Technology

Apple has just announced its iPhone 12 lineup, and as part of today’s announcements, the company introduced a dizzying amount of camera tech scattered amongst the new iPhones. If you’re coming from an iPhone that currently has a single camera, or even a pair, you may find some serious upgrades here. But first, let’s establish the baseline. The iPhone SE’s camera. One camera: iPhone SE (2020) and iPhone XR The iPhone SE turned heads earlier this year at a $399 price, and the iPhone XR is now $499. Both have a single 12-megapixel f/1.8 “wide” camera, though they’re not quite the same — the XR has a larger sensor, while the iPhone SE appears to be a smaller one similar to 2017’s iPhone 8. Neither has ultrawide or telephoto lenses, nor fancy Deep Fusion techniques; your portrait-mode shots are...

Anyone who buys a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, or Apple TV after October 22nd gets free three-month trial of Apple Arcade, Apple has announced. Apple’s games subscription service normally costs $4.99 a month, and gives you access to over 100 downloadable games with no ads or in-game purchases. Apple has long used lengthy free trial periods to advertise its subscription services. When it launched Apple TV Plus last year it gave customers a whole year of the service for free with the purchase of an eligible device, and recently extended these trials by up to three months. Three months is also the standard trial period for Apple Music. Until now, however, Apple has only offered a one month free trial of Apple Arcade with new sign-ups. Apple Arcade normally costs $4.99 a month The compan...

WordPress has introduced a new feature that automatically posts entire blogs as Twitter threads, complete with all text, images, videos and embeds. You can access the feature via the green Jetback icon on the top right of the edit post page, alongside existing options to share links to Facebook and other social networks. WordPress argues the feature is “a great way to amplify your content,” by allowing posts to reach any Twitter followers that don’t follow a WordPress blog directly. Twitter threads also often end up being much more visible on the platform compared to single tweets, and the new feature allows followers to read a post’s contents without having to click through a link. Your browser does not support HTML5 video. But here’s a counterpoint: Twitter threads are an objectively ter...

Canon has announced the PowerShot Zoom, an unusual camera that’s more like a digital monocular than a point-and-shoot. The company has been showing off the idea for a while and recently crowdfunded it in Japan; now it’s coming to the US. The PowerShot Zoom is a tiny device with an electronic viewfinder, a 1/3-inch 12-megapixel sensor, and two switchable equivalent focal lengths of 100mm and 400mm with a digital zoom up to 800mm. The lens is f/5.6-6.3, so this probably isn’t well-suited to low-light use. Image quality in general is not really the focus. Canon says the product has been designed for people who enjoy outdoor activities like birdwatching and hiking, however, and it could be a useful accessory for spectators at sports events like the Olympic Games — if they actually go ahead. Th...

Apple’s new iPhones have arrived (even if they’re a bit later than usual). And this year, Apple has launched four new phones: the iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max, its first iPhones with 5G and what Apple claims are the fastest smartphones ever made. The new iPhone 12 and 12 mini effectively replace last year’s iPhone 11, but this year Apple is offering its cheaper iPhone in two sizes (something that the company has done with its higher-end models for the last two years). It’s also made some big upgrades on the hardware front: the display is now an OLED panel instead of LCD, there’s support for 5G, and an updated design. The iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max are more incremental updates, however, offering new designs with slightly larger displays (6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, respective...

Apple’s new iPhone 12 line will be able to access faster wireless charging speeds of 15W in line with the most up-to-date Qi standard, but there’s a catch: you’ll have to use Apple’s new MagSafe brand of charger or a MagSafe-compatible one from a third-party accessory maker. Apple reintroduced its MagSafe branding for the iPhone with the announcement of its new smartphone line on Tuesday, and the company now touts a new feature in which “magnets align themselves perfectly every time for faster wireless charging” on its product page. But what Apple didn’t explicitly mention is that only its proprietary MagSafe brand, and not chargers using the general Qi charging standard it’s based on, can use those faster speeds. Apple’s MagSafe brand will let it gate keep faster wireless charging Noted o...

In some parts of the world, solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in history, thanks to policies encouraging renewable energy growth. That’s according to a new report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Sunshine is free, but the technology needed to turn it into usable electricity can be expensive. To encourage more people and companies to switch to solar power, countries can adjust their policies to make purchasing that equipment more affordable. Today, more than 130 countries have policies that lower the cost of building new solar installations. This is the first year that the IEA took such policies into consideration when calculating the cost of solar energy in its annual World Energy Outlook report. After doing so, their estimates of the cost of sol...

Apple has announced its very first 5G iPhones: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. They range in price from $729 to well north of $1,100, but — as Apple proudly announced during the press conference — even the Mini offers access to speedy millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G networks. As it turns out, that’s why each new iPhone features this conspicuous groove along the right edge. It’s a special window for mmWave signals, and it appears to be designed so users can visibly see it and perhaps avoid holding it there for maximum signal strength. Intriguingly, though, it doesn’t seem to be a feature of iPhones that will be sold elsewhere in the world. Here’s the same iPhone 12 Mini picture from Apple UK: Notice anything missing?Image: Apple And here’s a comparison image ...

A new crew of three astronauts are launching to the International Space Station late tonight, blasting off on a Russian Soyuz rocket out of Kazakhstan. The trio are heading to the station about a month ahead of SpaceX’s next crewed Dragon launch, which will bring another set of four astronauts aboard the ISS in mid-November. Heading up on this Soyuz flight are two Russian cosmonauts — Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov — and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, on her second trip to space. The trio will join three crew members who have been living on the ISS since April: Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy. However, their living arrangement won’t last long. Cassidy and his cosmonaut crew mates are slated to head back to Earth on October 21st, ...

AMC Theaters is warning investors that without a steady flow of movies to bring people into the remaining theaters it has open, the company could run out of cash by the end of 2020. It’s no surprise that the theater industry is hurting. Nearly every major blockbuster (movies that could get people to possibly visit a theater mid-pandemic) has been pushed back to 2021, and the theaters still open are operating at reduced capacities. The results aren’t great; Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet — the one notable blockbuster a studio tried to release — failed to perform in the United States, where theaters in major markets like New York City and Los Angeles remain closed. The next big film is Wonder Woman 1984, and there’s always a chance that could move from its current December 25th r...

We sifted through the deals to find the products actually worth shopping this Prime Day. Photo: Amazon The sixth-annual Prime Day has arrived — a few months later than last year, but just in time to kick off what’s possibly the earliest holiday shopping season in history. All those deals can be overwhelming, but we at the Strategist (as well as our friends at The Cut) are here to help suss out the best deals worth taking advantage of. And Prime Day always presents a, well, prime opportunity to secure one-of-a-kind deals on kitchen items and top-of-the-line appliances, whether that’s finally springing for the stand mixer that’ll revolutionize your baking abilities or investing in an Instant Pot that can replace your takeout habit. Note that everything will be on sale only until supplies las...

The Oculus Quest 2, Facebook’s new virtual reality headset, has started shipping today. The Quest 2 is a cheaper, revamped version of the original 2019 Quest. It’s got the same untethered standalone design but with a new chipset and a big bump in screen resolution and controller battery life. And it’s starting at $299 for the base 64GB model and $399 for a 256GB version, a $100 drop from the original Quest. Quest 2 preorders have been open since September, and it’s available through Oculus’ own site and stores like Best Buy and Walmart, with a full list of retailers in Oculus’ announcement post. It was difficult to buy an original Quest over much of the past year, thanks to persistent supply problems, but the Quest 2 still appears to be widely in stock. As we wrote in September, the Quest ...