Picture the scene: Your date has gone well and you and your partner might sleep together. Like any safe adult, you assume there will be a conversation about STI status and the use of protection. Now imagine how you would feel if they asked to take a photo of your penis and upload it to a website you’ve never heard of. That’s the future of intimacy, as imagined by Calmara, a new service launched by “men’s health” startup HeHealth.

HeHealth Website

Its press release suggests users take a picture of their partner’s penis so it can be run through a deep learning model for visual signs of sexually-transmitted infections. And while the website suggests users should wear protection, a banner atop the HeHealth sites describes the app as “Your intimate bestie for unprotected sex.” Mixed messages aside, you may notice some major issues with the pitch: That this only covers infections that present visually, and that it’s only designed to work with penises.

But even if that use case applies, you might not feel you can trust its conclusions once you’ve looked at the data. The Calmara website claims its scans are up to 90 percent accurate, saying its AI has been “battle-tested by over 40,000 users.” That figure doesn’t match up to its press release, which says accuracy reaches 94.4 percent (a figure cited in this NSFW preprint paper submitted a week ago), but its FAQ says the accuracy ranges “from 65 percent to 96 percent across various conditions.” We've reached out to the company and want to learn more about the apparent discrepancy.

Calmara

It’s not impossible for models to categorize visual information — I reported on how systems like these look at images of cells to aid drug discovery. But there are plenty of reasons as to why visual information isn’t going to be as reliable for an STI test. After all, plenty of conditions don’t have visual symptoms and carriers can often be asymptomatic long after infection. The company admits to this in its FAQ, saying that the app is a “first line of defense, not a full-on fortress.” Not to mention that other factors, like the “lighting, the particular health quirks you’re scouting for and a rainbow of skin tones might tweak those [accuracy] numbers a bit.” Even more alarming, the unpublished paper (which is riddled with typos) admits that a full 40 percent of its training dataset is comprised of "augmented" images, for instance "extracting specific visually recognizable disease patterns from the existing clinical image dataset and layering those patterns on top of images of health (sic) penises."

Calmara

The Calmara website’s disclaimer says that its tools are for the purpose of “promoting and supporting general wellness and a healthy lifestyle and are not to be used to diagnose, cure, treat, manage or prevent any disease or condition." Of course, if it really was intended as a general wellness tool, it probably wouldn’t describe itself as “Your intimate bestie for unprotected sex,” would it.

It doesn’t help that this is a system asking users to send pictures of their, or their partner's genitalia. Issues around consent and — as writer Ella Dawson raised on Bluesky — age verification, don’t seem to have been considered. The company's promises that the data is locked in a "digital stronghold" lacks specifics about its security approach or how the data it obtains may be shared. But that hasn’t stopped the company from suggesting that it could, in future, be integrated “directly into dating apps.”

Fundamentally, there are so many red flags and potential vectors for abuse and giving users a false sense of confidence that nobody should try using it.

A lot of EVs aren’t that fun to drive, built as they are to glide around a highway like a swan on a river. Sure, like the swan’s manic paddling, there’s a lot of hardware and software sweating in the background to maintain that serenity. But the feeling can be so soporific that you wind up lusting for the day full autonomy comes and puts us out of our misery.

Except, of course, if you’re driving a new Lotus.

You see, when you’re driving an electric Lotus, there’s a sense of cognitive whiplash you don’t often get these days. EVs are quick and have plenty of torque thanks to their electric motors but they rarely have anything close to a personality. But even when you’re driving its new two-plus ton SUV, you’re capable of zooming around a race track as if you were driving a go-kart. It’s this unity of electric smarts and old-school drivability that Lotus hopes will return the perpetually beleaguered manufacturer to its former glory.

Lotus

Lotus Cars

If you’re not a car person, I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing Lotus was a big name in manufacturing and F1 – emphasis on was – responsible for many innovations that shaped how we build, drive and race cars today. “We talk about [having] this pioneering and rebellious spirit,” says Mike Johnstone, Lotus’ new VP of Commercial Operations. For the last 75 years, Lotus has been a left-field car manufacturer, with customers who want something that is “not necessarily part of the status quo.”

Lotus is a company defined by, and proud of, its idiosyncrasies. It’s idiosyncratically based in rural Norfolk, a hundred miles or more from the rest of the UK’s automotive industry. It’s idiosyncratic co-founder Colin Chapman (pictured, above), whose famous mantra was “simplify, then add lightness.” It’s idiosyncratic technical innovations, like monocoque bodies, ground-effect aerodynamics and the early use of carbon fiber. Its cars' idiosyncratic obsession with perfect handling and speed rather than creature comforts.

It would be impolite to mention the idiosyncratic financial relationship between Chapman and John DeLorean that would lead to the latter’s undoing.

It was this idiosyncratic reputation that made it a draw for pop culture figures who wanted to stand out from the crowd. Patrick McGoohan chose a Lotus Seven to be The Prisoner’s car in 1996 because it showed a “touch of the rebel.” The Avengers’ Mrs. Peel drove a Lotus Elan, while James Bond drove a Lotus Esprit underwater in The Spy Who Loved Me and a Turbo Esprit in For Your Eyes Only. And Richard Gere drove a Lotus Esprit in Pretty Woman because Porsche and Ferrari, who were asked first, objected to the film’s subject matter. I doubt Lotus has ever uttered the phrase “brand safety” with a sincere face.

Since Chapman’s death in the early ‘80s, Lotus has become a byword for stagnation, passed from one corporate parent to another. Its model line suffered: It sold the Elise from 1996 until 2021, while the Exige was in production from 2000 to 2021. Its newest car pre-Geely was the Evora, and its 12-year lifespan made it the youngest and freshest ride in the range. All three were discontinued in 2021 when the Emira made its debut as the company’s last gas-powered car.

Lotus remained alive because of its small but passionate fanbase, which happened to include a number of automotive executives. But while demand for its own cars waned, the rest of the industry continued to rely on its expertise in making cars drive well. Lotus’ fingerprints are visible in so many high-profile cars, from the DeLorean DMC12, Aston Martin DB9 and even Sinclair’s C5. More importantly, the first Tesla roadster was developed on Lotus’ platform, with the first run of cars built at its Hethel, England base.

In 2017, Geely — the Chinese EV giant that owns Volvo and Polestar — bought a 51 percent stake in the company. It’s spent the last few years and a considerable amount of cash to push the company into the 21st century. The existing gas-powered product line was cleared out, the HQ revamped and a new electric-only facility built in China. I was able to visit the company’s Hethel plant to see the fruits of this investment, and also to try all of the new vehicles. The headline-grabbing model, of course, is the Evija, the company’s $3 million all-electric hypercar.

The Evija

Lotus Cars

Emeya, Eletre, Emira, Evija, Evora, Exige, Elise, Elan, Esprit: It’s tradition, or something, that all Lotuses have incomprehensible faux-Latin names beginning with an E. The Evija will, hopefully, lodge itself in your memory as the company’s hypercar, of which only 130 will be built. One of the first is owned by former Formula One world champion Jenson Button with a Brawn GP paint job in honor of his 2009 win.

Lotus opted to put a lot of hardware in the middle of the car behind the two seats to retain that mid-engined weight distribution. The body is a single piece of carbon fiber, and it’s obvious to all that this is a race car first, with Lamborghini-esque styling. To save weight, there’s little sound dampening, so you can hear the roar of the gear, and the road, as you slice through the air. Put your foot down and you’ll hear the power unit spin up to push juice to those four wheel-mounted 500W motors.

What comes out the other side is eye-bleeding acceleration and enough g-force that you feel your lunch shift from one side of your stomach to the other. Yes, other EVs can go quickly, and some accelerate ludicrously fast, but the Evija is playing in different water. For car people, Lotus has always been synonymous with fast-twitch driving dynamics and slightly lackluster reliability. But the Evija feels mature, solid, stable and able to harness all of the pure grunt that only an electric motor can provide.

I’d go further and say that the Evija is terrifying, especially when Karl Eaton, one of the minds behind the vehicle, took me around the track in one. He waited until the car reached 201 miles per hour to start explaining all of the smart choices embodied in its design. I didn’t recall much of what he said at the time since I was trying to keep all the fluids in my body.

The Eletre and Emeya

Lotus Cars

Of course, the Evija is the standard bearer for Lotus as a luxury EV maker that stands out from the crowd. It’s not likely you’ll have a few million lying around, but its existence will make you aware of the relatively more reasonably-priced options in its lineup. The Eletre is the first real Lotus EV, priced around $100,000 and again, something of a departure from the norm. Whereas Lotus prides itself on making zippy, mid-engined sports cars, this is a two-and-change ton SUV that just happens to be as capable on a race track as its E-named predecessors.

On my first few laps around the track, I drove the Eletre like a high-sided SUV, which is to say, gently. After all, I didn’t want to flip this thing over when I’d need to save three years worth of paychecks just for a chance to look at the sales brochure. My co-pilot kept urging me to go harder, and eventually I did, realizing that Lotus has done something amazing. It’s a car that you can fling around a track and feel like you’re Lewis Hamilton, and then drive it home without missing a beat.

Lotus Cars

The Eletre is already on sale, but we won’t need to wait a decade to see what follow-up Lotus has planned. Next on the docket is the Emeya, a luxury hyper-grand tourer based on the same platform as the Eletre. You can see the shared design language and the emphasis on active aerodynamics in the body to help the cars zoom around the corners. There are gaps and vents all around the body to help push air past the cabin and keep all four wheels planted on the road.

As for the interiors, Lotus is a company that has traditionally avoided fripperies like comfort and ease of use. These, after all, aren’t conducive to Chapman’s mantra of simplifying and adding lightness. But the Eletre and Emeya have gloriously un-Chapmanesque cabins full of luxurious materials and physical dials and switches more reminiscent of a high-end camera. When you look at the price and see that the luxurious excesses of this cost the same as a Tesla Model X, you feel as though the incumbents need to get a lot better quickly.

The Spirit of Lotus

Lotus Cars

You could argue that Lotus is just a badge under which Geely can slap components it’s using elsewhere. But Mike Johnstone said the parent company has no interest in diluting what makes Lotus Lotus. “More than 99 percent of all of our development is done ourselves,” said Johnstone, “where we benefit [from being owned by Geely] is access to a supply chain.”

Much has been made about what Lotus’ role in the automotive firmament should be in the new world of electric vehicles. Colin Chapman’s famous principles were to simplify and add lightness so aren’t bulky EVs, shorn of their gas-powered engines, an insult to his memory? Thankfully, I only needed to cross the road that runs alongside Lotus’ Hethel HQ to ask an expert: Chapman’s son, Clive (pictured, left). Clive is the head of Classic Team Lotus, a heritage brand that keeps the company’s former gas-powered F1 cars working. Despite the shared name and proximity, there’s no financial relationship between Lotus and the Classic Team.

Clive showed me around the facility, which maintains those classic F1 cars and races them at heritage events, like the Historic Grand Prix at Monaco. If you’re a one-percenter with an old Lotus, you can also send it here to be restored by specialists. On the upper floor, there’s a collection of classic Lotuses of every stripe. It’s a rare and beautiful sight to see. I asked Clive how his father would feel about the shift to electric. “Dad was never sentimental,” said the younger Chapman, and directed me to a pristine Lotus 56 in the collection. He explained that his father was never wedded to one technology or philosophy, despite what some Lotus fans may claim. The Lotus 56, after all, was equipped with a gas turbine engine more commonly seen in aircraft than vehicles, but Colin Chapman was very interested in the speed advantage it could have offered.

It seems that what mattered to Colin Chapman then is the same as what matters to Lotus now: Pushing automotive design forward, no matter how unusual the method. Before I tried any of Lotus’ EVs on its test track, I tried the (gas-powered) Emira and used that as my benchmark. My expectation was that the subsequent cars would all pale somehow in comparison to the last “true” Lotus to be made at Hethel. And yet, the new cars, despite their batteries and electric motors, are just as lithe and energetic as ever. This, I suspect, is why Lotus has a good chance of making a mark in the new world, because it remains enough of that uncompromising spirit to stand out from the crowd and make sure that, for those who need it, you can still feel connected to your car.

The latest series of Doctor Who will debut on iPlayer and globally on Disney+ at midnight in the UK. The first two hour-long episodes land on May 11, which will then air on BBC One later that day in prime time. Those who know how time zones work will have already guessed that Doctor Who will now be available to view in the US on May 10 at 7pm ET and 4pm PT.

There are plenty of sucky things about living in the UK, one of which is that we’re a day behind the US TV schedule. Buzzy shows like Lost were often spoiled by the internet long before it was legally available to view here. To curb the rampant piracy, shows like Game of Thrones and Succession were broadcast at 2am or 3am.

That way, ardent viewers could DVR those airings and watch them before they got to work lest it be spoiled. Because, if you didn’t, you’d have to be extremely careful when you were treading around on the internet. There were very few shows I didn’t have spoiled for me given that I work on the internet all the damn day.

So you can imagine my dismay to learn that Doctor Who, one of the crown jewels in the British TV firmament, will now be treated the same way. It’s hard not to feel annoyed given that the bulk of the series’ funding comes from the license fee paid by the majority of TV owners in the UK. It seems mad, to me, that the global simulcast isn't tied to the UK broadcast, rather than this obvious tweak to ensure the US gets it first. Especially when the alternative is to stay up until 2am on a Saturday morning. 

(Yes, I know there’s precedent for this, The Five Doctors aired on PBS two days before the UK airing, and the TV movie aired on Fox twelve days earlier. But that was in the pre-internet heyday when you didn't have every big moment from the show shared by its own official social channels mere seconds after it aired.)

Conversing with your computer has been a dream of futurists and technologists for decades. When you look at 2004’s state of the art, it’s staggering to see how far we’ve come. There are now billions of devices in our hands, and homes that listen to our queries and do their very best to answer them. But for all of the time, money and effort, chatbots of any stripe have not swallowed the world as their creators intended. They’re miraculous. They’re also boring. And it’s worth asking why.

Chatbot is a term covering a lot of systems, from voice assistants to AI and everything else in the middle. Talking to your computer in the not-so-good old days meant typing into a window and watching the machine attempt a facsimile of the act of conversation rather than the real thing. The old ELIZA (1964 to 1967) trick of restating user inputs in the form of a question helped sell this performance. And this continued even as far as 2001’s SmarterChild chatbot. The other branch of this work was to digitize the analog with voice-to-text engines, like Nuance’s frustrating but occasionally wonderful product.

In 2011, the ideas in that early work joined up to make Siri for the iPhone 4S, which was quietly built on Nuance’s work. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, saw Siri’s promise early and launched a large internal project to make a homegrown competitor. In 2014, Alexa arrived, with Cortana and Google Assistant following in subsequent years. Natural language computing was now available on countless smartphones and smart home devices.

Companies are largely reticent to be specific about the price of building new projects, but chat has been costly. Forbes reported in 2011 that buying the startup behind Siri cost Apple $200 million. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal quoted Dave Limp, who said Amazon’s Alexa team had more than 10,000 employees. A Business Insider story from 2022 suggested the company pegged more than $10 billion in losses on Alexa’s development. Last year, The Information claimed Apple is now spending a million dollars a day on AI development.

So, what do we use this costly technology for? Turning our smart bulbs on and off, playing music, answering the doorbell and maybe getting the sports scores. In the case of AI, perhaps getting poorly summarized web search results (or an image of human subjects with too many fingers.) You’re certainly not having much in the way of meaningful conversation or pulling vital data out of these things. Because in pretty much every case, its comprehension sucks and it struggles with the nuances of human speech. And this isn’t isolated. In 2021, Bloomberg reported on internal Amazon data saying up to a quarter of buyers stop using their Alexa unit entirely in the second week of owning one.

The oft-cited goal has been to make these platforms conversationally intelligent, answering your questions and responding to your commands. But while it can do some basic things pretty well, like mostly understanding when you ask it to turn your lights down, everything else isn’t so smooth. Natural language tricks users into thinking the systems are more sophisticated than they actually are. So when it comes time to ask a complex question, you’re more likely to get the first few lines of a wikipedia page, eroding any faith in their ability to do more than play music or crank the thermostat.

The assumption is that generative AIs bolted onto these natural language interfaces will solve all of the issues presently associated with voice. And yes, on one hand, these systems will be better at pantomiming a realistic conversation and trying to give you what you ask for. But, on the other hand, when you actually look at what comes out the other side, it’s often gibberish. These systems are making gestures toward surface level interactions but can’t do anything more substantive. Don’t forget when Sports Illustrated tried to use AI-generated content that boldly claimed volleyball could be “tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.” No wonder so many of these systems are, as Bloomberg reported last year, propped up by underpaid human labor.

Of course, the form’s boosters will suggest it’s early days and, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said recently, we still need billions of dollars in more chip research and development. But that makes a mockery of the decades of development and billions of dollars already spent to get where we are today. But it’s not just cash or chips that’s the issue: Last year, The New York Times reported the power demands of AI alone could skyrocket to as much as 134 terawatt hours per year by 2027. Given the urgent need to curb power consumption and make things more efficient, it doesn’t bode well for either the future of its development or our planet.

We’ve had 20 years of development, but chatbots still haven’t caught on in the ways we were told they would. At first, it was because they simply struggled to understand what we wanted, but even if that’s solved, would we suddenly embrace them? After all, the underlying problem remains: We simply don’t trust these platforms, both because we have no faith in their ability to do what we ask them to and because of the motivations of their creators.

One of the most enduring examples of natural language computing in fiction, and one often cited by real-world makers, is the computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But even there, with a voice assistant that seems to possess something close to general intelligence, it’s not trusted to run the ship on its own. A crew member still sits at every station, carrying out the orders of the captain and generally performing the mission. Even in a future so advanced it’s free of material need, beings still crave the sensation of control.

To celebrate Engadget's 20th anniversary, we're taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

Blink is once again attempting to challenge conventional wisdom about how good a $40 security camera can be. The Amazon-owned company is today announcing the Blink Mini 2, which crams in plenty more smart features into that relatively tiny body. Headline features include better image quality day and night, as well as a built-in LED spotlight for color night vision.

Blink

Paired with Blink’s custom system-on-chip, the Mini 2 will also offer smart notifications and person detection. Those features will require a Blink subscription which, for $3 a month, will get you cloud recording, 60 days of video history and live streaming. You’ll also need to pony up some more to use the Mini 2 outside — $49.98 will get you the camera and the necessary weather proof power adapter.

The Blink Mini 2 is available today in the US and Canada.

Engadget’s resident laptop expert Devindra Hardawar put the 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBooks Air through their paces. Fundamentally, both are fantastic machines but probably lack some of the gosh-wow factor the M2 Airs had when they debuted in 2022. After all, the M2 heralded a new industrial design and far better internals, while the M3 is more of an iterative update. Think of it like the iPhone S-years, when a dramatic redesign (the iPhone 4, say) was followed by a more refined model (the 4S) the following year.

Consequently, reviewing the M3 is an exercise in spotting the small differences, like the faster Wi-Fi (6E), brighter display and quicker processing speed. Benchmarking saw both machines get out ahead of the M2, but you probably won’t notice if you’re using this machine casually. And Devindra’s clearly getting a kick out of being able to run games like Death Stranding on a fanless ultraportable. You can — and should — read on to find out if the M3 is a must-buy.

— Dan Cooper

The biggest stories you might have missed

Nikon buys high-end cinema camera company RED

You can write long-form articles on X if you pay for Premium+

Leica’s SL3 mirrorless camera offers a 60-megapixel sensor and 8K video

Spotify is mad at the French government and is taking it out on users

Prime Video’s latest Fallout trailer deftly captures the tone of the games

Microsoft’s neural voice tool for people with speech disabilities arrives later this year

Why Jack Dorsey thought Elon Musk could fix Twitter

This luxury handbag is made from the material NASA uses to collect comet dust

SpaceX lawsuit claims repeated instances of gender discrimination and basic safeguarding failures

Microsoft is holding a Surface and Windows AI event on March 21

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Sony A6700 review: The company’s best APS-C camera yet

It’s great for video, less ideal for everything else.

Steve Dent for Engadget

Steve Dent, who knows more about cameras than I know about literally anything, has been using Sony’s A6700 and is now ready to lay down his verdict. He’s never been too much of a fan of Sony’s 6000-series models, which he says aren’t as good looking or usable as Fujifilm’s alternatives. The A6700 is an attempt to remedy this situation, and Steve says it’s a far better camera than its predecessor. But is it good enough for him to want to use it as his daily driver? You’ll have to read on to find out.

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TikTok is encouraging its users to call their representatives about attempts to ban the app

Can the US Government withstand the stan army?

The geopolitical quagmire surrounding TikTok isn’t letting up, which has led the platform to use its secret weapon: its Stan Army. TikTok has started sending push messages to users telling them to speak to their representative lest the immensely addictive platform be shut down. It’s one way to get attention, but it may not endear the company to US lawmakers if it can so easily incite millions of people to start scrutinizing the political process all at once.

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The real fight isn’t Tyson vs. Paul — it’s Netflix vs. its live streaming infrastructure

And the loser will probably be… humanity itself.

Netflix is devolving into the very thing it sought to destroy. It’s been stepping into the live broadcast space for a while and yesterday announced it would air a live punch fight between two people with extensive Controversies and Legal Issues sections on their Wikipedia pages. Given the high-profile nature of the participants and, presumably, people’s desire to see one or both get punched in the face, it should be a massive event. And it’s going to be the sternest test of Netflix’s capacity to use the internet to deliver millions of simultaneous streams of live TV.

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The Tesla Model S shook the industry, but its echo is fading

It upended the EV world in so many ways, at least at the time.

Koren Shadmi for Engadget

Engadget is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of articles looking back on the biggest changes in the tech world over that time. The wonderful Tim Stevens is in the spotlight today to talk about the Tesla Model S and his experiences when it debuted. It’s a tale of the car’s innovations, its highs, lows and how the EV industry has changed in the ensuing years.

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The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) limits the power of big platform holders, but it may have also created a new revenue stream (and some drama) for those same big names. Google has followed Apple’s lead in imposing extra charges on developers who want to circumvent its own app storefront. Companies luring users outside the Play Store will need to pay Google a cut of in-app purchases and subscriptions. I’m sure everyone will treat this as rationally as when Apple announced it too.

At the same time, Apple has once again suspended Epic Games’ developer access, concerned the games giant isn’t going to play by its rules. The iPhone maker pointed to tweets made by (Epic CEO) Tim Sweeney, suggesting a lack of faith in the company’s rules. Apple more or less said out loud it couldn’t trust Epic, especially given its track record of agreeing to work within Apple’s rules and then very publicly breaking those rules.

— Dan Cooper

The biggest stories you might have missed

41 state attorneys general tell Meta to fix its customer support for hacking victims

Rivian R2 specs leak from the automaker’s website

Meta explains how third-party apps will hook into Messenger and WhatsApp

Twitch will overhaul its mobile app for the first time since 2019

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FDA approves the first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor

You can buy one without a prescription in the summer.

The FDA has approved Dexcom’s Stelo Glucose Biosensor as the first wearable continuous glucose monitor to be sold over the counter. Sales of the device will begin this summer to help people who aren’t using insulin to manage their diabetes and also for more general use. I was surprised to learn these weren’t available to buy already since, in the UK, a startup called Zoe has been selling implantable monitors as part of its weight loss program for ages.

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Microsoft engineer who raised concerns about Copilot image creator pens letter to the FTC

Shane Jones has blown the whistle on AI images before.

Microsoft’s rush to incorporate AI into so many user-facing products has driven whistleblower Shane Jones to the FTC. They wrote to the body, saying Copilot Designer can be used to create inappropriate images and should be removed until better safeguards are in place. The Windows giant and OpenAI have both previously said robust tools exist to steer the model away from creating some of the gruesome images Jones has alleged to have generated.

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Apple has upgraded the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Airs with the M3 and a few new bells and whistles. But while I expected the company to keep the M1 around as its budget option, it swapped it out for the base model M2. Someone at Cupertino’s going to regret that, because the M2 Air is, despite its limitations, a damn fine machine. I don’t know if anyone needs the added performance the M3 Air provides, but I do know you can’t afford to ignore the base model M2.

Historically, Apple has kept a MacBook below a thousand dollars to hook price-sensitive buyers. A grand is a lot to spend on a machine if you’re broke, especially if there are cheaper low-end Windows machines (even if they are crap). Even then, the $999 MacBook is the “cheap” option, and Apple will hobble it just enough to upsell you to the $1,200 model it really wants you to buy.

That’s why I cynically expected the M1 to remain in place, because the slower chip and decade-old chassis was a nice compromise in exchange for a cheaper machine. Yes, the M1 would allow you to join the Apple SIlicon world, but you’d have to deal with a design that’s barely changed since 2017. The M2, by comparison, is less than two years old and is regarded as one of Apple’s best ever machines: The fact it’s available as the budget option is almost a flex.

This morning, I reread my colleague Devindra Hardawar’s great review of the M2 Air from 2022, and I still want one. The M2 has a wonderfully sleek design and comes equipped with plenty of great hardware. A fantastic 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display with a 500-nit backlight, a 1080p webcam, quad-speakers with support for Spatial Audio and Atmos. The better quality of stuff you got was probably Apple’s rationale for holding on to the M1, and charging $1,200 for the base M2 (which itself could be upsold for more with the better add-ons).

Then there’s the M2 silicon itself which, in this variation, has an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. Look, I know that 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD are both major drags on the M2’s overall performance. But I can’t stress enough that this is an ultraportable without a fan designed for lower power tasks. If you buy a machine this thin and get annoyed that it can’t render a two hour 4K movie as efficiently as a Pro model, the computer isn’t the problem, no matter what it's running.

Of course, the sticks you could use to beat the M2 MacBook Air are the same ones for a lot of Apple Silicon machines. Limited external display support, limited port selection, no ability to add upgrades further down the road and nonexistent repair support. But some or all of those issues are probably not top of your list if you’re looking for a good machine to live your life with.

Ah, but what about the AI performance which Apple says is so much better on the M3 than its immediate predecessor? I’ll be honest, I don’t know how many people are doing AI-intensive tasks on a machine like this, or even beefier ones. After all, most people are more than happy to engage with generative AIs through a web client, which requires no local grunt at all.

Not to mention that the M2 has often been offered with a hefty discount through sellers like Amazon. I’d reckon that while the $999 is a bargain, someone will probably knock another hundred off that figure the next time there’s a shopping holiday. Who needs an M3 Air?

Apple has reportedly pulled down the shutters on Project Titan, its initiative to build the future of transportation. If the reports are accurate, the project chewed through billions of dollars and several high-profile leaders as its mission shifted and shifted again. What may have started as a control-free autonomous vehicle was eventually scaled down to a generic EV but, ya know, made by Apple. But, I’ll be honest, I never believed we’d see an Apple Car in the real world, because it seemed so impossibly far-fetched as to be fictional.

I'm not saying Titan itself didn't exist, because every company has speculative projects, and I'm sure the reporting around what it achieved is accurate — Tim Cook definitely wrote "Car?" on a whiteboard at some point. If any company could walk in, learn the skills needed to build and launch a car and do it well (and profitably), it would be Apple. Other tech companies, like Sony, are making a real noise about entering the field, albeit in partnership with Honda. But, from a lot of logical angles, the idea that Apple would start making cars was impossible to fathom.

There’s a line in The Unbearable Lightness of Being where kitsch – a German word for bad or tacky art – is defined as a denial of the realities of life. Apple fits that description because while it’s wildly successful, it’s often despite decisions made that fly in the face of common sense. A watch that lasts for less than a day on a charge. A slippery, easily-dropped phone with a glass front and back that’s nightmarishly difficult to repair. A mouse that is still being sold with the charging port on its underside so you can only charge it when it’s not in use.

Even the most environmentally-friendly car still needs oil and grease to lubricate its workings, wheels that leave rubber on the road, brake pads that wear down. Seats that have to deal with spilled coffee and toddler vomit when you’re on a long road trip, the grime you only seem to find when you’re loading IKEA boxes into your trunk. Can you imagine Apple’s design team, who were behind the FineWoven case, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming toward bigger batteries, USB-C and waterproofing, thinking about such considerations?

Not to mention that while Apple can exert a lot of control over its devices now, cars aren’t so neatly closed off. Imagine how hard it would be for a company obsessed with control to cede so much to the auto shops of the world. Yes, you need to take your Tesla back for major repairs but can you imagine not being able to replace your tires when you get a flat? Unless, of course, Apple is planning to build garages in every major population center to overcharge you when it comes time to get an oil change.

And that’s before you get to the idea that Apple, who is quite obsessive about its brand, would have its logo plastered on the internet every time one of its cars so much as kissed a lamppost. Car accidents are currently an unfortunate fact of life that we, as a society, are not prepared to tackle the way we should. But all it would take is one fatality in an Apple car and the company would be demonized — and opened up to a raft of lawsuits all looking to get a piece of Apple’s cash pile.

A car also would muddy the company’s stance on environmental matters, and I can already picture the internal contortions. The executives driving their convertible Mercedes into Apple Park’s rarified subterranean parking garage would, I’m sure, quite like an Apple car. But I imagine the company’s teams who have to look at figures around energy consumption, emissions and climate change don’t. If Apple’s fine words about looking after the environment mean anything, it would throw its weight and expertise behind something better like scooters or e-bikes.

I’ve also struggled to fathom out how Apple would justify charging $100,000 for a limited-run EV when its real wins have come in the mass market. EVs take enormous amounts of capital and labor to assemble and it’s nowhere near as profitable as what Apple does today. In Q3 of 2023, WV — the world’s biggest car maker — made a net profit of about $4.7 billion, or about a quarter of what Apple made in the same period. How many luxury EVs would Apple be able to get out of the door and how many would it need to sell in order to justify that initial investment?

In fact, I suspect a lot of people piled a lot of unreasonable hopes on Project Titan's shoulders despite Apple's repeated scaling back. 'We'll make a car without a wheel, it'll be great,' you can imagine them saying, 'okay, maybe it'll have a wheel...' they added, years later, 'oh okay so, how about it's just a car that's not as autonomous as a Mercedes.' It hardly screams the sort of class-leading ambitions you normally see with an Apple product, does it?

And yes, there may have been lots of pretty renders of what an Apple car would look like made by talented graphic designers looking to bulk out their portfolio. And lots of wishful chat on social media about Apple buying another EV maker like Tesla or Rivian to slap its brand on top of — despite the fact that Apple buying a name-brand company outright has only happened once or twice in a decade. But, until the NDAs lapse and we get a tell-all book with internal imagery, I’m going to say that, despite the reported billions of dollars poured into it, the Apple Car never got close to being a real thing.

Apple has today announced Sports, a new iPhone app offering real-time stats for a number of major leagues. Once installed, users can set their favorite team and get a trove of data on their lock screen in the live activities box when the team is playing. Available free from today in the US, Canada and the UK, the app presently supports Basketball, Hockey and Soccer Football. The company added that other sports, including Baseball and American Football will debut for their upcoming seasons.

There are plenty of reasons you might not be able to watch your team of choice play live. You may have a prior engagement, the game may not be televised, or Todd Boehly has done so much damage to the club you can’t bear to look at it any more. In those situations, push alerts from major sports apps has been a lifeline, but it’s not always entirely reliable.

Now, it has been possible to get this working since iOS 16, if you fancied messing around in the depths of the Apple TV app. And some third-party platforms, like MLB’s homegrown app, would put this data in your lock screen or Dynamic Island. But Apple says that its own setup offers a “simple and fast way to stay up to speed on the teams and leagues they love.” The setup will also sync up with any sports preferences already stored in the Apple TV or Apple News apps.

Of more concern is that Sports will also offer up live betting odds for the games as they’re in play. It’s worth noting it will be possible to deactivate the live odds feature in settings, but it seems like it would have been smarter and less potentially harmful to make that opt-in, rather than opt-out.

Apple Sports is available to download right now, with support for English, while French and Spanish are supported where available.