Spotify has shelved plans to add AirPlay 2 support to its iOS app for the time being. "We've discussed this Idea internally and while we are working on supporting AirPlay2 in a proper way, we have decided to close it for now," a Spotify representative wrote on the community forums, as reported by MacRumors.
The company has pinned the blame on audio driver compatibility issues. Because of those, "this seems like a bigger project that we won't be able to complete in the foreseeable future."
Apple rolled out AirPlay 2 three years ago as part of iOS 11.4. The company also enabled support for third-party music services on HomePod and HomePod mini last year. In 2019, Spotify filed a complaint with the European Commission that accused Apple of locking it and other companies Apple competes with out of the likes of Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch. Spotify still doesn't offer native support for HomePod speakers, though you can play music from the app through Siri and download Spotify tracks on Apple Watch.
You can still connect Spotify to speakers and smart TVs over AirPlay or Spotify Connect. Spotify users won't officially be able to harness AirPlay 2 capabilities like reduced latency, multi-room audio and Siri control any time soon. However, because AirPlay is fully integrated with iOS, it should still work with any audio app as long as you use the OS-level playback controls, rather than the Spotify app.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its first-ever mobile broadband coverage map. The tool allows you to compare the LTE and voice coverage areas of the country’s four largest carriers, showing where you can expect to see wireless download and upload speeds of at least 5 Mbps and 1 Mbps, respectively.
The data you see on the map is accurate as of May 15th, 2021, and you can use the tool to compare what coverage looks like in your area away from the often misleading and confusing maps offered by AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Verizon (Engadget’s parent company). The tool is the result of last year’s Broadband DATA Act, which requires the FCC to collect and release robust data comparing different wired, fixed-wireless, satellite and mobile broadband service providers. To compile the map, the FCC collected standardized propagation information from the carriers. It also asked the public to help.
For too long the FCC has not had truly accurate broadband maps. But we're changing that. Starting right here and now. This is the first-of-its-kind wireless coverage map the agency has produced. And we're just getting started. More to come.https://t.co/FhgddIgRfh
“This map provides a preview of how the mobile data the FCC will collect under the standards set by the Broadband DATA Act will look when mapped,” the agency said. “Never before have maps been created using these new, standardized mobile data specifications, which will improve the uniformity and consistency of broadband availability data collected by the FCC.”
The map isn’t perfect. For example, you can’t see the extent of each carrier’s current 5G buildouts. But it’s hard to overstate just how much of an improvement this new tool is over what the FCC offered previously. To put things into context. In 2019, Microsoft estimated that 163 million Americans couldn’t access the internet at or above broadband speeds. Meanwhile, the FCC put that number closer to 25 million.
That discrepancy was the direct result of how the FCC compiled its data at the time. It relied on Form 477 filings from the service providers, which could include errors and exaggerations. FCC acting chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel says the new mobile broadband map is just the start of what the agency has planned on that front.
Google offered the first official details about the Pixel 6 just a few days ago, and it seems the company is gearing up to release the Pixel 5a as well. Previous leaks suggested the phone would be a revamped Pixel 4a 5G and a new report has shed some more light on the possible specs.
The device will reportedly have the same camera as the Pixel 5, as well as a headphone jack and an IP67 rating, according to Jon Prosser of Front Page Tech. The report suggests the Pixel 5a will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765G 5G chipset and have 6GB of RAM. There'll be a 4650MaH battery but no wireless charging support, according to Prosser. The phone's expected to have a 6.4-inch display and a single Mostly Black color option.
If all of that grabs your interest, you might not have to wait too long to get your hands on the Pixel 5a. The report suggests Google will release the device on August 26th for $450.
Google said in April it was still making a Pixel 5a with 5G, contrary to rumors at the time. It said the device would only land in the US and Japan and that it would be "announced in line with when last year’s a-series phone was introduced." It revealed the Pixel 4a in September 2020, so an August announcement and release date just about matches up. It's unclear whether Google plans to release a non-5G Pixel 5a.
We're steadily moving through August, and that means more summer deals are popping up all over. If you've got your eye on a pair of new high-end headphones, we've seen Sony's excellent WH-1000XM4 noise-cancelling over-ears fall back to $278, while Jabra's long-lasting Elite 85h model have returned to a budget-friendly $150. If better internet connectivity is what you're after, Amazon has dropped the three-pack of Google's WiFi mesh system to $150, providing a stronger WiFi network across a much larger area inside (and potentially outside) your home. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Sony WH-1000XM4
Engadget
Sony's excellent WH-1000XM4 ANC headphones often bounce up and down in price, so if you missed previous deals on them you're in luck. The wireless over-ears are back down to the $278 we saw in the Spring, a solid $72 saving on their typical price of $350.
The Jabra Elite 85h headphones are back down to a low of $150 at Amazon, which is around $100 off their normal price. They earned a score of 84 from us for their custom EQ and ANC modes, comfortable and attractive design and impressive battery life.
Families who are still largely working and studying at home might find that their WiFi network is feeling the strain, especially if someone's setup is far away from the router. If you're on the lookout for an upgrade, it may be worth considering the Google WiFi mesh system. A three-pack of nodes currently costs $150 on Amazon. That's the lowest price we've seen to date on the most recent model, which debuted in October at a price of $199 for the three-pack.
Amazon's first-gen Echo Show 5 has hovered around the $45 mark for the past week, but you've had to be quick to secure it from different retailers. If you missed the chance to get the Alexa-powered smart display at a discount, though, now's your chance to get one: It's available for $45 again at Amazon. That's the lowest price we've seen for the device, where it's been selling for around $50 these past months.
The Mac Mini M1 with extra storage is back down to $799 right now, offering a saving of $100. This is a great time to pick up the latest Mac Mini if you've wanted to upgrade your desktop to something more powerful that's also compact enough to fit into most desk setups.
MacBook Air M1
The latest MacBook Air M1 with 512GB of storage continues to maintain the low price we saw last week, meaning you can still grab it for $1,099. It's one of the best laptops for most people, and it's a great option for students going back to school. The Air M1 earned a score of 94 from us for its incredibly fast performance, excellent keyboard and trackpad, good battery life and lack of fan noise.
Jabra's Elite 85h headphones are available for $150 on Amazon once again, giving you another chance to grab them at the price if you weren't able to last month. We praised the wireless headphones for offering active noise cancellation that rivals the technologies used by Bose and Sony and gave it a score of 84 in our review. The device was priced at $300 upon launch in 2019, which we felt was a bit too high for what it can do. Amazon has been selling it for $174 after its sale in July, but now it's back down to its lowest price on the website.
To be clear, only the Titanium Black version is on sale for $150 on Jabra's official store on Amazon, while the rest will cost you a bit more. If you don't mind the lack of color options, though, one of the best features we liked about the headphones is their insane battery life that can last up for to 41 hours with noise cancelation turned off. During our tests, we used the Elite 85h for around two to three hours a day for seven days and still had 85 percent of power left by the time we were done.
We also liked that it has EQ and noise-cancellation presets you can choose from based on your environment. You can have different settings for use in public and in private, and you don't even have to manually switch between them. The headphones have the ability to analyze noise, so they can detect your location and switch to the appropriate profile.
In addition, we praised the headphones for having simple controls and a better design than some of their rivals. We noted in our review that Sony's 1000XM3 has better sound quality, but that device will set you back $100 more on Amazon right now.
Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is going to cost you. For two guests in a standard cabin for a two-night adventure, you’ll have to set aside just shy of $5,000.
Disney is promising it as "part live immersive theater, part themed environment, part culinary extravaganza, part real-life role-playing game." The company offers more details on how your story might unfold, with the ability to choose to side with the First Order (boo), or ally with the resistance.
There will also be lightsaber lessons, optional missions and the chance to interact with iconic SW characters who will, well, behave like video game NPCs. According to reports, each Starcruiser adventure is several months of salary one-of-a-kind, so if you can afford one journey on the cruiser, you can probably book a second, different, adventure.
The posit sounds very Westworld, and like that fictional theme park, it seems unashamedly aimed at only the wealthiest Star Wars fans. It also sounds like there will be no Star Wars experience like it. Temptation, however, might be outweighed by economic reality. Then again, it seems positively cheap compared to a ticket to actual space.
Google’s first battery-powered Nest Cam and Doorbell can be installed just about anywhere around your home, and you can even connect them to a wired power source, if you prefer. The battery life depends on how many recorded events the devices detect and factors like the temperature and settings. Google says the Doorbell’s battery will run for up to six months on a single charge, while the Nest Cam can run for up to seven months before you need to recharge it over USB. Continue reading.
The Messages, Photos and Siri features will also come to watchOS and macOS.
Apple has detailed new features focused on child safety. With the release of iOS 15, watchOS 8 and macOS Monterey later this year, the company says it will introduce a variety of child safety features across Messages, Photos and Siri.
To start, the Messages app will include new notifications to warn children, as well as their parents, when they either send or receive sexually explicit photos. When someone sends a child an inappropriate image, the app will blur it and display several warnings. Apple will also introduce new software tools in iOS and iPadOS that will allow the company to detect when someone uploads content to iCloud that shows children involved in sexually explicit acts. Rather than scanning photos when they're uploaded to the cloud, the system will use an on-device database of "known" images. These features and more will come to devices later this year. Continue reading.
President Biden’s latest executive order sets a target for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to have some form of zero-emissions driving, whether it's a pure EV, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The move is meant to not only promote clean transportation and limit climate change but help the US "outcompete" a Chinese car industry that's quickly shifting toward electrified vehicles. It could be an ambitious target: EVs have represented about 2 percent of US car sales for the past three years, according to the International Energy Agency and Pew Research. Continue reading.
The success of ‘Animal Crossing’ makes business as usual look worse by comparison.
In Nintendo’s latest financial report, it posted an operating profit of 119 billion yen, roughly $1.1 billion. That is, however, a 17.3 percent drop compared to the 144 billion yen ($1.3 billion) posted this time last year, when Switch consoles were consistently sold out and most of us were trapped indoors, isolating. Nintendo didn’t release a game that could match the success of Animal Crossing the year before. Amusingly, the company made a graph to show that, if you remove the Animal Crossing spike, its software sales have constantly increased since at least 2018. Continue reading.
Over the next 12 months, Microsoft is rolling out a series of updates for its OneNote apps on Windows with the intention of creating a single user experience. At the moment, there are two versions people can use: The OneNote app installed with Office and the OneNote for Windows 10 app available in the Microsoft Store. Microsoft will update the OneNote app with features currently exclusive to its counterpart pre-installed on Windows 10, though, and it will also give the program a visual refresh.
Microsoft originally intended to kill the OneNote app when the one for Windows 10 became available, but it changed its plans and revived the app in 2019. It upgraded the note-taking program with a bunch of new features and bundled it with Office installs a year later. Now, the tech giant says it will update OneNote with visual elements that it'll share with other Windows apps as part of Microsoft's efforts to give Windows 11 a more seamless look. The merged OneNote application will also gain access to the latest Microsoft pen and ink features, as well as a new navigational UI layout option.
Those already using the app installed with Office don't have to do anything but wait for the upcoming updates to roll out. As for those using OneNote for Windows 10, Microsoft will send them an in-app invite to upgrade to the other application once it's ready. The company says it expects to start sending out invitations in the second half of 2022, and it now advising organizations to make their personnel use the OneNote app, so they don't have to migrate next year.
Apple is reportedly planning an update that would allow it to scan iPhones for images of child sexual abuse. According to the Financial Times, the company has been briefing security researchers on the “neuralMatch” system, which would “continuously scan photos that are stored on a US user’s iPhone and have also been uploaded to its iCloud back-up system.”
The system would “proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected” and human reviewers would alert law enforcement if the images were verified. The neuralMatch system, which was trained using a database from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, will be limited to iPhones in the United States to start, the report says.
The move would be somewhat of an about face for Apple, which has previously stood up to law enforcement to defend users’ privacy. The company famously clashed with the FBI in 2016 after it refused to unlock an iPhone belonging to the man behind the San Bernardino terror attack. CEO Tim Cook said at the time that the government’s request was “chilling” and would have far-reaching consequences that could effectively create a backdoor for more government surveillance. (The FBI ultimately turned to an outside security firm to unlock the phone.)
Now, security researchers are raising similar concerns. Though there’s broad support for increasing efforts to fight child abuse, researchers who spoke to the FT said that it could open the door for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens, since a system designed to detect one type of imagery could be expanded to other types of content, like terrorism or other content perceived as “anti-government.”
At the same time, Apple and other companies have faced mounting pressure to find ways to cooperate with law enforcement. As the report points out, social media platforms and cloud storage providers like iCloud already have systems to detect child sexual abuse imagery, but extending such efforts to images on a device would be a significant shift for the company.
Apple declined to comment to FT, but the company could release more details about its plans “as soon as this week.”
As a wearable device, Amazon's Halo wristband is about as no-frills of a fitness tracker you can buy. It doesn't include a display, and outside of the two microphones that enable its controversial tone detection feature, it forgoes many of the more advanced sensors we've seen make their way into devices like the Apple Watch. But starting today, you can use the Halo band to see an overlay of your heart rate across various third-party apps and fitness equipment.
At launch, the integration works with machines from brands like NordicTrack and CLBMR, in addition to software like iFit and Openfit. To enable the feature, open the settings menu in the Amazon Halo app and find the "Heart Rate Sharing" option.
While not an exact match for the Apple Watch's GymKit functionality, the inclusion of heart rate sharing should make the Halo band more versatile, and that's something the wearable desperately needs. Once you get past its more controversial features, the problem with Halo is it doesn't stand out. In fact, most of the platform's best features are found inside the accompanying Halo app.
IMDb's free, ad-supported streaming service finally standalone mobile apps for iPhones, iPads and Android in the US. The Amazon-owned subsidiary released IMDb TV apps for LG Smart TVs, PlayStation 4, NVIDIA Shield and TiVo Stream 4K in March, following its recent expansion to Roku. Up until now, though, you'd have to fire up the IMDb app to access the service's offerings on mobile
The standalone apps' release could give the service a bigger reach and put it on the radar of more potential viewers. Amazon may have big plans for IMDb TV in the future, after all. According to reports that came out last year, the company is looking to make the free service available internationally. Mexico and the UK may be the first regions to get access to the platform outside the US, and if all goes well, IMDb TV could expand into Latin America and other European countries.
IMDb TV offers free access to popular shows and movies like Chicago Fire, All in the Family, Wolf of Wall Street and How to Train Your Dragon. It also gives you access to Amazon Originals made especially for the platform, including the crime drama Leverage: Redemption.
