Watching HBO Max shows and movies on a TV is getting a little easier for Vizio owners. SmartCast TVs now have a native HBO Max app, so you won't need to cast content from another device. Along with accessing HBO Max the old-fashioned way by pressing buttons on your remote, you can use voice navigation via the SmartCast Mobile app or Voice Remote with Vizio Voice.
To mark the app's debut, Vizio is using its SmartCast home screen to showcase some of the free episodes HBO Max offers to entice viewers to sign up. You can get a taste of shows including HBO heavyweights like Game of Thrones and Euphoria, as well as a few Max Originals. The titles will be on rotation, so there'll be other shows to sample later.
HBO Max has been steadily expanding its app to more platforms. Along with YouTube, it landed on Spectrum TV this week. They joined Netflix as Spectrum Guide's first streaming apps. The reception to HBO Max's smart TV apps hasn't been great though. WarnerMedia reportedly plans to overhaul them in the coming months.
Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 will be available on October 5th as a free upgrade for qualifying Windows 10 systems, as well as on new PCs shipping after that date. But it isn’t for everyone; a gradual rollout will prioritize newer hardware and use "intelligence models" to determine who gets the upgrade first. Microsoft will apparently factor in reliability and device age. It could be the case that friends and family utterly disinterested in an OS update could be offered it ahead of anyone chomping at the bit for the latest edition of Windows. Check out Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar's preview on what to expect from Windows 11.
All supporting machines will get the update by mid-2022, if you can think that far ahead. For those at the head of the line, you’ll still miss out on Android app support, which won't be available on launch. Microsoft plans to introduce the feature in a Windows Insider preview build sometime in the "coming months."
But the service may not be ready for the next iPhone.
A rumored satellite feature for future iPhones is reserved for emergency uses only, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. A few days ago, another report said the next iPhones will come with support for Low Earth Orbit satellite calls and messages. Other sources said, however, that Apple is reportedly developing at least two emergency-related features relying on satellite networks.
The first feature, Emergency Message via Satellite, will be added as a third protocol, alongside iMessage and SMS, to the Messages app. Apple is also reportedly working on a second satellite feature for users to report crisis situations, like plane crashes and fires.
You can now visit Best Buy’s website to purchase powered bicycles, as well as electric scooters and mopeds from brands like Unagi, Bird, Segway and SWFT. In October, Best Buy will begin stocking those same EVs in select stores across the US, including Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. The company’s Geek Squad will even offer a $100 service where it comes to your house to adjust the brakes, seat height and handlebars for you.
The $150 snapper works with the redesigned Polaroid app.
Polaroid
Polaroid’s Now+ is a $150 analog camera with Bluetooth connectivity and five physical lens filters. It's the first time the company has included the latter out of the box. You can clip the filters on to the camera's lens to saturate or deepen the contrast of your photos or add new effects, like starburst, red vignette, and orange, blue and yellow colors.
One new tool lets you record your own voice to train the tone of an AI voice
The voices on Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant and other AI assistants are far ahead of old-school GPS devices, but they still lack the finer qualities that make speech sound, well, human. NVIDIA has unveiled new research and tools that can capture those natural speech qualities by letting you train the AI system with your own voice.
To improve its AI voice synthesis, NVIDIA’s text-to-speech research team developed a model called RAD-TTS. The system allows an individual to train a text-to-speech model with their own voice, including the pacing, tonality, timbre and more.
(Maybe it’s time to build an AI voice so I don’t have to record Engadget’s The Morning Edition podcast each day. Don’t tell anyone, OK?)
South Korea has today passed a law requiring major app stores to allow alternate payment methods. The bill, due to be rubber-stamped by President Moon Jae-in, forces platform holders to open up their stores, which will affect their lucrative commissions on digital sales. Apple and Google are facing lawsuits and regulator investigations in multiple countries, many focused on how their app stores operate.
The new model also has better battery life and a lower price.
Finally, 2017’s QuietComfort 35 II headphones have a proper replacement: the QuietComfort 45. Bose says these headphones "maintain the hallmarks of their predecessor" when it comes to audio quality, comfort, reliable controls and more. The QC45 also keeps nearly the same design as the QC35 and QC35 II except for a few subtle changes — and a longer battery life estimated to be around 24 hours. At $329.95, they'll debut at a lower price than the previous two QuietComfort models.
The QuietComfort 45 headphones will be available in black and light gray on September 23rd. Pre-orders begin today at Amazon and Bose's website.
Ambient sound, customizable settings and good battery life.
When it comes to true wireless earbuds, Jabra has continued to improve design, features and technology since the Elite 65t. But there was one thing it was still missing: a low-cost model for around $100. So say hello to the Elite 3: an $80 set of true wireless earbuds with more features than we’re used to seeing at this price.
You won't have to buy a Galaxy Z Fold 3 or Flip 3 to get their software upgrades. Samsung is rolling out a One UI 3.1.1 update that brings many of those phones' multitasking and app resizing features to the original Fold, Fold 2, Flip and Flip 5G.
The Fold line unsurprisingly benefits the most thanks to its larger, tablet-like screen. Features like Multi-Active Window (up to three apps at once) and App Split View (seeing extra content for an app) make that folding display much more useful. You can also force apps to resize and rotate on your Fold, pin your favorites with the Taskbar and mirror your internal display on the cover screen.
Not that Flip owners are out of luck. Drag & Split lets all Samsung foldable owners create a new window for an already-open app, and you can invoke Flex Mode to bring up media controls when the phone is partially folded.
Most of these features are deploying now, although you'll have to wait an extra week if you're using the first Galaxy Fold. Not that you'll likely mind. This could significantly improve the usefulness of your older foldable, and suggests Samsung is eager to earn the loyalty of early adopters — if just to increase the chances that you'll buy another Fold or Flip when you're due for an upgrade.
After months of hype, Windows 11 has a release date. Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 will be available on October 5th, both as a free upgrade for qualifying Windows 10 systems as well as new PCs shipping with the OS pre-installed.
Don't assume you'll get the upgrade on day one, though. This is a gradual rollout that will prioritize newer hardware and use "intelligence models" to determine who gets the upgrade first, including reliability and device age. All supporting machines will get the update by mid-2022, but this suggests you may be toward the back of the queue if you're using relatively old hardware. At least some shipping Windows 10 PCs will be on the fast track for Windows 11 updates, including models from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and (of course) Microsoft.
Notably, though, Android app support won't be available on launch. Microsoft now only expects to introduce the feature in a Windows Insider preview build sometime in the "coming months." That's not completely shocking given the challenges of translating mobile apps to a mouse-and-keyboard experience, but this still means one of Windows 11's tentpole features won't be available for a long while.
In a blow to both Apple and Google, South Korea has today passed a law requiring major app stores to allow alternative payment methods. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bill, due to be rubber-stamped by president Moon Jae-in, forces platform holders to open up their stores. In addition, the new rules will prevent unreasonable delays for app approvals, which has been described as a way to prevent retaliation against developers. Companies which fail to comply with the ruling are at risk of being fined up to three percent of their domestic revenue.
The bill could have global ramifications given the battles that Google and Apple have fought concerning their app platform dominance. Both companies have come under fire for how they run the App and Play stores, respectively, with regulators and developers scrutinizing their business practices. In July, 36 US states launched an antitrust suit against Google over concerns that it is violating antitrust law, while Apple has been engaged in well-documented skirmishes with both Epic Games and Spotify. Officials in both the US and Europe, both of which are wrestling with concerns over the future of digital payments, are likely to look at both South Korea’s law, and how both companies respond to it.
Instagram will require users to share their birthday, an update the company says is meant to protect young people using its app. The photo app already asks new users to provide a birthday when they sign up, a requirement that’s been in place since the end of 2019. But people who previously signed up may not have shared the information.
But over the “next few weeks” Instagram will begin prompting users who haven’t previously shared a birthdate to do so. While they will initially be able to dismiss the prompts, the app will eventually require birthdays from everyone.
For now, there’s two scenarios in which users will be asked for their birthdays. First, the app will show a notification “a handful of times.” A separate prompt may also appear if users try to view a post that’s hidden behind a warning screen. These warnings appear on “sensitive content” that might not break Instagram’s official rules, but could be considered borderline, such as “suggestive” images or photos of medical procedures. Users will no longer be able to view these posts until they provide a birthday, and younger teens may not be able to see these posts at all.
Instagram
The company also says it will use artificial intelligence to detect when a user may have provided a false birthday, and that some users may be asked to “verify” their age. “In the future, if someone tells us they’re above a certain age, and our technology tells us otherwise, we’ll show them a menu of options to verify their age,” the company says. “This work is still in the early stages, and we look forward to sharing more soon.”
The changes are the latest as Instagram has tried to beef up security and privacy features for its youngest users. The company has also said it will switch to making younger teens’ accounts private by default, and has limited advertisers’ ability to target the demographic. It also recently introduced features to prevent adult strangers from messaging teens. Instagram has also said it’s in the early stages of thinking about a version of its service for users under the age of 13, which has prompted concern from lawmakers and other officials.
When Microsoft released the Windows 11 Insider preview earlier this summer, it did so with some confusion around minimum system requirements. It quickly reversed course, saying that more people could install the software update than its requirements originally stated so the company could gather more performance on how the OS performed. After a few months of users testing and providing feedback, Microsoft says that, for the most part, its system requirements from June will stand — but there are a few notable changes.
This means that you'll need a compatible 64-bit processor, 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage, as well as "UEFI secure boot, graphics requirements and TPM 2.0." For the most part, Microsoft is still requiring an 8th-generation or newer Intel processor, but the company is adding a few 7th-generation Intel options to the supported list, including Intel Core X-series, Xeon W-series and the Intel Core 7820HQ. For the latter, Microsoft will only support "select devices that shipped with modern drivers based on Declarative, Componentized, Hardware Support Apps (DCH) design principles, including Surface Studio 2."
After working with AMD, Microsoft has declined to include the first generation of AMD Zen processors in its officially supported list. The full list of supported processors can be found here.
There is some good news for people running older hardware, though. According to The Verge, Microsoft won't prohibit computers running processors on its "supported" list from installing Windows 11 — they just won't be able to do so through the official Windows update software. You'll instead have to download a Windows 11 ISO file and install it yourself. The Verge says this method will primarily be for businesses to try Windows 11 and it won't be publicizing this method to standard users.
If you're still wondering whether or not your computer will be able to officially run Windows 11, Microsoft has released an update for its PC Health Check, which was originally giving users some rather vague and unhelpful messages regarding compatibility. The new version should make it much clearer whether your computer is supported and, if not, what it needs to meet the Windows 11 system requirements.
Following the class-action lawsuit between Apple and app developers, the company has agreed to change several App Store rules, including allowing developers to email users “about payment methods outside of their iOS app” — think Netflix and Spotify offering subscription setups through the internet browser, all without Apple taking a cut. This was a key part of the Epic vs. Apple trial.
The company is also promising more transparency around its app review process and offer more price points to app makers from “fewer than 100 to more than 500.” The agreement also includes a $100 million payout, split among smaller developers who earned $1 million or less. It’s not money for Spotify, Epic and the bigger, most vocal, app owners. There are a few more wrinkles to the App Store changes. Engadget’s Karissa Bell elaborates on what's going on.
Hollywood's busiest man Dwayne Johnson has found time to release another pair of headphones with Under Armour branding and, well, JBL tech. The cans are essentially an updated version of the durable over-ears released in 2018, but now with adaptive noise canceling and 45-hour battery life. With speed charging, you should get two hours of playback time in five minutes.
Subscribers will also get new loot for 'Genshin Impact' and other games.
Amazon is adding some more free titles for Prime Gaming subscribers. One of the latest additions is Knockout City, a recent release from Velan and EA. It's a cross-platform dodgeball brawler launched in May that's already available through Xbox Games Pass Ultimate and EA Play. Anyone addicted to Genshin Impact — which is free to play everywhere — can get a nice grab bag of loot if they’re a Prime Gaming subscriber.
NES and SNES designer Lance Barr has retired from Nintendo after 38 years and eight months at the company. Although relatively few know his name, he played a role in the rise and rise of Nintendo.
Barr made his biggest mark when he was asked to design the outside of the NES to make the Famicom more palatable for American audiences. As requested, he made it look like it belonged next to a stereo system (complete with a VHS-style cartridge loader) compared to the "soft" Japanese model.
His influence continued at Nintendo, and in more recent times he helped design the Wii and its nunchuk controller.
HP’s use of AMD’s speedy mobile processors means this machine can do a lot more than other ultraportables in its class. Available for less than $1,000, the cost alone will let you see past some of its more pedestrian features. There are plenty of ports, and while it’s not exactly an inspirational design, you might be pleasantly surprised.
YouTube is promising picture-in-picture (PiP) viewing to all iPhone and iPad users in the US, starting with volunteers using Premium. You'll have to opt into the test through the experiments website on your computer, but you're all set after that — you can watch clips in a floating window. It’s just the first step: The company hasn't said when it plans to enable PiP for non-Premium subscribers.
Apple has agreed to change several rules that govern its App Store as part of a settlement with developers who filed a class action lawsuit against the company. The most significant change is that Apple is “clarifying” that developers are permitted to email users “about payment methods outside of their iOS app.” The company has also agreed to publish transparency reports detailing App Store rejection rates and the app review process.
Pokémon fans now have even more ways to enjoy the sprawling franchise's offerings on Nintendo Switch. The Pokémon TV app has, at long last, hit the console. It includes hundreds of episodes of the Pokémon anime series, including some full seasons, as well as animated specials.
Kids (and adults, if we're being honest) can also kick back and stream Pokémon Trading Card Game and video game competitions. They can pick up some training tips too. There's plenty for the youngest Pokémon fans as well. The Junior category includes sing-along songs, nursery rhymes and more. Content in the free app is refreshed periodically.
Though the Switch eShop has hundreds and hundreds of games, there are precious few media apps. You can fire up YouTube, Hulu and Funimation but Netflix and Prime Video are nowhere to be seen (unless you jailbreak your Switch). Another streaming app from a brand that's so entwined with Nintendo's DNA could keep people hooked on their Switch for even longer. Still, it feels like the Pokémon TV app should have been on the console long before now.
