't on normal; it's maybe 2x) and has to pause at around 30 seconds. Turning off the ad blocker immediately improves loading performance, with the white line on YouTube's progress bar showing significantly more buffering runway. Users report that the ad-block detection causes strange issues, like "lag" that makes full screen or comments not work or Chrome being unable to load other webpages while YouTube is open. YouTube has used all sorts of tactics to get people to turn off ad blockers and subscribe to YouTube Premium. The company previously has been showing pop-up messages saying ad blockers violate YouTube terms of service. Earlier, the company was caught adding a five-second delay to the initial site load for ad blockers. The changes have kicked off a cat-and-mouse game between Google/YouTube and the ad blocker community. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

The song appears on new album due later this year View the full article

The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority had ruled the image made the singer a "stereotypical sexual object"View the full article

The power ballad appears on the digital edition of Cyrus's eighth studio album Endless Summer Vacation View the full article

London-based quartet Whitelands are gearing up for their opening slot on Slowdive’s UK tour next month. Today, they announced their debut album Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day and shared the single “Tell Me About It,” which has guest vocals from Dottie of fellow UK dream pop act deary. View the full article

Bright neon and grainy VHS effects make the clip a gnarly bit of nostalgiaView the full article

Boy George’s memoir Karma is out stateside this week, and in the book the English musician recounts a negative experience he had with Janet Jackson back in the ’80s. “When it comes to me and Janet, let’s wait a while,” he wrote before going into detail about meeting her “without my face on.” View the full article

In 2019, Linda Ronstadt was the subject of a documentary, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice. Now she’s getting the biopic treatment too, with a fellow Number Ones artist lined up to portray her on screen. View the full article

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid. It has two CPUs, two operating systems, and six speakers, and it generally sounds deeply complicated. [credit: Lenovo ] Have you ever used a Windows laptop and thought, "Gee, I really wish this was also an Android tablet"? Does Lenovo have a product for you! The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid laptop at CES 2024 is both a Windows laptop and an Android tablet. The bottom half contains all the usual Intel laptop parts, while the top half packs a Qualcomm chip and a whole duplicate set of computing components. A detachable screen lets both halves come apart and operate separately, and you'll be spending your life riding the line between the Windows and Android ecosystems. Because you're getting two separate computers, you'll also have to pay for two separate computers—the device costs $2,000. Because the device houses two computers, you can separate them and run them at the same time. Of course, the tablet acts as an Android tablet when it's detached, but you can also plug the headless laptop base into a monitor and use Windows. Lenovo calls the tablet the "Hybrid Tab" while the bottom is the "Hybrid Station," and the whole thing voltroned together forms the "ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid." The laptop base runs Windows 11 and has an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, Intel graphics, and a 75 Whr battery. The tablet runs Android 13 on a Snapdragon 8+ gen 1 SoC, along with 12GB of RAM, 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, and a 38 Whr battery. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Fans speculated the news after Gomez posted an Instagram Story of the legendary singer's memoir View the full article

In the ’80s and ’90s, Linda Smith released solo music on cassette, making bedroom pop before the genre even existed. Today, the musician announced that she’s reissuing her albums Nothing Else Matters and I So Liked Spring, which have never been on streaming. To celebrate, she’s also sharing her cover of “Salad Days” by Young Marble Giants. View the full article

Asus plans to release this foldable OLED monitor in 2024. Electronics retailer Abt Electronics captured footage of it on display at CES. [credit: Abt Electronics/YouTube ] Foldable screens have been bending their way into consumer gadgets over the last few years. But with skepticism about durability, pricing, image quality, and the necessity of such devices, foldable screens aren't mainstream. With those concerns in mind, I haven't had much interest in owning a foldable-screen gadget, even after using a foldable laptop for a month. However, the foldable portable monitor that Asus is showing at CES in Las Vegas this week is an application of foldable OLED that makes more sense to me than others. Asus' ZenScreen Fold OLED MQ17QH announced on Tuesday is a 17.3-inch portable monitor that can fold to a 12.5-inch size. The monitor has 2560×1920 pixels for a pixel density of 184.97 pixels per inch. Other specs include a 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage claim and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. When I think of the ways I use portable monitors, foldability makes more sense than it does with other device types. For example, I love working outside when possible, and an extra 17.3-inch screen that's easy to carry would make long work sessions with an ultraportable laptop more feasible. The Fold OLED's 17.3 inches is near the larger size for a portable monitor, but the fold and comparatively light weight should make it feel more transportable than similarly sized monitors that don't fold in half. Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Kate Bush has shared a eulogy for Del Palmer, her longtime creative collaborator and one-time romantic partner, who passed away at 71 last week. “It’s hard to know what to say… He was a big part of my life and my work for many years,” Bush wrote. “It’s going to take a long time to come to terms with him not being here with us.” View the full article

Before "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" soundtracked the Oscar-buzzed film, the 78-year-old British artist was best known for being sampled in "My Name Is"View the full article

Right now, we’re going through a kind of renaissance of bands who combine old-school death metal with reckless hardcore. There’s a whole thriving scene of bands who walk that line: Gatecreeper, Creeping Death, Fuming Mouth, 200 Stab Wounds, Vomit Forth, Sanguisugabogg, Genocide Pact, Terminal Nation, plenty of others. Louisville’s Gates To Hell belong right up at the top of that list. View the full article

Lopez is unafraid to poke fun at her love life in the cinematic video for This Is Me... Now's lead singleView the full article

In October, serpentwithfeet announced GRIP, the follow-up to 2021’s DEACON, which was our Album Of The Week. He shared “Damn Gloves” with Ty Dolla $ign and Yanga YaYa, and today he’s releasing “Safe Word,” which he produced alongside the collective I Like That. He also directed the accompanying video with Micaiah Carter. Watch it below. View the full article