Apple’s third-generation AirPods are a big improvement over the previous model and only came out late last year. But you can now grab a pair at Amazon for just $150, a significant 16 percent ($29) off the regular price and only $10 higher than the cheapest deal we’ve seen to date.
Apple’s latest earbuds garnered an Engadget review score of 88, and we noted that they were “better in nearly every way” than the 2nd-gen models. That’s due in part to a new, more comfortable design that’s a better fit for more people. Sound quality is equally improved thanks to the rich bass and overall clarity and you get an excellent 30 hours of battery life with the included charging case. And on top of improving performance, the H1 chip enables hands-free Siri, spatial audio support with head tracking and pairing with multiple Apple devices.
If you really have trouble with earphones fitting, the one-size-fits-all AirPods might not be right for you — for a more custom fit and noise cancellation, the AirPods Pro might be a better choice. Those are also on sale as well, luckily, for $197 or 21 percent off the regular price. Just remember that both models are really designed for Apple’s ecosystem of devices, so Android users had best look elsewhere.
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An Apple executive who oversaw Apple’s machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts has left the company in recent weeks, citing its stringent return-to-office policy, according to Bloomberg. Ian Goodfellow is now reportedly joining Google’s DeepMind team as an individual contributor, a few years after he left the tech giant for Apple. Based on his LinkedIn profile, Goodfellow worked in different capacities for Google since 2013, including as a research scientist and as a software engineering intern.
Bloomberg says the former Apple exec referenced the policy in a note about his departure addressed to staff members. In April, Apple announced that it was going to start implementing its return-to-office policy on May 23rd and will be requiring employees to work in its offices at least three times a week.
The New York Times has just reported, though, that the company has softened its stance on remote work and will now launch a pilot that will see some employees come in to office only twice a week. Google has also started implementing a “hybrid work” plan that requires employees to physically work in its offices some days of the week, but Goodfellow may have taken a role that allows him more freedom.
Goodfellow supervised the engineers working on autonomous technology at Apple and developed a system that gave Google Maps the ability to automatically transcribe addresses from Street View car photos. However, he’s probably mostly known for inventing generative adversarial networks or GANs, which can be used to create deepfakes.
Apple Music will start livestreaming some concerts from major artists this week as part of a new series. Apple Music Live kicks off with a Harry Styles show that subscribers in 167 countries will able to watch live and at no extra cost on May 20th. The company says Apple Music Live is a way to “give the biggest stars in music the biggest possible platform to flaunt how they connect with audiences and how their songs translate to live performance.”
The concert takes place at UBS Arena in Long Island, New York. It’s effectively a record release party for Styles, whose third album, Harry’s House, comes out on the same day. Apple Music’s landing page for the event includes an interview with Styles about the making of the album, a link for users to pre-add Harry’s House to their library and a bunch of playlists focused on the performer.
This seems like a smart way for artists to both promote new releases and give people a sense of what their live shows are like to perhaps sell some more tickets. It could also help Apple Music persuade fans of artists whose shows it streams to sign up for the service.
Styles’ gig, titled “One Night Only in New York,” will be available to stream at 9PM ET on Friday. So that folks in other parts of the world can catch the show at a more reasonable time, there will be encore streams on May 22nd at noon ET and May 26th at 5AM. That suggests the concert won’t be available on demand afterward. When asked by Engadget for clarification on that, an Apple spokesperson said the company had “nothing to announce at this time.”
Several other platforms have streamed live shows to viewers. YouTube has broadcast performances from Coachella over the last several years. As it happens, Styles was one of the festival’s headliners this year. Hulu just inked a deal to stream the Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits music festivals this year and next. Amazon Music has baked in artists’ Twitch streams, while Amazon has streamed live shows on a ticketed basis and offered them to Prime Video subscribers afterward.
Apple has some experience in livestreaming concerts too. In 2007, it started running the iTunes Festival (later known as the Apple Music Festival) in the UK before expanding it to the US in 2014. Apple announced in 2017 that the festival had come to an end.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is this Thursday (May 19th) and Apple, like many other companies, is announcing assistive updates in honor of the occasion. The company is bringing new features across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, and the most intriguing of the lot is systemwide Live Captions.
Similar to Google’s implementation on Android, Apple’s Live Captions will transcribe audio playing on your iPhone, iPad or Mac in real time, displaying subtitles onscreen. It will also caption sound around you, so you can use it to follow along conversations in the real world. You’ll be able to adjust the size and position of the caption box, and also choose different font sizes for the words. The transcription is generated on-device, too. But unlike on Android, Live Captions on FaceTime calls will also clearly distinguish between speakers, using icons and names for attribution of what’s being said. Plus, those using Macs will be able to type a response and have it spoken aloud in real time for others in the conversation. Live Captions will be available as a beta in English for those in the US and Canada.
Apple is also updating its existing sound recognition tool, which lets iPhones continuously listen out for noises like alarms, sirens, doorbells or crying babies. With a coming update, users will be able to train their iPhones or iPads to listen for custom sounds, like your washing machine’s “I’m done” song or your pet duck quacking, perhaps. A new feature called Siri Pause Time will also let you extend the assistant’s wait time when you’re responding or asking for something, so you can take your time to finish saying what you need.
Apple
The company is updating its Magnifier app that helps people who are visually impaired better interact with people and objects around them. Expanding on a previous People Detection tool that told users how far away others around them were, Apple is adding a new Door Detection feature. This will use the iPhone’s LiDAR and camera to not only locate and identify doors, but will also read out text or symbols on display, like hours of operation and signs depicting restrooms or accessible entrances. In addition, it will describe the handles, whether it requires a push, pull or turn of a knob, as well as the door’s color, shape, material and whether it’s closed or open. Together, People and Door Detection will be part of the new Detection mode in Magnifier.
Updates are also coming to Apple Watch. Last year, the company introduced Assistive Touch, which allowed people to interact with the wearable without touching the screen. The Watch would sense if the hand that it’s on was making a fist or if the wearer was touching their index finger and thumb together for a “pinch” action. With an upcoming software update, it should be faster and easier to enable Quick Actions in assistive touch, which would then let you use gestures like double pinching to answer or end calls, take photos, start a workout or pause media playback.
But Assistive Touch isn’t a method that everyone can use. For those with physical or motor disabilities that preclude them from using hand gestures altogether, the company is bringing a form of voice and switch control to its smartwatch. The feature is called Apple Watch Mirroring, and uses hardware and software including AirPlay to carry over a user’s preset voice or switch control preferences from their iPhones, for example, to the wearable. This would allow them to use their head-tracking, sound actions and Made For iPhone switches to interact with their Apple Watch.
Apple is adding more customization options to the Books app, letting users apply new themes and tweak line heights, word and character spacings and more. Its screen reader VoiceOver will also soon be available in more than 20 new languages and locales, including Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Dozens of new voices will be added, too, as is a spelling mode for voice control that allows you to dictate custom spellings using letter-by-letter input
Finally, the company is launching a new feature called Buddy Controller that will let people use two controllers to drive a single player, which would be helpful for users with disabilities who want to partner up with their care providers. Buddy Controller will work with supported game controllers for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. There are plenty more updates coming throughout the Apple ecosystem, including on-demand American Sign Language interpreters expanding to Apple Store and Support in Canada as well as a new guide in Maps, curated playlists in Apple TV and Music and the addition of the Accessibility Assistant to the Shortcuts app on Mac and Watch. The features previewed today will be available later this year.
Apple is quickly acting on its promise to deliver some useful upgrades before WWDC. The company has released iOS 15.5 and its iPadOS 15.5 counterpart with improvements to both Apple Cash and (as mentioned earlier) Podcasts. Cash users can now send and receive money from their card, while Podcasts users can have the app automatically limit episode storage based on criteria like the number of shows or time since release.
A corresponding macOS 12.4 update adds the relevant Podcasts features. You can also grab a previously teased firmware fix for the Studio Display’s mediocre webcam quality. Apple has also released watchOS 8.6, tvOS 15.5 and HomePod 15.5 updates, although those focus on bug fixes and performance rather than any significant features.
The iOS, iPadOS and macOS updates aren’t huge, but that’s not surprising. Apple has historically wound down significant upgrades to its current operating systems around this time of year. The focus now is likely on iOS 16 and other big revisions likely to arrive in the fall.
Apple is giving Podcasts a useful boost, both for listeners and podcasters. As TechCrunchexplains, the impending iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5 and macOS 12.4 upgrades will finally give you a host of advanced tools to limit podcast storage across your devices. You can tell the Podcasts app to only download a certain number of recent episodes, those within a set timeframe (such as a week or month) or only new episodes. You can also disable downloads entirely — helpful if you’re using a small-capacity iPhone and need every gigabyte you can get.
Apple
The new OS upgrades will also give you the option of yearly subscriptions for paid podcasts. You’ll alsoget to browse shows by season and filter episodes by their status.
You may see more podcasts, too. Apple has unveiled plans for a “Delegated Delivery” feature that lets creators send both free and paid shows to Podcasts through third-party providers like Acast, Libsyn and Omny Studio. The move should make it much easier for producers to distribute their shows across platforms — they could make a series available through Podcasts, Spotify and other big platforms while managing content in one place.
Delegated Delivery will be available sometime this fall, and will be free whether or not creators are part of the Apple Podcasters Program. They’ll only need to join that program to publish paid material. The initiative is effectively Apple’s response to Spotify’s Anchor, and should increase the odds that your favorite show is available through your listening app of choice.
In February Apple unveiled Tap to Pay, a new feature that will enable merchants to accept payments with only an iPhone — something that could cut into the business of companies like Square. Now, it turns out that Apple is already testing the feature at its own Apple Park visitor center in Cupertino.
The Apple Park Visitor Center is one of the only apple retail stores in the US to support contactless pay straight from an iPhone. Awesome to see in person! pic.twitter.com/GiFDiL56OO
A video tweeted by user @NTFTWT, spotted by MacRumors, shows the system in action, with a customer making an Apple Pay payment directly to the iPhone of an Apple staffer. They simply needed to touch their iPhone to the other iPhone, with no payment terminal in sight.
As we detailed earlier, the technology requires an iPhone XS or later device. It works with Apple Pay, of course, but will also support contact-free credit and debit cards, third-party payment platforms and other digital wallets. Stripe has already detailed plans to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to business customers in the spring, with other platforms and apps scheduled to come later in 2022. Dutch processor Adyen will work with Lightspeed Commerce, Newstore and other commerce platforms to help them use Tap to Pay.
Apple promised a future iOS beta giving developers a look at Tap to Pay, but it has yet to release a date. Now that it seems to be operational at Apple’s own office, though, it might be a sign that it’ll launch soon in the US and around the world.
Yik Yak’s revived messaging app was supposed to bring back the days of truly anonymous local chat, but it may have inadvertently made life easier for creeps. Computer science student David Teather informedMotherboard that Yik Yak had a flaw that let attackers obtain both the precise location for posts (within 10 to 15 feet) and users’ unique IDs. Blend the two pieces of info and it’s possible to track a user’s movement patterns.
Teather used a proxy tool to determine that YikYak sent both the precise GPS position and user ID with every message, even if users would normally only see vague distances and city identifiers. An independent researcher verified the findings for Motherboard, although it’s not clear if anyone has exploited the flaw so far.
Yik Yak hasn’t responded to requests for comment so far. The developer released three updates between April 28th and May 10th, but it’s not yet certain if they completely address exposed locations. However, it’s safe to say that the issue left users at risk, especially if they shared any sensitive information with local chatters.
This week brought a slew of deals online on some of our favorite gadgets. Apple’s latest 4K set-top box is down to a record low, while the Mac Mini returned to the cheapest price we’ve ever seen it. Samsung’s Galaxy S22 smartphones all dropped to new lows, while SanDisk’s 1TB Extreme Pro SSD is 42 percent off and under $200. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Apple TV 4K
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
The latest Apple TV 4K is the cheapest it’s ever been at $150. The set-top box earned a score of 90 from us for its speedy performance, support for Dolby Vision and Atmos and its much improved Siri remote.
Apple’s Mac Mini M1 is back down to its all-time-low price of $570, or $130 off its normal price. It’ll provide similar performance to the MacBook Air M1, and thanks to its compact size, it’ll easily fit into any desk setup.
Apple’s 24-inch iMac is up to $200 off right now, so you can grab one of the desktops for as low as $1,150. It earned a score of 89 from us for its speedy performance, lovely display and thin-and-light design.
Apple’s AirPods Pro are back on sale for $175, which is 30 percent off their normal price. We gave them a score of 87 for their improved fit, good audio quality and solid ANC.
If you still prefer the original design to Apple’s AirPods, you can grab the second-gen earbuds for $100 right now. That’s 37 percent off their normal rate and only $10 more than their record-low price. We gave them a score of 84 for their improved wireless performance and solid battery life.
All three of Samsung’s Galaxy S22 smartphones are at their lowest prices ever, with the Galaxy S22 Ultra down to $950, the S22+ on sale for $750 and the standard S22 for $675. We gave the premium S22 Ultra a score of 89 for its bright, colorful display, built-in S Pen and solid cameras.
Amazon includes a free $100 gift card when you buy a OnePlus 10 Pro at its normal rate of $899. If you go to OnePlus directly today, you can get a free OnePlus Watch when you pick up the smartphone. We gave the 10 Pro a score of 79 for its big, 120Hz display, speedy fingerprint and face unlock and super-fast charging.
SanDisk’s 1TB Extreme Pro portable SSD is 42 percent off and down to $180. That’s close to the best price we’ve seen, and it’s a good option for those that need a tough drive that they can take with them on the go. In addition to drop protection and an IP55 rating, the Extreme Pro supports read and write speeds up to 2,000 MB/s, password protection and 256-bit AES hardware encryption.
Roku’s Streambar Pro is down to an all-time low of $150, which is 17 percent off its regular rate. This larger soundbar has all of the features of the standard Streambar, plus even better sound quality, a lost remote feature with Roku’s companion mobile app and support for private listening.
The online yoga, pilates and exercise platform Alo Moves has knocked 50 percent off its annual membership in an anniversary sale, so you can subscribe for only $99. The sale runs through May 14th, and with a subscription, you’ll gain access to hundreds of on-demand exercise videos that span activities like yoga, HIIT, barre and pilates, plus guided meditation classes and more.
Razer’s Kishi game controller for Android devices is half off and down to $45. It lets you more comfortably play games on your smartphone while on the go, and it has a USB-C port for charging.
Vantrue’s N2 Pro dash cam is $51 off and down to $119 when you use the code SASN2P at checkout. This model has two cameras that capture the road ahead of you and the inside of your car while you’re driving, making it a good pick for drivers are ride-share services. It also supports night vision, loop recording and optional GPS connectivity.
ThermoWorks’ Thermapen One is on sale for $79 right now, which is the best price we’ve seen since it came out last year. The latest version of the popular instant read thermometer provides temperature readings in just one second, plus it has a brighter backlit display, motion-sensing sleep and wake mode and an IP67-rated design.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference will still mostly be virtual this year, but it will hold an in-person event for a limited number of people at Apple Park. Now, the tech giant has started sending out invites for the one-day special on June 6th, where attendees will be able to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos on-site. While Apple’s last two developer conferences were pure online experiences due to the pandemic, it doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s offering a hybrid experience this time when its corporate employees have already started working in the company’s offices again at least once a week.
Members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program were given the chance to apply for invites from May 9th to May 11th. Apple said it will choose participants through a random selection process, and as you can see above, invitations aren’t transferrable. Chosen participants will have to RSVP by May 18th at 6PM PT/9PM ET, though, and their invite will be offered to another applicant if they fail to do so on time.
Apple is expected to showcase iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, tvOS 16 and the next version of macOS during the conference. The company might also talk about its upcoming M2 chips that it’s reportedly testing on at least nine new Mac models.
