Earlier this year, Universal Audio launched a new subscription service called "Spark" that gave Mac users affordable access to several plugins. Now, the company has announced that Spark is finally available for Windows 10 and 11 PCs. Similar to the service for Mac, it doesn't require any Universal Audio hardware or even the company's Apollo or Volt audio interfaces to work. The plug-ins included with the subscription, while include compressors, reverbs and delays, as well as preamps and several instruments, will run natively on a Windows computer. 

At the moment, Spark subscribers get access to 17 plugins from UA, Neve, Moog, API, Lexicon and Teletronix, among others, and more is expected to be added over time. Members who already own the perpetual license of a plugin included with the service will get access to a corresponding native version for Spark without having to pay subscription fees. 

To note, the plugins included with Spark cost hundreds of dollars each, while a subscription costs $20 a month or $150 a year. It could be a great affordable option for those who don't need more plugins than what the service offers. Those who want try it out can sign up for a 14-day free trial before committing to a subscription, while Volt audio interface owners can user it for free for a whole month. 

Samsung may not have left its battery troubles completely in the past. YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss (aka Arun Rupesh Maini) and others have noticed that batteries in Samsung phones are swelling up at a disproportionately high rate. While this most often affects older devices where ballooning batteries are more likely, some of them are only a couple of years old — the 2020-era Galaxy Z Fold 2, for instance. It's usually obvious (the phone back pops loose), but it can be subtle enough that you may not realize your battery is in a dangerous state.

Battery swelling isn't a new problem, or unique to Samsung. As lithium batteries age, their increasingly flawed chemical reactions can produce gas that inflates battery cells and increases the risk of a fire. This author has had two non-Samsung phones meet their ends this way. It's more likely to happen if you leave a battery without charging or discharging for a long time, and many companies (such as Apple) recommend that you keep batteries at a roughly 50 percent charge if you won't use a device for extended periods.

The concern is that swelling appears to affect Samsung phones of the past few years more than other brands, and that the power packs are rated to last five years without hazards like this. Tech video creators are uniquely well-suited to track issues like this — Maini and people like him often store dozens or hundreds of phones in identical conditions, although they don't necessarily keep the handsets at appropriate charge levels.

It's not clear just how broad the problem is, or how systemic it might be. We've asked Samsung for comment and will let you know if we hear back. However, it's safe to say the company would rather not deal with more battery woes. The Galaxy Note 7's fire-prone battery led Samsung to conduct a massive recall that (temporarily) tarnished the firm's reputation. With that said, the crisis also prompted a focus on battery safety and served as a warning sign to the phone industry. If nothing else, the swelling reports could educate users and manufacturers.

Probably the biggest change Apple announced with iPadOS 16 earlier this year is Stage Manager, a totally new multitasking system that adds overlapping, resizable windows to the iPad. That feature also works on an external display, the first time that iPads could do anything besides mirror their screen on a monitor. Unfortunately, the feature was limited to iPads with the M1 chip — that includes the 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pro released in May of 2021 as well as the M1-powered iPad Air which Apple released earlier this year. All other older iPads were left out.

That changes with the latest iPadOS 16 developer beta, which was just released. Now, Apple is making Stage Manager work with a number of older devices: it'll work on the 11-inch iPad Pro (first generation and later) and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (third generation and later). Specifically, it'll be available on the 2018 and 2020 models that use the A12X and A12Z chips rather than just the M1. However, there is one notable missing feature for the older iPad Pro models — Stage Manager will only work on the iPad's build-in display. You won't be able to extend your display to an external monitor.

Apple also says that developer beta 5 of iPadOS 16. is removing external display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads, something that has been present since the first iPadOS 16 beta was released a few months ago. It'll be re-introduced in a software update coming later this year. Given that some of the iPad community has been pretty vocal about issues with Stage Manager, particularly when using it with an external display, it makes sense that Apple is taking some extra time to keep working on it. 

Obviously, we'll need to try Stage Manager on an older iPad Pro before we can say how well it works, but the A12X and A12Z chips are still plenty powerful, so the experience should hopefully not be any different than on an M1 iPad. It's a bummer that external monitor support isn't included, but this should still be welcome news to people who bought Apple's most expensive iPads in the last few years.

Apple provided Engadget with the following statement about this update:

We introduced Stage Manager as a whole new way to multitask with overlapping, resizable windows on both the iPad display and a separate external display, with the ability to run up to eight live apps on screen at once. Delivering this multi-display support is only possible with the full power of M1-based iPads. Customers with iPad Pro 3rd and 4th generation have expressed strong interest in being able to experience Stage Manager on their iPads. In response, our teams have worked hard to find a way to deliver a single-screen version for these systems, with support for up to four live apps on the iPad screen at once.

External display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads will be available in a software update later this year.

The Google Play Store is notorious for making it difficult to find apps optimized for non-phone devices —you've often had to guess and hope for the best. Now, however, it just involves a couple of taps. Google says it recently added Play Store home pages to its Android app with recommendations for Android Automotive, Android TV and Wear OS apps. Visit "other devices" and you can find a health tracker for your Galaxy Watch 5, or a video service for your Chromecast.

New search filters also limit results to those that support non-phone hardware. If you find something you like, you can remotely install it from your handset. Google also noted that it previously revised the Play Store website to improve navigation and features like remote installs.

Google

The move follows efforts to accommodate tablet users, and could be helpful if you can't (or just don't want to) search for apps on the device where you'll use them. That's particularly helpful for Wear OS users who might have to browse apps on a tiny screen. You might find more apps for your devices and (as Google no doubt hopes) increase your chances of sticking to the Android ecosystem.

It's also difficult to ignore the timing. Google is formally debuting the Pixel Watch at its New York City event on October 6th, and just revamped the 1080p Chromecast. The improved app discovery could help sell these products to customers wondering if their favorite app is available. Not that you'll likely mind if you prefer third-party gear — this might boost Android as a whole.

If you want to see the power of competition in action, just look at the race between Intel and AMD to deliver the fastest PC CPU. While Intel was plagued with production delays and design issues over the past decade, AMD doubled-down on its Zen architecture to create an impressive family of Ryzen chips suited to performance-hungry enthusiasts. Today, AMD's chips power some of our favorite gaming laptops, like the ASUS Zephyrus G14.

Just when we were about to give up on Intel, though, it finally delivered on its long-awaited hybrid chips with the 12th-gen Core CPUs. Thanks to a combination of performance cores (P-cores) and efficient cores (E-cores), they trounced AMD in most multi-threaded benchmarks while using less power than the previous 11th-gen chips.

Now, it's time for the follow-up: Intel's 13th-gen Core chips, AKA Raptor Lake. And it sure looks like Intel isn't slumming it. The company's new top-end chip, the Core i9-13900K, sports 24 cores (8 P-cores and 16 E-cores) and can reach up to a 5.8GHz Max Turbo frequency. In comparison, last year's 12900K offered 16 cores (8P and 8E), and a maximum speed of 5.2 GHz. Intel claims the new 13900K is 15 percent faster than its predecessor in single-threaded tasks and 41 percent better for multi-threaded work like video encoding or 3D rendering.

Intel

The 13th-gen chips are built on an upgraded version of the Intel 7 process, which features the company's third-generation SuperFin transistor. When that 3D transistor technology was first announced in 2020, it sounded like a way for Intel to eke out more performance from its 10nm designs as it struggled to hit 7nm. (The Intel 7 process is still 10nm, following its rebranding last year.) For the most part, it seems like that was the case. AMD was able to reach 6nm with this year's Ryzen 6000 and 7000 chips, but Intel proved with its 12th-gen chips that it could still leap ahead with a larger fabrication process.

Based on the initial specifications, the 13th-gen chips look like a massive improvement across the entire lineup. The Core i5-13600K adds four cores and an initial 200Mhz of Turbo speed, hitting 14 cores and up to 5.1 GHz, compared to its predecessor. The i7-13700K now offers up to 16 cores and 5.4GHz, whereas last year's equivalent i7 was 12 cores.

The big takeaway? If you skipped last year's chips, and are running older Intel hardware, the 13th-gen CPUs look like the update you've been waiting for. Intel claims the 13900K is 27 percent faster than the 12900K when it comes to content creation multitasking, using apps like Adobe Media Encoder and Photoshop. And it's reportedly 34 percent faster for media creation apps like Blender and Unreal Engine.

While Intel doesn't have comparisons against AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000 chips (they're not available yet, after all), the company says the 13900K is 58 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X in Spider-Man: Remastered. That's to be expected, though, since the AMD chip is almost two years old at this point.

It's tough to tell how this latest battle between Intel and AMD will go, though we plan to test as much of the hardware as we can. If anything, though, it's certainly an exciting time to be in the market for new CPUs.

New Intel PCs will soon have a feature that Macs have offered for years: the ability to text, take calls and send files to their iPhones. That's all thanks to Intel's Unison app, which aims to keep Windows user in their workflow without being distracted by their phones. And yes, it also works with Android devices.

After acquiring the Israeli company Screenovate last year, Intel revamped its phone integration tool to suit more demanding users. With Unison, there's support for VPNs, firewalls and IT manageability. Intel also paid special attention to battery efficiency, as well as juggling wireless connections across Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular. The result is something that could be more useful than Microsoft's Your Phone app for Windows, which looks very polished but only works with Android phones.

According to Josh Newman, Intel's VP of mobile innovation, Unison will offer fast file transfers between phones and computers. (We're still waiting for more details on the actual connection speeds.) For example, you'd be able to quickly take a photo or video on your phone and throw it over to your Windows computer for additional editing. The app will also let you push files from your PC to your phone.

As a lifelong Windows user who can't help but covet the integration between Macs and iOS devices, Unison could be exactly what many PC users have been waiting for. Still, we'll need to see it in action before we make any final judgements, and its limited support could be an issue.

To start, Intel will only offer Unison a few 12th-gen Evo PCs from HP, Acer and Lenovo this fall. Newman says it'll head to future 13th-gen Evo systems next year. When asked if it could ever support earlier Intel hardware, Newman didn't rule it out, but he noted that the company wanted to see how Unison performed on a select group of systems first. There's also nothing stopping Unison from supporting AMD chips eventually, he said, but the companies would have to collaborate to make it happen.

I wasn’t expecting Apple, of all companies, to deliver the most competitively priced smartwatch you can buy in 2022. But with Apple shaving $30 off the cost, the new Watch SE is arguably the most compelling wearable on the market. For $150 less than the new Series 8, this year’s Watch SE delivers a comprehensive suite of health and fitness tools, emergency features and surprisingly few tradeoffs. It even uses the same new chip as the Series 8, and it looks indistinguishable to boot.

Design and hardware

If you’ve seen one Apple Watch, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Unlike the majority of smartwatches for Android users, iPhone owners are stuck with the rounded square face the company has retained year after year. At this point, it feels like most people are used to the shape and have either embraced it, adjusted to it or given up complaining.

I’m one of those who’s decided to no longer waste my breath asking for a round face. At least the Watch SE looks inoffensive and is light, comfortable and well made. The 40mm model I’ve been testing sits nicely on my wrist and most of the time I barely even notice it’s there. A 44mm version is also available.

It’s worth noting that most recent wearables are similarly unobtrusive, though at 26.4 grams (0.93 ounces), the 40mm Apple Watch SE is one of the lightest around. Meanwhile, the Fitbit Sense and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 both outweigh it at 37.6 grams and 28.7 grams, respectively.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Though the SE’s underside is made from a nylon composite and sapphire crystal instead of the ceramic on its predecessor and the Series 8, I didn’t even realize there was a difference until I scrutinized the spec sheet.

Unlike the Series 8 and Watch Ultra, the new SE isn’t rated IPX6 for dust resistance, but it is water resistant at up to 50 meters. It also uses an older heart rate monitor than the other two, but comes with the same S8 system-in-a-package (SiP) processor, as well as an onboard high-g accelerometer that makes crash detection possible.

Like its predecessor, the SE’s screen is covered by an Ion-X glass as opposed to the sapphire crystal on the Series 8. I’ve had no mishaps with the new SE, though my first review unit of the last-generation device did get seriously damaged, with spiderweb cracks covering the display after it fell off my bathroom sink. If you’re clumsy or anticipate being careless with your smartwatch, it might be worth paying more to get a hardier model.

Display

The Watch SE’s Retina display is bright, crisp and easy to read, even in direct sunlight. That latter trait has a lot to do with the fact that Apple consistently uses colorful text on a black background, which is great for readability. Though Samsung watches like the Galaxy Watch 5 often have higher resolutions and greater brightness, they also sometimes use tiny fonts with low contrast and can be hard to read.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

The new SE has the same display as its predecessor, which is to say it’s also an LTPO OLED panel that runs at resolutions of 394 x 324 and 448 x 368 for the 40mm and 44mm versions, respectively. It’ll also max out at 1,000 nits of brightness like the older SE and the Series 8.

Besides the lack of a skin temperature sensor, the main difference between this year’s Watch SE and its more premium siblings, is that it doesn’t have an Always On Display (AOD). This just means you’ll have to lift your wrist (fairly deliberately sometimes) to see things like the time, how long you’ve been working out or a notification that just came through. It does take a second for the Watch SE to wake up and show me what I’m looking for, but it never felt too laggy. If you’re the impatient type and have money to spare, though, this is one feature that might make the Series 8 worth the extra $150.

Performance and in use

For the price, it’s impressive that the Watch SE uses the same S8 SiP as the Series 8 and Watch Ultra. In general, this meant the $250 watch was just as snappy as its pricier counterparts at setting new watch faces, measuring my heart rate, starting workouts and more. I wore the SE and a Series 8 during my testing and sometimes it was quicker to detect that I had been walking for 10 minutes or longer, while other times higher-end model would be first. Regardless of which device alerted me first, though, they both clocked roughly the same duration for my outdoor walks.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Using the SE to track my daily HIIT and resistance training sessions felt exactly the same as using the Series 8. The only difference was that the latter’s AOD kept the workout screen on so I could more easily keep an eye on stats like elapsed time and calories burned.

The most significant feature that the SE lacks is the new skin temperature sensor that Apple introduced on the Series 8. This measures the wearer’s body temperature overnight and, based on any deviations from a baseline reading, retrospectively estimates if they’ve ovulated. Because the SE doesn’t have the hardware, it doesn’t offer this ovulation-tracking feature. But it does everything else related to cycle and sleep-tracking. You can log your periods or wear this to bed to see how long you’ve spent in zones like REM, Deep and Core sleep.

Despite packing an older heart rate monitor than the Series 8 and Watch Ultra, the SE didn’t take significantly longer to deliver a reading. Frankly, for the most part, I couldn’t tell that there was any difference between the SE and the Series 7 I had been wearing for a year. Missing features like the ECG and blood oxygen apps weren’t things I used much anyway.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

Battery life

One area where the SE lagged pricier Apple Watches is battery life. While the Series 8 usually stuck around all day with juice to spare the next morning, the SE tended to run dangerously low at night if I’d been particularly active earlier. I usually track one workout every morning and rely on the watches to automatically detect my two to five outdoor walks each day, all while trying to hit my stand and move goals. If I walk for longer than 10 minutes more than twice, the Watch SE will struggle to last till midnight.

Another notable difference between the SE and the Series 7 and later is that it doesn’t offer fast charging, but it never took longer than an hour to get back to 100 percent.

Wrap-up

Apple sacrificed surprisingly few features on the second-gen Watch SE. As a starter smartwatch, it offers plenty of health and fitness-tracking functions, while providing peace of mind via emergency features like crash detection and compass trackback. As long as you’re not extremely clumsy or impatient, you won’t miss things like the hardier screen, dust resistance or always-on display. At $250, the new Watch SE is the best smartwatch for the money.

Last year, I tried the Freewrite Smart Typewriter — an expensive, single-purpose E Ink typewriter that does one thing very well. It lets you draft text with an excellent keyboard and zero distractions. If you're a serious writer, there's a lot to like about it, but it is most definitely not cheap; Astrohaus, the company behind the Freewrite, even raised the prices of its products, including the full-size model and the portable laptop-style Freewrite Traveler, earlier this year. 

Today, though Astrohaus is unveiling a third device that they've been teasing for a few weeks now, the Freewrite Alpha. The most important thing to know is that the Alpha will be priced at $349, or $249 if you purchase via the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that starts today. That's still not cheap, but it's half the price of the Freewrite Traveler while still offering the same core features as the other products in the lineup.

The Freewrite Alpha is a small two-pound slate with a pop-out kickstand that probably isn't quite as portable as the Traveler, but should still be quite easy to carry with you just about anywhere. Despite the small size, it nevertheless has a full-size mechanical keyboard with Kailh Choc V2 low-profile switches. My guess is that they'll have a lot more travel than the laptop-style keyboard on the Traveler, though they probably won't be quite as satisfying a typing experience as you'll get with the Kailh Box Brown keyboard on the full-size Smart Typewriter. 

Alan Burns

It's also the first Freewrite to use an LCD display rather than the E Ink screens on the other models. It's a smaller screen than the already-small displays on other Freewrite models; it can display between two and six lines of text, depending on the font size you use. Given that Freewrite devices are meant specifically for drafting rather than editing, this shouldn't be too much of a concern, but you will see less copy on this device than other ones. You can scroll back up and see what you've written and used the WASD keys to move your cursor around, but I've found that, for the most part, I just plow ahead and write. 

Astrohaus says that the LCD display is reflective and uses ambient light, so it's not quite the same as looking at a glowing rectangle like your phone or iPad. But it likely won't be quite as easy on the eyes as the E Ink screen on other Freewrites. But on the other hand, the refresh rate should be much quicker. As for battery life the Alpha should last about 100 hours. Past Freewrites haven't had specific battery estimates; Astrohaus just say they last weeks between charges. 

Alan Burns

There are a lot of things the Alpha has in common with other Freewrite models. Everything you write is automatically saved to the device locally, and — assuming you connect it to WiFi — everything is also backed up to the cloud and available in the Freewrite Postbox web app. You also don't have to use this proprietary service, as the Alpha can also back up to Evernote, Dropbox or Google Drive. For the old school among us, you can also connect the Alpha to a computer and pull the local files off via its USB-C port (this is also used for charging). 

If you're interested, the aforementioned Indiegogo campaign is live now, but devices aren't expected to ship until July of 2023. That's a long wait for this product, but the current $249 price point is a lot more affordable than any previous Freewrite — so if this device catches your eye, it might be worth checking out on Indiegogo. While Freewrite devices are expensive, I can say from experience that they really can help you focus on writing, provided you can keep away from your phone, of course.

Chipotle's tortilla-making robot will soon help out in a restaurant you can visit. The chain has unveiled a slew of technology updates that include moving the Miso Robotics-made Chippy robot to a real restaurant. The machine will start cooking tortilla chips in a Fountain Valley, California location in October. Feedback from customers and workers will help the company decide on a national rollout.

Artificial intelligence will influence some human cooks, too. Chipotle is piloting a demand-based cooking system that uses AI to tell staff what and when to cook based on forecasts for how much they'll need. In theory, this lightens the load for employees while making sure there's enough freshly-cooked tacos and burritos when you show up for dinner. The pilot is underway at eight Orange County, California restaurants.

There's also an upgrade for tech you can use. An opt-in program in the Chipotle App lets you know when your order's ready, reminds you to scan your rewards code and can even warn if you show up at the wrong pick-up location. The experiment is in progress at 73 restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Chippy and kitchen AI projects may be well-timed. While there are concerns that AI and robotics may automate people out of jobs at restaurants like Chipotle and McDonald's, the deployments come as retail continues to struggle with staff shortages. This theoretically frees workers to concentrate on serving customers, rather than handling drudgery behind the scenes.

Almost exactly a year after Nreal unveiled its Air augmented reality glasses, the company is bringing the device to the US. Nreal Air, which the company is pitching as a device for streaming shows and playing games on, is available from Amazon starting today for $379. As with Nreal's $599 Light glasses, the Air will need to be tethered to a phone or other device. That could be a little easier if you snap up the new $59 Nreal Adaptor, an HDMI-to-Lightning dongle for iPhone.

In line with that peripheral, Nreal has upgraded the Air's iOS and Mac compatibility. At the outset, the Air will offer screen mirroring from iOS — Nreal's Nebula operating system doesn't run on iPhones yet. Still, you'll be able to watch streaming video services on a virtual 130-inch display.

That said, a version of Nebula will be available for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, Nreal said. When you plug the Air into a Mac, a user interface called AR Desktop will open up. You'll be able to view multiple virtual displays at the same time, which could make the Air useful if you need more screen real estate while travelling.

Nreal

The company has also redesigned Nebula. In particular, the AR Space experience, which Nreal users see when they open Nebula, now has a borderless curved wall design and animated menu icons. Users will receive recommendations for content through a new widget, which offers the option of previewing apps without having to open them. The Spatial Browser offers a horizontal mode (for multi-window web browsing) and a vertical mode for sites that demand a lot of scrolling.

In addition, Nreal is adding more casual games and a pair of new apps. The first of those is called Teleport, which will allow you to explore 3D models of real-world objects that have been scanned with phones. You'll be able to leave photos for other users, as well as voice and text messages. Teleport will be available later this year. Meanwhile, Mirror Mode enables users to play PC and console games on a 200-inch virtual screen. Cloud gaming services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming are supported too.