Two spies from the People's Republic of China attempted to interfere in a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice into a prominent Chinese telecommunications company, US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Wednesday. The two agents, Guochun He and Zheng Wang, were working for the benefit of Huawei, reports Bloomberg. According to a complaint seen by the outlet, He and Wang attempted to bribe a law enforcement employee to provide them with information on the Justice Department's investigation.
Apple is matching its wave of software updates with a not-so-pleasant price hike. As 9to5Macreports, the company has raised the prices of Apple Music and Apple TV+. Music now costs $11 per month for individual plans (up from $10) in the US, or $109 per year. The Family plan now costs $17 per month instead of $15. TV+ sees the largest relative jump — the price has increased from $5 per month to $7, and from $50 per year to $69.
Accordingly, Apple has hiked prices for its multi-service One bundles. You now pay $17 per month for an Individual plan versus the earlier $15. Family users now pay $23 per month instead of $20, and Premier customers pay $33 per month where they previously paid $30.
A company spokesperson attributes the increases to licensing costs in a statement to 9to5. The more expensive plans will let artists and writers "earn more" from streaming music, Apple claims. The TV+ increase also reflects the size of the service, the representative adds. The video offering had "just a few shows and movies" when it launched three years ago, and now has a much larger catalog.
This won't thrill you if you're cross-shopping services. Spotify still asks $10 per month for its regular plan, and $16 for a six-user family account. You won't get lossless or spatial audio, but it's a better bargain if you're more interested in the lowest possible price. Things are murkier with video services. The higher pricing still makes Apple TV+ more affordable than Amazon Prime Video and ad-free Netflix (particularly if you want 4K HDR), and more specialized services like Disney+ and Hulu will charge extra in December. It's just a question of whether or not shows like Ted Lasso and Slow Horses are worth the outlay.
The larger One prices may be easier to swallow. It's difficult to find all-in-one bundles that combine music, video, cloud storage and other services, particularly if you want something Apple-friendly. And like it or not, you probably won't find alternatives that include fitness apps or magazine subscriptions.
It's a major Apple update day, as the company is rolling out new versions of its iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems. While iPhone users at large have already had a taste of iOS 16, this will be the first time that most folks will get their hands on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura.
Apple delayed the release of iPadOS 16 amid reports suggesting it needed more time to polish up the Stage Manager multitasking feature (which we felt was unrefined in an early iPadOS 16 beta). In fact, Apple said it was skipping a public release of iPadOS 16 and going straight to version 16.1 — just in time for the company's latest iPad Pro and entry-level iPad shipping this week.
The latest version of the iPad operating system will include many of the same updates as iOS 16, including significant changes to Mail, Safari, Messages and other key apps. There are more collaboration-centric features, while the Weather app is finally coming to iPad.
As for iOS 16.1, that offers shared photo libraries through iCloud and a clean energy charging function, which optimizes iPhone charging times depending on when the power grid is using greener energy sources. Apple Fitness+ is now available on iPhone without the need for an Apple Watch. Also new are an improved battery life icon, Live Activities and per-app copy-and-paste permissions, which should mitigate iOS 16's irritating paste prompts.
Put horror movies and games aside for a few minutes to listen to something truly unsettling this Halloween season. The European Space Agency has released audio of what our planet's magnetic field sounds like. While it protects us from cosmic radiation and charged particles from solar winds, it turns out that the magnetic field has an unnerving rumble.
You can't exactly point a microphone at the sky and hear the magnetic field (nor can we see it). Scientists from the Technical University of Denmark converted data collected by the ESA's three Swarm satellites into sound, representing both the magnetic field and a solar storm.
The ethereal audio reminds me of wooden wind chimes rattling as a mass of land shifts, perhaps during an earthquake. It brings to mind the cracking sounds of a moving glacier as well. You might get something different out of the five-minute clip.
“The team used data from ESA’s Swarm satellites, as well as other sources, and used these magnetic signals to manipulate and control a sonic representation of the core field. The project has certainly been a rewarding exercise in bringing art and science together," the university's Klaus Nielsen, a musician and supporter of the project, said. “The rumbling of Earth’s magnetic field is accompanied by a representation of a geomagnetic storm that resulted from a solar flare on November 3rd, 2011, and indeed it sounds pretty scary."
If you happen to visit Solbjerg Square in Copenhagen this week, you may be able to immerse yourself in the magnetic field's low rumble. More than 30 loudspeakers are pointed at the ground there. They'll broadcast the audio three times daily until October 30th. “We have set it up so that each speaker represents a different location on Earth and demonstrates how our magnetic field has fluctuated over the last 100,000 years," Nielsen said.
This isn't the first time researchers have turned data from otherwise silent forces into sound. Last year, NASA released an audio representation of magnetic field activity around Jupiter's moon Ganymede. More recently, we got to hear a terrifying depiction of what a black hole sounds like.
For digital artists, doodlers, and heavy note takers, we think Apple's own second-generation Pencil is, unsurprisingly, the best iPad stylus money can buy. The one major hang-up with the device has been that it's wildly expensive, but if you've been looking to pick one up, a deal going on today alleviates that concern at least somewhat. The second-gen Pencil is currently available for $89 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, which marks the lowest price we've tracked to date and comes a couple days before Apple makes its newest iPad Pros widely available. This is $10 off the previous low we've seen from various past discounts, about $30 off the device's average street price in recent months, and $40 off Apple's MSRP.
As a refresher, both this and the first-gen Pencil—which Apple continues to sell for its older tablets at $99—are specifically designed to work with the iPad. There's no Bluetooth pairing process to worry about, and notably they both offer pressure sensitivity across iPadOS, so the harder you press down, the heavier the line you're drawing gets. Various third-party styluses support the latter in specific apps, but the Pencils have the benefit of offering it system-wide. The latest model was released in 2018 but, while it's possible Apple could announce an updated version in the near future, we haven't heard much to suggest a refresh is imminent.
Both Pencils perform reliably, but between the two, the second-gen Pencil remains a fairly noticeable upgrade. Instead of having to charge through a Lightning port—or a dongle, if you own a USB-C-based iPad—and awkwardly jutting out the side of your tablet, it attaches magnetically to a newer iPad's right side. Apart from providing more natural place to rest, this also charges the Pencil, so battery life should never be a concern unless you plan on drawing for 12 hours straight. The newer model also has a useful double-tap feature that lets you quickly toggle between settings in certain apps; in Apple's Notes app, for instance, you can double-tap to switch from your drawing tool to an eraser. The flatter edges of the second-gen Pencil are less conducive to rolling off a table than the rounded design of the first-gen model, too.
The other knock against the Pencil is that it's only compatible with iPads, and each generation only works with specific models at that. For the second-gen Pencil on sale here, those models include the fourth-gen iPad Air and up, the third-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro and up, any 11-inch iPad Pro, and the sixth-gen iPad mini. All other iPads, including the entry-level 10.2-inch iPad or the just-announced 10th-gen iPad, aren't supported. Nevertheless, while there are other iPad styluses like Logitech's Crayon that we recommend for more casual needs, this deal should be a relatively strong value for more committed iPad artists.
PayPal has started rolling out passkeys for users in the US, on the same day Apple is bringing the technology to its computers and tablets with macOS Ventura and iPadOS16. That means you'll be able to log into your PayPal account without having to type in your credentials, which in turn makes its quicker to check out your online shopping carts. PayPal says the option will first be available to users with iPhones, iPads and those visiting its website on Macs, but it will expand to additional platforms as they add support for the technology. Google released initial passkey support for Android and Chrome earlier this month and will launch the stable version, as well as an API for native Android apps, later this year. PayPal will also make passkeys available in other countries starting in early 2023.
Passkeys use your biometrics to log into your accounts, but it's different from using your face or or fingerprints to auto-populate username and password boxes. With passkeys, you become the login. When you activate the option for an app, it creates a cryptographic key pair associated with your account. One of those keys is public, and that's what apps and services save to confirm your identity. The other key is private and is only stored on your devices, so hackers can't steal them if they ever get into the servers of apps you use. Apps and websites that support passkey then match the public key they have with your private key to make sure that it's you who's logging in.
You can switch the feature on by logging into your account with a browser on desktop or mobile — the old way, with your user ID and password — and then choosing "Create a passkey." After you authenticate using Apple Face ID or Touch ID, your passkey will be automatically generated. And since passkeys are synced with iCloud Keychain, you only need to do that once. If you're logging into your account on another device that doesn't have passkey yet, you'll have the option to generate a QR code after entering your user ID. You can then scan that QR code with an iPhone that does support passkey to be able to log in.
YouTube is getting a fresh look and some extra features. For one thing, you'll be able to pinch to zoom into a video on the iOS and Android apps. When you remove your fingers, the video will stay zoomed in. That seems like a handy option for everyone who's about to pore over Taylor Swift's new videos to look for Easter eggs. YouTube started testing the pinch-to-zoom feature with Premium users in August, and now it will be available to everyone.
Another feature should help you get to the right part of a video more easily. On desktop and mobile, you'll be able to drag your cursor up or swipe up while scrubbing through a video to view a row of thumbnails (a bit like you might see on Netflix). As YouTube suggests, this should help you avoid rewinding too far back while you're watching a tutorial and want to rewatch a step.
YouTube
On the visual front, there's a new ambient mode that tweaks the background color of the app to match the video. YouTube UX director Nate Koechley describes this in a blog post as a subtle effect that takes advantage of dynamic color sampling, with the aim of drawing users' eyes into videos and placing more focus on the content.
Ambient mode will also be available on video playlists. You'll see ambient mode on web and mobile watch pages when you have the dark theme enabled. On that note, dark mode will soon look even darker on the web, mobile and smart TVs.
YouTube
Elsewhere, YouTube links in video descriptions will now be displayed as buttons. The service has reworked common actions such as like, share and download to "minimize distractions" too. Moreover, the subscribe button will have a new look — it will be a pill-shaped button instead of a rectangular one. Although the button will no longer be red, YouTube suggests the high-contrast redesign will help it stand out more on watch pages and channel pages.
YouTube is starting to roll out these changes today. They should be live for everyone within the next few weeks.
This is a good time to buy a smartwatch as an early holiday gift, or to help track those increasingly chilly outdoor runs. Amazon is selling the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 at a new low of $230 for a 40mm Bluetooth model, or $50 below the official price. The LTE version has been similarly discounted to $280. And if you crave the titanium case, brighter display or larger battery of the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, you can buy the discounted Bluetooth version for $400 or its LTE counterpart for $430.
The Galaxy Watch 5 remains our smartwatch pick if you're an Android user. As we noted in our review, the regular model has a pleasingly minimalist yet gym-ready design with robust health and fitness tracking. Apart from a few legibility quirks, the Wear OS 3 interface is easy to use while offering a solid range of apps. The 5 Pro, meanwhile, is tougher and lasts longer on a charge — important if you're going on fall hikes.
Battery life can be short on the 40mm Galaxy Watch 5 with the always-on display enabled, and the Pro may be too bulky for thinner wrists. And like last year, Samsung's wristwear is a non-starter if you're an iPhone owner. If those aren't obstacles, though, the Watch 5 is easy to recommend over the Pixel Watch and similar competitors.
OnePlus' Nord N200 had a simple hook: stuff 5G and a big battery into a low-priced phone. There were a few flaws, though, and the company is partly addressing them with the just-announced Nord N300 5G. The follow-up switches from the Snapdragon 480 chip to a speedier (if not exactly blazing) MediaTek Dimensity 810. You'll also find a 48MP main camera versus the N200's 13MP unit, a slightly larger 6.56-inch 90Hz display and faster 33W charging (up from 18W). Yes, the necessary charger comes in the box.
Other features will sound very familiar, for better or for worse. The 5,000mAh battery is still huge for the class, and the combination of a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD slot (now supporting up to 1TB) could prove appealing if you're no fan of wireless earbuds or paying extra for storage. There's just 64GB of space built-in, though, and the 2MP depth camera won't be thrilling. There's also a downgrade: the display resolution is just 1,612 x 720 versus the 2,400 x 1,080 of the N200.
The price may be sweet, at least. The Nord N300 5G will be available on November 3rd for $228 up-front as an exclusive for T-Mobile and its prepaid Metro brand. That lack of choice is unfortunate, but there's also a good chance your monthly instalment payments will be tiny.
OnePlus has a strong incentive to release the Nord N300, whether or not it represents a meaningful upgrade. The Nord series is a relatively hot seller in North America, with 1.5 million N200s expected to sell in 2022. While that figure won't give Apple or Samsung reason for pause, it's no mean feat for a budget device largely limited to one carrier in the US. The new model could keep that momentum going.
Evaluating the new iPad Pro is a simpler task than the basic iPad that Apple announced alongside it last week. That iPad has been completely redesigned. But the 2022 iPad Pro is a minor iteration of the model released in early 2021, which was powered by the M1 chip. Now, with M2 Macs out in the wild, Apple decided its best tablet needed one, too.
That new chip is by far the most notable change here. Otherwise, the design, screen, cameras, storage options, accessories and price are all the same. That’s not a big problem, though, because the iPad Pro was already an outstanding device — and the Liquid Retina XDR display Apple introduced on last year’s 12.9-inch model is still a simply outstanding screen. There are a couple new tricks here, like the Apple Pencil “hover” feature and the ability to shoot video in Apple’s ProRes codec, but by and large this iPad Pro isn’t angled at people who bought that M1 model. Instead, it’s just a case of Apple flexing its muscles by making the most powerful, spare-no-expense tablet that it can.
In the short time that I’ve been testing the latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I can say that it’s far more responsive than my personal 11-inch iPad Pro from 2020 as well as the new iPad I’ve also been testing. Those other devices aren’t slow by any stretch of the imagination, but the M2-powered iPad Pro responds to everything almost instantaneously. Of course, the same can be said about the M1 iPad Pro, especially given my modest workflow.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
In a demo last week, Apple showed how the new iPad Pro can chew through apps like the forthcoming DaVinci Resolve and Octane X. The former is an intense video application that combines things like professional-level color correction, color grading, visual effects and much more, while Octane X is meant for 3D rendering. Both apps are pretty far outside things I’d use, but in the demo it was pretty easy to see how responsive the new iPad Pro was scrubbing through and editing frames from an 8K video or applying different effects.
One thing I can tell is that the new Stage Manager multitasking feature in iPadOS 16 is working much better on this new iPad Pro than it did in my testing on last year’s model using various beta releases over the last four months or so. Again, my needs are modest, but I never had any app crashes or moments where the interface just shut down and threw me back to the Home Screen. In a sign of Apple’s confidence, Stage Manager was even enabled out of the box, whereas it was turned off by default when iPadOS 16 was in beta.
Conceptually, I’m still struggling a bit with how Stage Manager decides what apps (or groups of apps) show up on the left-side switcher, and I feel like the experience of using it on any iPad smaller than the 12.9-inch Pro is not going to be much better than just using two apps in Split View, but it does seem a lot more stable now. I don’t know if that’s thanks to software optimizations, the more powerful hardware or some mix of both, but it’s a welcome change.
If you’re an Apple Pencil aficionado, the M2 enables a pretty cool new feature called Hover. As the name suggests, the iPad Pro can detect when the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, and elements will start to react. For example, if you hold the Pencil over the apps in your dock or on the homescreen, the one that the Pencil is over will zoom in slightly to show you what you’re targeting. It’s similar to what happens when you use the trackpad to move the pointer over apps. It’s not the most essential trick, but it’s a good example of what Hover can do. But this is just a trick that doesn’t really change the iPad experience; developers will need to build Hover functions into their apps for it to be really useful.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
That said, I was able to see a few potential use cases for it. In the Notes app, there’s a new watercolor brush, and when you hover the Pencil over the screen you’ll get a little preview of the color you’ve selected. And when you select a new color, you can hover the Pencil over your existing sketch to see how the watercolor interacts with it before actually drawing. In a demo of the illustration and animation app Procreate, hovering the Pencil over a project brings the animation to life or shows a 3D view of your creation. It’s one of those features that is clever but doesn’t have an essential use case yet, but I’m definitely curious to see how developers implement it.
Otherwise, most of what we said about the iPad Pro in 2021 still applies here. Performance is outstanding, the screen is one of the nicest that we’ve seen on any device, the Pencil and Magic Keyboard are great but expensive add-ons, but iPadOS 16 still feels like it occasionally holds back the hardware here. Over the next few days, I’m going to do more detailed performance testing to see how the M2 compares to the M1, though we already have a good idea of how that’ll play out thanks to how M2-powered Macs stack up to older models. Even after a few days, I’m pretty sure that people who own the M1 iPad Pro don’t need to worry about upgrading. If you really push your iPad Pro to the limit, and it’s a few years old, these new models should offer a pretty significant upgrade.
