CES 2024 may not have officially started yet, but the news is already in full swing. The show’s official dates are January 9th to 12th, with the 8th usually being a day of press conferences ahead of the convention centers opening to attendees. Which makes this… Day 0 of CES 2024.

The announcements on this day usually gives us an idea of what to expect for the rest of the week, and this year we’re already seeing some emerging trends. Samsung and LG both brought us transparent display tech, we saw a slew of pet and kitchen gadgets, while vibrating and massage chairs have taken over the showfloor. Here’s a recap of the biggest news out of CES 2024 so far.

Let’s start with the companies that couldn’t even wait till we were in Vegas to share their news.

On January 3rd, just one day after people returned to work on the New Year, LG announced it would be bringing its new DukeBox smart speaker to the show. The DukeBox features vacuum tube audio placed behind a transparent OLED screen, allowing you to see the vacuum pipes for a retro vibe even as something is on the display. LG also teased a two-legged AI-powered robot, a 27-inch OLED gaming monitor that goes up to 480Hz, its latest 4K OLED TVs with AI processors, Gram laptops with AI features and the CineBeam Qube 4K projector.

We’ve now seen many of these things in person and I’ll tell you more about them in a bit, but other PC and gaming peripheral companies also teased their wares prior to the show. Dell, for example, showed its new XPS 13, 14 and 16 laptops alongside a curved 40-inch 5K monitor that it says offers “five-star comfort.”

Razer also told everyone to be on the lookout for its Blade 16 laptop at CES, because it’ll feature the “world’s first 16-inch 240Hz OLED display.” Samsung also teased its trio of Odyssey-branded anti-glare OLED gaming monitors on January 2nd! The day after New Year’s Day! I wish companies would stop just spilling their own beans ahead of the actual full reveal, because it gets in the way of actual news. And there was plenty.

For instance, Samsung had a whole truckload of new products to share. Yes, it did announce most of its news ahead of CES, but a lot of it was really interesting. The one that stole most of our attention was the world’s first transparent MicroLED screen — that's a screen you can see through even as it displays content, and is completely clear when nothing is on. According to our senior reporter Sam Rutherford, who saw the screens up close last night at Samsung’s First Look showcase, the transparent MicroLED panel was significantly brighter and noticeably clearer than the transparent LCD and OLED screens next to it.

Samsung also launched a new speaker version of its Frame TV, called the Music Frame. This is basically a photo frame that can hold a photograph or art print, while also hiding a solid speaker within. It basically masquerades as home decor, but that doesn’t diminish its capability. It has two woofers, two tweeters and two mid-range drivers, and also supports Dolby’s Atmos audio. You can pair it with your existing home audio system or use it standalone.

That’s not all Samsung unveiled. It also showed off Premiere projectors that can turn any surface into an interactive display, as well as its 2024 TV lineup that features plenty of AI.

Samsung’s main rival at CES is LG, since both companies tend to show off an incredibly similar portfolio of products. This year, LG also came to the game with transparency as its secret weapon, showing off the “world’s first wireless transparent OLED TV.” According to Billy Steele, who’s seen this OLED T TV, “some of the visuals are a bit unsettling,” but because the transparent background made it feel like things on display, like a singer, seemed like they were actually in the room. He said image quality was bright and sharp, though, and that it was comparable to Samsung’s MicroLED version. Though LG’s set seems more ready for public consumption, the company did not share pricing information, just that it’ll be ready to sell the OLED T this year.

LG also brought the other products I mentioned earlier and I was able to check out the new Gram Pro laptops in person at the Unveiled showcase last night. They’re impressively thin and light, as usual, and trying to do bicep curls with them is really not a challenge.

While we’re on the topic of laptops, a quick shoutout to HP and Acer. HP brought us the “world’s lightest 14-inch gaming laptop” and a new 4K 240Hz OLED gaming monitor, among other things, while Acer dragged out a massive 57-inch ultrawide monitor that will cost $2,500. It refreshes at 120Hz and has a Dual UHD resolution of 7,680 x 2,160. Acer also refreshed its Swift and Aspire laptops with Intel Core Ultra processors and dedicated Copilot keys for Microsoft’s generative AI shortcuts.

We also saw a slew of kitchen and pet products at Unveiled, including GE’s Profile smart indoor smoker that cooks meats and imparts a woody flavor without actually smoking up your apartment. The Flappie AI cat door, meanwhile, uses AI to see if your cat is coming back to your house with a rodent and automatically lock so it can’t come inside with the gross gift.

There’s so much more that I can barely cover in this single recap article, so I urge you to check out our liveblog, which we update all the time with the latest news. This has only been a collection of news from the day before the day before the show officially opens, and we’ve barely begun. Stick around as we continue to cover the biggest news and trawl through the convention to find you the most noteworthy developments from CES 2024.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

I don't like talking on the phone in public. Often, I'm gossiping about something I have no business discussing around other people, or I'm talking about some tech product that has yet to be launched. That's why a product like Skyted's Silent Mask entices me. The company launched its Kickstarter campaign today at CES 2024 for its noise-reducing wearable that would allow you to speak freely about confidential information anywhere without worrying about people around you hearing. It's already broken its $8,800 goal many times over, and as of this writing it's raised $54,000, meaning it's a concept that resonated with many people. 

I'm skeptical of most Kickstarter projects, given the high likelihood they're vaporware, but the Skyted prototype I checked out here at the show felt solid. It didn't have an elastic head strap for me to put it on my head, so I had to hold it to my face while I tested it, but that aside the mask felt well-made. More importantly, the device actually worked. 

I had to temper my expectations slightly, but otherwise I was impressed. The mask isn't made to completely eliminate noise or let you scream your primal rage out in the middle of a restaurant and still remain unheard. Or, if you're an aspiring Broadway singer like me, it won't completely mute your belted out ballads. It will, however, reduce sound by 25 decibels so if you're speaking at a normal volume, the person next to you won't hear what you're saying. 

Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

My colleague Mat Smith was kind enough to join me for part of the demo so I could talk to him while putting the mask on and off my face. When I had the mask on, Mat, who stood right next to me, was sometimes unaware I was speaking. I kept my volume at a consistent level, which was slightly louder than I'd normally speak, given the noise around us on the showfloor. Even without Mat's validation, I could tell that what I was saying was noticeably muffled, to the point where if I had to talk about embargoed or confidential information in public, I would feel certain no one can hear the contents of my conversations. Now, I do need to point out that I did struggle to breathe at some points when trying on the Skyted mask, but that probably has more to do with how tightly I was pressing it to my face than the actual fit.

The mask uses technology similar to recent models of jet engines, which use resonators to draw sound away and into chambers. That way, the waves dissipate in a controlled environment instead of being leaked and overheard. There are little holes in the middle of the inside of the mask, and 12mm chambers on either side of the face. A microphone sits inside the mask, and, depending on the model of the device, can connect to your phone or laptop via Bluetooth or a wire. It has audio jacks onboard for input and output, so you can hear both yourself and the other people on your call. 

The Skyted is currently available for an early bird starting price of $299 on Kickstarter, though after the introductory period it will cost $100 more. There are quite a few applications for a mask that helps keep your realworld conversations private, like allowing people to take meetings on their commutes. Skyted CEO Stephane Hersen said that talking on the phone is illegal on some trains in Europe, which means passengers on longer routes can't take work calls if they need. With Skyted, they would be able to. Hersen, who says he previously worked as a VP at Airbus, believes there are applications in education as well.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

If your home is filled with Samsung and SmartThings-compatible products, an upcoming feature might simplify your life. At its CES 2024 press conference, the company unveiled a new service called Now+ that incorporates smart home controls into the TV's interface. With this, not only can you see and control your light switches or air conditioners from your television, but also use your phone as a remote control. The company also unveiled a feature called Daily+, which is customizable and will tap all the info Samsung and Bixby have on you via your SmartThings devices to make it easier to get to relevant apps. 

According to Samsung, this will allow TVs to detect smartphones that are within range and use them as remotes. A new SmartThings TV Quick Panel will slide in to show "core functions," so you can manage devices, view cameras and, say, ping your phone "without compromising content viewing." The company also described a feature where your TV will turn on as you approach it and show "critical information about your devices and appliances." The platform can also display "your home’s camera feed, temperature, and remaining time in your laundry cycle," if you have all the relevant compatible appliances.

Details were scarce on when these features can be expected, what TVs and devices are compatible and whether you'll need to be using Samsung smartphones if you want the remote control feature. It's worth noting that SmartThings is compatible with the Matter standard, so quite a large array of connected appliances should work with it. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

It wouldn't be CES without Samsung showing off a strange and strangely lovable robot, and this year is the same. At its CES 2024 press conference today, the company showed off a robot named Ballie that has a projector built in. Interestingly, though, according to a report from The Washington Post, Samsung said the robotic sphere will actually available for sale within the year.

We first saw an early iteration of Ballie in 2020, when Samsung brought the device onstage, with an executive cupping the oversized tennis ball-like gadget in their hands. When it was introduced back then, Ballie was touted as a household assistant and potential fitness assistant, with such sophisticated skills as opening smart curtains and turning on the TV. It was supposed to also be able to call for help if it sees a person has fallen and not gotten up.

In four years, Ballie appears to have grown up. It's now "bowling-ball-size," according to the Post, and has a spatial LiDAR sensor and a 1080p projector. The latter has two lenses and allows the robot to display movies, video calls and "greetings" on its surrounding surfaces. In a video shown during the keynote, Ballie greets a user who returns to their home by projecting the word "Welcome," as well as displaying a conference call, workout video and the contents of a nearby PC, like a secondary screen. In an adorable scene, it also showed the robot projecting a video of greenery on to the floor for a golden retriever sat across from it. 

Samsung also showed people controlling Ballie by speaking to it, as well as via text messages. In its replies, Ballie was sending clips of what it saw, like the activity of a pet left at home. Like the earlier model, the newer robot can automatically switch connected lights and gadgets on or off, as well as non-connected appliances with its infrared transmitter. 

Ballie was reminiscent of a similar product that LG showed off in 2016 called the Rolling Bot, but that short-lived device never made it to market. It's quite hard to believe that Samsung will be selling these in 2024, but it hasn't shared any details beyond what it told The Post, and pricing has also yet to be revealed. Still, it's nice to see a product go from adorable concept to plausible prototype and possibly be able to buy it soon.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

In recent years, LG has rolled into every CES with an update to its Gram series of super thin and light laptops. And each time, I delight in seeing how hard (or easy) it is to squeeze in a quick arm workout on the showfloor with the newest version. This year at CES 2024, the company is launching a pair of Pro models that feature upgraded OLED panels that support touch input and variable refresh rates. They also come with Intel's Meteor Lake processors and up to NVIDIA's RTX 3070 graphics cards. 

This generation of LG's Gram Pros come in 16- and 17-inch models, with OLED and IPS display options to choose from. The company also upgraded its stylus so it recharges when magnetically attached to the laptops. The stylus available at the showfloor was not working, so I wasn't able to see if its slimmer body affected the writing experience at all. Plus, the sample model of the Gram Pro 2-in-1 also stuttered every now and then when changing the screen's orientation as I flipped it between landscape and portrait modes.

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

I'm willing to chalk that up to the units running pre-production software, which is also why I didn't get to check out the software features that LG is rolling out with these laptops, either. For one thing, the Gram Pros' processors are equipped with Intel's AI Boost, which is supposed to help the machines perform AI tasks more quickly. LG is also offering its Link software that can let you use Windows, Android and even iOS devices as companion secondary displays to the Grams. Neither of these features were shown off at the CES 2024 demo area, though. 

What I did get to check out in person is the build, which an LG representative told me is more durable than before. It uses a nano-magnesium alloy, and impressively houses a dual-fan cooling system. For a system that contains that hardware, and includes two USB-A, two USB-C and an HDMI port (along with a headphone jack), the 17-inch Gram Pro that I picked up was surprisingly sleek. It has a contoured edge that is thicker at the port end and tapers off to a strikingly sharp end. 

Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

The 2-in-1, which only comes in a 16-inch size, has won a Guinness World Record for "lightest 16-inch 2-in-1 laptop." It weighs 3 pounds, which made it not at all challenging for the bicep curls and shoulder presses I was doing with it. But that also means it won't add too much to your load when you're on the go. 

We've had concerns with the Gram laptops' build quality in the past, as they've been so thin that their chasses have exhibited flex. This year's model is similarly sleek, with a profile measuring 12.4mm, and it has a nano-magnesium frame like the non-2-in-1 version. The unit I checked out certainly felt a little stronger than those I've seen in previous years, but I can't give you specifics since I wasn't trying hard to break it. 

You can choose between OLED or IPS panels, with the former offering a variable refresh rate between 48 and 120Hz and the latter stretching that range to 31Hz and 140Hz. The Gram Pro series will be available in February and start at $1,499. For more details on what's new with the 2024 Gram Pro laptops, check out our news post here.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The last few years have been, to put it mildly, rough. And 2023 continued to bring sad tidings. Amid the humanitarian crisis that is the Palestine-Israeli conflict, plus increased fears around the credibility and reliability of AI and Elon Musk’s ongoing meltdown, tech’s biggest players also suffered their fair share of losses. This year, we saw the demise of the E3 gaming convention, the deterioration of popular online forums and the decline of cryptocurrencies, Silicon Valley banks and financial institutions. Not to mention the poor neighbors of the Twitter office in San Francisco who had to endure obnoxious, potentially epilepsy-triggering lights flashing from the building. While we can happily say “good riddance” to many of these things, it is with some sadness that we bid farewell and condolences to some of this year’s worst developments.

The X, Twitter and Elon Musk fiasco

No “Losers in 2023” list is complete without mentioning the fiasco that is Elon Musk’s Twitter (or X). Last year, shortly after Musk acquired Twitter, some of us were asked to make predictions about how Musk’s new venture would fare. I felt that it was a high-risk, high-reward move that might work due to Musk’s combination of luck and smarts, based mainly on his previous success heading up Tesla and SpaceX.

However, I also said that Twitter might devolve into the most chaotic social media platform around, which is pretty much what happened. In hindsight, what I failed to account for was that unlike Tesla and SpaceX, Musk doesn’t seem to give a crap about running X like a business and has treated the company more as an expensive toy meant to call attention to the sins (at least in his mind) of social media. And when you combine his increasingly unhinged personality with shortsighted decisions, what you get is an organization in turmoil. So while not all of these things occurred in 2023, here are just a few of the dumbest things that Musk and X have done in the last 18 months.

A little over a year ago, Musk blew up Twitter’s verification system, which promptly led to fake accounts sporting seemingly legit handles doing things like posting an image of Mario flipping the bird, the pope spreading conspiracy theories and more. Then earlier this year in June, Musk decided to block users who weren’t logged in from seeing tweets, which caused Google and others to remove Twitter content from search results. That’s not a very smart move for a company that relies heavily on traffic to generate ad revenue, so it wasn’t a big surprise when Musk backtracked a week later.

But perhaps Musk’s biggest blunder was changing Twitter’s name to X in July, a move so silly that most people continue to pretend like the rebranding never happened. Oh and let’s not forget that the name change was commemorated with a sign that was mounted on the company’s HQ in San Francisco that blinded its neighbors and didn’t have proper permits, resulting in an installation that lasted barely more than a weekend. More recently, citing a rise in hate speech, major companies including Apple and Disney decided to pull ads from X, which later prompted Musk to tell Disney CEO Bob Iger to “Go fuck yourself.” Another clearly wise business move made by a very grounded individual. (That’s sarcasm, in case it’s not clear.)

At this point, it’s hard to imagine how much worse X can get, but given everything that’s happened in 2023, it’s plain that the company formerly known as Twitter hasn’t even hit rock bottom yet. — Sam Rutherford, Senior reporter

David Imel for Engadget

Microsoft’s Surface tablet

No offense to the Surface Laptop Studio 2, which is a mighty powerful and uniquely convertible laptop, but this year felt like a low point for Microsoft’s iconic Surface tablets. The Surface Pro 9 hasn’t been upgraded at all since last, so it’s still running either an older 12th-gen Intel chip. There is a 5G-equipped model with a custom ARM-based Microsoft SQ3 chip, but we recommend staying far far away from that thing. And beyond the Laptop Studio 2, we only got the Surface Laptop Go 3 for consumers(the tiny Surface Go 4 tablet is now firmly targeted as business users, it doesn’t even show up on the main Surface site).

It almost seems like Microsoft’s dream of creating a true tablet/laptop hybrid is dead – or at the very least, it’s on pause as the company focuses on shoving its AI Copilot into all of its products. Let’s face it: While the Surface business has earned a bit of money for Microsoft, it’s a pittance compared to what the company sees from its Azure cloud revenue. Instead, the Surface devices proved that Microsoft could produce high-end Windows hardware that occasionally pushed the PC industry forward.

It’s been 11 years since Microsoft announced its first Surface devices, but it turns out most consumers didn’t want to replace their laptops with tablets. Simpler 2-in-1 convertible devices, like HP’s Spectre x360 16, are far less common these days (and notably, they also work best in their notebook modes). And it doesn’t help that Windows 11 is still far from tablet friendly. If you really want to get work done on a slate, it simply makes more sense to get an iPad and a keyboard case instead.

With Microsoft’s Surface visionary, Panos Panay, now at Amazon, there doesn’t seem to be much hope left for the company’s tablet concept. But who knows, maybe the Surface Neo will finally make a return as a true foldable some day. (Remember the Surface Duo, another failure?) A Windows user can only dream. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior reporter

Amazon

Amazon’s Halo hardware products

Speaking of dreams, mine were dashed by Amazon in July this year when the company pulled support for its Halo line of health-related hardware products. In fact, my sleep itself might have been affected, since I had just gotten used to checking my Halo app each morning to see the amount of rest I got the night before.

Amazon’s Halo division has been plagued with controversy since it launched the screenless Halo wearable in 2020. The device was a barebones activity tracker, but stood out for an opt-in feature that used onboard mics to listen to you speaking and tell if you sound stressed, upbeat or emotional. This caught a lot of attention, with people saying this was akin to Amazon trying to police your way of speaking. Many other reviewers, myself included, were more critical of the fact that, though the Tone feature did flag times when wearers sounded happy or sad, it did not present enough information for that data to be useful.

The Halo app also offered a way for you to use your phone’s camera for a body composition scan. You’d have to enter your height and weight, before stripping down to your underwear and posing for four pictures, showing your front, back and sides. The app would then tell you how much of your body is fat or muscle.

If it sounds dubious, it’s probably because it is. Though Amazon said its “Halo body fat measurement is as accurate as methods a doctor would use—and nearly twice as accurate as leading at-home smart scales.” Spoiler: It wasn’t. I used the Body feature every few months for about two years, comparing it to the bio-electrical impedance analysis (BIA) sensor on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch when that became available. Over time, as my body composition changed, I also got BIA scans at the F45 gym I go to, which uses a more sophisticated machine. Amazon’s scans were wildly off, while the Samsung watch came closer to the data gleaned from the machine at my gym.

Photo by: Cherlynn Low / Engadget

All that is to say that Amazon’s Halo products haven’t been great. But that seemed to start to change when the company launched the Halo Rise bedside sleep tracker this year. I loved it for the way it accurately detected when I fell asleep, calculated the different stages I was in (REM, Deep, Light etc) and more importantly how it did all that without requiring me to wear something to bed or install a new mattress. I finally had a feasible way to track my sleep and use that to figure out how hard or easy I should take each day’s workout, along with other activities and stresses.

Alas, that joy was short-lived. Despite Amazon acquiring healthcare companies and clearly investing more into becoming a pharmaceutical provider, it gave up on the Halo business this year. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, since one good product doesn’t an entire profitable endeavor make. Amazon not having access to my sleep, heart rate, steps and tone is probably for the best, as we contemplate a future where the online shopping giant is also our doctor and pharmacist. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy editor

E3

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been reading and talking about games, but the internet expanded my horizons beyond the confines of the UK magazine industry. In the late ‘90s, at age 13, I started writing (very badly) for a popular game site, covering release dates, special editions and other unimportant things.

Within a couple of years I’d lost interest in writing, but I still hung out in the same IRC channels talking about games with likeminded people. IRC started my obsession with E3 and the Tokyo Game Show; weeks where I’d talk about these huge events with a weird milieu of fans and industry professionals.

In 2000, the fever around Metal Gear Solid 2’s E3 debut was out of this world. The first-person reports from the show were unbelievably positive. When the trailer finally became available to download a few weeks later, it quickly spread across the internet. I can still remember the mix of frustration and excitement as I downloaded it from an IRC bot at 7KB a second to finally get a glimpse of “next-gen” gaming.

MGS2 was peak E3 for me, and in hindsight it was also the moment E3 began to die: Why did I need to read a 1,000-word breakdown of a trailer when I could just download and watch it myself? Why should Konami spend big money on a booth when it could just release a trailer directly to its potential customers?

Back then, I was the only person I knew IRL who was “extremely online.” Now, everyone is. By the 2010s, when I started to attend E3 myself, the role of press and the show had shifted. Nintendo E3 Directs were in full swing, and the big shows from Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft and EA were all beamed live to fans. Sure, I got to play some games and interview some developers, but that’s something that happens throughout the year now.

E3 remained one of the highlights of my calendar, and there were always some memorable moments — the PS4 and Xbox One reveals were probably the highlight of my in-person years — but by 2019, my excitement was more tied to seeing farflung colleagues and old industry friends than it was the event itself. When the pandemic canceled the 2020 event, it was obviously it would never recover. We’d written about how the industry didn’t need E3 years before.

Summer Game Fest will happen again next year. It will never hit the scale of the show it’s replacing, but I hope that it becomes a strong enough brand to keep the idea of E3 going. There’s still something exciting for fans, and journalists, about a week of gaming announcements to predict and dissect. If more companies spread their events throughout the year, that last bit of E3 magic will be gone. — Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor

Cryptocurrencies and finance in tech

Much as we pretend mathematics represents an immutable truth, we must remember it’s not without its loopholes. Centuries from now, historians researching crypto may assume humanity forgot that as it decided to substitute math for truth in its entirety. That the prodigies of this world sought to engineer out human fallibility between League of Legends sessions. Uncertain, wooly and hard-to-quantify concepts like “truth” and “trust” would be tossed out in favor of the certainty of pure math. That’s the PR line: The Bitcoin white paper describes the virtual currency as a “system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.” It’s ironic, then, that so many high-profile people who hitched their mast to crypto are either in prison, or are awaiting trial for fraud.

Those same historians may wonder if crypto was merely a vehicle ripe for hijack by unethical types, or if its inherent fraudiness was written into its DNA. 2023 will offer plenty of material to scrub through given the number of figures who wound up face-to-face with law enforcement. Coinbase started the year accused of leaving gaps in its systems big enough to enable fraud, money laundering and drug dealing. Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky was sued and later arrested — alongside the company’s chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon. Not long after, Terraform Labs was charged by the SEC for securities fraud after it wiped out $45 billion or so. Bear in mind, this is a year-in-review story, and I’ve only managed to make it as far as February.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, dominated headlines this year much as FTX had in 2022. Regulators accused it, and its founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao of deliberately undermining its own controls and processes to not-so tacitly enable users to break the law. Zhou would plead guilty, step down as CEO and pay a hefty fine which enabled the company to keep running. Oh, and we should mention the Winklevoss Twins, their exchange and its partners, who were accused of defrauding investors to the tune of $1 billion. Ironic then, that Ferrari finally decided to try to appeal to the Lambo-and-Tendies demographic by opening up crypto purchases for its cars just as things started to get tough.

Of course, the real loser in all of this has to be Michael Lewis who, with an MA in Economics and experience as a bond trader for Salomon Brothers in one hand, and a ringside seat with Sam Bankman-Fried in the other, managed to miss what was going on at FTX. Lewis has doubled down in support of his latest muse but now that SBF has been found guilty of fraud, it looks like his reputation as the most credible financial journalist of the age is in tatters. — Daniel Cooper, Senior reporter

STRF/STAR MAX/IPx

Reddit

I've been a longtime Reddit lurker, occasional poster and always a first-party app user. But when the drama about the company's decision to start charging for API access started to unfold in April, my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of third-party Reddit clients. Too bad, though, that the company proceeded to then botch it all.

Because API access was no longer free, many apps like Apollo, RIF, BaconReader and Narwhal had to reconsider their pricing or shut down altogether. Reddit’s policy change didn’t just challenge these apps, which mostly offered superior browsing experiences to the company’s own. It also created problems for clients that were built for more accessible use, rendering them unusable unless their developers ponied up the fees, which could go up as much as tens of thousands of dollars (or, in Apollo’s case, an estimated $20 million a year).

While Reddit did eventually seem to concede that the API fees would shut out some users with disabilities and ended up working with some unnamed developers to give them free access, the company dug in its heels in the wake of public outrage and subreddit blackouts. In the second half of the year, subreddits all over the platform either stopped posting, changed their settings to private or NSFW or dedicated themselves to only putting up salacious images of Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.

Reddit didn’t just ignore the protests and carry on with its planned fees. It went as far as to forcibly take over some communities that went dark, while looking for volunteers to take over certain subreddits that it deemed to have violated its Moderator Code of Conduct.

According to internet analytics company Similarweb in June, Reddit saw a 6.6 percent drop in average daily traffic. We don’t have the latest statistics on how the company is doing now, but I can tell you from personal experience that the first-party app on iOS is a complete shitshow. Like many other Redditors have pointed out before, videos will autoplay unmuted out of nowhere for no reason, while I’ve encountered numerous infuriating bugs, including one where a video on a post was repeatedly going on and off mute while I was also trying to stream Spotify to a speaker. It just sucks.

After the mass subreddit blackouts spawned a bunch of duplicate communities with different moderators, the quality of posts have noticeably fallen, as well. Not to mention the company got rid of trophies and then attempted to bring them back again in a confusing format. Throw in the fact that the community now seems to be a mix of karma-farming bots and commenters who copy and paste the same jokes over and over again, the days of enjoyable Reddit scrolling seem to have come to an end in 2023. — Cherlynn Low

Throughout 2023, it felt like the drama never let up. From Elon Musk’s nonstop shenanigans to the constant launches in the generative AI race, the last twelve months was packed with news. Thankfully, it wasn’t all bad, and this year saw more winners than before. There were clear frontrunners, like Threads and AI, but we also saw surprises like Apple’s Vision Pro headset and the iPhone maker finally embracing several open standards. Of all the things that happened this year, here’s the Engadget team’s list of tech’s biggest winners in 2023.

Threads

If you had told me a year ago that Mark Zuckerberg would use the Elon Musk-induced chaos at Twitter to his and Meta’s advantage, I wouldn't have been surprised. If, however, you had told me that Meta’s slapdash effort to build a standalone Twitter clone based on Instagram would emerge as the most viable and popular alternative, I probably would have laughed.

But, if 2023 taught us anything, it’s that Elon Musk was more adept at taking Twitter X to lower lows than we could have possibly imagined. And while we’ll likely never see an actual cage match between Zuck and Musk, it’s impossible to ignore just how much Threads has benefitted from Musk’s self-inflicted wounds.

After an initial surge and drop-off in interest, Threads is back at 100 million monthly users. It was the fourth-most downloaded app of the year, according to Apple, despite a mid-year launch and months without any EU availability. The app is also beginning its long-awaited experiment with federation, which will eventually make its content interoperable with Mastodon.

Threads has, of course, benefitted from Meta’s vast engineering resources, as well as the company’s willingness to engage in good old-fashioned growth-hacking. And there are still valid concerns about Meta’s content moderation practices and the implications for allowing the Facebook owner to control yet another major social platform.

But the fact that Threads was able to grow so quickly despite all that shows just how desperate people were for an alternative. Threads may not have been the most advanced or most interesting of the wave of alternatives, but it’s been able to use its ties to Meta and Instagram to attract the most interest. And, right now, it has something X doesn’t: a whole lot of momentum. — Karissa Bell, Senior reporter

Generative AI

We capped off 2022 with the rising popularity of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s remarkably powerful generative AI chatbot. While the idea of having a conversation with a chatbot wasn’t exactly new, ChatGPT leveraged a large language model (LLM) to achieve natural, almost human-like responses, as well as the ability to craft readable text or pull up information on demand. It was a sign that AI was going to be an important topic in 2023 — something Microsoft proved when it launched Bing’s AI Chat in February, which was powered by OpenAI’s next-generation GPT 4 model. And so the AI wars began.

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Google rushed to announce its Bard chatbot to pre-empt Microsoft’s Bing Chat launch, but it demonstrated the limitations of generative AI when it confidently answered a question about the James Webb telescope incorrectly. That led to an immediate 8 percent drop in Google’s stock, and it made the company seem like it was just chasing Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s accomplishments with Bing Chat and ChatGPT. (Bard was originally powered by Google’s LaMDA LLM, which had been in development since 2021.)

Bing Chat was just the start for Microsoft: It also launched AI integration in Microsoft Edge through a “Copilot” sidebar, something that also ended up arriving in Microsoft 365 apps, Windows 11 and Windows 10. Google, meanwhile, announced Bard integration for its Assistant and implemented a slew of AI-powered features into Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, Chat, Slides, as well as the new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Heading into 2024, we can look forward to Google’s GPT 4 competitor, Gemini, and Microsoft also announced that its Copilots are getting upgraded with GPT-4.

Outside of Microsoft and Google, AI ended up being the buzzword adopted by much of the tech world throughout 2023. (How quickly we forgot about Web 3.0, crypto and the metaverse.) But while the relentless hype cycle was inevitable, we also saw text-to-image generation tools like OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 become even more powerful, evolving beyond the creepy multi-fingered imagery it was famous for. AI is starting to influence the the world outside of tech as well: It was one of the most prominent concerns for WGA members during their 148-day long strike, and many people were fooled by the famous image of the Pope wearing a puffy Balenciaga coat, which was generated by Midjourney.

There’s still plenty we don’t know about how AI will influence our lives, though researchers like Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute, and Margaret Mitchell are continually raising the alarm about ethical AI concerns. Much of the AI world seems to be following Facebook’s former philosophy of “move fast and break things” — expect to see more drama around artificial intelligence like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s surprise firing and re-hiring. It normally takes a few years for a founder to get ousted from their company, like Steve Jobs and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. Devindra Hardawar, Senior reporter

Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Apple meets RCS, USB-C and Qi 2

In 2023, it almost felt like hell froze over. Apple, notorious for its walled garden, not only introduced new phones with USB-C charging ports this year, but also announced it would support the RCS messaging standard. This happened after months of public badgering from Google (and its execs) and multiple reports calling out the green-bubble stigma. Apple appeared to relent, seemingly having come to terms with previous misgivings.

Though Apple’s declaration is a step in the right direction and brings better security and multimedia support for those on iPhones texting people on Androids, the bubble-color divide is far from dissolved. When the company does adopt the messaging standard, it may not change the way texts are presented. iMessage still has many features that RCS lacks, particularly those introduced in iOS 17 this year like Voice Memo transcripts and Check Ins.

Of course, it’s not like Apple is welcoming all these interoperable standards with open arms. Its adoption of USB-C is clearly a reaction to the EU’s mandate that all new devices sold next year charge with the same standard. And even after announcing RCS support, the company still worked hard to plug the workarounds that enabled Android platforms like Beeper and Sunbird to bring some semblance of iMessage support to non-iOS devices.

But when you consider all the changes made this year, plus the fact that iPhone 15s are among the first devices that work with the new Qi 2 wireless charging protocol, it’s hard to ignore the momentum. It doesn’t feel quite right to label Apple a winner because of all this, but with the number of people that are now better served and supported by the company’s devices, it won’t be surprising to see a fair amount of goodwill flow its way. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy editor

Photo by: Sam Rutherford / Engadget

Foldable phones

Since 2019, Samsung has had a virtual monopoly on big fancy foldable phones. But in 2023, we got not one but two new challengers in the Pixel Fold and OnePlus Open. And while neither can claim total superiority, they’ve brought some interesting innovations to the category.

With its super thin design and wider front display, the Pixel Fold makes it easy to use all of your apps without ever needing to open the device. So when do unfold it, you appreciate its 6.7-inch flexible screen even more. And unlike its rivals, Google didn’t cut corners with its cameras, as the Pixel Fold offers better image quality than pretty much any other handset (foldable or otherwise) aside from its recent sibling, the Pixel 8 Pro.

Meanwhile with the Open, OnePlus created a clever card-based multitasking system that makes it super easy to flip between apps. The Open is also thinner and lighter than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5. And while it’s still pretty expensive, thanks to a nifty deal that brings its price down to $1,500 with the trade-in of any phone, OnePlus’ first foldable is helping lower the barrier to entry for devices even further.

So in a year when the pace of Samsung’s innovation felt like it was starting to stagnate, two new rivals brought increased competition to the category, which is a win for anyone who’s ever thought about buying a big foldable phone. — Sam Rutherford, Senior reporter

Apple Vision Pro

Apple didn’t make the first MP3 player, and it certainly didn’t make the first smartphone. But the iPod and iPhone managed to out-innovate existing products and reorient the entire technology world around their existence. The Vision Pro is a similar play, albeit one that isn’t immediately meant for everyone. Companies like Oculus (now Meta) and HTC Vive have been pursuing consumer VR for almost a decade, but the Vision Pro takes an even bolder leap forward. Imagine having your apps floating above your desk, or having a video pinned to a wall of your room, or seamlessly reliving your memories captured in 3D spatial videos. And yes, it can also deliver immersive virtual experiences when it needs to.

As is true for many VR solutions, it’s hard to convey the magnitude of Apple’s accomplishment with the Vision Pro in words, screenshots or promo trailers. If you’re not terribly excited about spending $3,499 on Apple’s unproven goggles, I can’t blame you. But after spending some time with the Vision Pro during its launch event, I’m convinced it’s something special. Its screens are far sharper than any VR headset I’ve seen, its onboard cameras deliver a better mixed reality experience and the simple gestures Apple has developed for navigating its interface are wonderfully intuitive.

While the Vision Pro has its obvious issues — it’s priced for developers and early adopters, not average consumers; it’s still a chunky device that many people won’t want to wear — it fundamentally reshapes the way we’ve been thinking of mixed reality. It’s not just a gadget for VR games, nor is it something purely geared towards business purposes like the Hololens 2 and Magic Leap 2. It’s something truly new, and it could end up paving the way towards our spatial computing future. — Devindra Hardawar

Engadget

Gaming handhelds

Handheld gaming PCs combine everything you love about classic portables like the Gameboy Advance or the PSP with big performance (and admittedly much larger builds) plus the freedom to play practically any title you can think of. And in 2023, we saw an explosion of compelling devices with a range of designs: from big chunky units with detachable controllers like Lenovo’s Legion Go to a major revamp for the Steam Deck featuring a new OLED display. Meanwhile, systems like the ASUS ROG Ally offer top-notch specs in a sleek design. And this is before you mention smaller manufacturers like Ayaneo, GPD and others that have put their own twist on the category. But the best part is that most of these cost half the price of a typical gaming laptop, so if all you care about is being able to game from… well anywhere, 2023 has given us a wealth of options. — Sam Rutherford

Neuralink

Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain-computer interface startup came into 2023 against the figurative ropes. The FDA had denied its 2022 petition to begin human trials of its implantable prosthetic over concerns that prototypes of the device had killed a slew of porcine test subjects; rival BCI maker Synchron had already beaten it to market (having having successfully installed their device in a human patient that July) and the USDA had launched an investigation into animal cruelty claims against the company. Musk’s promise of beginning human trials “within six months,” made during a November “show-and-tell’ event appeared increasingly unlikely.

Heading into 2024, Neuralink is in a much better place. The USDA conducted a "focused" inspection of the company’s facilities but did not find any compliance breaches beyond a single issue in 2019 that Neuralink self-reported, per a report obtained by Reuters. That investigation came in response to a complaint filed by the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine, an animal welfare advocacy group, that alleged Neuralink and research partner UC Davis had caused the needless suffering and death of simian test subjects between 2017 and 2020. Neuralink may have placated that investigation, however, the USDA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has since launched its own independent investigation at the behest of federal prosecutors into the allegations as such actions might violate the Animal Welfare Act. That process remains ongoing.

In May, Neuralink received the best news of its year: the FDA had cleared the company to begin early-stage human trials, after it had satisfactorily address the agency’s previous issues. "The agency’s major safety concerns involved the device’s lithium battery; the potential for the implant’s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue," current and former Neuralink employees told Reuters in March.

In September, nearly a year after Musk’s six-month promise, the Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME if you really squint) study opened for subject volunteers. The study "aims to evaluate the safety of our implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts." Whether patients turn out to have the devices implanted won’t be revealed until the trials are complete but given Musk’s increasingly erratic behavior and irrational diatribes, embrace of antisemitism and promotion of far-right hate speech — the fact that he ran Twitter into the ground in barely a year — could make selling people on the finer points of their cranial surgery an impossible task. — Andrew Tarantola, Senior reporter

It was never going to last. Ever since it was launched this week, the Beeper Mini app, which let Android users get iMessage text support, was expected to be in trouble as soon as it caught Apple's attention. And catch Apple's attention it has. Yesterday, the entire Beeper platform appeared to be on the fritz, resulting in speculation that the iPhone maker had been shutting down the iMessage workarounds. As of this morning, Beeper Mini was still posting on X (formerly Twitter) that it was working on and potentially fixing the outage, but with an announcement from Apple today, all that may be for naught. 

"We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage," Apple said. "These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users."

Though Apple does not mention any apps by name, it stands to reason that, given the timing of Beeper Mini's launch and recent troubles, that this refers to the loophole the platform was using. 

Beeper's method sent users' texts to Apple's servers before moving on to their intended recipients, and was thought up by a high-school student. Would-be messengers wouldn't even need an Apple ID to access iMessage via Beeper Mini, though the Android app did offer end-to-end encryption for conversations between those on both operating systems. 

Apple also said today that it's unable to verify that messages sent through unauthorized means that pose as having valid credentials can maintain end-to-end encryption. Beeper had anticipated that this workaround might one day be shut down, and it looks like the Android-iOS messaging divide remains intact. For now.

Ahead of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities last Sunday, Apple released a short film that showcased its Personal Voice accessibility feature, which debuted earlier this year in iOS 17. Personal Voice allows users to create digital versions of their voice to use on calls, supported apps and Apple’s own Live Speech tool.

For those who are at risk of permanently losing their voice due to conditions like Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, ALS and vocal cord paralysis, not sounding like yourself can be yet another form of identity loss. Being able to create a copy of your voice while you’re still able might help alleviate the feeling that you’ll never feel like yourself again, or that your loved ones won’t know what you sound like.

All iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma users can create a personal voice in case you need it in the future — whether temporarily or for long-term use. I found the process (on my iPhone 14 Pro) pretty straightforward and was surprisingly satisfied with my voice. Here’s how you can set up your own Personal Voice, as long as you’ve upgraded to iOS 17, iPadOS 17 or macOS Sonoma (on Macs with Apple Silicon).

Before you start the process, make sure you have a window of about 30 minutes. You’ll be asked to record 150 sentences, and depending on how quickly you speak, it could take some time. You should also find a quiet place with minimal background sound and get comfortable. It’s also worth having a cup of water nearby and making sure your phone has at least 30 percent of battery.

How to set up Personal Voice on iPhone

When you’re ready, go to the Personal Voice menu by opening Settings and finding Accessibility > Personal Voice (under Speech). Select Create A Personal Voice, and Apple will give you a summary of what to expect. Hit Continue, and you’ll see instructions like “Find a quiet place” and “Take your time.”

Importantly, one of the tips is to “Speak naturally.” Apple encourages users to “read aloud at a consistent volume, as if you’re having a conversation.” After you tap Continue on this page, there is one final step where your phone uses its microphone to analyze the level of background noise, before you can finally start reading prompts.

The layout for the recording process is fairly intuitive. Hit the big red record button at the bottom, and read out the words in the middle of the page. Below the record button, you can choose from “Continuous Recording” or “Stop at each phrase.”

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In the latter mode, you’ll have to tap a button each time you’ve recorded a phrase, while Continuous is a more hands-free experience that relies on the phone to know when you’re done talking. For those with speech impairments or who read slowly, the continuous mode could feel too stressful. Though it happened just once for me, the fact that the iPhone tried to skip ahead to the next phrase before I was ready was enough for me to feel like I needed to be quick with my reactions.

Personal Voice on iOS 17: First impressions

Still, for the most part the system was accurate at recognizing when I was done talking, and offered enough of a pause that I could tap the redo button before moving to the next sentence. The prompts mostly consisted of historical and geographical information, with the occasional expressive exclamation thrown in. There’s a fairly diverse selection of phrases, ranging from simple questions like “Can you ask them if they’re using that chair?” to forceful statements like “Come back inside right now!” or “Ouch! That is really hot!”

I found myself trying to be more exaggerated when reading those particular sentences, since I didn’t want my resulting personal voice to be too robotic. But it was exactly when I was doing that when I realized the problem inherent to the process. No matter how well I performed or acted, there would always be an element of artifice in the recordings. Even when I did my best to pretend like something was really hot and hurt me, it still wasn’t a genuine reaction. And there’s definitely a difference between how I sound when narrating sentences and having a chat with my friends.

That’s not a ding on Apple or Personal Voice, but simply an observation to say that there is a limit to how well my verbal self can be replicated. When you’re done with all 150 sentences, Apple explains that the process “may need to complete overnight.” It recommends that you charge and lock your iPhone, and your Personal Voice “will be generated only while iPhone is charging and locked” and that you’ll be alerted when it’s ready to use. It’s worth noting that in this time, Apple is training neural networks fully on the device to generate text-to-speech models and not in the cloud.

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In my testing, after 20 minutes of putting down my iPhone 14 Pro, only 4 percent of progress was made. Twenty more minutes later, the Personal Voice was only 6 percent done. So this is definitely something you’ll need to allocate hours, if not a whole night, for. If you’re not ready to abandon your device for that long, you can still use your phone — just know that it will delay the process.

When your Personal Voice is ready, you’ll get a notification and can then head to settings to try it out. On the same page where you started the creation process, you’ll see options to share your voice across devices, as well as to allow apps to request to use it. The former stores a copy of your voice in iCloud for use in your other devices. Your data will be end-to-end encrypted in the transfer, and the recordings you made will only be stored on the phone you used to create it, but you can export your clips in case you want to keep a copy elsewhere.

How to listen to and use Personal Voice

You can name your Personal Voice and create another if you prefer (you can generate up to three). To listen to the voice you’ve created, go back to the Speech part of the accessibility settings, and select Live Speech. Turn it on, choose your new creation under Voices and triple click your power button. Type something into the box and hit Send. You can decide if you like what you hear and whether you need to make a new Personal Voice.

At first, I didn’t think mine sounded expressive enough, when I tried things like “How is the weather today?” But after a few days, I started entering phrases like “Terrence is a monster” and it definitely felt a little more like me. Still robotic, but it felt like there was just enough Cherlynn in the voice that my manager would know it was me calling him names.

With concerns around deepfakes and AI-generated content at an all-time high this year, perhaps a bit of artifice in a computer-generated voice isn’t such a bad thing. I certainly wouldn’t want someone to grab my phone and record my digital voice saying things I would never utter in real life. Finding a way to give people a sense of self and improve accessibility while working with all the limits and caveats that currently exist around identity and technology is a delicate balance, and one that I’m heartened to see Apple at least attempt with Personal Voice.

The green bubble-blue bubble divide may be getting smaller soon. 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple has confirmed it will support the RCS messaging standard that it's long eschewed. That's not to say that messages from Android devices will no longer appear green on Apple's iMessage app. It does mean that texts from iPhones to non-iPhones will support the newer Rich Communication Services protocol, meaning they will not have to go through the aging SMS system.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.