Technology

On August 2nd of last year, TikTok celebrated its first birthday. To mark the occasion, I wrote about the four biggest risks facing the company. One was finding new customers. Two was continuing to develop compelling new features. Three was attracting top influencers. And four was managing its relationship with regulators. The big news over the past few weeks has been that TikTok, due to reasons largely outside its control, ultimately failed at the fourth task. President Trump has ordered that the Chinese company ByteDance divest TikTok, transferring all of its assets to an American company. And on Monday, TikTok sued the Trump administration. Here are Mike Isaac and Ana Swanson in the New York Times: TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving...

Yesterday saw the first of what promises to be many, many hearings in the Apple vs Epic legal battle over Apple’s App Store policies and fees. That first hearing was preliminary to the preliminaries, merely designed to see if Apple should be forced to reinstate Epic’s developer privileges immediately while the court figures out whether the company should reinstate Epic’s privileges temporarily for the duration of the trial. A decision came in the wee hours of the night. As Russell Brandom explains, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that “Apple can’t retaliate against Epic Games by terminating the company’s Apple developer accounts or restricting use of Epic’s Unreal Engine by developers on Apple platforms. But in the same ruling… Apple will not be required to bring Fortnite — which ...

I’ll just come right out and say that I don’t really think I’ve ever had a problem with sweaty palms in the 25 years or so that I’ve been regularly using a mouse. But my weather app is telling me it feels like 100°F in Tokyo today, and I am not looking forward to my electricity bill this month, so if I can shift even one percent of the cooling burden from my air conditioner to my PC’s USB port, why not? That’s where Mindshunter’s Zephyr Gaming Mouse comes in. It is, as far as I’m aware, the first ever gaming mouse with a built-in fan to cool your hand. It’s available (and fully funded) for pre-order on Kickstarter now with prices starting at $89 and an estimated shipping date of October. The Zephyr mouse is made possible by a type of design that’s become increasingly popular in the world o...

DJI could be about to announce a new smartphone gimbal called the Osmo Mobile 4 — now abbreviated “OM 4” — according to a new report from WinFuture. A video short posted to Twitter by WinFuture’s Roland Quandt shows two new magnetic mounting mechanisms that let you quickly snap your smartphone into the mount, a big improvement over the previous model. If this trailer is accurate, it could mean the new Osmo has addressed one of the biggest complaints we had about the Osmo Mobile 3 when we tried it out last year. Previously, you had to slide your smartphone into a claw mount, but now it looks like you pre-attach a magnetic disk or claw to the back of your phone, letting you quickly snap the handset into the gimbal with the help of magnets. WinFuture has also published a pair of images of the...

Epic Games just won a temporary restraining order against Apple — at least in part. Effective immediately, Apple can’t retaliate against Epic Games by terminating the company’s Apple developer accounts or restricting use of Epic’s Unreal Engine by developers on Apple platforms. But in the same ruling, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided that Apple will not be required to bring Fortnite — which it had banned after Epic added an in-app payment system in violation of Apple’s rules — back to the App Store. The judge argued that Epic “strategically chose to breach its agreements with Apple” “The Court finds that with respect to Epic Games’ motion as to its games, including Fortnite, Epic Games has not yet demonstrated irreparable harm. The current predicament appears of its own making,” Rogers...

Nintendo is planning to release an upgraded version of its popular Switch game console next year, according to reports in Taiwan’s Economic Daily News and Bloomberg. The new model will come out in early 2021, according to the Economic Daily News, which cited supply chain sources. This could be the first serious performance upgrade to the Switch since its release in March 2017. Bloomberg says Nintendo “has looked into including more computing power and 4K high-definition graphics,” while the Economic Daily News mentions improved visuals. Nintendo did release two new Switch models last year, but they used a more power-efficient version of the original hardware to enable a smaller form factor and better battery life without notable performance improvements. That Switch hardware is based aroun...

When Razer went on a building and buying spree that saw it morph from a PC peripherals company to a publicly traded do-it-all gaming hardware manufacturer, Corsair was clearly paying attention — on Monday, it took the penultimate step in a similar journey by filing its own IPO paperwork. And within the S-1 filing, we can finally see just how big a company Corsair has actually become. The company says it pulled in a billion dollars in revenue last year, and now commands over 18 percent of the US market share in gaming peripherals and nearly 42 percent of gaming PC components. (The company doesn’t say how big it is worldwide.) Also number three in mice, number four in headsets Corsair claims it’s now the number one seller of high-performance computer memory, cases, power supplies, coolers an...

In September, Logitech will ship a colorful collection of gaming accessories, consisting of a few preexisting products with some fresh tints, and one brand-new product: the $129 G733 Lightspeed gaming headset. With the exception of the $229 G915 TKL wireless mechanical keyboard, which is now offered in white instead of only black, other accessories — the $39 G203 Lightsync wired mouse, the $59 G305 Lightspeed wireless mouse, and the G733 headset — will come in four colors: blue, lilac purple, white, and black. Since most of these products have already been available for a while, I’m going to focus on the G733 headset. It’s a lightweight, wireless gaming headset that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Impressively, it has most of the same features as the $199.99 Logitech Pro X Lightspeed he...

Apple’s worldwide retail network may be struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, but that hasn’t stopped the company from indulging in its penchant for pricey-looking, unique, and outlandish exterior design. The iPhone maker’s newest retail location, located in Singapore on the city-state’s waterfront and known officially as Apple Marina Bay Sands, can claim a world’s first title: it’s the only Apple retail shop on the planet that floats on water. The location, part of the luxury hotel and resort of the same name, is Singapore’s third Apple Store following Orchard Road, which opened as Singapore’s first in 2017, and Apple Jewel Changi Airport, located in the world-famous retail sector of Singapore’s transportation hub that also features the world’s tallest indoor waterfall. (Singapore s...

Tech teardown specialist iFixit has published a new article taking apart the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, providing us a better look at what’s underneath the giant camera bump of Samsung’s $1,300 stylus-equipped smartphone and its cheaper sibling. Surprisingly, iFixit found that both phones are missing the vapor chamber and copper heat pipes Samsung had been using on previous phones to cool their processor during extended gaming sessions. Instead of copper, iFixit found a multi-layered graphite thermal pad inside each device during its teardowns and says that JerryRigEverything reportedly found one as well. But weirdly, at least one other Galaxy Note 20 Ultra does have the copper heatpipe and vapor chamber cooling, as you can see in this teardown video. Instead of copper, ther...

Samsung finally announced the follow-up to the beleaguered first generation Galaxy Fold, the Galaxy Z Fold 2, earlier this month, but the phone still isn’t out yet — Samsung promised to reveal more on September 1st. Ahead of then, though, it seems at least one Z Fold 2 has made it into the wild, as a Chinese YouTube channel has already posted a review of the upcoming foldable (via SamMobile). I don’t speak Chinese, so I can’t tell you what the reviewer is saying. But if you want to see what an actual powered-on Z Fold 2 looks like doing a bunch of different things, I recommend watching the whole video. And there’s a few interesting tidbits worth calling out. Perhaps most noticeably, the outer screen seems like a major improvement, as it now takes up almost the entire front of the phone: Im...

Unity, maker of the popular Unity Game Engine, has filed to go public at an incredible moment in time. Its chief rival, Epic Games, is currently busy arguing that Apple is holding the Unreal Engine hostage, and Epic will appear in court this very afternoon to demand a restraining order so Apple can’t cut off access to developers. What’s more incredible, though: the numbers revealed in Unity’s new S-1 filing show the company is far more of a formidable rival to Epic than we thought. We knew the early surge of interest in Unity may have forced Epic’s hand, first when Epic drastically dropped the price of Unreal Engine in 2014, and in 2015 when it started letting developers build with Unreal for free. But despite those moves, Unity says that in 2019, over half of the top games on mobile, PC, ...