Author: News Room

The Festavia lights are impressive holiday string lights, boasting rich colors, individually addressable LEDs, and a variety of magical preset scenes that combine to create an effect that outshines most rivals. What’s great is you can use them indoors and outdoors thanks to their IP54 rating, so if you don’t want to decorate your porch or walkway, you can use them to dress up your Christmas tree or stair rails.The lights will work over Bluetooth, but with a Hue Bridge or newer Bridge Pro, you can take things even further with automations and the ability to sync the lights with…

Microsoft is pitching a future where AI controls everything on your PC and agents go and do work for you in the background. But before the company gets there, it has to build the tools to make these systems work and convince its own developers that AI is actually capable of achieving these big promises.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed earlier this year that up to 30 percent of the code of “some of our projects” is written by AI, and I’ve been eager to learn exactly how Microsoft’s developers are using the technology ever since. I’ve been speaking to sources…

While companies like Coca-Cola turned to generative AI to create “visually jarring” holiday ads this year, Apple continues to embrace practical effects with its new festive short film called A Critter Carol featuring a forest full of tech-savvy woodland creatures.In the ad a hiker drops their iPhone 17 Pro, which is found by a curious raccoon who uses it to shoot an impromptu performance of the song “Friends” by Flight of the Conchords, along with other animals including a bear, wolf, owl, deer, squirrel, and rabbit. The phone is eventually retrieved by the hiker, who uses their Apple Watch to…

Going home for the holidays isn’t all turkey, holiday decorations, and political arguments discussions. It also comes with requests for tech support and questions like “Why does my computer do this?” and “I read about this AI — what is that?”Think of it as an opportunity rather than a burden. If you’re like many people, you get tech support calls from frustrated parents or grandparents all year long. This is your chance to make sure things are set up so that, when you do get that call in a month or two, you can more easily fix things — or…

Windows users are transitioning to Windows 11 at a slower rate than the upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft’s 10-year-old operating system, which just hit the end of support phase, is still proving popular among consumers and businesses. Dell revealed this week that around 500 million machines are capable of upgrading to Windows 11, but are sticking with Windows 10 instead.“We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven’t been upgraded,” said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell’s slice of machines.…

All I wanted was a new smartwatch. I had a couple in mind, like the Google Pixel Watch 4 or the Garmin Vivoactive 6, but my AI shopping buddies seemed really convinced watches from a couple years ago were the way to go.Over the past month, OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, and Microsoft have all introduced new shopping features on their AI platforms, right in time for the holiday shopping season. ChatGPT can generate a personalized buying guide for you. Copilot will help you track prices. Gemini will even call local stores for you.After asking four different AI bots to help me…

Intel has defended itself against accusations that its latest executive hire stole trade secrets, as TSMC sues the exec and Taiwanese prosecutors say they’ve begun a probe into the incident.Wei-Jen Lo, a Taiwanese engineer, joined Intel this fall, hired to help the company improve its mass production processes. He’d previously worked at the American company in the ‘80s, during its boom years, before joining TSMC in 2004, helping to oversee that company’s most successful period too.This week TSMC announced that it was suing Lo, alleging that he violated his employment contract and noncompete agreement, along with Taiwan’s Trade Secrets Act.…

Editor’s note: Black Friday doesn’t officially take place until Friday, November 28th; however, if you want to shop ahead of time, we’ve rounded up the best early Black Friday deals you can already get.If you have an iPhone, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch for you. But there was only one Apple Watch when the smartwatch launched in 2015. A decade later, you’ve got three flavors to choose from: the entry-level Watch SE, the standard Series, and the rugged Ultra. Each appeals to a different demographic and set of needs, but good news: I’ve tested every Apple Watch dating…

Apple TV removed The Hunt from its streaming slate last week after concerns were raised about plagiarism. The move, previously reported by Apple Insider, comes after French media journalist Clément Garin claimed that the story closely follows Shoot, a 1974 novel written by Douglas Fairbairn. The Hunt was originally supposed to premiere on Apple TV on December 3rd. However, Gaumont, the production company behind The Hunt, confirmed its removal from Apple’s streaming schedule. “The broadcast of our series ‘The Hunt’ has been temporarily postponed,” Gaumont tells Variety. “We are currently conducting a thorough review to address any questions related to…

Counterpoint Research is predicting Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup will help it nudge Samsung out as the number one phone manufacturer in the world this year, as reported by CNBC and Bloomberg. The report estimates Apple will ship 243 million phones this year, while Samsung will ship 235 million, landing Apple a 19.4 percent share of the global smartphone market, less than 1 percent ahead of Samsung.Counterpoint says the newly introduced iPhone 17 series garnered 12 percent more sales in its first four weeks than the iPhone 16 lineup, with sales boosted by “lower-than-expected” impact from tariffs.Different analysts have reported different…

The skyrocketing price of RAM is trickling down to custom PC makers, including CyberPowerPC and Maingear. On Wednesday, CyberPowerPC announced that it plans to adjust the pricing across all of its systems on December 7th, as reported earlier by PCMag.“Recently, global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%,” CyberPowerPC says in a statement posted on X. “This has had a direct impact on the cost of building gaming PCs since 10/1/25.”Meanwhile, Maingear is trying to stave off price increases for as long as it can. “I anticipate that the prices will continue to…

If you’re a Windows user looking for something that comes close to Apple’s latest MacBook Air, Microsoft’s newest 13-inch Surface Laptop — officially called the Surface Laptop 13-inch 1st Edition with Snapdragon — is a great option. Right now, you can pick up the model with an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage for $549.99 ($350 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Microsoft, which marks a new all-time low.The Surface Laptop is more than capable of powering through a 12-hour day and handling typical productivity tasks with ease. The laptop offers…