I’ve started testing the waters writing this newsletter (and several other stories) on an iPad, with keyboard folio, of course. And it works surprisingly well, if not perfectly. Apple’s journey in getting its tablets to dip into the world of laptops has taken a while, but it’s almost there.

Now, a report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman suggests Apple will push iPadOS even further in version 16, with some software changes apparently nudging the device further in that direction.

Gurman's sources say iPadOS 16 will have a revamped multitasking interface, including more resizing options. Currently, you can run apps in full screen or side by side in Split View. The Slide Over function allows you to bring in a narrower version of a third app as well. The next version of iPadOS will make it easier to move between apps and see which ones you have open. That may even include freely resizable windows in iPadOS, which sounds like a dull, dull upgrade, but it’s exactly what I need when flitting between web browsers, Google Docs and Slack windows. Please, give me what I want, WWDC.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Quentin Tarantino is getting his own film podcast on Stitcher

• Polestar is making a production version of its 'Beast' performance EV

• The first 'Final Fantasy XVI' gameplay trailer reveals a summer 2023 release window

• Oregon is shutting down its controversial child welfare AI in June

• Google is scrapping Assistant's ability to set location-based reminders

• Sonos' refurbished sale includes $180 off the Arc soundbar

• Amazon employees call on the company to stop selling ‘anti-trans’ books

• What we bought: How BenQ's ScreenBar completed my home office setup

• Toyota's prototype 'cartridge' is a way to make hydrogen portable

• Capcom's 'Resident Evil 4' remake lands on March 24th, 2023

Amazon takes on PS5 and Xbox scalpers with a new invite system

The goal is to help legitimate shoppers get their hands on in-demand products. 

Amazon is trying to fend off scalpers and bots that snag all the latest consoles before you can secure one. It's rolling out an invite-based ordering option for high-demand products in low supply to help legitimate shoppers get their hands on the items. The invite option is available now for PS5 in the US. Amazon will enable it for Xbox Series X in the next few days.

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The best wireless headphones you can buy right now

And not all of them will break the bank.

Engadget

Updated for mid-2022: We’ve collated the best wireless headphones — some of which are the best headphones, period. For this guide, we’ve focused on the over-ear style, covering a range of prices, so you can decide how much you’re comfortable spending.

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Chipotle now accepts cryptocurrency payments

As long as your wallet app supports a Flexa digital payments platform.

You can now pay for your burritos and tacos with Bitcoin and other digital currencies, as long as you don't mind spending your coins directly instead of going through exchanges. Flexa has announced that the Mexican fast-food chain can now accept digital payments through its platform at all Chipotle locations in the US if have a Flexa-enabled wallet app enabled, such as Gemini.

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'Street Fighter 6' arrives in 2023 with new modes and real-time commentary

It also features simple controls for special moves.

Capcom

Capcom has revealed that Street Fighter 6 will come out in 2023 for the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Like the company promised earlier, the game will include Luke, a key DLC character for Street Fighter V, as well as fan favorites Ryu and Chun-Li.

There also seems to be an open-world aspect to the game, but one of the most intriguing new features is real-time commentary, which will provide easy-to-understand explanations about gameplay for your matches. These commentaries will be voiced by notable Fighting Game Community commentators, starting with Jeremy "Vicious" Lopez and Aru, and they'll support subtitles in 13 languages.

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'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' will hit Disney+ on June 22nd

That's just 47 days after the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film debuted in theaters.

You won't need to wait much longer to catch the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie at home. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will start streaming on Disney+ on June 22nd — roughly a month and a half since its debut.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to cut around 10 percent of jobs at Tesla, according to a report from Reuters. In an email to executives, he wrote that he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy. Including its subsidiaries, Tesla employed around 100,000 people as of the end of 2021, so any layoffs could be substantial.

Tesla has struggled with production more than some automakers, as most of its vehicles bound for Asian and European markets are manufactured in China at its Shanghai factory. Like other firms that manufacture in the nation, it has had difficulty restarting production following COVID-19 lockdowns.

On top of that, investor sentiment has been down due to inflation and the war in the Ukraine. However, the US jobs market is as good as it's ever been, with unemployment holding steady at a 3.6 percent, the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. Demand for Tesla vehicles remains strong as well, according to Reuters. 

Musk recently told SpaceX and Tesla employees that they had to return to the office full-time or leave the company. His uncompromising stance on remote work contrasts with other major tech companies that have allowed workers to request work-from-home permanently, including Salesforce, Slack and Facebook. Tech talent agency founder Jason Stomel told Reuters that Musk's stance could be a "disguised layoff" because he "knows there's a percentage of workers who are just not going to come back." 

GM's Cruise has received the first ever driverless deployment permit issued by the California Public Utilities Commission. That means the company can now charge for the robotaxi rides, ones with no safety driver behind the wheel, it gives to members of the public. Cruise has secured permission (PDF) to operate its paid passenger service at a max speed of 30 mph on select streets of San Francisco from 10PM to 6AM. 

The company is expected to have 30 electric vehicles in its fleet, offering its ride-hailing passengers paid rides. Those cars aren't allowed to operate on highways, however, or during times of heavy fog and rain. In its announcement, the company said it will begin rolling out fared rides gradually, including to areas not currently covered by its permit. 

A Cruise spokesperson told TechCrunch:

"In the coming months, we'll expand our operating domain, our hours of operation and our ability to charge members of the public for driverless rides until we have fared rides 24/7 across the entire city."

The company first received permission to offer passengers free robotaxi rides almost exactly a year ago and opened fully driverless ride-hailing to the public this February. In March, the CPUC gave Cruise (and Waymo) permission to start charging their passengers, but only for rides with a safety driver behind the wheel. Now, Cruise can charge customers even if there's nobody else onboard. The company called this development a "major milestone for the shared mission of the AV industry to improve life in [the] cities." It will also use this opportunity to gather data for the development of the project's future phases.

Back in 2017, Sony's Insomniac Games famously tweeted that its Spider-Man game was a "permanent PS4 exclusive" that would "never appear on Xbox or PC." Welp, Sony just announced that the Spider-Man series is coming to PC, with Spider-Man Remastered arriving on August 12th, 2022 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales coming in the fall.

Sony mildly acknowledged its previous ultimatum ("That's right...), while pointing out that the port isn't due to any lack of success on PS4 or PS5. It said that the series has now sold through more than 33 million copies globally as of May 15, 2022, which makes it one of Sony's biggest first-party hits. 

From the footage shown in the teaser, the visuals look pretty great. The remastered version includes adjustable render settings and ray-traced reflections, and you'll of course be able to use your keyboard and mouse. The game "will include the full main story and its continued narrative in Marvel's Spider-Man: The City that Never Sleeps DLC," with three accompanying Peter Parker story chapters along with additional missions and challenges, according to Insomniac.

Despite the "never" tweet, a Spider-Man port looked far more likely after Sony purchased Nixxes, a studio known for porting games to PC. Nixxes did in fact do the work, saying it focused on "creating the best possible PC experience that takes advantage of all the exciting possibilities the PC platform has to offer." As mentioned, Spider-Man Remastered arrives on August 12th and Spider-Man: Miles Morales shortly afterwards in autumn. More information about both games will arrive closer to the launch dates. 

A few months after confirming the existence of Street Fighter 6, Capcom has revealed that the upcoming entry to the fighting franchise will come out in 2023 for the PS 5, PS 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Like the company promised in its initial teaser, the game will include Luke, a key DLC character for Street Fighter V, as well as fan favorites Ryu and Chun-Li. The video game developer previously described Luke as "a key player in the future of Street Fighter" who would help expand its world. 

Capcom is using its own RE Engine to develop the fighting game, and it says that gives it the capability to make sure finer details shine through, such as the look of individual muscles tensing up. The company also used the RE Engine to for its other popular titles, including Resident Evil Village, Devil May Cry 5 and Monster Hunter: Rise.

One of the features debuting with the title is Real Time Commentary, which will provide easy-to-understand explanations about gameplay for your matches. These commentaries will be voiced by notable Fighting Game Community commentators, starting with Jeremy "Vicious" Lopez and Aru, and they'll support subtitles in 13 languages.

It will also feature modes from previous entries, along with two new ones called World Tour and Battle Hub. In addition, Capcom is introducing Modern Control Type with Street Fighter 6 to make special moves easier to execute: It will allow you to perform special attacks simply by pressing the button for it along with directional input.

The company has yet to announce an exact release date for it, but you can watch a trailer for the game below:

Apple will make a number of changes to scheduling rules for its retail employees that the company believes will result in more flexible working hours, reportedBloomberg. The move arrives as Apple retail stores in Maryland and New York City are slated to hold union elections in the coming weeks. The changes will include changes to limits on the number of late shifts worked, consecutive days worked and the minimum amount of time that must pass before an employee is eligible to work a new shift.

According to staff who spoke to Bloomberg, Apple will make some of the following changes over the next several weeks. Others will not arrive until later in the year. Shifts must be scheduled at least 12 hours apart (up from 10 hours.) Choosing a weekend day to not be scheduled, and a maximum of five consecutive scheduled days in a row also appear to be among the concessions. And unless they opt to pick up late shifts, retail workers won't work more than three shifts per work that run past 8pm.

Apple retail workers over the years have spoken out about the demanding work schedule and low wages. The company expanded benefits for all full-time retail employees earlier this year, increasing the number of paid sick days and offering paid parental leave. It also set a new floor of $22 per hour for its retail employees last week. Still, Fruit Stand Workers United — the group in the midst of organizing Apple’s Grand Central Store — is pushing for a $30 minimum wage, tuition reimbursement and more options for retirement plans.

Final Fantasy XVI is due to hit PlayStation 5 in the summer of 2023 — and Square Enix has a hot new trailer to prove it. The title's first gameplay trailer showcases the massive monsters called Eikons and the Dominant humans that inhabit them, and presents chaotic, cinematic battle scenes in a medieval-inspired world.

FFXVI was officially revealed in September 2020 and developers promised to drop more information about it by the end of the following year. But in December 2021, the development team announced the game was nearly six months behind schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that we've waited an extra half a year, the gameplay trailer is finally here.

"In our latest trailer, we’ve introduced several new Eikons, as well as provided a more detailed peek at our action-packed battle system and the freedom it gives players," FFXVI director Hiroshi Takai said on the PlayStation blog. "As for development progress, I’m happy to announce that the game is fully playable from start to finish; though, from optimization to brush-up, there is still a mountain of challenges to tackle as we head into our final push."

It seems like Square Enix is back on track with its FFXVI development timeline, aiming to release the game on PS5 next summer. It's set to be exclusive to PS5 for a limited time.

Ford head Jim Farley said the brand’s electric vehicles may shift to fixed prices and completely online sales. In a speech today at an IBM conference, Farley described a future where Ford dealerships would no longer stock inventory but serve as customer service centers for picking up online orders or repairing existing vehicles — with buyers also having the option for home delivery.  In this hypothetical scheme, eliminating car dealerships would put an end to haggling with salespeople.

“We got to go to non-negotiated price," said Farley. Naturally, he also used his speech to throw some jabs at competitors. "I believe some Mach-E and Lightning customers would love to have a Mustang for the weekend. Maybe they want a Super Duty. I can do that," Farley said, "They can't."

The company announced plans this year to be the top EV car maker in the world, hoping to beat out Tesla and other companies with strong EV brands such as BMW, Nissan and Kia. Farley said Ford aims to have the capacity to produce 600,000 EVs by 2023, a notably smaller figure than the 936,000 deliveries that Tesla made last year.

The CEO said he believes that prices for EVs will lower to an average of $25,000, as the cost of batteries and distribution gets cheaper.

Thursday afternoon, Microsoft's president and vice chair Brad Smith penned a blog post outlining four "principles" the company would be adopting in response to the recent wave of union efforts in the US. Admittedly it's surprising for a company this size in the tech industry to — in word or deed — strive for anything less than the complete destruction of any organizing effort. But Smith's post contains precious little substance.

Let's begin with the bolded line right past the preamble: "Our employees will never need to organize to have a dialogue with Microsoft’s leaders." Anyone who has ever been involved in an organizing campaign will recognize this as a gentler version of the typical management talking point that a company "prefers a direct relationship" with its employees. The reason being, of course, that without an observer or weingarten rep present, a boss or human resources staffer is free to intimidate an employee or bury a complaint. Even in less sinister scenarios, while a one-on-one meeting might feel equitable on its face, it isn't: a boss has the force of the company behind them; a worker lacks that, and is dependent on that same company for their livelihood. The entire purpose for voicing complaints as a group, legally recognized as a union or not, is to limit that vast disparity in power.

This same line of thinking is restated in Smith's first principle:

We believe in the importance of listening to our employees’ concerns. Our leaders have an open door policy, and we invest in listening systems and employee resource groups that constantly help us understand better both what is working and where we need to improve. But we recognize that there may be times when some employees in some countries may wish to form or join a union.

Once again, the implication veers strongly towards a preference for dealing with workers individually. And the linguistic turn that those interested in joining or forming a union are only "some employees" in "some countries" reads as an attempt to undermine such efforts as the work of a vocal minority. 

We recognize that employees have a legal right to choose whether to form or join a union. We respect this right and do not believe that our employees or the company’s other stakeholders benefit by resisting lawful employee efforts to participate in protected activities, including forming or joining a union.

The first half of principle two, reproduced above, could be just as easily restated as "we are committed to obeying the law." It doesn't matter whether Microsoft "recognizes" that the NLRA exists any more than it "recognizes" it can't write whatever it wants on its SEC disclosures. This is simply how things are. Of course, understanding workers have the right to organize hasn't stopped other tech companies (most notably Amazon) from engaging in anti-union actions that have often been found to be in contravention of the NLRA. 

Where things get interesting is the second half of this principle, which sounds an awful lot like a promise of non-interference. Certainly, members of the tech press haveinterpreted it that way. But saying Microsoft might not "benefit" from resisting a union campaign and stating plainly that it will not work against such a campaign are not the same. This particular phrasing also does not claim an anti-union campaign would be actively harmful either, meaning shareholders likely wouldn't have recourse to sue the company if it chooses to take that approach down the line. 

We reached out to Microsoft to ask if it will agree not to hold captive audience meetings or engage union-avoidance law firms to carry out similar actions on its behalf; we also asked if it will agree to voluntarily recognize union drives within its ranks. A spokesperson for the company told Engadget that "Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have anything further to add at this time beyond what's included in Brad's blog."

We are committed to creative and collaborative approaches with unions when employees wish to exercise their rights and Microsoft is presented with a specific unionization proposal. In many instances, employee unionization proposals may open an opportunity for Microsoft to work with an existing union on agreed upon processes for employees to exercise their rights through a private agreement. We are committed to collaborative approaches that will make it simpler, rather than more difficult, for our employees to make informed decisions and to exercise their legal right to choose whether to form or join a union.

If this isn't de facto an undermining of the union process I don't know what is. Rather than accept a "specific union proposal," Microsoft is saying, quite clearly, it prefers to do something other than agree to that proposal — and in the form of a "private agreement" to boot. (Collective bargaining agreements, which govern the relationship between an employer and it unionized employees, are typically public.) Likewise, anyone should feel a deep suspicion in Microsoft's claim that it can help its workers make "informed decisions" on the kind of workplace they'd prefer to have while also representing its own interests as a business.

Building on our global labor experiences, we are dedicated to maintaining a close relationship and shared partnership with all our employees, including those represented by a union. For several decades, Microsoft has collaborated closely with works councils across Europe, as well as several unions globally. We recognize that Microsoft’s continued leadership and success will require that we continue to learn and adapt to a changing environment for labor relations in the years ahead.

Principle four is almost entirely fluff. It contains no explicit promise on how Microsoft will comport itself differently. Presumably, a company cannot help but maintain a "close relationship" with the people who comprise that company. But it also recalls one of the few instances in which a Microsoft-associated company did successfully organize. In 2014, bug testers who were contracted through an outside firm, Lionsbridge, managed to form a union; within a few years, all 38 of them were laid off. Workers filed a complaint with the NLRB regarding the mass layoffs and Microsoft reportedly spent four years attempting to stall the process and convince the agency it should not be considered a joint employer. While Microsoft's Phil Spencer has more recently voiced support for the group of recently-organized quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzard (which Microsoft is in the process of acquiring), that could just as easily be read as an attempt to twist the arm of the FTC: allow this $69 billion anti-trust nightmare to go through and we won't try to crush the first union within a North American AAA games studio.

While some research has indicated unionizations can lead to a temporarily more frigid response from Wall Street and a small reduction in overall profits, other studies indicate a unionized workforce is just as productive, happier and incurs less turnover — presumably the sorts of qualities a mature business like Microsoft would want to foster. Microsoft could very easily help set an industry-wide precedent by committing to meaningful, well-defined policies: not principles, or goals or a corporate ethos, but actual policies which executives could be held accountable for failing to follow. If and when that time comes it will be a cause for celebration, but it isn't today.

Capcom's oft-rumored, much-anticipated remake of Resident Evil 4 is officially a thing and it's heading to PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam on March 24th, 2023. The studio debuted a trailer for the project during the PlayStation State of Play live stream.

The game will be a revamp of the original, beloved 2005 title starring Leon S. Kennedy and the president's daughter, Ashley Graham. And, of course, a bunch of homicidal infected villagers.

"We aim to make the game feel familiar to fans of the series, while also providing a fresh feeling to it," a Capcom producer said. "This is being done by reimagining the storyline of the game while keeping the essence of its direction, modernizing the graphics and updating the controls to a modern standard."

Capcom also teased some Resident Evil 4 content built specifically for PlayStation VR 2, the incoming version of Sony's console VR headset. 

On top of all the remake goodness, there's a PSVR2 version of Resident Evil Village, the latest Resident Evil game, on its way. The first trailer for this bit of content features scenes from early sections of the game, focusing on everyone's favorite tall vampire lady.