The Morning After: Our verdict on Apple’s Studio Display

Apple’s new display is here, ready for the Mac aficionados unwilling to deck their workstation in anything less than brushed metal and soft corners. The Studio Display is a bit brighter than the 5K iMac; otherwise it’s the same 27-inch screen. That does mean it lacks features we’ve seen on the latest MacBook Pros, like ProMotion refresh rate and Mini-LED backlighting. 

There is an A13 Bionic chip to drive its webcam (which needs the help) and augment its speakers. For the $1,599 price, though, it’s missing some pretty standard features, like an adjustable stand, HDR and high refresh rates. If you want a Mac screen and don’t want to pay more than $2,000, it may still be the best fit. Read our full review here.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

YouTube makes thousands of TV show episodes available to stream for free

The ad-supported series include ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ and ‘Heartland.’

YouTube is letting users in the US stream thousands of free ad-supported TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Heartland and Unsolved Mysteries. YouTube plans to offer around 4,000 free TV episodes on top of the 1,500 movies already available. This month, it added a raft of new movie titles, including Gone in Sixty Seconds, Runaway Bride and Legally Blonde, now available to stream for free with ads.

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PS5 will catch up to Xbox with variable refresh rates

Sony teased the feature will arrive in a few months.

Variable refresh rate (VRR) is coming to the PlayStation 5 in the “coming months,” Sony announced. If you have an HDMI 2.1-compatible TV or PC monitor, it will dynamically sync the display refresh rate to the PS5 console’s graphical output, Sony explained in a blog post. The feature is long overdue. VRR has been available on the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles since they debuted. VRR will help minimize visual artifacts, like screen tearing, offering a more consistently smooth picture.

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IKEA’s latest experiment in speakers is an outdoor LED lamp

It’s a Spotify-enabled Bluetooth speaker.

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IKEA

IKEA has unveiled the Vappeby Bluetooth speaker with a Spotify Tap button that doubles as an outdoor lamp, confirming an FCC filing we saw last year. With IP65 dust and water splash resistance, it’s designed to illuminate outdoor parties, BBQs, etc. with LED light while delivering 360-degree sound. The new model is now available to order for $65 in blue or gray.

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Nothing’s first phone will launch this summer

The Phone 1 will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon and run a modified version of Android.

As teased, Nothing will release its first smartphone this summer and, in the usual marketing style of its CEO, OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei, Nothing shared a handful of details while promising to reveal more soon. The phone will run Nothing OS, a modified version of Android that “captures the best features” of Google’s mobile OS while distilling it “to just the essentials.” Which I guess are two ways of saying the same thing. It’s a huge challenge to launch a new smartphone in a land of Galaxies, Pixels and iPhones, but I was pleasantly surprised with Nothing’s slick Ear 1 wireless buds. The company could pretty much win me over with a transparent smartphone, to be honest.

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Google will test alternatives to its Play Store billing system, starting with Spotify

As part of a program that could have far-reaching consequences for the tech industry, Google is launching a pilot to test third-party billing systems in Android and across its wider ecosystem. The company announced on Wednesday it plans to conduct the …

Twitter DM search now works the way you’d expect

Twitter is expanding DM searches to help you find the exact conversation you’re looking for. The social media app now lets you use the search bar in the DM inbox to find specific messages. Type in a keyword or name, pick the “Messages” tab and you’ll see any relevant messages, including older ones.

The company didn’t mention which platforms supported the feature (we’ve asked for comment). As of this writing, we could only search for people or groups on the web.

Twitter introduced DM searches in 2019, when they became available to iOS app users. The feature didn’t come to Android until 2021, but Twitter delivered an upgraded version that allowed searches of your full history rather than just recent threads. The firm teased the ability to search message content later that year, but it clearly took longer to deliver the upgrade than anticipated. Still, this might be appreciated if you’re trying to unearth a must-have restaurant or revisit a favorite discussion.

Apple’s digital car keys now work with some Hyundai vehicles

Since launching in 2020, Apple’s digital car key feature has only been available on a handful of BMW models. In January, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claimed the feature would expand to include select vehicles from Hyundai brands like Genesis “by the summer…

Fans made a native ‘Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ PC port

You won’t have to use the Switch Virtual Console (or a good emulator) to make the most of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on modern hardware. VGCreports fans at Harbour Masters have developed a native PC port (available on Discord) that supports many up-to-the-minute features, including HD (and ultra-wide) graphics, modding, keyboard input and even Switch-style gyroscope aiming. You could make good use of a Steam Deck in your latest round of gaming nostalgia, to put it another way.

And yes, Harbour Masters claims it can avoid Nintendo’s legal team. The Ocarina of Time PC port revolves around Ship of Harkinian, a tool that turns a user-supplied (and hopefully legal) Nintendo 64 ROM for the game into a usable program. As the software doesn’t include any of Nintendo’s content, the developer supposedly can’t pursue Harbour Masters over copyright violations.

The conversion should improve, too. The creators are working on 60 frames per second graphics, twin stick controls, text-to-speech upgraded models and higher-resolution texture packs. Mac and Linux support is also said to be in the pipeline, as is a PC adaptation of Majora’s Mask.

Whether or not this port is legally safe, it reflects fans’ determination to preserve Ocarina of Time and other Nintendo classics without relying on official emulation or re-releases. Enthusiasts ported Super Mario 64 in 2019, for instance. While this work isn’t as vital as it once was with the existence of solutions like the Virtual Console, it does provide gamers more control over where and how they play the titles from their childhood.