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 John Ternus was unavoidable when Apple debuted the Macbook Neo. He kicked off an intimate media event for the Neo, introducing it as a transformative machine for Apple thanks to its low $599 cost ($499 for education customers) and premium build quality. He was interviewed on Good Morning America, the sort of prominent media feature CEO Tim Cook typically handles. And when I asked Apple workers about the Neo at its launch event, they almost always brought up Ternus' vision of the laptop.
For all intents and purposes, Tetanus was Apple's frontman for the MacBook Neo.
Ternus is slated for his coronation as Apple's CEO on September 1, and the Neo is not only a feather in his cap, but a likely indication of the company's approach to products going forward. It's a sign that Apple is getting more comfortable taking risks.
Apple lives and dies on its own premium image. It completely gave up on making cheap iPhones like the SE and 5C, and the $599 iPhone 16e and 17e are more expensive than typical mid-range Android phones (though the $249 Apple Watch SE is admittedly one of the cheaper smartwatches around.). It was risky to shove a mobile processor into a full-fledged computer, which could have made it too weak. And it was a gamble to stick with a meager 8GB of RAM, practically sacrilegious within the Apple pantheon. It's not breaking new ground for product categories, but the Neo, in being a budget laptop at all, is surprisingly un-Apple.
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 Apple's first foldable iPhone, dubbed the "iPhone Ultra," could be missing at least five key features present on the iPhone 18 Pro models despite its $2,000 price point.
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New emoji and video podcasts are just a couple features the update brings to your device.
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 Following the latest update of Apple's Invites app, hosts can now manually edit the guest list to update guest responses and adjust the number of additional guests.
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 There are a lot of folks waiting for a new version of the Apple TV because the set-top box hasn't been updated since 2022. There is an update coming this year, but people will need to wait a bit longer because Apple is holding the next ?Apple TV? until the new version of Siri comes out this fall.
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After debuting in the US, Gemini in Chrome is making its way to more markets. Starting today, Google is rolling out Chrome's built-in chatbot to users in countries in East Asia and the Pacific, including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. The expansion comes after Google earlier this year made Gemini in Chrome available to people in Canada, India and New Zealand.
With the exception of Japan, where Google isn't making the new suite available on iOS just yet, everyone else in the countries mentioned above can access Gemini in Chrome through Chrome's desktop browser, and the app on their iPhone or iPad. To get started, just tap the "Ask Gemini" icon at the top right of the screen. It will open a new sidebar Google introduced at the start of the year where you can chat with Gemini across every open tab. From there, you can also access Google's in-house image generator, Nano Banana 2. As you would expect, the suite offers integrations with Google's other apps, allowing you, for instance, to add events to Calendar without leaving the interface.
If you don't want to use Gemini, you can right click on the shortcut to unpin it from the top of the interface.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-brings-gemini-in-chrome-to-users-in-australia-japan-singapore-and-south-korea-220000474.html?src=rss
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 Amazon this week announced plans to acquire Globalstar, the satellite company that powers Apple's satellite features on the iPhone 14 and newer and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. In turn, Amazon announced that it has signed an agreement with Apple to provide satellite connectivity for current and future iPhone and Apple Watch features.
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 iPhone accessory maker Casely reissued a recall for its faulty Power Pod wireless power bank (via The Verge) after one of the affected units resulted in the death of a 75-year-old woman and another exploded on a plane.
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Perhaps Steve Jobs was right to limit the amount of time he let his children use iPhones and iPads — a tradition Apple maintains with its Screen Time tool, which lets parents set limits on device use. Now, an extensive UNESCO report suggests that letting kids spend too much time on these devices can be bad for them.
Baked in inequality and lack of social skills
That's the headline claim, but there's a lot more to the report in terms of exploring data privacy, misuse of tech, and failed digital transformation experiments.
To read this article in full, please click here
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