Ignore my cruddy handwriting to marvel at this beautiful color. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales A front light and color display are just two of the ways this pretty note taking device puts luxury first. Continue reading…

Image: Asus Asus is launching its latest NUC mini PC today, complete with Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 2 processors. For some reason, Asus has decided to put a dedicated Copilot button on the front of this puck-shaped PC, so you can reach out and launch Microsoft’s AI assistant.I’m not entirely sure why you’d want an AI button on a miniature PC that’s probably going to sit more than an arm’s length away from you on a desk, but it’s a button that has now progressed beyond Microsoft’s effort to push it on keyboards. Asus also has a fingerprint reader on top of this NUC for Windows Hello authentication, which makes more sense so you can touch the fingerprint reader when you initially power on this mini PC. Image: Asus The full... Continue reading…

Apple’s iPhone 16 event invitation. | Image: Apple Apple is getting ready to announce the iPhone 16, which will surely be its most powerful and best-camera-having phone yet (at least for the Pro models). It’s also expected to be the first iPhone to launch with Apple Intelligence across the board.In addition to the iPhone 16 lineup and a slate of new watches and AirPods, Apple is expected to show more AI features, like the ability to understand what’s onscreen, along with features it introduced at WWDC in June, which include an upgraded Siri, image generation, AI rewrite, and call recording and transcription abilities.The word “glowtime” is likely a reference to the glow effect that appears around the edges of the screen when Siri is activated in the latest developer betas of iOS 18.... Continue reading…

A little while ago, we saw the release of the new Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ devices from Microsoft. Now, the Redmond giant is ready to bring its newest range to the business side of computing. Microsoft has announced that the Surface Pro 11 and the Surface Laptop 7 will become available to businesses, alongside a 5G-enabled version of the Surface Pro 10.

Qualcomm is once again expanding its Snapdragon X series of chipsets for Windows laptops, introducing the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core. This is the Snapdragon X SoC that I've been reporting on since January, but branded differently than was planned back then. The idea is to hit lower price points for high-performing Windows on Arm PCs.

Most iPhone users are familiar with the green message bubbles that appear when texting Android phones, but occasionally these pop up when messaging other iPhones, too. When a message can't be sent via iMessage, it will fall back to a text messaging standard, and this results in green bubbles appearing even on the best iPhones. Aside from being an annoyance, green bubbles can lack iMessage-exclusive features. So, if you're seeing green bubbles and want to know why, we've got the answer.

macOS is full of great native utilities, like the built-in Screenshot app, but third-party software can often provide a better experience than what you'll get with Apple's default apps. I'm constantly searching for new must-have macOS apps to improve my daily workflow on the best Macs, and I recently decided to give CleanShot X a try. At its core, CleanShot X is a paid screenshot utility that offers a more robust feature set than what macOS' Screenshot can provide.

The Verge Microsoft is holding a special Copilot event later this month that will be focused on “the next phase of Copilot innovation.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and vice president of AI at work Jared Spataro will host the “wave 2” Copilot event on September 16th.The event will be hosted on LinkedIn and focus on the business side of Microsoft’s Copilot offerings. I revealed in my Notepad newsletter last month that Microsoft is about to rebrand Copilot in the most Microsoft way possible. This means that instead of “Copilot in Word” it will become “Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word,” alongside a rebranding of “Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365” to “Microsoft 365 Copilot.” Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s event won’t be all about... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Safety regulators are urging the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to investigate the ultracheap e-commerce platforms Shein and Temu. In a statement published Tuesday, two CPSC commissioners say Shein and Temu “raise specific concerns,” including reports that “deadly baby and toddler products are easy to find on these platforms.”The statement cites last month’s report from The Information, which highlights some of the dangerous products sold on both sites. That includes padded crib bumpers on Temu that have been banned in the US, as well as children’s drawstring hoodies on Shein that the CPSC considers a strangulation hazard.CPSC commissioners Peter Feldman and Douglas Dziak say the safety agency should evaluate how Shein,... Continue reading…

Image: Volvo Volvo is pushing back its deadline to sell only electric vehicles, now saying it will rely on a mix of hybrids and battery electric vehicles. The company says it will achieve “net zero greenhouse gas emissions” by 2040.Three years ago, the Swedish automaker made a commitment to only sell EVs by 2030. Since then, EV sales have exploded, but a recent slowdown in growth is leading many manufacturers to reconsider their pledges. Volvo blamed the readjustment on a number of factors, including “slower than expected rollout of charging infrastructure, withdrawal of government incentives in some markets and additional uncertainties created by recent tariffs on EVs in various markets.”Volvo is now among them, arguing that it will be a... Continue reading…

The flaw doesn’t impact newer YubiKey hardware that doesn’t use the Infineon cryptolibrary. | Image: Yubico Security researchers have detected a vulnerability in YubiKey two-factor authentication tokens that enables attackers to clone the device according to a new security advisory. The vulnerability was discovered within the Infineon cryptographic library used by most YubiKey products, including the YubiKey 5, Yubikey Bio, Security Key, and YubiHSM 2 series devices.YubiKey manufacturer Yubico says the severity of the side-channel vulnerability is “moderate” but is difficult to exploit, partly because two-factor systems rely upon something the user has and something only they should know. “The attacker would need physical possession of the YubiKey, Security Key, or YubiHSM, knowledge of the accounts they want to target, and specialized... Continue reading…

Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm launched its first big wave of Windows laptops this summer at $999 and up — but a new, somewhat weaker chip could soon shave off at least $100. Today, the company’s announcing its first 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chips, which will feature in a new Asus Zenbook S 15 and Dell Inspiron 14 that’ll retail for $899 each.While the new Qualcomm chips have all the same features as the 10-core and 12-core models, they’re decidedly weaker in some ways — especially graphics. On average, they’ve got less than half the GPU power for games and other graphical apps. And while they all feature the same 45 TOPS of AI performance from their NPU, they’ve also got 12MB less CPU cache. Image: Qualcomm 1.7 teraflops is a lot... Continue reading…