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 Amazon this week has all-time low prices on the Apple Watch Series 11, with $100 discounts across numerous models of the smartwatch. This sale includes a handful of aluminum models of the Series 11 on sale at record low prices.
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Control is one of my favorite adventure games of the last decade or so, a mind-bending trip through an ever-changing building where you get to use telekinesis to battle some pretty freaky enemies. It was a graphically-demanding game when it was released in 2019, but a lot can change in less than six years: Control: Ultimate Edition is now available on the iPhone and iPad for a mere $5, following its announcement last October. It's a universal purchase, which means if you buy it it'll work on the iPad, iPhone and Mac as well.
Developer Remedy promises that it's the full Control experience, with the DLC episodes included. Remedy rebuilt the UI and controls to make it work on touchscreen devices; the company says that it has tweaked aiming and the various puzzles to make them work better for the iPad and iPhone. But naturally, the game also works with controllers. If you're serious about having the best experience with the game, finding a way to play with physical controls is probably a good idea.
The game will run on iPhones with at least an A17 Pro chip. That includes the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well all of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 series. Plenty of iPad models can run the game, as well — any iPad with an M-series chip or the A17 Pro will work. That means the current basic iPad, with its A16 processor, is left out of the fun. But any iPad Air or Pro from the last four years or so should be good to go.
I tried a test version of Control when I reviewed the new iPad Air recently and, unsurprisingly, the tablet's M4 chip was more t
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Tim Cook's tenure as Apple CEO ends September 1 when he takes the role of executive chair. He will be replaced by John Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran and head of its hardware engineering division. I get the sense Cook's professional obituaries will focus on his steady hand, execution success and lack of intra-company drama. All of those are virtues but I suspect the media, ever in love with a narrative of its own concoction, will use them as cudgels. Consider this an attempt to balance the record ahead of Cook's damning with the faintest of praise.
Cook is quiet and private, making it easy to paint him as a bland managerialist who coasted on the success of the iPhone. In Ternus, Apple once again has a "product guy" at its helm, a term loaded with enough subtext to sink a battleship. You can feel the implication that it's only "product guys" who have the vision, taste and knowledge to innovate. By extension, Cook was never "a real nerd," but an empty finance guy that never understood what makes Apple tick.
If there's one thing Silicon Valley loves more than money, it's a mercurial genius upon whom they can rest their dreams. Figures with a capital-V vision who invent new product categories with a flick of a wrist, captains of industry who inspire awe and devotion. And making enough money that even a Rockefeller would start thinking "gosh, that's a bit much."
The Jobsian myth-making obscures his talents and minimizes the number of misses he had along the way. Jobs' first tenure at Apple ended in failure and NeXT, for all its innovation, didn't survive as a standalone hardware maker. Many of his ideas were too big and ambitious to succeed and his refusal to compromise made them sink. His time in the wilderness made him a better manager, and a far better storyteller. But to suggest Jobs was gif
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Cell phone plans can get exceedingly complicated, so Comcast's pitch for Xfinity Mobile's simplicity is rather appealing — particularly at a time when everything is more expensive than ever. Today, the company is announcing two simple plans priced at $30 and $45 a month that have some serious perks for their prices.
The $30 Mobile Select plan covers the main basics, including 50GB of "premium" full-speed data; Global Travel Pass to cover yourself when traveling in 215 different countries; and Xfinity's Wi-Fi PowerBoost. That latter feature takes advantage of Xfinity's wide network of Wi-Fi hotspots around the country. Your phone will automatically connect to those when you're out and about, and you'll get priority speeds of up to 1 gigabit on those networks as well as at home.
The $45 Mobile Plus plan adds some pretty significant perks. For starters, you'll get unlimited premium data and 4K video streaming (the Select plan limits you to 720p). But more significantly, the Plus plan promises device upgrades at literally any time. At this point, most carriers offer ways to upgrade before the typical three-year device payment plan is up, but as someone who did that late last year, I can confirm that the constantly changing promotions around phone upgrades make it hard to know exactly what you'll be eligible for.
Comcast, however, says that Mobile Plus subscribers can literally upgrade their phone at any time. I asked how it would work if I was crazy enough to switch to a Galaxy S26 six months after getting an iPhone 17 Pro, and they said it would be no issue, regardless of how much I had beat up my iPhone. I'm trying to figure out if there's a catch, but the company's representatives were very adamant about "anytime upgrades" being as uncomplicated as they said.
Similarly, the Plus plan also includes lifetime device protection, another thing that most carriers charge separately for. This extends to any connected device on your plan like sma
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Anker has announced its own chip that can give its small, wearable products AI capabilities that run locally on device. The company is planning to debut the chip called "Thus" on a new model of headphones, slated to be unveiled at its Anker Day event on May 21.
Anker calls Thus the "first Compute-in-Memory (CIM) AI audio chip with neural networks." The company explains that Thus is "inspired by the workings of the human brain" in that the storage and processing of information takes place in one location instead of keeping them separate, similar to how it works on modern chips for computers.
Thus integrates computing power directly into NOR flash memory cells, which provide faster read speeds than NAND memory. A NOR-based CIM system requires only a tiny space inside devices, which makes it an ideal option for small products like headphones. Anker says headphones are a particularly challenging environment to demonstrate what a new chip can do, because "hardly any other device places higher demands on an AI chip." They have a tiny space allotted for components and operate with just a few milliwatts of power, even though they have to consistently provide noise cancellation. If the model delivers, it could be a huge advertisement for Thus, which Anker plans to put in other mobile accessories and IoT devices, as well.
While the company has yet to reveal all its upcoming headphones' AI-powered capabilities, it did announce one particular feature. Clear Calls, as it's called, will cancel noise "with a large neural network running entirely on the device, supported by eight MEMS microphones and two bone conduction sensors." Anker says it will enable significantly clearer conversations even in environments that are challenging for conventional noise cancellat
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Apple hardware engineering chief John Ternus and marketing chief Greg Joswiak recently did an interview with Tom's Guide, where they shared new insights into the MacBook Neo, AI, and spatial computing.
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