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Beats launches $169 Studio Buds + with a transparent option

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Want to get to know a pair of earbuds? Go on a run. A long, sweaty one. One of two things will happen: either you’ll spend half the time fumbling with them or you’ll forget you ever put them in. I realize not everyone can or does run (some mornings I feel like I’m electively grounding down my knee cartilage for fun), so hopefully you have your own method. A good athletic lifestyle pair will simply stay put. One not suited for the task will start loosening up quickly, like a poorly installed hubcap on a pothole-filled road. This spirals quickly. You soon find yourself adjusting and jiggling, all while the sweat exacerbates the situation. All of a sudden, you’re accidentally playing/pausing and skipping tracks. Not all earbuds need to be running earbuds, of course. Take the Sony LinkBuds S. They’re currently my favorite in a lot of ways (sound, comfort), but I avoid running in them at all costs. I learned that lesson the hard way. They’re too top-heavy and often loosen by the first mil
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Ring’s founder will become Latch’s CEO after selling a stealth startup to the company

Jamie Siminoff has been busy. The Ring founder quietly exited the advisor role he took back in March after exiting the brand’s CEO role. He had been at Amazon since its 2018 acquisition of the firm. Turns out he’s sold yet another startup — this time one you’ve never heard of. The clunkily named Honest Day’s Work (HDW) has been acquired by Latch, best known for its proptech smart lock and corresponding operating system. As part of the deal, Siminoff will be stepping into Latch’s CEO role later this year, replacing the interim chief exec, Jason Keyes. Siminoff joins Latch during a difficult transitionary period. Almost exactly a year ago, the company announced that it had cut a total of 130 people — around 28% of its full-time roles. In a letter to Latch staff, then-CEO Luke Schoenfelder explained that the layoffs were carried out to “ensure Latch is on a path to sustainable growth.” This January, Schoenfelder stepped down, along with chief financial officer Barry Schaeffer and chief
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Logitech launches the Logitech G Cloud gaming handheld in Europe

Logitech is moving forward with its handheld gaming console focused on cloud gaming as the company is about to launch its device in Europe. In addition to this release, the company is still actively releasing software updates for the Logitech G Cloud. The Logitech G Cloud will become available gradually between May 22 and June 22 in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland for €359 or £329. As a reminder, it costs $349 in the U.S. but it is usually on sale for $299. European customers will get up to six months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (with Xbox Cloud Gaming), one month of Nvidia GeForce Now (Priority subscription tier) and one month of Shadow PC. When Logitech announced the Logitech G Cloud in September 2022, many people didn’t really understand why people would spend $350 for a portable Android console. Unlike the $299 Switch, you can’t play Zelda on it. Unlike the $399 Steam Deck, you can’t play PC games on the go. But the answer lies in th
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Teenage Engineering teases the tape recorder of my dreams, only it’s digital

The kooky geniuses at Teenage Engineering are back with a new gadget that is guaranteed to make you salivate until its price tag smacks you back to reality. The maker of drool-worthy synthesizers just announced the TP-7 , a teeny portable recorder that features a “motorized tape reel,” which spins as it captures audio and also functions like a click wheel. Teenage Engineering imbued this digital recorder with layers of nostalgia, evoking both the early-ish days of digital (like Apple’s original iPod , Gizmodo points out) and the yet-more-distant days of tape. The TP-7 also seems to pull from some iconic camera designs; its recording indicator beams like Leica’s red dot, while its leather back seems to draw from Polaroid’s classic SX-70 .  In other words: The Stockholm-based audio company is teasing yet another gorgeous, totally overbuilt and arguably unnecessary gadget. It’s $1,499 and “coming this summer.” I want one desperately. Okay, okay, I’ll focus — promise. The TP-7 also
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Keepon, carry on

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I’m back in the South Bay this week, banging away at an introduction in the hotel lobby a few minutes before our crew heads to Shoreline for Google I/O. There’s a guy behind in a business suit and sockless loafers, taking a loud business meeting on his AirPods. It’s good to be home. I’ve got a handful of meetings lined up with startups and VCs and then a quiet, robot-free day and a half in Santa Cruz for my birthday. Knowing I was going to be focused on this developer even all day, I made sure to line some stuff up for the week. Turns out I lined up too much stuff – which is good news for all of you. In addition to the usual roundup and job openings, I’ve got two great interviews for you. Two weeks back, I posted about a bit of digging around I was doing in the old MIT pages – specifically around the Leg Lab. It included this sentence, “Also, just scrolling through that list of students and faculty: Gill Pratt, Jerry Pratt, Joanna Bryson, Hugh Herr, Jonathan Hurst, among others. Bo
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Canon sidles up to vloggers with PowerShot V10

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Who says compact cameras are dead? Well, the market does, actually; the mobile phone has all but killed off the category altogether, so it’s interesting to see Canon take another stab at the market. The PowerShot series of cameras today gained its newest family member, the V10. The main question this product has to overcome is ‘why not just use your phone,’ and the camera nerd in me is relieved to have a good answer: Phone cameras are great, but they have to be small. With that restriction removed, Canon can do what Canon does best: Build cameras. On paper, the little camera looks great; it is built around a 1-inch CMOS sensor. That alone is a big deal; phone cameras are getting good enough now that we are right at the edge of what physics can do for us: Sensors get hot, and with all those pixels packed into a tiny space, and limitations on how good and precise lenses can be, you’re butting up against the practical maximum image quality you can get. If you want to get better from the
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Fairphone gets its audio groove on with repairable over-ear BT headphones

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Dutch social enterprise Fairphone is best known for its mission to build ethical smartphones via a brand that promises fairer wages for supply chain workers and design choices that encourage consumers to cherish and repair the hardware rather than toss last year’s model thanks to modularity and a web shop selling replacement (and upgradeable) spare parts. Today it’s taking the leap into a new device category — applying the same principled approach to shipping the most sustainable and fair consumer electronics it can, within limits imposed by wider industry practices which set the availability (and compatibility) of electronics components, to a pair of its own-design, over-ear Bluetooth headphones. The latest repairable Fairphone product is called Fairbuds XL. Confusingly, Fairbuds XL are very much not (in-ear) earbuds. So the choice of name is evidently a bit of a pun. Fairphone tells TechCrunch there was hot debate internally over what to call the headphones. We can only imagine
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