"A $3,000 podcasting kit, in this economy?" That was my first thought when I learned about Nomono's portable recording setup last year. Since then, the price has dropped slightly to $2,490. But my main concern remains: Who needs this thing when you can get a small audio recorder and lavalier mics for far less? Still, I was intrigued.

Nomono's kit includes four wireless lav mics, as well as a space recorder for room tone and spatial data, all of which charge in a portable carrying case. Your recordings are automatically uploaded to Nomono's cloud service, where you can optimize their audio quality (and eventually edit them in your browser). As someone who's been podcasting regularly since 2008, the notion of an all-in-one kit that can easily tackle local recordings sounds like an absolute dream. Nomono's kit has the potential to be something the podcasting industry has needed for years, but can the company justify its incredibly high price?

Clearly, this isn't a product aimed at everyone — it's certainly not for beginners, and I'd argue it's far beyond the scope of what most podcasters actually need. But after testing Nomono's kit for a few weeks, I can see how it could be helpful for recording studios and companies that need flexible podcasting solutions. It doesn't require much training to use, it delivers high quality recordings, and it can be deployed just about anywhere. For those folks, spending $2,490 on Nomono's kit may make more sense than having an engineer dedicate time to every single recording. Add in a cloud subscription, which can cost as much as $29 a month, and it definitely doesn't seem like something for mere podcasting mortals.

You can tell Nomono is striving for Apple-level design simply by looking at its hardware. Even though everything is made of plastic, nothing feels cheap. The egg-like charging case has a cloth handle at the top as well as a USB-C port. Its two halves snap together with secure clasps — flip those open, take off the top and you're presented with four lavalier microphones around the space recorder. It's like an adorable podcasting bird nest.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The space recorder serves as the hub for the entire Nomono experience: It's a rectangular device featuring omnidirectional microphones for capturing room tone with spatial information (it can tell where everyone is located during a conversation). There's a small screen at the top displaying the battery levels of all the connected lavs, as well as prominent recording and directional buttons. On the side, it features a USB-C port and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. As you're capturing audio, the space recorder takes in data from the lav mics and uploads it to Nomono's cloud once your session is done.

The lavaliers aren't nearly as unique: They're small, indiscrete square pucks featuring four LED colors (helpful for distinguishing each track). They grip onto your clothes with small magnets — making them easy to put on, but potentially just as easy to slip off. The lavs never fell off during my testing, but I constantly worried about knocking one off and losing the tiny magnet. (Nomono includes some additional magnets in its bundled accessory kit, which also has windscreen sleeves for the lavs and space recorder.)

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Setting up Nomono's hardware was relatively straightforward: After charging the case, I downloaded the Nomono Companion app, created an account, and paired the kit to my phone. The app shows battery levels for the lav mics and space recorder. To capture audio, you just need to remove the space recorder and at least one lav, then hit record. That process was surprisingly fast and reliable — I was typically able to get recordings started in under 30 seconds.

Wrapping up a session is mostly dependent on your internet connection. It took under 60 seconds for a 90-minute recording to get uploaded, and then I had to wait a few more minutes for Nomono's cloud to process the upload. It was far faster for short recording tests, just be prepared to wait a bit if you're planning to push lots of audio. Nomono’s hardware delivers 16-bit 48kHz WAV files for each lavalier, as well as an ambisonic WAV file (with up to four tracks) from the space recorder.

The quality of those recordings are crisp and detailed even in slightly noisy outdoor spaces. The lavs don't sound nearly as rich or nuanced as a premium dynamic or condenser microphone, but I didn't really expect them to. I'd consider them on-par with other wireless lavaliers I've used during video production (our podcast editor, Ben Ellman, described the sound as being ideal for video shoots). A conversation with my wife also sounded surprisingly clear, with none of the crosstalk issues or echoes I've encountered with cheaper multi-mic solutions.

Nomono

To give your recordings a bit more polish, Nomono also offers three levels of enhancement through its cloud platform: on the light end, it features a high-pass filter, cross-talk reduction, notch EQ filter, de-noising and de-essing (for removing harsh "S" sounds and other sibilants). Medium enhancement adds loudness normalization, a tone-shaping EQ and adaptive level, while full enhancement goes even heavier on the latter two features. While you can still download pure, unfiltered tracks, these enhancements are useful for the less audio savvy.

Eventually, you can choose to spatialize your recording through Nomono’s online platform, which makes each audio track sound like they’re coming from different directions (depending on where the space recorder was placed during the session). That feature wasn't available while I was testing the kit, and to be honest, it's also not something I'd ever consider using in a podcast. 

Nomono's full audio enhancement did a decent job of cutting down highway sounds and other street noise while I was recording in front of my local Starbucks (see above), but it also made my voice sound a bit tinny and compressed. Basically, don't expect any miracles. While It's useful to have simple ways to cut down background noise, you'll still need to find a relatively quiet recording space to capture the best audio. (Otherwise, why even buy such an expensive podcasting kit?!)

The company plans to launch its online editor by the end of 2023, which could also potentially include the ability to edit spatial recordings. Since this isn’t exactly a consumer solution, I’d bet that most people buying Nomono’s hardware already have more sophisticated ways to edit audio.

Here's a comparison of Nomono's lavalier versus the Rode Procaster XLR microphone: 

While Nomono’s hardware mostly impressed me, its online platform made it tough to deal with larger files. It took over five minutes for it to prepare a 90 minute track for download (including its bundled spatial audio file). And that didn’t include the time it took to actually grab the file, which would be dependent on your internet connection. I understand the appeal of a seamless online audio solution, but it’s annoying when I know it would be faster to just grab a file from a device sitting right on my desk. 

The space recorder didn’t show up on my Mac or PC when I connected to it, unfortunately. Nomono representatives say the company is planning to make offline features available next year, but for now, it's focused on a cloud-based workflow because they believe it's the "most convenient and time-efficient" solution for users. That also means livestreaming is out of the question with this kit, though it may show up in a future Nomono product, the company tells me.

I’d have a much easier time justifying Nomono’s high price if I knew I could use its hardware without relying on a website. This isn’t my first time at the gadget startup rodeo: What good is this $2,490 recording kit if the company goes out of business in a year or two?

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

It’s clear that Nomono has developed something special, but it’s hard to imagine this recording kit being the only solution for an audio-savvy company. You’ll still need to have a dedicated podcasting space with hard-wired microphones. What Nomono offers is flexibility: What if you need to record in another room, in someone else’s office, or at a hotel? In those situations, a self-contained $2,490 podcasting kit might not seem so wild.

Samsung made a huge flex this week by hosting its first Unpacked event in Seoul, South Korea (sorry NYC!). In this episode, Cherlynn, Devindra and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford dive into all of Samsung’s news: The Galaxy Z Fold 5, Z Flip 5, Watch 6 and Tab S9. Is Samsung playing it safe this year, or is it actually bringing something new to the world of foldables? Also, we discuss Twitter’s rebrand to “X” (sigh), as well as why astrophysicist Avi Loeb is likely wrong about his extraterrestrial alien balls.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Samsung’s Summer Unpacked 2023 Overview – 0:54

• Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 – 3:23

• Galaxy Watch 6 – 19:24

• Galaxy Tab S9 – 26:19

• Other News: Twitter is now X – 33:40

• GM announces plans to revive the Chevy Bolt – 47:44

• Astrophysicist Avi Loeb found tiny metal balls in the ocean, they probably aren’t alien tech – 51:30

• Microsoft announces pizza-scented controller as a TMNT promotion – 53:54

• AI News: Netflix lists machine learning jobs in the middle of Hollywood’s double strike – 55:54

• Working on – 1:00:34

• Pop culture picks – 1:08:24

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

In a move to prevent public companies from delaying news about cyberattacks, the US Security and Exchange Commission has set a four-day deadline to disclose "material cybersecurity incidents." A US attorney general could potentially delay that disclosure if doing so would lead to "substantial risk to national security or public safety." Otherwise, the rules will serve as a stiff new guidepost — albeit, one that's slightly less restrictive than the EU's GDPR cyberattack deadline of just three days.

The news comes after Microsoft was criticized by security experts for taking weeks to confirm an attack against Outlook and other online services. “We really have no way to measure the impact [of the attack] if Microsoft doesn’t provide that info," Jake Williams, a cybersecurity researcher and former NSA hacker, told the AP in June.

While GDPR rules are more about protecting the public, the SEC appears to be more focused on investors: “Currently, many public companies provide cybersecurity disclosure to investors," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement. "I think companies and investors alike, however, would benefit if this disclosure were made in a more consistent, comparable, and decision-useful way."

Technology companies have pushed against the SECs rules since they were initially announced last year, which ultimately led to the inclusion of a delay clause, Bloomberg reports. Additionally, the Information Technology Industry Council argued that the four-day deadline is too short, since companies may not know enough about the cyberattack by then.

At one point Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb dons his iconic uniform — a fedora cap, a smoking pipe, a slightly over-sized suit — like Batman wearing his cape and cowl for the first time. It's a look that serves as a sort of armor against mere mortals, who he woos with a peculiar charisma, as well as the military and political bureaucracy he battles while leading the Manhattan Project. It's also a way for Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) to ground himself as he wrestles with the major conflict around his work: Building an atomic bomb could help to the war, but at what cost to humanity?

Oppenheimer may seem like a curious project for Nolan: Since wrapping up his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, he's thrown himself into increasingly complex projects (perhaps to atone for that disappointment). Interstellar was ostensibly a story about a man exploring the cosmos to find a new planet for humanity, but it also wrestled with personal sacrifices as his children aged beyond him.

Universal Pictures

Dunkirk was a purely cinematic, almost dialog-free depiction of a famous wartime evacuation. And Tenet was a bold attempt at mixing another heady sci-fi concept (what if you could go backwards through time?!) with bombastic James Bond-esque set pieces. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, is a mostly talky film set in a variety of meeting rooms, save for one explosive sequence.

Take a step back, though, and a film about an intelligent and very capable man wrestling with huge moral issues is very much in the Nolan wheelhouse. Oppenheimer's swaggering genius fits right alongside Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman, the dedicated magicians in The Prestige or the expert dream divers/super spies in Inception.

The film, which is based on the biography American Prometheus by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, follows Oppenheimer from his time in Germany as a doctoral student, to his professorship at UC Berkeley. He mingles with notable scientists, including Albert Einstein himself, and makes a name for himself as a quantum physics researcher. We see Oppenheimer as more than just a bookish geek: He sends money to anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he pushes for unionization among lab workers and professors, and he supports local Communists. (Something that will come back to haunt him later.)

It's not too long before he's recruited to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and the myth-making truly begins. Like a Nolan heist film, he assembles a team of the brightest scientific minds in America and beyond, and he pushes the government to establish a town doubling as a secret research base in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The film is strongest when it focuses on the specificities of the Manhattan Project: the rush to build a bomb before Nazi Germany, the pushback from scientists terrified about the damage "the gadget" could do.

Universal Pictures

The movie firmly focuses on Oppenheimer's point of view, so much so that we mainly see him as a heroic tortured genius. Only he can put the right scientists together and motivate them to work; only he can solve the riddles of quantum physics to keep America safe. Some colleagues criticize his cavalier attitude about building an atomic bomb — they think it can lead to untold disaster, while he naively thinks it may be so powerful it may end all war. But, for the most part, we're left feeling that he was a great man who was ultimately betrayed by a country that didn't care for his post-war anti-nuclear activism.

I wasn't able to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen, unfortunately, but sitting front row in a local theater still managed to be a thoroughly immersive experience. That was particularly surp—rising since it's really a movie featuring people (mostly men) talking to each other in a series of unremarkable rooms. Save for one virtuoso set piece — the build-up and aftermath of a successful atomic bomb test is Nolan at his best — what's most impressive is how cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema makes those conversations utterly engaging. We've never seen Cillian Murphy's piercing blue eyes do so much work in close-up.

Universal Pictures

Still, it's an overall disjointed experience. The few featured women — Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as the Communist activist Jean Tatlock — are sketched thin, even by Nolan standards. And the movie would have benefitted from more insight into Oppenheimer's thinking. It's a surprisingly standard biopic, even though it's three hours long and far more technical than any studio film this year.

At the very least, it would have been interesting to see Oppenheimer reckon more directly with the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We see him confront President Harry Truman (Gary Oldman) in a vain attempt to stop building nuclear weapons, and the film points to his very public stance against future bombs. But even those scenes feel self-serving.

At the end of the film, Oppenheimer finally comes to understand something many of his colleagues have been saying from the beginning. Nothing will be the same because of him. There is no peace now, only the undying specter of nuclear annihilation.

AI can now place us inside South Park episodes – should we be worried? This week, Devindra and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham chat with Edward Saatchi, the CEO of The Simulation, about his company’s new AI technology that can generate TV episodes, movies and more. We preview a test South Park episode featuring Devindra, and discuss if this technology is actually a good thing for creatives. Also, Editor at Large James Trew joins to discuss his piece on AI-powered immortality. And to keep the sci-fi theme going, Devindra chats with the director and writer of Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone, Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Interview with The Simulation CEO Edward Saatchi around AI-powered South Park – 0:59

• James Trew on digital immortality and AI’s place in a new field, “grief tech” – 20:48

• Microsoft / Activision Blizzard’s final merger deadline pushed to October – 32:19

• Apple is working on its own generative AI chatbot – 33:19

• Google tests AI tool to generate news articles – 38:15

• ASUS takes over Intel’s NUC PC business – 44:20

• Around Engadget: Sam Rutherford’s Nothing Phone 2 review – 51:21

• Listener mail: Rohan from Singapore on what’s keeping the iPad from being a “real” computer – 56:11

• Working on – 1:03:54

• Pop culture picks – 1:07:43

• Interview with the the creators of the new Netflix movie They Cloned Tyrone – 1:13:25

Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham
Guests: Edward Saatchi, James Trew, Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

It was just another day in South Park. The kids were making fun of each other on the playground, while the parents were all doing their best to maintain their sanity in the small Colorado town. And then there was me, a tech journalist going door-to-door warning about the impending AI apocalypse. No, I wasn't actually guest starring on the long-running TV series — I was thrust into an episode entirely produced by the Showrunner AI model from The Simulation, the next iteration of the VR studio Fable.

All it took was some audio of my voice (recorded during a call with The Simulation's CEO Edward Saatchi), a picture and a two-sentence prompt to produce the episode. And while it wasn't the best South Park episode I've seen, I was shocked by how watchable it was. It begins with my AI character popping into Sharon and Randy Marsh's house in the morning, warning them about the AI uprising. Randy is intrigued, but Sharon is annoyed by my arrival (both of which were set up in one sentence of the initial prompt).

"They're [AI] infiltrating every aspect of our lives," my AI character says. "They're in our cars, our phones... even our toasters."

"Our toasters, really? I always knew that little bastard was up to something," Randy replies.

Sure, that's not exactly a tightly crafted joke, but it was enough to make me chuckle. And again, it didn't take much for Showrunner AI to piece that conversation together. Watching this episode made it clear that generative AI can actually produce watchable content (certainly more so than that AI Seinfeld project), but it also made me even more worried about the role of AI in media.

At this moment, writers in the WGA and performers in the SAG-AFTRA unions are striking for better residual pay and protections against potential AI exploitation. A tool like Showrunner AI, which can produce decent content without much effort, threatens creatives everywhere. The WGA strike and the fears around AI-generated content is also the main plot line in the demo South Park episode, "Westland Chronicles."

The Simulation

"Maybe it's a mistake to release it, I'm not sure," Saatchi said over email, when I asked if it's really the best time to launch Showrunner AI. "If our focus was becoming 'the AI TV studio' and gloating that we can make shows with no staff I'd feel very queasy — but we're trying to build a simulation and we need infinite story to make that work."

He added: "Now is the moment, in the biggest strike in 60 years, before AI has achieved takeoff, to negotiate the most aggressive protections possible for writers and actors from producers' use of AI — negotiations now so that these tools are in the hands of artists and creators only and not the hands of producers trying to become Griffin Mill Robert Altman's The Player."

(That character famously said, "I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here.")

The idea of building intelligent characters isn't new for Saatchi. In 2018, we discussed Fable Studio's VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Wall, which centered on an interactive character named Lucy. Even then, he thought AI-powered beings were more intriguing than the notion of VR storytelling. Now, thanks to the proliferation of generative AI models, he can finally make that happen.

The Simulation

His goal with The Simulation is right there in the name: He wants to create simulations of characters living their lives in specific environments, similar to The Truman Show. That content could be cut down into episodic summaries with Showrunner AI. Like so many in the AI field, Saatchi eventually wants to build AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, "an AI that reaches and surpasses human intelligence and is, ultimately, a new lifeform."

While many AI experts remain skeptical about the viability of AGI, Showrunner could still end up being a powerful tool. But of course, like any tool, it could end up being used for good or evil. Saatchi envisions it being helpful for creators to build their own shows without a huge budget, but he also admits it could be used by studios to "undermine artistic expression."

The Simulation

After watching myself starring in a South Park episode, though, I'm more worried than hopeful. The tech isn't perfect yet — my voice sometimes sounds overly robotic, and characters pronounce my name differently almost every time — but it's close enough. Saatchi and his team, including the AI research Philipp Maas, who developed the South Park simulation, still preview every episode to ensure they make sense. But with no end in strike for the Hollywood union strikes, it's hard not to imagine some studio looking at this tool as a potential savior.

“We aren’t releasing the Showrunner commercially and aren’t in talks with the South Park people (though we are with several studios about their IP, as well as creators to make original IP) but we used South Park only so that people have a comparison point between a super high quality human show and an AI show," Saatchi said. "If the showrunner was ever released with the permission of an IP (letting fans create their own episodes) we believe all the revenue should go to the IP holders — these are just remixes after all!"

Currently, The Simulation is developing showrunners around other animated concepts, like a space exploration series, and a Silicon Valley satire dubbed "Exit Valley." The technology can't produce live action content yet. The company is also releasing a research paper explaining how its showrunner AI technology works, with the hopes of encouraging more AI workers to build on it.

The most striking thing about my South Park episode is that it actually feels like an episode of the show. Over the course of five minutes, I visited the local school, where all of the kids proceeded to make fun of me. One wisely lectured me about overhyping claims about the AI apocalypse, while I was also warning them to watch out for clickbait. By the end, I was eager to see more. And that was the most worrying thing of all.

For almost three decades in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has gone head to head in high-speed motorcycle battles, climbed Dubai's Burj Khalifa, and hung from the side of a plane during takeoff. Oh, and he also died at one point (following an extended free dive into an underwater data bank). But in the latest film, Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt faces his toughest opponent yet: an omnipotent AI that could reshape geopolitics as we know it. After defying the laws of physics, it only makes sense that he has to defeat a god.

As ludicrous as that may sound, it also fits perfectly within the Mission: Impossible series, a universe where Ethan Hunt has been described as the "living manifestation of destiny," and everyone is well aware that the "Impossible Mission Force" sounds like something pulled out of a comic book. At this point, it's a franchise that exists for Tom Cruise and his collaborators — most recently, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie — to go wild with spy gadgets and death-defying stunt sequences. It's made by spy movie geeks, for spy movie geeks.

That's been true of the series from the start. The original TV show centered on grounded spy craft, albeit in a world where people could easily impersonate others with realistic face masks. Brian de Palma's 1996 film was a throwback to paranoid '70s spy thrillers, but it also made room for gadgets like glasses that wirelessly transmitted crystal clear video. And, of course, there's the nail-bitingly tense infiltration of a CIA server room, a scene that infiltrated pop culture for years.

John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2 is far less cerebral, but it also leans heavily into his operatic Hong Kong action style. It's not a great movie, I'll admit, but as a fan of Woo's action films, I can't help but be thrilled by the car chase meet cute, and the balletic finale which morphs from a motorcycle chase into a hand-to-hand fight on a beach.

Paramount Pictures and Skydance

After a slight hiatus, JJ Abrams rebooted the franchise in 2006 with Mission: Impossible 3, a film that built upon the spy shenanigans from his TV series, Alias. Since then, the franchise has been on a constant quest to one-up itself. 2011's Ghost Protocol goes full on Buster Keaton with every set piece (director Brad Bird essentially turns Ethan Hunt into a character from The Incredibles), culminating in the scene where Cruise himself actually scaled the Burj Khalifa.

Arriving amid Daniel Craig's James Bond run (which is filled with movies I either love or absolutely hate), and the end of the original Jason Bourne trilogy, Ghost Protocol felt like a throwback to everything that made the Mission: ImpossibleTV show so addictive. There's a loyal and highly-skilled team, a nefarious villain and tons of gadgets on display. But crucially, things don't always work out as Hunt and crew expect, which makes the franchise more relatable to all of us with failing gadgets. (Every time my iPhone crashes, I can't help but be grateful I'm not climbing the Burj Khalifa with only a single high-tech gecko glove.)

With the arrival of Christopher McQuarrie, who directed 2015's Rogue Nation and its sequels, Mission: Impossible found a groove that differentiated it from most other modern franchises. Almost like action film jazz, McQuarrie and Cruise frequently came up with ideas for set pieces and built movies around them. Scripts were reworked on the fly. Normally this would spell disaster, but McQuarrie ended up thriving in the chaos. Together with stunt coordinator Scott Eastwood, he also managed to push the series into astounding new practical set pieces (see: Ethan Hunt hanging out of a plane in Rogue Nation, or the extended skydiving sequence in Fallout).

Paramount Pictures and Skydance

Dead Reckoning Part 1 builds on McQuarrie's previous entries. This time, Hunt and a new companion (Hayley Atwell's Grace) are chased through Rome's narrow streets while driving a souped-up, tiny Fiat. He base-jumps off of a mountain using a motorcycle. He fights on a real train speeding along at 60MPH. All the while, he's trying to stop the villainous AI, known only as The Entity.

On the face of it, Dead Reckoning shares plenty with Mrs. Davis, the latest show co-created by Damon Lindelof which also features a tough protagonist against an all-powerful AI. The film also dabbles in similar themes: Surely an omnipotent artificial intelligence would also inspire near-religious devotion. In Dead Reckoning, that's embodied by Gabriel, the angelically named sociopath played by Esai Morales.

While the film rarely slows down to explore the true impact of AI, Hunt and his team — Simon Pegg's Benji, Ving Rhames' Luther — instantly grasp the larger implications. Whoever can control the AI could basically control the world — not merely through physical force, but by defining truth and reality itself. An AI could erase a person from surveillance footage, or turn them into someone else entirely. Nothing can be trusted. As we grapple with the impact of ChatGPT and generative AI in real life, it’s hard not to feel like we’re on a similar path. (It's also funny to see in the midst of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which are directly tied to complaints about studios taking advantage of creatives with AI.)

As much as I love other action film franchises – like John Wick’s increasingly elaborate choreography, or the sheer ridiculousness of the Fast and the Furious –Mission: Impossible remains uniquely enjoyable. It’s committed to delivering astonishing practical stunt work. It’s self-aware just enough to poke fun at itself. And a part of me hopes that somehow, a team of geeks can also fight back against the excesses of AI.

It looks like Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is trucking along, following a court rejection of the FTC’s injunction attempt. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Jordan Minor, a Senior Analyst at PCMag covering games, about this massive deal and what it means for the gaming industry. Will further consolidation end up being harmful for consumers (as we’ve been saying for a while), or will Microsoft actually help the beleaguered Activision? Also, we dive into our experiences with the latest Apple betas: iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma and watchOS 10.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

Subscribe!

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Topics

• Microsoft is (mostly) cleared to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion – 00:56

• Our previews of the iOS 17, iPad OS 17, macOS Sonoma, and WatchOS 10 betas – 21:55

• Meta’s Threads hits 100m users, Elon is not happy about it – 47:58

• Microsoft confirms Chinese hackers used 365 email exploit to access US government accounts – 51:32

• Google’s Bard can now speak 40 languages – 52:29

• Around Engadget: Sam Rutherford’s ROG ally review and Katie Malone on why passkeys are suddenly everywhere – 1:01:46

• Working on – 1:05:47

• Pop culture picks – 1:07:06

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Jordan Minor
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

It's easy to look at every new macOS release and wonder where the upgrades actually are. Unlike iOS and iPadOS, Apple doesn't often push for bold and visible changes on the desktop (last year's Stage Manager was a surprising addition, but even that was brought over from iPadOS). Instead, most of the enhancements to the Mac experience are usually under the hood — don't forget, the company completely rebuilt macOS for its new Apple Silicon chips.

So it goes with macOS Sonoma, an update that doesn't truly make itself known until you see its new high-res video screensavers (something the Apple TV has done for years), or try to drag over a widget to your desktop. If widgets are a highlight in a new OS, you know it's a slow year.

This isn't a knock against Sonoma, exactly. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Apple is saving its bolder UI concepts for iPhones, iPads, and the Vision Pro. Macs are computers that don't even have touchscreens yet! Playing it safe makes the most sense.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

So let's talk about screensavers. While not exactly Earth shattering, Apple's new aerial footage looks great in macOS Sonoma. It adds a dose of elegance to an already refined operating system — having footage from Hawaii or Patagonia pop up in the middle of the workday is like a mini-vacation. (Don't judge me, I know it sounds sad.)

I also liked being able to turn aerial screensavers into wallpapers. Doing so lets them play as videos on your lock screen, but once you log in, the video slows down and smoothly settles on a static image. I'm sure that's done to avoid motion sickness from some users, but I'm hoping Apple or some intrepid hacker unlocks the ability to let the video constantly play on your desktop. I'll risk a bit of squeamishness for more of that slick drone footage.

As for the widgets, well... they're widgets. On your desktop. It's a pretty straightforward concept. I'll admit, being able to quickly see the weather or an upcoming appointment under my windows is easier than popping open the notification tray. But it's not exactly a killer feature. But hey, if you really do love these things, at least you can easily bring over your iOS widgets. And if you also have an iPad, I'm sure it'll be helpful to have all of your widgety goodness across your devices.

Beyond those two features, Sonoma's upgrades are a bit more subtle. If you jump into a video chat, you can use hand gestures to kick off some fun special effects. A double thumbs up triggers fireworks behind you, while a peace sign surrounds you with floating balloons. They're certainly fun at first, but thankfully you can turn them off easily for more professional video chats.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The new presenter overlay features, on the other hand, are a lot more useful. In supported screen sharing apps, like FaceTime or Zoom, you can place a small or large window of yourself on top of whatever window you're sharing. It's the sort of feature I'm surprised Apple didn't roll out sooner, as it can help to humanize boring video chats. Instead of just sharing a spreadsheet, for example, your colleagues can also see what you think of your data as you're discussing it.

Here are a few other Sonoma updates to keep an eye out for:

• Safari supports profiles for different use cases. For example, one profile could house all of the bookmarks and settings that you need for work.

• You can also turn any website into a web app with Safari. It's the perfect way to read Engadget without any distractions!

• Stickers and Memoji now synchronize with all of your Apple devices over iCloud.

• A new Game Mode will prioritize resources while gaming. I didn't notice any major differences with Apple Arcade titles during my testing, though.

• Autocorrect should be better too, but again, I didn't notice any major changes.

While Twitter encountered many self-inflicted wounds this week, users jumped to Blue Sky and Mastodon. Then Meta decided it was a fine time to drop its Twitter copycat, Threads. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Engadget’s Karissa Bell about where all of these services are headed. Will Threads be the clear winner, thanks to Instagram’s social graph? Or will the future lie with fully decentralized platforms like Mastodon?

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Twitter continues to crumble, Meta introduces Threads Twitter clone – 1:10

• The next AirPods Pro release could include health features like a hearing test and body temperature sensors – 34:06

• Google’s Pixel 8 Pro prototype leaked – 37:18

• EU Digital Markets Act identifies a class of large ‘gatekeeper’ tech companies for additional regulation – 51:07

• U.S. Federal Trade Commission announces huge fines for fake product reviews – 55:45

• Working on – 1:03:19

• Picks – 1:06:15

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Karissa Bell
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien