Latest Technology

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 15 , iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 . Those releases are the next major versions of the operating systems for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download these betas — you don’t need a $99 developer account. But don’t forget, it’s a beta. The company still plans to release the final version of iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 this fall. But Apple is going to release betas every few weeks over the summer. It’s a good way to fix as many bugs as possible and gather data from a large group of users. As always, Apple’s public betas closely follow the release cycle of developer betas. Apple also released the second developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 15 today. So it sounds like the first public beta is more or less the same build as the second developer build. But remember, you shouldn’t install a beta on your primary iPhone or iPa

To train a robot to navigate a house, you either need to give it a lot of real time in a lot of real houses, or a lot of virtual time in a lot of virtual houses. The latter is definitely the better option, and Facebook and Matterport are working together to make thousands of virtual, interactive digital twins of real spaces available for researchers and their voracious young AIs. On Facebook’s side the big advance is in two parts: the new Habitat 2.0 training environment and the dataset they created to enable it. You may remember Habitat from a couple years back ; in the pursuit of what it calls “embodied AI,” which is to say AI models that interact with the real world, Facebook assembled a number of passably photorealistic virtual environments for them to navigate. Many robots and AIs have learned things like movement and object recognition in idealized, unrealistic spaces that resemble games more than reality. A real-world living room is a very different thing from a reconstructed

Regularly testing waterways and reservoirs is a never-ending responsibility for utility companies and municipal safety authorities, and generally — as you might expect — involves either a boat or at least a pair of waders. Nixie does the job with a drone instead, making the process faster, cheaper, and a lot less wet. The most common methods of testing water quality haven’t changed in a long time, partly because they’re effective and straightforward, and partly because really, what else are you going to do? No software or web platform out there is going to reach into the middle of the river and pull out a liter of water. But with the advent of drones powerful and reliable enough to deploy in professional and industrial circumstances, the situation has changed. Nixie is a solution by the drone specialists at Reign Maker, involving either a custom-built sample collection arm or an in-situ sensor arm. The sample collector is basically a long vertical arm with a locking cage for a sam

Nintendo defied expectations today with an E3-timed Direct showing off not the hoped-for new Switch hardware but a dozen or so new games — as well as a general release window for the much-anticipated next Zelda game. And to celebrate the original’s 35th anniversary, it will sell a new Game & Watch featuring the first three games in the series. Among other things, Nintendo showed off remasters or remakes of titles from the “Monkey Ball,” “Mario Party,” “Advance Wars, “Wario Ware” and other series, and announced new entries in the “Mario + Rabbids” and “Shin Megami Tensei” worlds. Other newly announced or teased games will be making it to Switch as well, like the new “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Perhaps most surprising was the inclusion of a new side-scrolling Metroid game, the first in nearly 20 years — and in fact, it has been in and out of development for half that time. “Metroid Dread,” the fifth in the mainline series that began on the NES, will release October 8, and we’ll see

Kai-Fu Lee’s Sinovation Ventures has its eyes on a niche market targeting software developers. In April, the venture capital fund led a $10 million angel round in Jingling , a Chinese startup developing Linux-based tablets and laptops, TechCrunch learned. Other investors in the round included private equity firm Trustbridge Partners. Jingling was founded only in June 2020 but has quickly assembled a team of 80 employees hailing from the likes of Aliyun OS, Alibaba’s Linux distribution, Thunder Software, a Chinese operating system solution provider, and active participants in China’s open source community. The majority of the startup’s staff are working on its Linux-based operating system called JingOS in Beijing, with the rest developing hardware in Shenzhen, where its supply chain is located. “Operating systems are a highly worthwhile field for investment,” Peter Fang, a partner at Sinovation Ventures, told TechCrunch. “We’ve seen the best product iteration for work and entertainm

Apple announced a batch of accessibility features at WWDC 2021 that cover a wide variety of needs, among them a few for people who can’t touch or speak to their devices in the ordinary way. With Assistive Touch, Sound Control, and other improvements, these folks have new options for interacting with an iPhone or Apple Watch. We covered Assistive Touch when it was first announced , but recently got a few more details. This feature lets anyone with an Apple Watch operate it with one hand by means of a variety of gestures. It came about when Apple heard from the community of people with limb differences — whether they’re missing an arm, or unable to use it reliably, or anything else — that as much as they liked the Apple Watch, they were tired of answering calls with their noses. Apple Watch gets a motion-controlled cursor with ‘Assistive Touch’ The research team cooked up a way to reliably detect the gestures of pinching one finger to the thumb, or clenching the hand into a fist

Microsoft will soon launch a dedicated device for game streaming, the company announced today. It’s also working with a number of TV manufacturers to build the Xbox experience right into their internet-connected screens and Microsoft plans to bring build cloud gaming to the PC Xbox app later this year, too, with a focus on play-before-you-buy scenarios. It’s unclear what these new game streaming devices will look like. Microsoft didn’t provide any further details. But chances are, we’re talking about either a Chromecast-like streaming stick or a small Apple TV-like box. So far, we also don’t know which TV manufacturers it will partner with. It’s no secret that Microsoft is bullish about cloud gaming. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, it’s already making it possible for its subscribers to play more than 100 console games on Android, streamed from the Azure cloud, for example. In a few weeks, it’ll open cloud gaming in the browser on Edge, Chrome and Safari, to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

The European Union has been digging into the competition implications of AI-powered voice assistants and other Internet of Things (IoT) connected technologies for almost a year . Today it’s put out a first report discussing potential concerns that EU lawmakers say will help inform their wider digital policymaking in the coming years. A major piece of EU legislation introduced at the back of last year is already set to apply ex ante regulations to so-called ‘gatekeeper’ platforms operating in the region, with a list of business practice ‘dos and don’ts’ for powerful, intermediating platforms being baked into the forthcoming pan-EU Digital Services Act. But if course applications of technology don’t stand still. The bloc’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, has also had her eye on voice assistant AI technologies for a while — raising concerns about the challenges being posed for user choice as far back as 2019 , when she said her department was “trying to figure out how access to

Playdate , app and game designer Panic’s first shot at hardware, finally has a firm price and ship date, as well as a bunch of surprise features cooked up since its announcement in 2019 . The tiny handheld gaming console will cost $179, ship next month, and come with a 24-game “season” doled out over 12 weeks. But now it also has a cute speaker dock and low-code game creation platform. We first heard about Playdate more than two years ago, were charmed by its clean look, funky crank control, and black and white display, and have been waiting for news ever since. Panic’s impeccable design credentials combined with Teenage Engineering’s creative hardware chops? It’s bound to be a joy to use, but there wasn’t much more than that to go on. Now the company has revealed all the important details we were hoping for, and many more to boot. Image Credits: Panic Originally we were expecting 12 games to be delivered over 12 weeks, but in the intervening period it seems they’ve collected m

Today’s WWDC keynote from Apple covered a huge range of updates . From a new macOS to a refreshed watchOS to a new iOS , better privacy controls , FaceTime updates , and even iCloud+ , there was something for everyone in the laundry list of new code. Apple’s keynote was essentially what happens when the big tech companies get huge; they have so many projects that they can’t just detail a few items. They have to run down their entire parade of platforms, dropping packets of news concerning each. But despite the obvious indication that Apple has been hard at work on the critical software side of its business, especially its services-side ( more here ), Wall Street gave a firm, emphatic shrug. This is standard  but always slightly confusing. Investors care about future cash flows, at least in theory. Those future cash flows come from anticipated revenues, which are born from product updates, driving growth in sales of services, software, and hardware. Which, apart from the hardware

Apple is rolling out some updates to iCloud under the name iCloud+. The company is announcing those features at its developer conference . Existing paid iCloud users are going to get those iCloud+ features for the same monthly subscription price. In Safari, Apple is going to launch a new privacy feature called Private Relay. It sounds a bit like the new DNS feature that Apple has been developing with Cloudflare. Originally named Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS , Private Relay could be a better name for something quite simple — a combination of DNS-over-HTTPS with proxy servers. When Private Relay is turned on, nobody can track your browsing history — not your internet service provider, anyone standing in the middle of your request between your device and the server you’re requesting information from. We’ll have to wait a bit to learn more about how it works exactly. Cloudflare and Apple design a new privacy-friendly internet protocol The second iCloud+ feature is ‘Hide my email’. It

During the virtual keynote of WWDC , Apple shared the first details about iOS 14, the next major version of iOS that is going to be released later this year. There are four pillars with this year’s release: staying connected, focusing without distraction, using intelligence and exploring the world. “For many of us, our iPhones have become indispensable,” SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said. “Our new release is iOS 15. It’s packed with features that make the iOS experience adapt to and complement the way you use iPhone, whether it’s staying connected with those who matter to you most. Finding the space to focus without distraction, using intelligence to discover the information you need, or exploring the world around you.” FaceTime gets a bunch of new features Apple is adding spatial audio to FaceTime. Now the voices are spread out depending on the position of your friends on the screen. For instance, if someone appears on the left, it’ll sound like they’re on the left i

Today, Apple is holding a (virtual) keynote on the first day of its developer conference , and the company is expected to talk about a ton of software updates. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris) , you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. As usual with Apple’s developer conferences, you can expect to learn more about the next major updates of the company’s operating systems. Get ready for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, a new version of macOS and some updates for watchOS and tvOS as well. But Apple could also use this opportunity to unveil some new products that are particularly popular with developers. Apple has already shipped several laptops and desktop computers with its own ARM-based M1 chip. High-end models haven’t been updated yet. Rumor has it that Apple could use today’s opportunity to unveil a new iMac Pro, updated MacBook Pro models or even a new external display. You can watch the live stream directly on this page

Think you’re living in a hyper-connected world? Huawei’s proprietary HarmonyOS wants to eliminate delays and gaps in user experience when you move from one device onto another by adding interoperability to all devices, regardless of the system that powers them. Two years after Huawei was added to the U.S. entity list that banned the Chinese telecom giant from accessing U.S. technologies, including core chipsets and Android developer services from Google , Huawei’s alternative smartphone operating system was unveiled. On Wednesday, Huawei officially launched its proprietary operating system HarmonyOS for mobile phones. The firm began building the operating system in 2016 and made it open-source for tablets, electric vehicles and smartwatches last September. Its flagship devices such as Mate 40 could upgrade to HarmonyOS starting Wednesday, with the operating system gradually rolling out on lower-end models in the coming quarters. HarmonyOS is not meant to replace Android or iOS, H

Kabuto , the French startup that designs and sells smart suitcases, is releasing a new suitcase today. Called the Kabuto Trunk, this is the company’s biggest suitcase to date. Unlike smart suitcases from other brands, this isn’t just a suitcase with a battery in it. In particular, there’s a fingerprint reader located at the top of the suitcase. You can save up to 10 different fingerprints. After that, it works pretty much like a fingerprint reader on a smartphone — you put your finger on the reader and it unlocks your suitcase. In that case, it unlocks the zippers. If somebody else is using your suitcase or the battery is dead, you can also open the suitcase with a traditional key. The Kabuto Trunk features a hard-shell design with a capacity of 95 liters. It has metal bearing wheels and real tires. Users can choose between two batteries — a 10,000mAh battery and a bigger 20,000mAh battery. Basically you have to choose between weight and battery capacity as bigger batteries tend to