Author: News Room
I have been an audio reviewer for 20 years. My time as a freelance headphones panelist at Wirecutter, and the multitude of reviews I’ve written for sites like Reviewed, Digital Trends, IGN, and now The Verge, have given me the chance to listen to hundreds of earbuds. Some were truly excellent, and some were pretty hideous. Honestly, they tend to blur together as I move from new earbud to new earbud. But when something worthwhile comes around, it gets and holds my attention. These are the three sets that I reach for most often right now.$170The GoodIncredible call qualityGreat ANCUseful…
Have lightweight laptop shoppers ever had it so good? Even in the shadow of AI-inflated memory and SSD prices there’s a bounty of powerful and long-lasting models to pick from right now, courtesy of new hardware from all four major chipmakers. If Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, AMD Ryzen AI 400 or Apple’s M5 silicon don’t take your fancy there’s Core Ultra Series 3 – AKA ‘Panther Lake’ – in the Intel corner. It’s what Acer has gone with for the 2026 Swift 16 AI, an updated version of its top-tier ultraportable. The slender 16in machine goes all out with an…
The RAMageddon crisis has got Microsoft rethinking its Xbox console hardware business. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox strategy chief Matthew Ball have both revealed this week that Microsoft is reevaluating plans for its next-generation Project Helix console and exploring “radically different” console business models in the meantime.“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible,” said Ball…
If the phrase “summer body” makes you want to immediately order a take out and lie down, don’t panic. Burning belly fat doesn’t require military-grade discipline, a terrifying personal trainer, expensive home gym equipment, or a diet consisting entirely of boiled eggs and regret. According to Daniel Herman, NASM nutritionist and founder of Bio-Synergy, the reality is actually pretty straightforward. “No BS. No shortcuts. Just do stuff that works,” he says. The truth is that losing belly fat comes down to consistency, smart nutrition, sensible exercise and a few sustainable lifestyle tweaks that normal humans can actually stick to. Here…
Microsoft’s Office 2019 apps for Mac will stop working next month, because the company isn’t renewing a certificate that validates Office licenses. Owners of Office 2019 for Mac are being warned they’ll have to purchase Office 2024 or a Microsoft 365 subscription if they want to continue editing documents.Microsoft previously promised that “all your Office 2019 apps will continue to function,” when it announced end of support in 2023. The company then quietly updated that support note last month to remove the mention of apps continuing to function, replacing it with “Rest assured that all your Office 2019 apps won’t…
Logitech finally announced its new ultraportable travel mouse following leaked marketing images that spoiled the surprise last month. As the name implies, the Mobi Fold is a compact mouse that can fold in half using a hinge that can pivot about 130 degrees. At $79.99 in graphite, off-white, lilac, and sand color options, the Mobi Fold isn’t Logitech’s lightest or cheapest mouse, but it’s definitely one of its smallest and a well-featured alternative to your laptop’s trackpad if you can get used to some unconventional ergonomics.The arch-shaped Mobi Fold looks similar to other folding devices, like the Surface Arc mouse.…
Parents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or “spirit week” theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones — the new Siri can finally do this.After stumbling through its first launch of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to…
Fresh off the knowledge that Apple is cutting off the last Intel-based Macs and four generations across three models of Apple Watch from the 2026 software updates, there’s also bad news for Apple TV owners. Following the launch of the tvOS beta version for developers, it has become apparent that two Apple TV models will not be eligible to update beyond tvOS 26. They are the Apple TV HD fourth-generation model from 2015 (model A1625). Furthermore, the first-generation Apple TV 4K from 2017 (model A1842) will also miss out on tvOS 27. That leaves only two iterations of the hardware…
Later this year, you will be able to get bundled subscriptions for iPhone apps, as Apple announced it’s expanding App Store bundles so they can include offers from different companies. It’s similar to streaming video bundles that have combined offers for Apple TV and Peacock, but it also could put together subscriptions for completely different services, like Instagram Plus and Tinder Platinum.Another option on the way is Suites, “a set of subscriptions that aren’t available standalone, which people can purchase as a single subscription.”TechCrunch and 9to5Mac report the new additions were announced during WWDC, along with other App Store changes,…
During the WWDC keynote on June 8, Apple announced a new customisation feature for its AirPods audio products that’ll enable listeners to further tailor the sound to individual preferences. A brief reveal during the keynote showed an custom EQ graph enabling listeners to fine-tune the highs, mids and lows, while also showing the effect on the song’s waveform. Users can still choose to enjoy the Recommended profile, but this adds more options. “AirPods are designed and engineered by Apple to faithfully represent music, TV shows, movies, and calls. If you prefer a different sound profile, you can customise how AirPods…
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it’s “really, really dangerous” for Anthropic to speculate about Claude’s consciousness inside its “constitution,” or the instructions that tell the model how to behave. During an episode of Decoder, Suleyman argues that this kind of speculation may have set up the chatbot to act as though it’s conscious:I think that it’s almost as though some of the folks at Anthropic have anthropomorphized the design of Claude so much that it has then gone and wireheaded them and kind of tricked them into believing that it has these glimmers of consciousness that they put into…
WWDC’s focus on Siri AI and Liquid Glass meant the usual iOS and macOS feature enhancements were buried. Yesterday’s WWDC keynote threw viewers – including myself – for a bit of an (Infinite) Loop. It was very much a departure from previous year’s addresses where we got deep dives into specific features. This address was all about Siri AI and backtracking on the Liquid Glass UI design. So, perhaps that’s why we got a fresh press release from Apple today isolating some of the key new features dropping across its apps, services and devices. Let’s run through them here: Apple…