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Tag: gear roundup

  • You Can Clamp Your Phone Into Razer’s Fancy New Game Controller

    You Can Clamp Your Phone Into Razer’s Fancy New Game Controller

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    Given everyone’s sustained interest in playing games on their phones, companies are eager to offer an experience that works better than just jabbing your fingers on a touchscreen. Razer, the maker of unapologetically robust and garish gaming devices, has a new offering that does just that.

    The new Razer Kishi Ultra is a souped up controller that adds pro-level thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers to just about any mobile device. It’s the latest in Razer’s Kishi lineup of portable gaming devices, which launched in 2020. The two handles pull apart, allowing you to slide your phone in between them. Let the spring-loaded clamp grip your phone, and you’ve got something like a DIY Nintendo Switch. It uses a USB-C port to connect to the phone. In addition, it can handle an iPad Mini and any Android tablet measuring up to 8 diagonal inches as long as it has a USB-C port. The Kishi Ultra only works with USB-C iPhones, so it’s limited to iPhone 15 and beyond. (It can even handle some folding phones.) The Kishi Ultra can also connect to your PC via USB-C cable. Like nearly everything Razer makes, the Kishi Ultra is loaded up with RGB lighting options which you can change via the associated app, so you can have your fill of customizable flashiness.

    The Kishi is unlike the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck, which are fully fledged portable gaming machines on their own. But gaming devices with more specific use cases are gaining popularity, like Playstation’s Portal device, which only lets you stream games from your existing PS5. Razer has been making gaming handheld devices since 2013, and has its own Steam Deck-style Razer Edge handheld. But more and more companies are eager to make devices that work with the screen you already have in your pocket. Devices like Razer’s latest and those from the gaming company Backbone are meant to strap controllers to the side of your device and enhance your mobile play time.

    Here’s some other consumer tech news from this week.

    Meta Adds an AI Images to WhatsApp

    Meta has added AI Image generation capabilities to its WhatsApp messaging platform. As part of its rollout for its Llama 3 large language model that came this week, the company has juiced up its Meta AI in-app offerings.

    The AI image generation option in WhatsApp works like sending a text message. You can go into a private chat with Meta AI and type out a prompt. The keyword in the input field is “imagine,” so if you type that and a description of the image you want to create, the AI assistant will generate a visual representation of your prompt. And it happens nearly instantly. The image pops up on screen as you’re typing, and you can see the image change and generate in real time as you add more words to your prompt. This can get … quite weird as you add more parameters to your request, but the more descriptive you are, the more detail the generator can work into a picture. The resulting images are about what you would expect from any AI art source these days—weird proportions, humans with too many fingers, misplaced eyeballs. Still, it’s both neat and very strange to watch an AI generate your description of something as you’re writing it.

    Meet GMC’s Hulking New Denali EV Pickup

    Photograph: GMC

    There is a deluge of new EVs coming out this year, ranging from tiny three-wheeled smart cars like the Nimbus One to revved-up supercars like the upcoming electric Dodge Charger. Pickup trucks are a slightly more niche space in the EV market, aside from popular models like the Ford F-150 Lightning, Rivian’s offerings, and Tesla’s floundering Cybertruck (every one of which was just recalled.)

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • Walmart Is Selling the Apple MacBook Air With M1 for Just $699

    Walmart Is Selling the Apple MacBook Air With M1 for Just $699

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    For the first time ever, Walmart is selling Apple MacBooks in stores. The mega-retailer isn’t selling the fastest models but rather the MacBook Air with an M1 chip, which was originally released in the fall of 2020. The laptop is listed for the reasonable price of $699. That’s a $300 discount over the M2 version from 2022, which Apple still sells for $999, and a $400 discount over the just-released MacBook Air with M3, which Apple sells for $1,099.

    Clearly, Apple is looking to move inventory of its old hardware to make room for its new offerings. Since Apple started selling its newest MacBook Air model just over a week ago, it has delisted the option to buy a new M1 Air from its website. The model is still available as one of Apple’s refurbished machines, albeit for $50 more than the new-in-box computers Walmart is stocking. Other retailers are benefitting from this blowout too. Earlier this week, BestBuy started selling M1-equipped iMac desktops for $900, a discount of more than $500.

    The MacBook Air with M1 is not the best MacBook you can buy; the laptops Walmart is selling have 8 GB of memory and just 256 GB of storage, so they should be considered entry-level machines. If you need more oomph, see WIRED’s MacBook buying guide for more recommendations. But if you need a good, cheap Mac, this is a great deal on a computer with Apple’s Silicon chipset.

    Here’s some more consumer tech news from this week.

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    How Do You Do, Fellow Redditors?

    As Reddit readies itself for its IPO, the company is eager to make itself ever more appealing to advertisers. Reddit has announced a suite of business-friendly tools called Reddit Pro, which are meant to help companies better reach users everywhere on the platform. Now, that includes looking the part too.

    The latest feature in this vein is called free-form ads. It lets companies take out ads that look and feel like regular Reddit posts. It apes the look of a popular megathread post, with a faint “Sponsored” disclaimer at the top to set it apart.

    It’s likely to conjure up the same problem as sponsored ads on Google Search, which can make the service a slog to sort through all the ad posts before finding something substantive. It’s also a move that’s likely to rub Reddit’s particularly prickly user base the wrong way, considering that many of the most vocal Redditors tend to bristle at brands’ presence on the platform and rebel when Reddit seems to prioritize business over users.

    Also: Reddit’s policy of allowing AI training models to access its user data is drawing the attention of the US Federal Trade Commission, the subject of our next item …

    The FTC Screams for Ice Cream

    The FTC and US Department of Justice have filed a joint comment advocating that soft-serve ice cream machines be made easier to fix. It’s a move that would affect all commercial soft-serve machines in the US, but the comment is particularly directed at McDonalds, which has become notorious for the constant breakage of its ice cream machines.

    In 2021, an activist hacker group developed a device to fix the ice cream machines better than the company’s systems could, and then later sued McDonalds after the restaurant chain effectively shut down their guerrilla efforts. That case is still ongoing,

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • Rad Power Bikes Has 4 New Models—and Safer Batteries

    Rad Power Bikes Has 4 New Models—and Safer Batteries

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    The Seattle ebike company Rad Power Bikes has announced four new ebike models, all of which have the very important distinction of being unlikely to have their batteries suddenly burst into flames.

    The company says its new Safe Shield Batteries—which come standard on all four new bikes—have been certified at UL-2271, an industry standard ranking for battery safety. That means the batteries on these models of Rad Power’s bikes won’t be nearly as susceptible to the kinds of battery fires that have been plaguing low-end ebikes and scooters and have led to injuries and nearly 20 deaths in the US.

    Rad Power had 30,000 of its RadWagon 4 ebikes recalled in 2022 due to misaligned tires, an issue the company has apologized for and says it has fixed. There’s been one reported case of a Rad Power bike catching fire, but other than that the company hasn’t contributed to the wave of cheap ebike battery fires. We tend to like Rad Power’s bikes quite a bit here at WIRED, so this increase in battery safety is welcome news, especially because of the added emphasis on the whole “not exploding” thing.

    The RadExpand 5 Plus is a folding bike with an electric drivetrain powered by the new battery.

    Photograph: Rad Power Bikes

    Rad Power’s new bikes come in a few forms. There’s its Radster commuter bike, which comes in Road and Trail models for different terrains. Both start at $1,999. The company also announced the RadExpand 5 Plus, an $1,899 folding bike, and its new iteration of the cargo-oriented RadWagon 5, which starts at $2,199.

    Here’s some other consumer tech news from this week.

    Ask Wendy’s Anything

    Reddit is trying to make itself friendlier to marketers. This week, the company announced a new suite of tools, called Reddit Pro, that will be available to businesses for free.

    Reddit Pro offers brands a variety of ways to engage with the platform’s users, in service of helping advertisers better pour themselves into every eyeball remotely possible. For instance, Reddit will offer “AI-powered insights” that the company says will sift through the site’s 17 billion posts to find relevant threads and topics that companies can then use to “join or start conversations” (aka deploying their deeply cringe marketing tactics). That means when you write a comment about, say, Wendy’s, in a thread way down on a tiny subreddit, the brand’s social media team will have an easier time finding it and spouting off some sassy brand banter in the replies.

    It’s the latest move in Reddit’s slow, controversial quest for profitability (and possibly enshittification). Reddit filed to take the company public in February, which will enable it to sell stock to shareholders. The company, which has never proven profitable, is eager to make its platform more appealing to advertisers who can spend money in its forums. This is likely why Reddit has made moves like charging an exorbitant amount of money for the tools developers use to access the platform’s data, effectively killing third-party apps. This move of giving brands and advertisers an easier portal into every segment of the site is another stab at those ambitions.

    Dodge This

    There’s a new Dodge chargin’ onto the scene. Yes, it’s a Charger, the beefy, grotesquely fuel-inefficient muscle car that’s been roaring across roads for the better part of the past century. In 2021, Dodge announced it would ditch its gas-powered Chargers in favor of electric variants. This week, the first stage of that rollout has officially begun.

    Billed—somewhat arguably—as “the world’s first and only electric muscle car,” the Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack EV is an absolutely juiced-up road-rage machine that’s bound to be the closest thing you can get to driving a Transformer. It boasts up to 670 horsepower and has a quoted zero-to-60 time of 3.3 seconds. The car also comes with an array of features meant to make it easier to mainline high-octane driving adrenaline. There are dedicated performance modes for rubber-burnin’ excursions like Drag, Track, Drift, and Donut modes. Another setting, called PowerShot, increases horsepower by 40 hp for 15 seconds. It’s like injecting your car with nitrous oxide but keeping it street legal.

    Nikon Takes a Red Eye

    Camera manufacturer Nikon announced this week that it is scooping up the cinematic camera company Red. Red’s professional digital cameras have a long reputation in cinematography circles for pushing the boundaries of what camera sensors and optics can do. They’re traditionally expensive, beefy devices aimed at professionals producing cinema-quality content. If you watch any big-budget shows or movies on network television or the streamers, you’ve surely seen something shot on Red.

    This move by Nikon points to the company’s video ambitions. Nikon makes very good photography cameras but has struggled to compete with the likes of Canon when it comes to video. Buying a premium video-camera company may certainly give the brand a leg up.

    Hey Google, U OK?

    There’s always lots going on at Google. As one of the biggest tech firms in the world, the company often attracts a lot of scrutiny and criticism, much of it warranted. But Google’s been on a roll lately, with problems stemming from its rush to push out AI products, its recent rounds of layoffs, and internal discrimination against its own employees. All of this makes for a very chaotic time for the company, which raises the ultimate question: Is Google OK?

    This week on WIRED’s Gadget Lab podcast, we talk about the online uproar about Google’s Gemini AI going “woke” and all the internal turmoil roiling the big Silicon Valley company.

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    Boone Ashworth

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  • It’s Apparently Easy to Crack the Apple Vision Pro’s Front Screen

    It’s Apparently Easy to Crack the Apple Vision Pro’s Front Screen

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    Apple’s mixed-reality headset is selling well, but it’s embroiled in a new mystery that’s proving tough to crack.

    As first reported by MacRumors, some customers have discovered a mysterious crack appearing vertically down the center of the front-facing screen on their Vision Pro headsets. The reports have come from only a small number of users, most of them talking about it on Reddit, which can be an unreliable source. That said, Engadget reports that the same crack has occurred on its review unit. The folks affected say they haven’t mishandled the devices—there’s been no dropping or smashing that could create the crack in the laminated glass screen. So it’s not yet clear what exactly is causing the problem, or whether it actually affects the performance of the Vision Pro.

    WIRED reached out to Apple to ask about the cracks on the Apple Vision Pro’s front screen and what could be causing them, but the company hasn’t responded.

    Apple has chosen to make its first headset out of premium materials like aluminum and glass that have resulted in the device being both heavy and less durable. For an example of how it stands up to stress, take this video of YouTuber JerryRigsEverthing absolutely demolishing an Apple Vision Pro headset. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t do well if you set it on fire.)

    Here’s some other consumer tech news.

    Apple Sports a New App

    This week, Apple announced a dedicated app for sports lovers. It’s called—wait for it—Apple Sports. The app is free on iOS, and it gives iPhone users access to real-time sports scores. It can be used to track scores and stats from some professional and college leagues, like Major League Soccer, NBA and NCAA basketball, Premier League soccer, and NHL hockey. Notably missing are other sports giants like the MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NWSL, and WNBA, though Apple says those leagues are coming to the app soon for their upcoming seasons.

    The app lets users filter and customize the scoreboards to show their favorite teams. It’s also meant to push users toward watching games on Apple TV, with the inclusion of a “Watch on Apple TV” button in the app. While the iPhone app is free, streaming the games usually requires a subscription.

    Apply PC Games Directly to the Forehead

    In other VR news, Sony says it is testing out making its newest VR headset compatible with PC games. Sony’s PS VR2 came out a year ago, and while it’s a fun, powerful device, it received some criticism for requiring a tethered connection to a PS5 console. Now, Sony is exploring the idea of letting players utilize the headset for gameplay on PCs as well.

    The announcement was buried a few paragraphs into an update about new games coming to Sony’s console platform. The company didn’t share any details about which PC games it is testing on PS VR2, or when such a feature might become available.

    Still, it’s a welcome cross-platform move that may bring Sony a step closer to ending the console wars. That’s probably not the company’s immediate goal here, but it is not the first move by a gaming company on the interoperability front. Last week, the Xbox team announced that several of its previously exclusive console games will soon be made available on other platforms like PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch.

    What Are You Dune 2 Night?

    Swiss luxury watchmaker Hamilton has unveiled two new timepieces inspired by director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune sequel. As you might expect, they look like something that’s arrived straight from Arakkis. (That’s the Dune planet.) The exterior is a rugged matte black, with bright blue numbers and watch hands meant to evoke the color of the eyes of the Fremens. (They’re the Dune people.) The triangular shape of the case is an evolution of Hamilton’s Ventura model, which was first introduced in the 1950s.

    The Ventura XXL Bright costs $1,810 and is limited to 3,000 total units. The Ventura Edge Dune watch is $2,553 and is limited to 2,000 total pieces. Dune: Part Two opens next Friday, March 1.

    Tech Trouble

    It’s a rough time to be in the tech industry for a lot of workers, especially those who have been swept up in the great wave of layoffs that have happened so far this year. In a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of tech workers lost their jobs. Companies of all sizes have made cuts recently, including Google, Amazon, Discord, and Instacart. It’s a stark shift for an industry that grew by enticing employees with extravagant campuses and benevolent benefits. Now, faced with a glut of job seekers, companies have gotten very particular about who they hire. It’s harder than ever to land a tech job, and both sides of the interview table are getting creative about how they approach the other. (Yeah, they’re probably all using AI.)

    This latest episode of WIRED’s Gadget Lab podcast dives into the plight of tech workers, and how getting a job and keeping one have become much more precarious.

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    Boone Ashworth

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