Days after Apple started allowing iOS users in the EU to use third-party app stores, the company has announced more changes related to how developers can distribute their apps. Most significantly, those who meet certain criteria will be able to let users download apps from their websites.

The Web Distribution option, which will be available this spring, will effectively let developers bypass the app ecosystem entirely for their own apps. To be eligible, devs will need to opt in to new App Store rules that see them pay a fee for each user install after certain thresholds and be an Apple Developer Program member that’s been in good standing for at least two years. They’ll need to “have an app that had more than one million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year” among other criteria, per a support document.

By setting certain rules for supporting downloads from the web, Apple will be hoping to minimize the risk that users will be installing sketchy apps, such as ones containing malware or those that support piracy. Still, given the criticism levied against the company for seemingly only sticking to the letter of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and not its spirit, the fact that the company is exerting control over app downloads from the web may come under scrutiny too.

In addition, as 9to5Mac notes, Apple is now allowing developers to run app marketplaces that solely contain their own apps. Previously, they were required to offer apps from other devs. As such, this means the likes of Epic Games, Xbox and Meta can have iOS app marketplaces that only include their own apps and games.

Last but not least, developers will have more flexibility over how they can direct users to an external webpage to complete a transaction for digital goods and services. Apple had provided design templates for in-app promotions, discounts and deals, but those are now optional as of today. That means the likes of Spotify and Netflix can now design links out to their websites (and potentially avoid the 30 percent cut Apple takes of subscriptions from app-based signups).

Motorola just announced a couple of new budget-friendly smartphones, which are set to be released in the near future. These are refreshes of the popular Moto G Power and the Moto 5 5G phones. The upcoming handhelds don't reinvent the wheel, as they are iterative updates, but there are some decent specs worth sharing.

The 2024 Moto G Power boasts a 6.7-inch FHD+ 120Hz display, Dolby Atmos stereo speakers and a 50MP camera system with image stabilization tech. There’s a MediaTek Dimensity 7020 chipset, 128GB of internal storage with a microSD slot, 8GB of RAM, 5G connectivity and a 5000mAh battery complete with 30W fast-charging. This will certainly get the job done when it comes to streaming media, light gaming and browsing the web.

The new Moto G Power even features a fingerprint-resistant back cover made from vegan leather, which the company says provides a “stunning, premium design and comfortable feel.” This phone is coming to Cricket first, on March 22, before an unlocked version hits traditional retailers on March 29. It’ll cost $300.

Motorola

The Moto G 5G includes a slightly smaller 6.6-inch 120Hz display, Dolby Atmos stereo speakers and a 50MP camera system complete with a macro lens. As the name suggests, this is a 5G-capable phone with a Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 processor and 4GB of RAM. Just like the G Power, there’s a 5000mAh battery with quick-charging. It ships with 128GB of internal storage, but there’s an expandable microSD slot.

The updated Moto G 5G will be available at T-Mobile and Metro on March 21, with wider availability starting on May 2. It costs just $200. Motorola also recently released a refresh of the G Play smartphone, which is priced at $150. The company sure does love its G series phones.

April is just around the corner, so if you're not stressed about filing taxes yet, it's likely coming any day now. Thanks to the lovely (read: horrible) tax lobby and the politicians who take their money, the headache taxes bring is as American as apple pie. The IRS is attempting to simplify things a bit with a Direct File tool, a free digital program that provides step-by-step guidance for taxpayers submitting their returns, The Associated Press reports. The IRS first announced this tool was on its way back in October.

To clarify, yes, even this development still requires filing your taxes and determining how much you owe (why tell us when we can just guess?), but it should be a more straightforward process and save you some money. However, it's far from open for all. The IRS pilot program is available to residents of 12 states and only those with a simple tax situation — we're talking basic W-2s and standard deductions here. Other potentially eligible reporting includes SSA-1099 Social Security income, the Child Tax Credit and student loan interest. The IRS has a complete list of eligibility requirements and a tool to check if you qualify.

Direct File is available to residents of Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Washington, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and New York. The last four also require state tax returns, so their residents who use Direct File will be directed to tools for filing those once they are finished. Alaska was initially in the mix but has seemingly been dropped since last year's statement.

Airbnb has announced a complete ban on indoor cameras in host properties. Hosts were allowed to have cameras in communal spaces, but they were supposed to be banned from bedrooms and bathrooms. Hosts were also supposed to disclose any cameras in the rental, which may not always have happened. The company says it established the new rules “in consultation with our guests, hosts and privacy experts” and that it’ll continue to seek feedback.

Hosts also have to disclose any outdoor cameras (that can’t point indoors or be in areas with a “greater expectation of privacy” — think showers and saunas). Because humans can be monstrous. The new rules kick in April 30.

Any hosts that violate these new policies could face having their properties banned from Airbnb — and even get their entire account removed.

— Mat Smith

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Samsung’s new midrange Galaxy A55 is pretty boring

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How to find and cancel your unused subscriptions

And make the process easier.

The FTC wants to compel companies to make cancellation processes easier but, during a hearing on the matter earlier this year, industry lobbyists argued that making things easier would be bad for business. So to make things worse for business (I joke), we’ve put together a guide with a few tips to help you find exactly what you’re paying for and how to cancel things you no longer need. Or perhaps, things that have rocketed in price.

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What to expect at Microsoft’s March 21 event

The company may brand its next Surface Pro and Surface Laptop as AI PCs.

Microsoft

Microsoft is holding a digital event titled Advancing the new era of work with Copilot on March 21. We’re expecting new Surface devices and — given the event’s name — a lot more about dovetailing Microsoft’s AI ambitions with its hardware and software. Rumors are all over the place: We could see a new Surface Pro with a brighter OLED screen, devices powered by either Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite chips. And possibly even nothing for consumers and just a barrage of business- and commercial-focused devices. Boo! Engadget will cover all the notable announcements on March 21 at noon ET.

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NVIDIA being sued over AI copyright infringement

The company may have trained its NeMo AI on a controversial dataset.

The latest tech company immersing itself in AI and facing copyright troubles is NVIDIA. Several authors are suing the company over its AI platform NeMo, a language model that allows businesses to create and train their own chatbots. The authors claim NVIDIA trained it on a controversial dataset that illegally used their books without consent. They want a jury trial and are demanding NVIDIA pay damages and destroy all copies of the Books3 dataset used to power NeMo large language models (LLMs). They claim the dataset was copied from a shadow library called Bibliotek, consisting of 196,640 pirated books.

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It's getting hard to keep up with copyright lawsuits against generative AI, with a new proposed class action hitting the courts last week. This time, authors are suing NVIDIA over its AI platform NeMo, a language model that allows businesses to create and train their own chatbots, Ars Technica reported. They claim the company trained it on a controversial dataset that illegally used their books without consent.

Authors Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene and Stewart O’Nan demanded a jury trial and asked Nvidia to pay damages and destroy all copies of the Books3 dataset used to power NeMo large language models (LLMs). They claim that dataset copied a shadow library called Bibliotek consisting of 196,640 pirated books. 

"In sum, NVIDIA has admitted training its NeMo Megatron models on a copy of The Pile dataset," the claim states. "Therefore, NVIDIA necessarily also trained its NeMo Megatron models on a copy of Books3, because Books3 is part of The Pile. Certain books written by Plaintiffs are part of Books3— including the Infringed Works—and thus NVIDIA necessarily trained its NeMo Megatron models on one or more copies of the Infringed Works, thereby directly infringing the copyrights of the Plaintiffs. 

In response, NVIDIA told The Wall Street Journal that "we respect the rights of all content creators and believe we created NeMo in full compliance with copyright law."

Last year, OpenAI and Microsoft were hit with a copyright lawsuit from nonfiction authors, claiming the companies made money off their works but refused to pay them. A similar lawsuit was launched earlier this year. That's on top of a lawsuit from news organizations like The Intercept and Raw Story, and of course, the legal action that kicked all of this off from The New York Times. 

"There is no Founding Agreement, or any agreement at all with Musk," OpenAI said in a court filing as a defendant in Elon Musk's lawsuit. We're, of course, talking about the lawsuit Musk filed against OpenAI, which accuses it of violating its status as a non-profit, as well as of violating a founding agreement promising the organization would never operate for profit and would release its AI publicly. The company said the billionaire's claims are based on "convoluted — often incoherent — factual premises." It called that founding agreement "a fiction Musk has conjured to lay unearned claim to the fruits of an enterprise he initially supported, then abandoned, then watched succeed without him."

If the case goes to discovery, there's evidence that would show that Musk supported OpenAI's transition into a for-profit structure, "to be controlled by Musk himself," OpenAI continued. Further, the billionaire allegedly ceased supporting the project when his ideas weren't followed. That statement echoes the company's blog post from earlier this month, wherein it published purported emails to and from Musk from when he was still involved with the organization. Based on those exchanges, Musk knew and was in favor of turning OpenAI into a for-profit entity. He even wanted full control of it as CEO and to have majority equity. Musk also agreed with a suggestion to attach the organization to Tesla, so that the automaker could provide its funding. In the end, the parties didn't come to agreement, and Musk ended his involvement. 

"Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself," OpenAI wrote in its filing. "Musk purports to bring this suit for humanity, when the truth — evident even from the face of Musk’s contradictory pleading — is that he brings it to advance his own commercial interests."

Musk introduced his own artificial intelligence company called xAI last year, with the rather lofty goal of understanding "the true nature of the universe." A few days after OpenAI published its blog post wherein it claimed that Musk knew it never intended to open source its technology, the billionaire announced that xAI was going to open source its Grok chatbot. While it could very well be a dig at OpenAI, open sourcing Grok could also get his company feedback from the developer community, which xAI could then use to improve its technology. 

AI-powered visual search features arrived to Ray-Ban's Meta sunglasses last year with some impressive (and worrying) capabilities — but a new one in the latest beta looks quite useful. It identifies landmarks in various locations and tells you more about them, acting as a sort of tour guide for travelers, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth wrote in a Threads post. 

Bosworth showed off a couple of sample images explaining why the Golden Gate Bridge is orange (easier to see in fog), a history of the "painted ladies" houses in San Francisco and more. For those, the descriptions appeared as text below the images.

On top of that, Mark Zuckerberg used Instagram to show off the new capabilities via a few videos taken in Montana. This time, the glasses use audio to provide a verbal description of Big Sky Mountain and the history of the Roosevelt Arch, while explaining (like a caveman) how snow is formed. 

Meta previewed the feature at its Connect event last year, as part of new "multimodal" capabilities that allow it to answer questions based on your environment. That in turn was enabled when all of Meta's smart glasses gained access to real-time info (rather than having a 2022 knowledge cutoff as before), powered in part by Bing Search.

The feature is part of Meta's Google Lens-like feature that enables users to “show” things they are seeing through the glasses and ask the AI questions about it — like fruits or foreign text that needs translation. It's available to anyone in Meta's early access program, which is still limited in numbers. "For those who still don’t have access to the beta, you can add yourself to the waitlist while we work to make this available to more people," Bosworth said in the post. 

Microsoft is holding a digital event titled “Advancing the new era of work with Copilot” on March 21. Among the possible announcements are new Surface devices, potentially the first branded as AI PCs. It will already be the second Windows hardware event — and first mainline Surface Pro launch — without former chief product officer and longtime keynote presenter Panos Panay, who left for Amazon last year. Here’s everything we could see at the company's first launch event of 2024.

The company describes the event as breaking down “the latest in scaling AI in your environment with Copilot, Windows, and Surface.” There are conflicting reports about exactly what we’ll see in late March. 

Windows Central claims an OLED Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 will headline the event, with their upgraded processors enabling “huge performance and efficiency gains” over their predecessors. However, a report from The Verge suggests this month’s event will only cover the business and commercial-focused versions of the devices — with much subtler upgrades than the consumer versions. The outlet claims the consumer variants with “a larger redesign” will follow later this spring.

The new devices will allegedly be powered by Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite silicon with next-generation neural processing units (NPUs) for advanced AI tasks. The Intel variants are expected to launch in April, while the Arm-based Snapdragon ones will reportedly arrive several months later in June. If the reports are accurate, this would be the first time the Surface Laptop line has included an Arm-based version.

At least in the consumer models, the Surface Pro 10 is rumored to switch from LCD to an anti-reflective OLED screen. The device would be brighter than the Surface Pro 9’s screen and support HDR content. Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop 6 is rumored to include thinner display bezels (with rounded corners) and a haptic touchpad. Its updated port selection is said to include two USB-C and one USB-A on its left side.

The commercial / business models (which may be all we see at this month’s event) are rumored to include a built-in Common Access Card (CAC) reader and options with up to 64GB of RAM.

Microsoft

Whether at this month’s event or later, the new consumer-facing Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are expected to kick off Microsoft’s push for Windows 11-running AI PCs. They’ll reportedly be among the first to include an on-device version of Copilot. Other rumored AI features include real-time captioning and translation, upscaling and frame-rate smoothing for games, upgraded Windows Studio Effects and a feature called AI Explorer. Both devices will reportedly include a dedicated Copilot key.

AI Explorer is rumored to include a built-in timeline that’s searchable using natural language. Perhaps similar to the third-party Rewind AI app for macOS, the feature will allegedly log everything you do and see on your device, letting you sift through it with Copilot. It would let you ask the assistant things like, “Find me that thing about dinosaurs,” and see every moment in your PC’s history relating to them. (It could be a privacy nightmare if not handled properly, but expect Microsoft to offer security assurances like encryption and entirely on-device processing.)

The feature would also allegedly “understand context, help jumpstart projects or workflows, and even suggest tasks based on what’s currently on screen.” Other rumored features include the ability to tell Copilot to remove the backgrounds of onscreen images from third-party apps in the Photos app.

The AI features, which aren’t expected to be exclusive to the Surface devices, will reportedly arrive in this year’s annual feature update for Windows 11 (version 24H2), expected in the fall. Windows Central noted it isn’t clear whether Microsoft will discuss the features during the March event.

Engadget will have full coverage of Microsoft’s announcements on March 21 at noon ET.

Samsung has launched its 2024 midrange phone lineup, which combines weaker specs and feature sets with more alluring prices than its flagship handsets. The Galaxy A55 and A35 have 6.6-inch Super AMOLED displays. For the first time in its budget handsets, the company included Knox Vault, a walled-off security section that debuted in the Galaxy S21.

Both Android 14-running phones have FHD+ (2220x1080) displays (374 pixels per inch) and variable refresh rates up to 120Hz. Like last year’s Galaxy A54, both include Samsung’s Vision Booster feature, which adjusts the screen’s tone mapping based on ambient lighting conditions. Their 6.6-inch diagonal measurements (not accounting for rounded corners) are a slight bump up from the A54’s 6.4 inches.

Samsung’s official materials didn’t list the phones’ processors, but Android Police reports the A55 uses an Exynos 1480, while the A35 settles for a slower Exynos 1380. RAM comes in different configurations: 8GB or 12GB in the A55 and 6GB or 8GB in the cheaper A35. Your storage options are 128GB or 256GB in each handset, but only the A55 has a microSD card slot.

Samsung

In addition to performance, cameras will be one of the primary differences between the two phones. The pair has three rear cameras, each with a 50MP main camera and a 5MP macro lens. But the more expensive A55 uses a 12MP ultra-wide sensor, while the A35 has a more pedestrian 8MP ultra-wide lens. In addition, the A55 has a 32MP front-facing camera, compared to the A35’s 13MP front shooter. Both use optical image stabilization (OIS) and video digital image stabilization (VDIS) to offset camera shake.

Unsurprisingly, neither phone appears to include the generative AI features Samsung uses to differentiate the Galaxy S24 series (and older flagships, via software updates). The closest you may get in this price range is the company’s “advanced AI Image Signal Processing (ISP)” for better photography in low-light conditions, included only on the A55.

Samsung didn’t list the phones’ build material in its press release and official specs, but Android Police says the A55 is the company’s first midrange phone with a metal frame. (Last year’s Galaxy A54 used plastic.) Engadget reached out to Samsung to clarify, and we’ll update this article if we hear back.

The handsets each have a 5,000mAh battery. Samsung estimates two days of battery life, but this could vary greatly depending on usage.

US pricing and launch dates aren’t yet available. However, Samsung says the A55 will start at £439 (US$562) in the UK, while the A35 will begin at £339 ($434). Samsung lists a March 20 release date for both handsets in the UK.

It's been a busy several few months for fighting game fans between the likes of Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 1 arriving. Another game is entering (or more accurately re-entering) the fray as Warner Bros' platform fighter MultiVersus will return on May 28. It will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and the Epic Games Store.

MutliVersus is Warner Bros' take on the Super Smash Bros. series. The aim is to weaken enemies enough to knock them off of a platform. Instead of controlling the likes of Mario, Link, Pikachu and Sephiroth, the roster is made up of characters from across WB properties, including DC Comics, its movies (hence the inclusion of LeBron James from Space Jam: A New Legacy) and even HBO. It's an enjoyable two vs. two take on the format.

The free-to-play game debuted in open beta in July 2022 and it was an instant hit. It brought in 20 million players in its first month. However, the player count dwindled quickly (at least on PC) amid complaints of a lack of updates and new characters. Developer Player First Games said last March that it would take the servers offline in June so it could work on the game ahead of its full release this year. One aspect of this that angered some fans was the fact many spent money on the game to unlock characters and cosmetics, only for it to go offline for what turned out to be another 10 months.

Along with the full release date, game director Tony Hyunh announced some of the updates to MultiVersus. There will, of course, be new characters. Hyunh didn't reveal any of the fresh faces, but I have my fingers crossed for a couple of names from Succession and The Last of Us showing up, just because. You can also expect more stages and fresh attacks for each character. We'll learn more details in the lead up to the release date.

Player First Games rebuilt the game from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 to improve character lighting and the visuals. Hyunh says the team incorporated new rollback netcode to minimize lag for online play and to ensure consistent performance. There will also be a player versus environment mode that will allow you to play the game without having to square off against other players.

MultiVersus is returning just after Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to focus more on live-service, mobile and free-to-play games with a long-tail rather than single-player experiences. That's despite the disappointing performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (a live-service title) and colossal commercial success of Hogwarts Legacy, which sold 22 million copies last year.