For the first time, live sports are coming to Apple TV+. Apple announced today during its Peek Performance event that it will carry Friday Night Baseball. Once Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association agree to a new collective bargaining agreement, Apple will stream two games per week that will only be available on the company’s streaming platform. The weekly doubleheader will be available in eight countries and you won’t have to worry about local blackouts.
In the US, Apple will also stream MLB Big Inning, a live show featuring highlights from regular season games. US fans, in addition to their Canadian counterparts, will also have access to a 24/7 livestream featuring game replays, news, analysis and more. For a limited time, Apple said Friday Night Baseball would be available through Apple TV+ without the need for a subscription.
Rumors that Apple was bidding on a baseball package came out in January. By that point, the League had been in a lockout since the start of December, but it didn’t seem like it would cancel any games. That was then. Now, it’s unclear if there will even be a 2022 season.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
It’s been two years since Apple launched the last iPhone SE and finally, a new model is here. At its “Peek Performance” event today, Apple unveiled the new iPhone SE, which like its predecessors is a more affordable version of the flagship range. As expected, the budget-friendly phone has an updated quad-core A15 Bionic processor and supports 5G cellular standards. Surprisingly, though, it still retains a home button below the screen for Touch ID, and has a single rear camera. In fact, it looks nearly identical to its predecessor.
The new iPhone SE will be available in midnight, starlight and red colors, and has a 4.7 inch Retina HD screen. It’s covered in glass, with Apple saying this is the “toughest glass in a smartphone on both the front and back.” It’s the same glass as that on the back of the iPhone 13. The iPhone SE also comes with IP67 dust and water resistance, and the company is promising better battery life thanks to efficiencies from the A15 Bionic and iOS 15.
Though there is just one 12-megapixel rear camera here (with f/1.8 aperture), Apple said the latest iPhone SE has a “new camera system,” adding things that we saw on the iPhone 13 like Photographic Styles, Smart HDR 4 and Deep Fusion for better processing.
Apple
Finally, like the iPhone 13 series, the iPhone SE is made with some recycled materials, according to Apple. It uses “100-percent recycled rare earth elements in the Taptic Engine and audio magnets, 100-percent recycled tungsten in the Taptic Engine, and 100-percent recycled tin in the solder of the main logic board.” The company also changed its packaging so it no longer uses an outer plastic wrap.
Pre-orders begin this Friday (March 11th) at 5am PT, with availability beginning March 18th. At $429, it’s worth noting that year’s iPhone SE is $30 pricier than the last model. If you’re still keen on getting a new iPhone SE, I’d suggest waiting till we can get in a unit to test before you get one, so we can evaluate things like battery life and real-world camera performance. Stay tuned for our full review.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
Instagram is joining Facebook in its attempt to bury Russian state media in its app. The app will now down-rank posts from state media outlets in its feed and in Stories, and will add prominent labels to discourage other users from sharing their posts….
Esports tournament organizer ESL Gaming has teamed up with Qualcomm to run a mobile gaming league. The Snapdragon Pro Series will have three tiers of competition — Open, Challenge and Masters — and have around $2 million in prize money at stake.
Tournaments will be held in six regions: North America, Europe, the Middle East, China, North Africa and Asia-Pacific. The “multi-genre” competition will come to a head with a live event for Masters-level players. More details about the Snapdragon Pro Series, including which games will be used, will be revealed in the coming months.
ESL formed a mobile esports ecosystem last year with a smaller prize pool of $650,000 and games including Clash of Clans, PUBG Mobileand League of Legends: Wild Rift. With Qualcomm on board and more money on the line, there’s a bigger opportunity for skilled mobile gamers to compete in esports and win potentially life-changing prizes. For Qualcomm, the circuit could prove a valuable showcase by letting esports fans see how well games run on Snapdragon-powered mobile devices.
Some of the better-known minds in tech are uniting to tackle one of computing’s greater challenges. CNBCreports LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman (pictured above) have formed Inflection AI, a company that will use artificial intelligence software to help humans talk to computers. The hope, according to Suleyman, is that you’ll speak to computers in ordinary language — this will “almost certainly” be possible in five years, he said.
Suleyman will serve as CEO, while fellow DeepMind alumni Karén Simonyan will operate as Inflection’s chief scientist. The company aims to stay relatively small to preserve the team’s focus and speed.
The move was a long time in coming. Hoffman and Suleyman have known each other for nearly a decade, and Suleyman backed away from DeepMind in August 2019 following both a desire to “recharge” and criticisms of his management style in previous years. He became Google’s VPP for AI product management and policy in December of that year, but left this January to work with Hoffman at venture capital firm Greylock Partners.
There are still many unknowns surrounding Inflection. It hasn’t pinpointed its target audience or a timeline for its first products. The DeepMind veterans could help its chances, however, and they’re trying to solve a common problem. Existing AI assistants aren’t particularly clever, and fixing that could improve everything from the phone in your pocket to next-generation robots.
Over the years, 8BitDo has released a number of Xbox-specific accessories, including a controller designed for use with Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming service and a pair of media remotes for the Series X/S. And now for the first time, it’s introducing a cont…
Apple is holding its latest hardware event today (March 8th) and you’ll be able to watch it right here. The event gets under way at 1PM ET. The stream is also available on Apple’s website and the Apple TV app
As for what to expect, it’s highly likely that Apple will reveal a new iPhone SE with the A15 Bionic chip used in iPhone 13 devices as well as 5G support. There are also rumors about a refreshed iPad Air with the same features. Elsewhere, tied into the “Peek Performance” tagline Apple is using for the event, it’s believed the company will update the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 Apple silicon chip after its larger siblings got CPU upgrades late last year.
Although those seem like the surer bets, there are some other devices Apple’s said to be working on that could make an appearance, such as an external 7K monitor, a Mac Studio desktop (i.e. a souped-up Mac mini) or other Macs. In any case, we won’t have to wait long to find out.
After the event, be sure to join deputy editor Cherlynn Low and senior writer Sam Rutherford for Engadget’s post-show livestream. They’ll break down Apple’s announcements and share their thoughts on all the news. You can check out the post-event stream below or on Engadget’s YouTube channel.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
A few big PlayStation exclusives have dropped over the last few weeks — Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7 and Sifu— along with other major releases like Dying Light 2 and Elden Ring. Now that players have their hands on those, it’s time to take a look at what’s ahead for PS4 and PS5.
The next State of Play stream will take place on March 9th at 5PM ET. It’ll run for around 20 minutes and focus on games from Japanese publishers. There’ll be updates from studios elsewhere too.
As ever, Sony is tempering expectations a bit. The State of Play won’t include anything about the PlayStation VR2 headset or games for it. Still, fingers crossed for a firm release date for God of War Ragnarök and details about whatever Naughty Dog is working on.
You’ll be able to watch the stream on PlayStation’s Twitch and YouTube channels.
You’re probably aware that some brands’ devices are easier to repair than others, but an influential advocacy team may have just confirmed your suspicions. The Vergenotes the US Public Interest Research Group has published a repairability report card grading major laptop and phone brands both on the ease of fixing their devices (based partly on French repair scores) and the company’s overall stance on repairs. As you might guess, Apple, Google and Microsoft fared poorly with D grades and one F for iPhones — their historically sealed-in designs, lack of parts and lobbying against Right to Repair legislation didn’t win them any points.
No company on the report card received an A grade. However, there were some highlights. Laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell and Lenovo all earned solid B grades for easier access and reduced opposition to Right to Repair, while Motorola was the only phone maker to match that performance with its relatively fixable phones. HP and Samsung each mustered a C grade.
PIRG’s aim is clear. As with its campaign to open up ventilator repairs, the interest group wants PC and phone makers to factor repairability into their designs, after-sale service and politics. Easier-to-fix products reduce e-waste and save money, PIRG argued.
The tech industry is already evolving to some extent. The Biden administration has ramped up pressure on American companies to embrace Right to Repair, including a plan to enforce pro-repair laws. Some of the companies are already changing their attitudes, if partly to head off potential legislation. Apple will start selling parts to customers this year, while newer Microsoft Surface devices are relatively simple to fix. PIRG’s clout may still help, but it isn’t the only one nudging the tech world toward better repairability.
In the world of hearing aids, Eargo stands out for a few reasons. Not least because of its different approach, but also because of its rapid, annual release cycle. It’s all part of how Eargo operates more like a technology company instead of a stuffy medical-device provider. This year’s model? It’s number 6, and it’s not a huge leap from last year’s, but it’s still a notable one. One that pushes Eargo ever nearer to feature parity with the competition it seeks to outdo while maintaining its tiny, tiny form factor.
It’s that form factor that is both beneficial and binding. To be clear, “invisible in canal” (IIC) hearing aids are not unique to Eargo, but they do tend to come with tradeoffs such as no Bluetooth connectivity, reduced battery life and, of course, a lack of on-device controls (such as volume). To Eargo’s credit, it has found ways to sidestep most of these challenges with each new product, and this time it’s automatic profile switching – dubbed “Sound Adjust” — that gets crossed off the list of things that an Eargo can’t do.
First, a reminder of some of the things previous models could already do. Despite their size you can configure Eargos via the companion app. Initially, this was limited to placing them in the (Bluetooth-enabled) charging case, but newer models can be adjusted while wearing them thanks to the clever use of ultrasonic commands. You can also switch preset profiles using a gesture (double-tapping your tragus). All Eargos are also rechargeable with a charging case so you don’t need to fiddle with batteries.
More recently, since last year’s model, you’ve been able to customize the audio profile of the hearing aids to match your own unique hearing needs, which is perhaps the most significant update for most people. As a direct-to-customer product there’s usually no audiologist fitting these for you, so the app-based process goes a long way to eliminating that rather obvious negative and probably also does a good job of convincing fence-sitters that these are serious hearing aids and not fancy personal amplifiers (all Eargo products have been FDA approved hearing aids).
James Trew / Engadget
When it comes to testing out the new Sound Adjust feature it’s not quite as simple as monitoring the companion app and watching it update as a profile changes. Thanks to how the Eargos communicate with the app (via the aforementioned ultrasound) the phone needs to be very close to the hearing aids with the volume up (above 75 percent) for it to make changes. Of course, that’s just one way. Right now, there’s no real way for the buds themselves to communicate back to the app. So how do we know when the hearing aids change modes?
As a crude test I left the Eargos on the “Normal” preset and then simulated a noisy room by playing some restaurant sounds over a nearby speaker. I can’t be certain what changes the device made, but compared to the same test wearing the previous model (without Sound Adjust) the noise did seem less jarring. The sharp sound of cutlery against plate was more pronounced in the older model than it was in the Eargo 6.
There is another, perhaps more immediately observable difference this time around and that’s the noise reduction, which seems much improved. As before you can decide how much noise reduction to apply from three different settings (low to high) or disable it if you prefer. It’s not obvious how much this feature impacts the battery life. I was able to get a full day’s use out of them with it activated and room to spare, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t use it — it really does make the hearing experience more natural.
These new features definitely add some finesse to the whole experience. They’re also more practical updates, too. There’s a new “mask mode” which, and I mean this optimistically, I hope doesn’t remain useful for much longer but it’s there nonetheless. Another practicality is that the Eargo 6 is rated IPX7 for water resistance: finally, you can take a shower with these things in. With water-resistant earbuds/headphones, stepping into the shower with them on is a novelty, but with a hearing device you want to put on forget about, not having to remove them for a shower just gives you one less thing to worry about.
All these new changes increase the viability of the Eargo 6 as a replacement for whatever legacy device you might be using currently. Or, if you sense you could benefit from hearing assistance but the thought of a trip to the audiologist or haggling with insurance has been putting you off, these are about as easy an option you can find.
James Trew / Engadget
I do wish they were a little more comfortable for extended use. In general, they are fine – even for all-day wearing. But some days, my ears can feel a little more blocked than others and when this happens, I can sense some fatigue after a couple of hours with the Eargo inside. This can be further aggravated by eating, which reminds you how connected many of the muscles in our jaw and ear are.
It would also be nice to know when the Eargo have reached their maximum or minimum volume. There are controls in the app for adjusting them together and separately (perfect for my unilateral hearing loss) but I never know when it’s at maximum, so I end up either over pressing the “+” sign to make sure I must be at max when some simple feedback could just solve the mystery. This is obviously a minor nitpick, though it can be useful for helping to get the balance right to avoid going so loud as to create feedback, which does occur at higher volumes (on most hearing aids).
As always, if these sound like they might be helpful to you, you can buy them directly from the Eargo website for $2,950 (financing is available). As to whether this could be covered by your insurance, that’s less clear/something you’ll need to confirm with your provider.
