Taking Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4 for a spin
These days, the path of least resistance in laptop design is straight-up knocking off the MacBook. We've certainly seen our share of egregious cases over the years. Microsoft, however, has defiantly forged its own path with industrial design across the board. Its products are largely interestin
Spotify brings offline listening to the Apple Watch, at last
The relationship between Spotify and Apple has been…understandably contentious at times. After all, Apple runs the streaming service's biggest competitor. At the end of the day though, the Apple Watch and Spotify maintain the No. 1 spot in their respective categories by a wide margin. And pla
Snap announces a new generation of Spectacles, streamlined glasses to experience the world in AR
Amid a pre-recorded Partner Summit where Snap took users through a whole set of new tools for Snapchat users, creators and companies, Snap also threw in a “one more thing” at the end that shows the company, after a rocky start several years ago, is definitely not giving up on its hardwa
Esper raises $30M Series B for its IoT DevOps platform
There may be blions of IoT devices in use today, but the tooling around buding (and updating) the software for them stl leaves a lot to be desired. Esper, which today announced that it has raised a $30 mlion Series B round, buds the tools to enable developers and engineers to deploy and manage flee
Google is opening a retail store in New York this summer
Google has explored storefronts for a while now. Here's a pop-up in Manhattan's SoHo district that we took a trip to some four+ years back. But the company's own branded retail experience has been fairly limited — unsurprising, given that it has always been a software company firs
Apple Watch gets a motion-controlled cursor with ‘Assistive Touch’
Tapping the tiny screen of the Apple Watch with precision has a certain level of fundamental difficulty, but for some people with disabilities it’s genuinely impossible. Apple has remedied this with a new mode called “Assistive Touch” that detects hand gestures to control a cursor
Span introduces a new home electric panel
As energy prices continue to rise and more home owners look to the viability of things like solar, consumers will no doubt be searching for more ways to control their usage. Founded by ex-Tesla engineer Arch Rao, Span looks to address these questions, while asking, in a world of smart home devices,
Formlabs raises $150M
There was a massive raise for the 3D printing industry this morning, as Massachusetts-based Formlabs announced a $150 million Series E. The round, led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, effectively doubles the value of the unicorn to $2 billion dollars.
The news comes during a kind of resurgence as t
IFA Berlin 2021 is canceled, citing 'uncertainties' around vaccine rollouts
After IFA became one of an extremely small number of in-person trade shows in 2020, the gfu Consumer & Home Electronics GmbH is pulling the plug on this year's event. Initially planned for September 3-7 at the Messe in Berlin, the large-scale consumer electronics trade show is going on hiat
Google is making a 3D, life-size video calling booth
Google is working on a video calling booth that uses 3D imagery on a 3D display to create a lifelike image of the people on both sides. While it’s still experimental, “Project Starline” builds on years of research and acquisitions, and could be the core of a more personal-feeling
Google and Samsung are teaming up to take on Apple's watchOS
With a long-standing history of working together on the mobile side, it's always been a bit of a surprise that Samsung hasn't had much patience for Google's wearables play. The hardware giant had flirted with Android Wear in the past, but for the last several years, it's been invest
Facebook VR exec Hugo Barra is leaving
Four years after joining as Facebook’s first VP of VR, ex-Xiaomi exec Hugo Barra has left the company, he said in a social media post Tuesday.
Barra led Facebook’s VR efforts during a particularly tumultuous time for Oculus, coming aboard to helm the division as the once independent arm
Apple 24-inch M1 iMac review
Last September we concluded our 27-inch iMac review thusly,
“The big open question mark here is what the future looks like for the iMac — and how long we'll have to wait to see it. That is, of course, the perennial question for hardware upgrades, but it's exacerbated by the knowledg
Leveling the playing field
In 2011, a product developer named Fred Davison read an article about inventor Ken Yankelevitz and his QuadControl video game controller for quadriplegics. At the time, Yankelevitz was on the verge of retirement. Davison wasn't a gamer, but he said his mother, who had the progressive neurodege