Those looking to pick up a smartwatch for the first time, or upgrade from an older model, should check out the sale running on Amazon right now on the Apple Watch Series 9. Certain sizes and colors have deep discounts, including the 41mm Product Red version that's down to a record low of $295 — more than $100 off its regular price. The 45mm model with cellular connectivity is also on sale by way of a clippable $80 coupon, which brings the final price down to an all-time low of $350.
The Apple Watch has been at the top of our list of the best smartwatches for quite some time, and the Series 9 (introduced in September 2023) is a big update from its predecessor. It runs on a new S9 SiP, which is the most meaningful upgrade to the wearable's processor in years. While we didn't notice a huge jump in general performance — the Watch has been speedy and responsive for a long time — the SiP update does allow for faster Siri responses and enables offline Siri interactions.
The latest model also supports the new Double Tap gesture based on Assistive Touch. This allows you to navigate the Watch's interface without actually touching the screen, doing things like dismissing timers or starting workout tracking using finger gestures. You can only use Double Tap in specific instances in watchOS 10, but those actions are made easier and more accessible with this feature.
In addition, the Series 9 has a second-gen ultra wideband (UWB) chip that works with a new Find My iPhone interface, plus its screen is brighter than previous versions. All of those things combine make the Series 9 feel like the biggest update to the Watch in a few years. Nevertheless, the caveats remain the same as they have been for some time: you can only use the Apple Watch if you're an iPhone user, and it lags behind the competition when it comes to sleep tracking. Battery life contributes to the latter, but you'll still get a full day's worth of use before you need to charge it up overnight.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-apple-watch-series-9-is-on-sale-for-as-low-as-295-right-now-131012915.html?src=rss
Playdate came out two years ago, and it’s still miniscule and yellow with a black-and-white screen and a delightful crank on its side. Today, the device has a built-in library of more than 100 titles, none of which are Call of Duty, Dark Souls, The Last of Us or any other big-budget, mainstream game — and this is precisely what makes it so damn charming. The community that’s sprung up around this palmheld is lively and creative, and scrolling through the Playdate tags on itch.io or github feels like hanging out in a friendly underground clubhouse populated by crank-obsessed video game freaks.
It’s less disturbing than it sounds, I promise.
For real though, Playdate has only gotten cuter and more relevant with age. Firewatch publisher Panic and hardware studio Teenage Engineering unveiled the device in February 2019, pitching it as a sub-$200 handheld with a monochromatic screen, a crank and seasonal drops of free games. Pre-orders for Playdate opened in July 2021 and the plan was for shipments to start by the end of that year. However, in November, Panic discovered a severe battery issue in its production line and the company was forced to swap suppliers and delay the release. Playdate officially landed in players’ hands in April 2022, and overall, reviewers found that it was entirely worth the wait.
Panic
Playdate shipped with 4GB of flash storage and 24 free games, including Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure from Keita Takahashi’s studio uvula and Zipper by Bennett Foddy. Playdate has always supported sideloading, too, meaning it’s easy to get titles from itch.io and other distribution sites on the device. In March 2023, Playdate’s Catalog went live, offering a curated selection of 16 games for purchase. Panic also upped the price of Playdate from $179 to $199 at this time, citing rising manufacturing costs.
Today, Panic has sold roughly 70,000 Playdates and its Catalog features over 100 games, with more added regularly. Panic held a software showcase in February and the headliner was Mars After Midnight, a Playdate-exclusive project from Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope. Mars After Midnight came out on March 12, and Playdate had a big games sale that week, just like a grown-up storefront would.
Two years post-launch, it’s clear that there’s no single formula for a Playdate game. Chopter Copter, for instance, turns the Playdate on its side and uses the crank as a helicopter-style rotor, spinning the propeller cap on a demon trapped in a gothic tower. Cranking controls this horned dude as he slices through flying enemies, leaving bits of meat and bone to fall out of the narrow frame. And then there are titles like Word Trip, a simple yet addictive letter-shifting game that I would recommend to all Wordle fans. Playdate supports first-person shooters, detective mysteries, bullet hells, shoot-em-ups, puzzle games, RPGs, pocket pets, rhythm situations, action-adventures, racing sims and all manner of subgenres, including some that have been invented just for the platform.
Root Bear by TEAM ROOT
Across Playdate’s UI and games, the crank transforms into hundreds of different tools. There are the standard iterations like crank to scroll and crank to buy, but there’s also crank to pour a drink, crank to fly, crank to fish, crank to spin a record, crank to build a city, crank to control time, crank to crank, crank to survive. Literally every game on Playdate reveals a new use case for the crank or helps demonstrate the absurd level of detail possible on a 400 x 240 1-bit display. Many games do both of these things — and Mars After Midnight is one of them.
As the creature in charge of a community room on a Martian colony, Mars After Midnight players crank open an observation window and identify the correct aliens for each session, while also providing snacks, cleaning up with two long tentacles and planning future support groups. Players use the crank to slam the room’s peephole open and shut, but the game also fully incorporates Playdate’s A and B buttons, D-pad and speaker, rolling out fresh mechanics at a steady pace. The game is populated by adorable, bumbling aliens and cartoonishly cute set pieces, and it even introduces an entire language.
Like the vast majority of Playdate games, Mars After Midnight doesn’t feel like a pared-down version of a bigger idea; it was simply meant to be a colorless, crank-powered experience.
Mars After Midnight by Lucas Pope
I’ve encountered one consistent issue with Playdate, and it’s something that I didn’t think would be a huge problem when I first reviewed it in 2022. The lack of backlight in its display is noticeable and occasionally annoying, particularly in low-light spaces. I often find myself tilting the screen toward a nearby window or lamp, and the device is pretty much unplayable on a dark plane or bus, or without a light source after sunset. If you remember trying to play an original Game Boy at night in the backseat of your parents’ car, waiting for the street lights to flicker past the window at regular intervals, it’s a lot like that. There’s a tinge of nostalgia here, but it’s mostly just kinda frustrating.
Playdate’s biggest issue, however, might be the Stereo Dock. Panic unveiled the Stereo Dock in mid-2021 — it’s a truly adorable charging stand, Bluetooth speaker and pen holder that matches Playdate’s pleasant yellow hue. I’ve wanted to plop one on my desk since it was announced, but the Stereo Dock has been “coming soon” for two years now.
It really is still coming, Playdate Project Lead Greg Maletic told Engadget.
"We apologize to everyone with a Playdate who has been waiting patiently for the Stereo Dock; it’s been a trickier project than we anticipated and we had a few false starts,” Maletic said. “We thought we'd save some time on that project by having our factory do the software for the Stereo Dock, but we've learned that you don't always necessarily want that in some cases. The Stereo Dock is very much alive, we have the physical prototypes to prove it! We expect to have a formal update on when you can buy one later this year."
Panic
If the worst thing about Playdate is the fact that people can’t get enough of it, then it sounds like things are going well. The device hasn’t faced any widespread recalls or hardware issues, its storefront is growing, its development pipeline is ridiculously easy to enter, and people are still interested in buying it (and the Stereo Dock, one day).
With Playdate, Panic has created a new pocket of curious game enthusiasts, and it’s provided a platform for innovation that will ripple across all sectors of development. Playdate is a simple, small gaming machine with a single twist — a crank — and in its first two years on the market, it’s unearthed wells of creativity in the indie scene. By paring down the graphics and adding a new input method, Playdate changes the way we think about how games are played and made. As many of the industry’s most influential studios are trapped in a cycle of mass layoffs and regularly scheduled crunch, it’s a fantastic time to rethink what we’re all actually doing here. Playdate makes this process natural, accessible and entertaining.
Panic
A device like Playdate doesn’t just happen. I wouldn’t be worried about revisiting this thing two years post-launch if it were too underpowered, overcomplicated or unserious, but this isn’t a funny gimmick from a company on a press tour. The sense of elegance, care and proper prioritization built into Playdate is what makes it a blank canvas for so many different styles of game development. Playdate is a little yellow inspiration machine; it’s a physical reset button for the entire industry. Actually, I guess it’s a reset crank.
Go on, turn it. It’s so much fun.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playdate-revisited-two-years-with-the-little-yellow-inspiration-machine-125517060.html?src=rss
OpenAI has brought the new GPT-4 Turbo to paid ChatGPT users. The company announced the news on X (formerly Twitter), sharing that its large language model has improved math, logical reasoning, coding and writing skills. In reference to the latter, a response to its initial post states that "when writing with ChatGPT, responses will be more direct, less verbose, and use more conversational language." Notably, in December, Microsoft integrated GPT-4 Turbo with its CoPilot AI chatbot and image generator DALL-E 3.
When OpenAI announced GPT-4 Turbo in November, it highlighted major upgrades to the system powering ChatGPT. At the time, OpenAI claimed that GPT-4 Turbo could receive six times as many pages of text — 300, compared to the previous 50. Given the breadth of information provided, this expansion could mean more complex prompts and responses. The large language model can also create captions or descriptions of image prompts and handle text-to-speech requests.
GPT-4 Turbo has even advanced since its initial announcement. OpenAI had initially increased its world knowledge to April 2023, a good jump from GPT-4's September 2021 cutoff. Now, GPT-4 Turbo has information all the way up to December 2023.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paid-chatgpt-users-can-now-access-gpt-4-turbo-123031501.html?src=rss
OpenTable's restaurant pages still feature a lot of reviews left by anonymous diners at the moment, but that will not be the case starting next month. The online restaurant reservation service is changing its policy around reviews so that they're not as anonymous — and it's even applying the new rule retroactively. As BleepingComputer reports, it told users in an email that starting on May 22, it "will begin displaying diner first names and profile photos on all diner reviews." Further, "this update will also apply to past reviews."
"We've heard from you, our diners, that trust and transparency are important when looking at reviews," the company also said in its letter, insinuating that it's changing the way reviews work based on user feedback. As BleepingComputer says, it'll be easy to match a bad review with customer reservation records based on the user's first name and when the post was made.
While that's not nearly as bad as Glassdoor publishing people's names alongside their employer reviews without consent, it could still be very uncomfortable for people who wanted to talk about bad experiences without the fear of not being welcomed back into a particular establishment. Sure, the new rule could ensure that bad reviews have merit, that a customer legitimately dined at that restaurant and any complaint they mention truly is worth looking into. But we wouldn't be surprised if people feel put off and even betrayed by the decision to apply this upcoming policy to old posts.
Those who have no intention to go back to restaurants they didn't particularly like could change their first names if they wish, though future reservations will be made under that name. Users can also change their profile pictures if they want and even delete their reviews altogether before May 22.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/your-anonymous-opentable-reviews-will-soon-display-your-first-name-120006774.html?src=rss
A wave of AI assistant devices is finally launching, and the first is Humane’s slickly designed AI Pin. Humane calls it the “first wearable device and software platform,” a magnetic clippable wearable, with a projector, camera, mic, speakers and its own internet connection.
Is this what replaces the smartphone? A tiny device that projects its own screen, with ostensibly no touch controls, just a voice assistant to get things done. No, not really at all.
After a while trying to make a voice-centric assistant work for her, Cherlynn Low said the AI Pin is “slow, finicky and barely even smart.” Check out her detailed review.
The Rabbit R1 will be completely different, right? Right?!
The deal doesn’t extend to other Universal artists.
Taylor Swift’s music has returned to TikTok after a ten-week hiatus. The music left the platform after negotiations broke down between the social media app and Swift’s label, Universal Music Group. Intriguingly, the deal did not include provisions for fellow UMG artists, so Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and Drake.
X will no longer allow users to hide their blue checks, regardless of whether or not they paid for premium. On Thursday, the app began notifying users that “the hide your checkmark feature of X Premium is going away soon.” X unexpectedly began adding blue checks to accounts of “influential” users with at least 2,500 followers who pay for a premium subscription. While Elon Musk suggested the change was meant to be a perk, some — including formerly verified users — were less than pleased with the presence of a blue badge, lest others suspect they actually paid for a subscription. (I would read a thesis on how Elon Musk ruined verified ticks on social media.)
Apple’s parts pairing continues to hamper the self-repair movement.
Consumers and repair shops will soon be able to employ genuine used Apple parts to fix devices rather than having to order new components. The company claims that used parts “will now benefit from the full functionality and security afforded by the original factory calibration.” The initiative will start with the iPhone 15 this fall. As things stand, if you swap in a used screen from another iPhone for your crunchy screen, certain features, such as True Tone and automatic brightness adjustment, may not work. The upgraded self-repair program should resolve that.
Humane’s hyped up AI Pin is finally here and, unfortunately, it stinks. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra are joined by Michael Fisher (AKA MrMobile) and Wired Reviews Editor Julian Chokkattu to chat about the AI Pin and the many ways it fails. It’s often inaccurate, it takes crummy photos, and it gets way too hot. Not so great for something you’re supposed to wear all day! Is there any hope for AI-dependent gadgets? Also, Washington Post columnist Christopher Velazco joins to discuss Apple’s approval of used iPhone components for repairs.
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 podcast, Engadget News!
Topics
Too much heat, too few features: Humane’s AI pin doesn’t live up to the hype – 1:09
Other News: Apple will allow devices to be repaired with secondhand parts soon – 44:08
Google’s Next 24 event announces AI video generation tool, ARM-based CPU for data centers, and Google Photos tools for all subscribers – 53:10
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guests: Michael Fisher (MrMobile) and Julian Chokkattu Producer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-humane-ai-pin-review-110052283.html?src=rss
Movie-industry shindig CinemaCon was the venue at which Paramount Pictures announced it has started work on a new Star Trek movie. Slashfilm reports Untitled Star Trek Origin Story will be a prequel to Star Trek (2009), J.J. Abrams’ glossy prequel to Star Trek (1966). It’ll be directed by Toby Haynes, most famous around these parts for helming episodes of Andor and Black Mirror’s USS Callister. The screenplay has been written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote The Lego Batman Movie and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
So that we’re clear, Untitled Star Trek Origin Story will serve as a prequel to the 2009 origin story and a sequel to 2001’s origin story, Enterprise. It will likely be set before Discovery, which was conceived as a prequel to Star Trek (1966) and Strange New Worlds, which is a prequel to Star Trek (1966). And, look, if you’ll allow me to get a little personal for a moment, I am deeply overjoyed at the news. Given the dearth of origin stories, prequels and nostalgia-parades in the Star Trek universe, an Untitled Star Trek Origin Story is a welcome, necessary and life-giving addition to the franchise.
Let’s be honest, it’s high time we got something insular and backward-looking after so many years of non-stop groundbreaking, original adventures shorn from the burdens of continuity.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paramount-announces-yet-another-star-trek-prequel-101030423.html?src=rss
If you're — apparently, one of the few people — using the VPN service that comes with Google One, we've got bad news for you. In an email you're going to receive from Google if you haven't gotten it yet, it revealed that it's phasing out the perk sometime later this year. The company rolled out Google One's VPN feature back in 2020, but you could only access it then if you're paying for a plan with at least 2TB of storage, which costs at least $10 a month. Last year, the company expanded its availability across all One plans, including the basic $2-per-month option, making it more affordable than before.
At the moment, you can access One's VPN service if you're in one of the 22 countries where it's active, whether you're on iOS or Android. You can also use it to mask your internet usage on a Mac or Windows computer. Google didn't say when the VPN service will stop working completely, but it told 9to5Google that it's discontinuing the feature because "people simply weren’t using it." Instead of trying to drum up interest, it's redirecting its resources to support other and more in-demand One features. However, you'll still be able to use the free VPN that comes with Pixel devices even after One's shuts down through the Settings app on Pixel 7 devices and newer models.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-one-is-shutting-down-its-vpn-feature-later-this-year-063507780.html?src=rss
X will no longer allow users to hide their blue checks, regardless of whether they paid for premium or not. On Thursday, the app began notifying users that “the hide your checkmark feature of X Premium is going away soon.”
The change comes shortly after X unexpectedly began adding blue checks to the accounts of “influential” users with at least 2,500 followers who pay for a premium subscription. While Elon Musk suggested that change was meant to be a perk, some of his critics — including formerly verified users — were less than pleased with the blue badge appearing on their accounts, lest others suspect them of actually paying for a subscription.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-wont-let-users-hide-their-blue-checks-anymore-222938703.html?src=rss
Bluetooth trackers are handy little things that can help you find valuables after misplacing them. Our pick for the best Bluetooth tracker is the Chipolo One, and a four-pack has dropped to a record low price. The bundle (which usually costs $75) is currently available for just $60, which makes each tracker just $15. Alternatively, you can buy a single tracker for $20 (usually $25).
The Chipolo One can't really measure up to the crowd-sourced finding network of AirTags or Tile trackers, so it's perhaps not the best option for monitoring the location of your luggage while traveling. However, it does a more than capable job of helping you find items around the house. It has the loudest ring of all the trackers we've tested, for one thing, and there was no delay between pressing a button in an app and hearing the Chipolo One trill away.
The One can be easy to spot, since it's a colorful plastic disc. It's fairly hardy too, since it has IPX5-rated splash resistance and a two-year battery life (the battery is replaceable). One other feature in the One's favor is that it's compatible with both iOS and Android, and we found it straightforward to pair with an iPhone and Samsung Galaxy phone.
The aspect of the One that particularly impressed us was its separation alerts. Once you get around 350 feet away from the tracker, you'll get an alert on your phone asking if you might have left an item somewhere. Through your maps app, Chipolo can guide you back to the location where your phone and the One were last in contact. Of course, you can ring the tracker once you're close by to help you find it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-four-pack-of-chipolo-one-bluetooth-trackers-is-on-sale-for-60-right-now-195303230.html?src=rss
