Gear Live: The Latest Tech, Gadgets, AI, and Gaming News
The New Apple Watch Reportedly Listens All Day, Then Recaps Your Life Back to You
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
A watch that listens to your day and then hands it back to you as a tidy summary is either the most useful thing Apple has put on your wrist in years, or the reason you take the thing off. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports it is coming to the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, which Apple is expected to show at its Surprise and Shine event at 10AM PT today.
The watch reportedly uses its microphone alongside GPS and its other sensors to pick up what you are doing, then generates a daily recap: what you ate, when you worked out, who you spent time with, and summaries of the conversations you had. Gurman reports the recaps live inside the new Siri app, so you can ask about your own day and get an answer. Apple has confirmed none of this. We find out in a couple of hours how much of it survives contact with an actual keynote.
Gurman Says Apple’s Foldable Is Called iPhone Duo, Supports Apple Pencil, and Starts at $2,000
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Rumors,
The foldable iPhone has a name, and it is not iPhone Ultra. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman posted last night that Apple settled on iPhone Duo, with a $2,000 starting price for 256GB, storage running up to 2TB at roughly $3,000, Apple Pencil support, and two colors: dark blue and white. It ships in October.
Apple has confirmed none of that. The keynote starts at 10:00am PT today, which means every line of this gets confirmed or corrected within a few hours. Gurman's track record on Apple's roadmap is about as good as it gets from outside the building, so it is worth taking seriously. It is still not official until Apple says it on stage.
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Apple’s Camera AirPods Were Supposed to Debut Today. Now They’re a 2027 Product.
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Portable Audio / Video, Rumors,
Somewhere in a version of today's Apple event that no longer exists, there are earbuds with cameras in them. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple planned to show off high-end AirPods with built-in cameras at the 10am Pacific keynote, and then took them off the schedule. They are now aimed at 2027.
This is Gurman's reporting, not an Apple announcement. Apple does not comment on products it has not shipped, and it has not commented on these. Gurman has been tracking the earbuds all year, though, and the story has held its shape even as the date kept sliding.
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Razer’s $50 Reclusa X Mini Is the Cheapest Way Into the Keyboard Rabbit Hole
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop, Peripherals,
Fifty bucks normally buys you a gaming keyboard you put up with. Razer's Reclusa X Mini 65%, announced Tuesday, costs $49.99 and lets you pull the switches out with your fingers and drop different ones in. No soldering iron required.
Hot-swap sockets, which take most standard 3-pin and 5-pin mechanical switches, usually show up on boards costing two or three times this much. Razer put them on its cheapest mechanical keyboard and made it the first product in a new Reclusa line.
Meta’s Muse Wants Your Inbox, Your Calendar, and a Card on File
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Software, Artificial Intelligence,
To use Meta's new AI agent the way Meta wants you to use it, you have to hand over your inbox, your calendar, your smart home accounts, and a working payment card. Muse, which started rolling out in the US this week, is built to go do things rather than answer questions, and doing things requires the keys.
So it opens a browser and fills in forms. It sends email on your behalf, books travel and negotiates your bills, and it keeps working after you close the app, remembering your preferences and volunteering suggestions you never asked for. Meta's own examples run from turning saved Instagram recipe reels into a grocery list to organizing a dinner, down to tracking who at the table can't eat what. It's live in the US on iOS, Android and muse.ai, with the AI glasses "coming soon."
Click to continue reading Meta’s Muse Wants Your Inbox, Your Calendar, and a Card on File
Kia’s Electric Hot Hatch Has Fake Gears, and Americans Can’t Buy It
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Transportation,
Kia's new EV4 GT has paddles behind the steering wheel that do not shift anything. Pull one and the car staggers the torque coming out of its motors to imitate a gearchange, with a synthesized engine noise to match. Kia calls it Virtual Gear Shift. The idea is that electric cars are so smooth your brain stops registering how fast they are, so the fix is to put the interruptions back in on purpose.
The EV4 GT is one of three GT-badged EVs Kia put on sale in Europe this week, alongside the EV3 GT and the EV5 GT. All three get dual-motor all-wheel drive, electronically controlled suspension, 20-inch alloys, and neon-green brake calipers, because a performance badge apparently requires a caliper color. Two of the three are never coming to the United States.
Click to continue reading Kia’s Electric Hot Hatch Has Fake Gears, and Americans Can’t Buy It
Nintendo’s Zelda 40th Anniversary Pro Controller Comes with a Display Stand
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Video Games,
Nintendo built a controller that comes with its own display stand, which tells you exactly what it expects you to do with it.
The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller: The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition showed up at today's Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct and lands October 29. The right grip is green, the left is black, a gold Triforce runs across the middle of the face, the trigger buttons are gold, and there's a small Hylian crest tucked up top. It launches the same day as the matching Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Switch 2 console and a carrying case with screen protector, both wearing the same gold Triforce on black (we've got a separate post on the console).
Mistral Raised 3 Billion Euros, and Not Being American Was the Pitch
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Artificial Intelligence,
Being based in Paris was supposed to be the handicap. Instead Mistral just raised 3 billion euros, about $3.5 billion, at a post-money valuation above 21 billion euros (roughly $24 billion). The company says that is the largest equity fundraising round any European technology company has ever completed, and Samsung Electronics led it.
Samsung co-led with the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity. a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg all joined. That last one is not a typo. When a national government turns up on a cap table next to Andreessen Horowitz, the pitch has stopped being about benchmark scores.
Click to continue reading Mistral Raised 3 Billion Euros, and Not Being American Was the Pitch
The Xiaomi 18 Fold Is 219 Grams, Runs Xiaomi’s Own Chip, and Stays in China
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Displays,
Most book-style foldables open into a shape that is close to square, which is fine for a map and awkward for almost everything else. Xiaomi copied a piece of paper instead. The Xiaomi 18 Fold opens to a 7.58-inch screen with the proportions of an A4 sheet, and closes onto a 5.38-inch cover screen with exactly the same proportions.
It weighs 219 grams, which makes it the lightest foldable Xiaomi has built, and it runs the XRing O3, the 3-nanometer processor Xiaomi designed in-house. The phone went official in China on September 7 and spent this week on the show floor at IFA in Berlin. It goes on sale September 10, one day after Apple's event.
A 2TB SSD Now Costs $400 Because AI Data Centers Bought the Rest
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop, Storage, Artificial Intelligence,
Go price a 2TB SSD right now. A drive that sat between $120 and $200 last year is knocking on $400, and plenty of listings have already walked past it. The small ones got hit too. A 256GB SSD that used to be a $25 impulse buy now runs several times that.
The usual fallback was a spinning hard drive, and those went up just as hard. A 4TB 3.5-inch SATA drive that cost about $120 a year ago is around $240 now, and 8TB went from roughly $200 to roughly $400. Engadget pulled those figures from PCPartPicker's price history.
Click to continue reading A 2TB SSD Now Costs $400 Because AI Data Centers Bought the Rest