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The House of Mouse is celebrating Disney+ Day today, and that means exclusive content and releases if you're already a subscriber, as well as a discount if you're not a member yet. If you're a new customer or have previously let your subscription lapse, you can now get a month of Disney+ for only $2. The discounted price will only apply to your first month of membership, after which you'll have to pay $8 a month to keep your subscription active. Still, that's 75 percent off the service's regular price and a great opportunity to test it out or regain access to its movies and shows.

This year's Disney+ Day also marks the streaming premiere of Thor: Love and Thunder and Pinocchio, as well as of new series and originals like the computer animated show Cars on the Road. Brie Larson's hybrid docuseries Growing Up, which features coming of age stories, and National Geographic's Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory that will take you on journeys to capture real-life animal stories in some of Earth's harshest environments are now available on the platform, as well. And if you're a parent, I wish you luck and hope you have the fortitude to be able to withstand repeated plays of Let It Go, because there are new sing-along versions of Frozen and Frozen 2.

The $2 Disney+ offer ends before midnight on September 19th, so may want to sign up soon or set a reminder if you don't want to miss it.

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Apple’s long-awaited Far Out event was a showcase of all the gadgets the company is now ready to sell us. The new iPhone 14 was blessed with a super-size sibling, and the iPhone 14 Pros ditched the notch for a lozenge-shaped punch hole in its display. Sorry, the people at Apple are insisting we call the hole a “Dynamic Island,” since the screen around it will change size for notifications. The new Apple Watch was joined by the Watch Ultra, with all of the added ruggedization extreme-sports types have been waiting for. Plus, the AirPods Pro got touch-sensitive controls and better noise cancellation, thanks to the addition of the H2 chip. It was very much a show focused on quality-of-life tweaks for these devices, with some features you might consider neat, but nothing you might feel compelled to camp outside an Apple Store to be first in line to buy.

– Daniel Cooper

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Apple's new AirPods Pro have touch controls

• Bose's QuietComfort Earbuds II automatically customize sound and ANC

• The James Webb Telescope captures the Tarantula Nebula in stunning detail

• The first US video game studio to unionize is shutting down

• Apple Fitness+ is coming to iPhone this fall in 21 countries

• iOS 16 will be available on September 12th

• Apple’s Photonic Engine technology improves low-light camera performance

• watchOS 9 will arrive on September 12th

• The iPhone 14 can connect to satellites for emergency SOS features

• Apple Watch Series 8 has a temperature sensor and crash detection

iPhone 14 and 14 Plus hands-on: A bigger screen and small camera updates

The iPhone Mini is no more.

Billy Steele / Engadget

There are two iPhones 14: the 6.1-inch standard model and its 6.7-inch Plus variant, harking back to the old regime of one “regular” sized device and one super-sized version. (Sadly, the iPhone Mini’s poor battery life made the unit a poor seller, so Apple has swung the axe.) Engadget’s Cherlynn Low got her hands all over the new handsets, which focus on better camera upgrades. The rear camera has a larger 12-megapixel sensor (with bigger 1.9-micron pixels) as well as autofocus on the forward-facing lens, for better selfies. Despite the phone’s size, the 14 Plus is lighter than its Pro siblings, a small mercy if you’ve ever dropped a phone on your face in bed.

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iPhone 14 Pro hands-on: Don't call it a notch

The always-on display is an exciting feature.

Billy Steele / Engadget

Apple saved most of the big upgrades for the iPhone 14 Pro and Max as it tries to put more water between its flagship handset and those in the ultra-premium tier. There’s a new A16 Bionic chip and a Super Retina XDR display that can run at 1Hz, giving users an always-on display for the first time. Plus, the Dynamic Island, a punch hole housing FaceID and the camera that can bleed into the display around it, making it look more like a notification window. The rear lens also got an upgrade, with a 48-megapixel primary sensor backed by Apple’s promise it’ll have dramatically improved low-light performance.

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Apple kills off the SIM tray on the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro in the US

This may impact travelers pretty hard.

The iPhones 14 will be the first in the range to ditch the physical SIM tray in favor of eSIM technology. On paper, this is a smart move – another hole in the phone you can eliminate for better waterproofing and security. But it’s also a bit of a thumbed nose for travelers who might prefer to swap SIMs when on the go to take advantage of cheaper local rates. Plus, if you smash your device, you can’t simply put your SIM in an old phone you’ve got lying around.

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Apple Watch Ultra hands-on: Built for the great outdoors

The Watch 8 gets some sensor upgrades but looks much like its predecessor.

Billy Steele / Engadget

Engadget’s Billy Steele spent some time with Apple’s new Watch Ultra, with its, uh, interesting design and additional action button on the side opposite the digital crown. The 49mm timepiece gets a 2,000 nit display, good for rough environments, an 86-decibel emergency siren and more accurate GPS. Given Apple products are always a little less rugged than we might hope, the promises the company made here are going to be well worth testing. Can this device really replace the hardcore Garmin for your extreme sport of choice? Only time will tell.

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At the 2022 Code Conference, Tim Cook responded to a journalist's question about RCS text messaging by suggesting they buy an iPhone, The Verge reported. Asked how Apple could improve communication between iPhone and Android users, he said "I don't hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy into that." When the journalist replied that he couldn't send certain videos to his Android-using mother, Cook joked "buy your mom an iPhone." 

That's bound to add fuel to the debate about a common smartphone messaging format. Google has long promoted the RCS (Rich Communications Service) as a way to allow for better interoperability between iOS and Android users, even shaming Apple about it last month. Doing so could help eliminate the dreaded "green bubble" seen by iPhone users when they receive a text message from an Android phone.

Apple considered offering iMessage to Android users but quickly shut the idea down, as internal documents revealed during the Epic trial. Former marketing chief Phil Schiller famously said that porting iMessage to Android "would hurt us more than help us," and another former Apple exec said in an email that "iMessage amounts to serious lock-in." 

Cook did say that Apple isn't addressing RCS "at this point," appearing to not entirely rule the idea out. In any case, the green bubble issue is largely US-centric, as users in other countries tend to favor non-SMS apps like Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal. 

The Artemis III mission will take humanity back to the Moon and will have two astronauts conducting up to four spacewalks on its surface. Now, NASA has picked the company that will be building the spacesuits Artemis astronauts will wear when they leave their spacecraft and explore the lunar landscape. The agency has announced that Axiom Space will develop the mission's moonwalking system and has been awarded an order with a value of at least $228.5 million.

Axiom is one of the two companies that NASA named as its official Artemis spacesuit partners back in June, with the other one being Collins Aerospace. For this particular order, the agency said it reviewed proposals from the two vendors and had decided on Axiom to design, develop, certify and ultimately produce Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) spacesuits and equipment for Artemis III. 

Axiom's xEVAS will build off on NASA's Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuits that the agency designed for Artemis missions. They will accommodate a wide range of crew members, the company said in its announcement, and will be built with increased flexibility and specialized tools for exploration. 

That Axiom is building the spacesuit to accommodate a wider range of bodies is of particular importance as we prepare to explore the Moon and other deep space locations. If you'll recall, a planned all-female spacewalk back in 2019 was cancelled due to the lack of properly fitting gear, and it put a spotlight on spacesuit design and the availability of various sizes. Artemis III is intended to put the first woman on the lunar surface, and Axiom has confirmed in its announcement that it will be making an xEVAS spacesuit for that female astronaut.

Michael Suffredini, Axiom Space President & CEO, said in a statement:

"Our modernized, evolvable spacesuits will enable rapid upgrades to implement better, safer technologies over time, ensuring our astronauts are always equipped with high performing, robust equipment. We look forward to providing our space pioneers with advanced tools needed to further humanity's permanent expansion off the planet."  

This particular order is for the Artemis III landing only. The vendors are expected to compete for future task orders that include spacesuits for recurring lunar landings, as well as the development of spacesuits for use outside the ISS in low-Earth orbit.

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Sony PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has revealed that Microsoft offered to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation for three years beyond its current Activision deal. "After almost 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers," Ryan told GamesIndustry.biz. 

Last week, the UK's competition authority said it was concerned that Microsoft's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition could "harm rivals" by shutting them out of popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Xbox chief Phil Spencer essentially responded by saying the company made a deal with Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for "several more years" in an offer "that goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements."

However, Sony is apparently concerned about the arrangement. "I hadn’t intended to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought this into the public forum," Ryan said. "Microsoft has only offered for Call of Duty to remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoft’s proposal undermines this principle."

Activision's current deal with Sony is reported to cover the next three Call of Duty releases, including Modern Warfare II set to arrive on October 28th. Last month, Microsoft made an interesting argument about monopoly concerns around the Activision acquisition, saying that the company it wants to pay $68.7 billion to acquire makes no "must have" games. Sony, meanwhile, called Call of Duty an "essential" triple-A game "that has no rival." As analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out, Sony was Activision Blizzard's biggest customer in 2020, while Microsoft was the fourth largest behind Google and Apple.

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You can now enjoy surround sound while streaming YouTube TV content on your Apple TV and Fire TV devices. As The Verge reports, the streaming television service has expanded the list of devices supporting its shows and movies with 5.1 audio after rolling out the capability to Android TV, Google TV and Roku devices back in June. YouTube TV first started testing 5.1 channel audio for those first three devices back in March, while also promising to work on support for Apple TV and Fire TV devices, as well as for gaming consoles. This rollout covers two out of those three — a tweet on the official YouTube TV page says the service is still in the process of bringing the capability to consoles.

The Help page for YouTube TV doesn't explicitly mention Apple TV as a supported device yet, but it does list the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick Lite, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Stick with 4K Ultra HD. To note, surround sound isn't available for all YouTube TV content, only those that have it. So long as a user is streaming on a compatible device, 5.1 audio will be automatically switched on. That said, those who want to make sure that it's available for a specific video can do so by playing it, going to "More" under player controls and selecting the "bug" icon. YouTube TV's "Stats for nerds" will be displayed at the top of the video, and it should show AC-3/EAC-3 in the codecs section if it has surround sound.

Apple wasn't the only company with new true wireless earbuds to debut today. Bose also has a new model on the way, the QuietComfort Earbuds II. As the name suggests, this set is an update to the first QC earbuds the company debuted in 2020. This time around, the company has retooled the design, tweaked the fit and added some heavy-duty sound calibration technology. But all of the upgrades come at a cost as the QuietComfort Earbuds II will be $20 more then their predecessor at launch. 

Bose says these next-gen buds are about a third smaller than the previous version, which will be a welcome change. The first QuietComfort Earbuds were plenty big, so anything the company can do to trim the overall size will be an improvement. Bose explains that it has also changed the fit of the earbuds with what it calls a Fit Kit. Essentially, the ear tip is now two pieces, with an oval-shaped tip and a "stability band" that keeps the buds secure in your ears. There are three sizes of each, so you can mix and match bases on what works best for you. What's more, the Bose app offers a fit test that checks for an adequate seal by detecting any leaks. 

Inside, the QuietComfort Earbuds II are equipped with what Bose calls CustomTune sound calibration. The technology has been available on the company's SoundControl hearing aids, but in this case it's used to improve a bunch of core earbud features. By measuring the acoustic properties of your ear canal, Bose says CustomTune tailors both the audio and the active noise cancellation (ANC) to you. The process takes less than half a second and is completed every time you put the earbuds in your ears. The company further explains that CustomTune "fully optimizes the sound frequency profile to the unique properties of every ear, so the sound that reaches the eardrum is just as the artist intended." For ANC, CustomTune calibrates the noise reduction signal and Bose says its noise-canceling tech is better at blocking human voices and crying babies. Plus, the ANC is continuously adapting to any changes, keeping distractions to a minimum. 

Bose

CustomTune is also applied to ambient sound on the QuietComfort Earbuds II. When you're using that transparency or Aware Mode, a feature called ActiveSense can pick up any loud noise and apply the appropriate level of cancellation until it stops. Bose says CustomTune also helps the QC Earbuds II offer an ambient sound that's "as natural and lifelike as possible."

The QuietComfort Earbuds II are IPX4 rated for sweat and water resistance, so you should be able to use them during workouts with no problem. Bose says it also improved call quality thanks to changes to the noise removal algorithm. And lastly, you can expect up to six hours of battery life with three more charges in the case. A quick-charge feature will give you two hours of use in 20 minutes. 

The QuietComfort Earbuds II will be available on September 15th for $299, but you can pre-order them now. Only the black color option will ship on that date, but Bose is planning to sell a "Soapstone" version later this year.