Author Archives: Sarang Sheth

Halloween finally gets its own snow globe, and it’s made of LEGO

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The snow globe was invented by accident in 1900, when a Viennese surgical instrument mechanic named Erwin Perzy tried to build a brighter operating room lamp and ended up with a glass ball full of drifting semolina. Medicine’s loss was the gift shop’s gain. For the 125 years since, Christmas has hogged the format, filling every globe on the shelf with Santas, snowmen, and tiny trees. Halloween never got a turn, which feels unfair to the holiday that loves a spooky little scene trapped under glass. The Brick Artist just fixed that with the Halloween Snow Globe, a LEGO Ideas build that swaps snowfall for a creaky graveyard you can spin with a crank.

Inside the dome sits a twisted dead tree, a floating ghost, a jack-o’-lantern scarecrow, gravestones topped by a gargoyle, and a full moon peeking out from storm clouds. A Vampire minifig guards the front of the black base, arms out like a bouncer at the world’s smallest haunted nightclub. Turn the lever on the back and an internal gear mechanism rotates the whole scene 360 degrees, bringing a skeleton and a spider into view from behind the tombstones. The same builder gave us a spinning Christmas Snow Globe last December, so the setup might ring a bell. It’s the same clever chassis, now dressed for the other big holiday, and frankly it looks better in black.

Designer: The Brick Artist

A hand crank that spins the whole graveyard

The crank sticks out of the back of the base as a Technic axle with a tan handle, the kind of grip you’d expect on a music box. Turn it and gears hidden inside the black drum rotate the entire scene a full 360 degrees. The builder doesn’t spell out the gear layout, so the guts stay a mystery, but the renders show a clean hand-powered setup with no motors or batteries to fuss over. That keeps the base a tidy stage instead of a machine room. A crank also beats a shake, because nothing gets rattled loose and you control the drama.

My favorite detail, though, is where the skeleton and spider are parked. Both sit around the back of the scene, hidden behind the tombstones from the front, so the crank doubles as a reveal. That one placement gives the spin a reason to exist, hands whoever is turning it a tiny jump scare, and borrows the logic of a haunted house ride where the creepy stuff waits around the corner. Plenty of rotating displays just show you the same scene from another angle, while this one hides a punchline on the far side. It also means the globe looks different from every direction, which is rare for a decoration.

Brick-level tricks inside the dome

The tree is built from jointed black bars and clips, which lets its branches twist and reach in ways stacked bricks never could. The ghost hovers on a transparent stem above the gargoyle, so it floats like it’s up to no good. The scarecrow’s pumpkin head wears a top hat, and its coat is layered dark slopes that fake ragged, wind-tattered cloth. Behind it, a flat round moon is half covered by gray cloud plates, a cheap trick that sells an entire night sky. Check the render from behind and you’ll spot the moon’s bare studs, proof that it’s a stage prop built for the front row.

Autumn leaves do the job snow normally would. The ground is a patchwork of tan and gray round tiles, spiky reddish brown plants for dead brush, and orange and yellow leaf elements scattered between them. Those warm colors pop hard against an otherwise black and gray scene, like a Tim Burton still with one splash of orange. The base repeats the trick with wreaths of leaves and white flowers, plus a black spider and little web elements at the corners. The palette does the lighting work, since a mostly gray dome needs somewhere for your eye to land.

A Christmas classic with a Halloween Town makeover

LEGO already blessed this exact idea in 2024. When Simon Scott’s fan design became the 2,193 piece Nightmare Before Christmas set at $199.99, LEGO Ideas ran a contest asking builders to turn a Christmas classic into a Halloween version. The Brick Artist’s globe is that same swap with no prize pot attached. The Vampire up front looks a lot like the 2010 Collectible Minifigures Series 2 Vampire, a figure whose look later inspired Lord Vampyre in the 2012 Monster Fighters theme. Dracula standing guard at the front door is a very on-brand way to greet trick-or-treaters.

The Halloween Snow Globe was submitted on October 8, 2026, and as of October 9 it sat at 420 supporters (hehe) with 424 days left to reach the 1K milestone. LEGO Ideas runs on community votes: fans submit builds, supporters pile up, and LEGO decides which ones graduate into real boxes. Head to the LEGO Ideas page and give it your vote, because every supporter pushes it toward the next milestone.

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OnePlus wants to stick a tiny air conditioner on the back of its gaming phone

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Apple’s MagSafe, which returned on the iPhone 12 in 2020, turned the back of the phone into prime real estate. Wallets stuck on first, then grips, battery packs, and tripods (we rounded up the early MagSafe accessory wave in 2021), with Qi2 later pulling Android into the same magnetic party. The next resident, apparently, is a tiny air conditioner. Gaming phones and cooling fans have been dating for years, but those clip-ons were bulky and held on by spring clamps. A magnet-mounted cooler that sits flat like a card wallet is a more civilized take, and OnePlus is about to launch one.

The OnePlus Ice Card Mini follows the 68-gram Magnetic Ice Cooling Clip, which launched in March at 179 yuan (about $26) in China. The new one weighs about 1.8 ounces (50 grams) and measures 2.8 by 2.1 inches (70mm by 53.4mm), a footprint roughly 30% smaller, at 0.38 inches (9.7mm) thick. A thermoelectric cooling chip and an air-cooling system do the work, powered straight from the phone’s USB-C port. It debuts alongside the OnePlus 16 on October 12 at 7pm local time, and Oppo’s China store already lists it. Pricing and US availability have not been announced.

A mini-fridge chip and a tiny fan, squeezed into 0.38 inches

Thermoelectric (Peltier) coolers shuttle heat from one face of a small ceramic sandwich to the other whenever current runs through them. That leaves the hot side as the problem, so the Mini pairs its TEC chip with an air-cooling system that puts cold air where the phone runs hottest. The body mixes polycarbonate and aluminum alloy, measures 0.38 inches (9.7mm) thick, and bulges to 0.48 inches (12.3mm) around the air intake. Two settings sit at about 25dB and 35dB, closer to a whisper than a hair dryer. About 10 newtons of magnetic force holds it on.

We covered the Ice Speed Freezemat, a concept MagSafe charger that borrowed its cooling trick from the way the body sweats. The SHARGE Icemag then brought active cooling to the MagSafe power bank, and LISEN’s stand later tucked a fan into a desk object. The Mini strips the idea down to one job in a card-shaped body that draws at most 3.5W (5V at 0.7A) over USB-C. OnePlus’s earlier 27W and 40W coolers for China were far hungrier. That puts the Mini in the pocket-and-forget camp instead of the gaming-rig one, and I like that call.

No RGB, one status light, and a plate for phones without magnets

OnePlus’s 27W Ice Point clip from 2025 leaned on dual-color lighting for a gamer look. The Mini arrives in a single Silver Wing gray, with one status light that glows blue or green for the active mode and flashes red to flag a fault. That reads like a tool rather than a trophy, which suits a card-sized accessory you might actually leave in a bag. Nobody needs RGB on something that lives in a jacket pocket. The result is closer to a router’s blinking LED than a gaming rig’s light show.

A magnetic plate in the box extends the trick to Android phones and iPhones without built-in magnets. OnePlus and OPPO phones also get a pairing with the ColorOS X high-performance mode, so the home team gets a software handshake. Power can come from the phone, a power bank, or a wall adapter, so there is no proprietary port to hunt for. That plain USB-C approach suits a household of mixed phones. The pairing is the part I most want to see in action, since a cooler that talks to the phone beats a fan on a magnet.

Eight hours off a power bank turns a gaming gadget into travel gear

OnePlus says a 10,000mAh power bank can keep the Mini running for up to eight hours on high, which covers a long flight or a very committed gaming marathon. That detail turns the cooler into a field accessory, one that lives in a bag next to the power bank most of us already own. The math is believable, since 3.5W for eight hours is about 28Wh, and a 10,000mAh bank holds roughly 37Wh at nominal voltage. Add conversion losses and the claim lands right where physics says it should. Not bad for a gadget weighing 1.8 ounces.

Phones keep getting thinner and more powerful, and the thermal answer keeps shifting to a second object clinging to the back. OnePlus alone has announced at least four coolers in about eighteen months, from the 27W Ice Point to this 50-gram Mini. That cadence says the company sees cooling as a real accessory category rather than a gimmick. I would not be surprised if other brands copy the card-sized format. Cooling accessories could become the next thing everyone shrugs at until their navigation app turns the phone into a hand warmer.

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This plastic stool is a giant Esc key, and it hides your clutter

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I have a soft spot for objects nobody bothers to credit, and the plastic stool might be the champion of them. It’s the monobloc chair’s shorter, scrappier cousin, and it gets about half the respect. You’ll find it at night markets, under kitchen sinks, and propping open a door somewhere in Asia. Nobody can name the person who designed it. Every few years a design student gives it a glow-up, and then it goes right back to being ignored.

This time the glow-up comes with a joke. Dream Research Society, a Chinese product studio, turned the stool into a giant Esc keycap, complete with tapered sides and a little white ESC legend. The top pops off like a lid, so the stool also hides your shoes, toy bricks, or that one box of cables you swear you’ll sort someday. The designer says you can buy it now on major Chinese e-commerce platforms, in transparent, black, or white. Finally, a stool with a punchline.

Designer: Dream Research Society

Scale a computer keycap up to stool size and most of the work is already done. The tapered skirt, the softly rounded corners, and the slightly lighter top cap with a bold white ESC legend all carry over straight from the keyboard. The corners of the skirt are cut away, which leaves four small feet and gives the stool its stance. No dimensions are listed, so I can’t give you a seat height, but the photos show a low, squat piece that looks built for tying shoelaces rather than hosting dinner. A keycap that helps you leave the house is a decent joke.

The whole top lifts off as a lid, with a small finger slot on one edge, and underneath is a hollow body. The promo renders fill it with toy bricks, picture books, and plush animals. In the transparent version you can see all of it through the walls, so the clutter becomes a display. The one compromise is obvious from the form: the lid is also the seat, so grabbing anything inside means standing up first. That works for shoes and gets a little annoying for toys, especially when the one brick you need is at the bottom. Call it a keyboard shortcut that takes two steps.

The listing shows three bodies, transparent, black, and white, each topped with a gray lid. Gray on white is the pairing that reads as a keyboard from across the room, like something pulled off a beige-era office desk. Separate renders also show frosted bodies with pink, green, and cream lids, though I can’t tell whether those are sold or just mood. The joke has real history behind it, too. Bob Bemer pushed the escape character into ASCII around 1960, and the key has been the computer world’s emergency exit ever since. Parking that exit button in your entryway, right where you leave the house, is a gag that took 60 years to set up.

The designer says it’s a real product, on sale through major Chinese e-commerce platforms. I couldn’t find a price, materials, weight limit, or brand name, and nothing points to a US release, so American readers get to admire from afar for now. The promo images also include arrow-key versions in clear blue, which I’d love to see as a four-stool cluster, though I can’t confirm they exist beyond the renders. If they do, someone’s living room is about to become a cursor cluster. Until then, the humble plastic stool finally has an inside joke, and all it took was a keyboard.

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The HomePod is finally getting a screen (and a robotic arm) this October 13th

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Apple event names usually read like perfume ads. Wonderlust, Scary Fast, It’s Glowtime. So when invites landed this week for an October 13 event called “Welcome home,” the bluntness was hard to miss. Apple went with a literal doormat quote. Behind it, the HomePod is reportedly getting a screen, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman saying the headliner is a smart home hub unofficially called the HomePad. A new Apple TV 4K and a HomePod mini 2 are expected to tag along, and press are headed to an “Apple Experience” in Tribeca, which sounds like hands-on time.

The HomePod has spent nine years as the best sounding speaker you never ask anything. We have been daydreaming about a screen for it since October 2023, when we covered the rumored HomePod Max and its 7-inch display. Gurman now describes a 6-inch square screen on a polished metal arm over a round, perforated speaker base, a look reminiscent of the 2002 iMac G4. That is the sunflower iMac everyone nicknamed the iLamp, so Apple appears to be raiding its own attic. Echo Shows and Nest Hubs have spent years looking like phones stuck on cans, so a little desk lamp energy goes a long way.

Designer: Sarang Sheth

The HomePad comes in two versions, with a robotic arm model reportedly on the way

Visual Rendering of the HomePad from 2023

Gurman says Apple is building two versions, a tabletop model codenamed J490 and a wall-mounted one codenamed J491, and both need an outlet. The wall version drops the arm and round base for a thin square base with the speakers and microphones below the display. Both are meant to serve a whole household, recognizing who is talking, showing that person’s content, and hiding private info in a visitor mode. The interface reportedly borrows from Apple Watch and StandBy mode, with iPhone widgets and a single front camera for FaceTime. It also needs an iPhone for setup, so nobody is throwing their phone out yet.

Apple tried several ways of attaching the iMac G4’s screen before settling on one stainless steel arm, and Jobs listed himself as primary inventor on one of its design patents. A third HomePad is reportedly in development with a 9-inch display on a robotic arm that moves 360 degrees, which is basically Pixar’s Luxo Jr. lamp coming to life. We spotted this coming in 2024, when we covered Apple’s homeOS plans, magnetic mount and robotic arm included. The thick bezels are the odd choice, since Apple spent a decade shaving them off. On a screen you glance at from across the kitchen, they might just read as a picture frame.

Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini 2 get new chips and Siri AI

The current Apple TV 4K runs a 2021 A15 Bionic, and rumors point to either an A19 with 8GB of RAM or an A19 Pro with 12GB, which is what the iPhone 17 Pro uses. An N1 wireless chip is also rumored, adding Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread, the low-power smart home radio that keeps gadgets chatting without clogging your router. Code in tvOS 27.2 hints that four HomePods can pair with it for surround sound and relay Siri requests so answers show up on your TV. A tweaked Siri Remote is expected too. Siri AI will likely stay exclusive to the new box, so your four-year-old Apple TV gets to watch from the sidelines.

The original HomePod mini arrived in October 2020 at $99 and still runs an S5, a chip first seen in the Apple Watch Series 5. Rumors say the sequel moves to an S9, with the N1 wireless chip and a new Ultra Wideband chip. Code strings reportedly point to the same fabric-wrapped sphere with a backlit touch top, in a lighter blue and white plus new green, pink, and black. Keeping the sphere is the safe call, though I still crave the Braun T3 vibes of that fan-made HomePod Nano concept we featured in 2023. The headline feature is reportedly Siri AI, so the tiny speaker might finally earn the smart in smart speaker.

LG and Schneider accessories, plus what Apple is saving for later

Apple reportedly co-developed a lineup with LG that includes a smart lock, thermostat, temperature sensor, video doorbell, and indoor, outdoor, and floodlight cameras, all expected to wear LG branding. Gurman suggests they won’t ship as early as the HomePod and Apple TV, though a stage cameo is still likely. Leaks describe a deadbolt with a keypad that rotates to open, a doorbell with a second downward-facing camera, and an outdoor camera sealed with O-rings and waterproof grease. Code in iOS 27.2 also lists a Schneider thermostat and temperature sensor with a “second-party” tag, which gets special treatment from the OS. That is a rare admission from a company that usually builds everything itself: HomeKit needs friends.

Earlier reports floated a HomePad price around $350, which is unconfirmed and absent from Bloomberg’s latest report. That would sit right next to the $349 the original HomePod cost in 2017, when we called it Apple’s tune-busting Fabergé egg. Apple hasn’t said whether the event will be livestreamed, and US pricing and availability are still unannounced. The Macs get their own event about two weeks later, so October 13 belongs entirely to the home. A camera shaped like an oversized lip balm tube, which sends text instead of video, is reportedly waiting until 2027. After nine years of being heard and never seen, the HomePod finally gets a face, and it is wearing a 2002 outfit.

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Someone Fixed Jaguar’s Type 01 With An Aggressive Sports Body Kit

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Jaguar kept us waiting two years, and what rolled out in New York on Tuesday looks suspiciously like a very expensive Braun radio on wheels. The tail is a wall of horizontal metal slats stretched across a windowless rear deck, and the nose wears a matching slatted box that could have been borrowed from a vintage hi-fi. I mean that fondly, sort of. The Type 01 starts at $130,500 in the US, with orders opening in early 2027 and deliveries in the second half. At that price, I would like the car to look like somebody finished it.

Carbon Noir’s Type 01 Sports Edition concept is the cure, and it works almost entirely by editing. The slatted front panel stays but now sits inside a black carbon surround that ties it to the headlights, so the nose reads as one band instead of a box stuck on a face. A lower stance, stepped overfenders, and open black wheels with gold calipers fix the proportions, and the blue-gray paint helps the carbon trim blend in. Out back, a red light bar carrying the JAGUAR wordmark, a finned diffuser, and a big pedestal wing give the tail something to do. Everything recognizable from Tuesday’s car is still there, just dressed for dinner.

Designer: Carbon Noir

Why the stock Type 01 looks blank from the side

Stretch a tape measure along the Type 01 and you get about 17 feet (5.2m) of car that stands only around 4.6 feet (1.4m) tall, according to Autocar. Almost all of that length is a single satin silver slab from sill to shoulder, interrupted by a charge flap and a pair of flush door handles. A strip of bronze sits low on the door, and it is the only thing out there that looks like a design decision. The car rolls on 23-inch wheels, yet the flat turbine-style covers read as gray discs from any distance. A wheel that size should look like jewelry, and these look like dinner plates.

Hagerty reports that the production car came first and the Type 00 concept was developed from it, so those slab sides are the design rather than something watered down on the way to the showroom. Jaguar has a rear three-quarter pressing it calls the Impossible Panel, where the aluminum is formed across five planes with three feature lines meeting at a single point. That is serious metalwork, and in a flat satin finish it is hard to appreciate. Panels that clever deserve some shadows to play with. A body kit happens to be a shadow delivery system.

Stance, wheels, and a nose with a point of view

Lowering the car and wrapping each tire in a stepped overfender does more work than any wing. The factory car has a visible gap between tire and arch, so the body seems to float above its wheels. Carbon Noir closes that gap, and the fenders flare out in layers that finally give the long flank a rhythm. Open black wheels with gold calipers replace the flat covers, and suddenly the wheels look as big as they are. The dark blue-gray paint pulls the carbon into the body, so the trim looks grown rather than glued on.

Tiered carbon canards stack up the lower bumper, and their edges pick up the same bronze tone as the strip on Jaguar’s door. That is a smart little callback, since it turns one stray detail on the stock car into a theme for the whole kit. A pair of sculpted vents also cut into the hood, which is dead flat on the factory car. Together they give the face a head-down, ready-to-pounce posture, which seems fair for something named after a big cat. The slats stay, the headlamps stay, and the Jaguar-ness survives the surgery.

A tail with a wing, and what Jaguar could borrow

The factory tail is one uninterrupted surface, with bright slats edge to edge, a black band below, and a plate floating in the middle. Carbon Noir splits it into zones. A red light bar with the JAGUAR wordmark crowns the slats, a finned diffuser anchors the bottom, and a pedestal wing perches on the deck like a tray on a butler’s arm. A wing that size would look silly on a small car, but a 17-foot GT has the deck space to carry it. Copper trim traces the diffuser edges too, which keeps the back tied to that door strip.

Carbon Noir is the designer who gave India’s auto rickshaw a Renault-style electric makeover a few weeks ago, so jumping from a three-wheeler to a $130,500 British GT is quite the commute. Both projects show an eye for the shape already hiding inside a design. Managing director Rawdon Glover told Robb Report that more than 50,000 people have registered interest and 78 percent are new to Jaguar. Newcomers spending six figures will probably notice what the stock car leaves unfinished. Orders open in early 2027, which leaves Jaguar plenty of time to scroll Instagram. Jaguar gave us the radio, and Carbon Noir added the subwoofer.

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Ex-Dyson designer builds a Y2K Nokia-flavored landline for kids

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You cannot slam a smartphone. Trust me, I’ve tried, and all you get is a sad little tap on a red icon and a mild sense of defeat. Slamming a receiver was a full body experience with built-in sound design. Generations of furious teenagers, dramatic dads, and heartbroken rom-com leads got to end a call with a clunk that said everything. Kids today never get that. They also never untangle a cord, memorize a number, or yell “I’ll get it!” across the house, which feels like a lot of lost childhood.

A UK startup called YAPA is bringing all of it back with a home phone for kids aged five to 14. It was designed with Aetha, the Poole studio led by ex-Dyson designer Tom Parsons, and it has a corded handset, a real keypad, and a little display for caller ID. Parents approve contacts through an app and set the hours when calls can come through, so dinner stays sacred. Everything runs over Wi-Fi, which means no wall jack and no phone bill from 1994. Translucent shells in colors like Flamingo Fizz and Electric Lagoon, plus swappable covers, give it a Y2K Nokia energy that I find completely irresistible.

Designer: Aetha Design

The shell is where YAPA gets its personality. Frosted translucent plastic wraps the base, and you can spot the internals through it, like the circuit board sitting in a clear bay beside the speaker grille on the pink unit. That’s iMac G3 thinking, the same see-through honesty 8BitDo revived on its 64 controller last December. The handset, keys, and fold-out rear leg share one loud solid color against that milky body, with orange on clear, mint on pink, and lime on aqua. Every colorway keeps the same orange coiled cord, which works like a signature and makes the whole thing look like it escaped from a 2001 toy catalog.

Swappable covers are the second Y2K callback, and this one comes straight from Nokia. Xpress-On covers debuted on the Nokia 5110 in 1998, and the 3310 pushed the idea hard, with thousands of shells from third parties. YAPA follows the same playbook, selling extra covers in Comet Orange, Cosmic Citrus, and Deep Space for £19.99 each, roughly $27. Anyone who ever matched a phone cover to an outfit will understand the appeal immediately. Today’s kids get to do the same thing, except the canvas is a kitchen counter.

Parsons and the Aetha team had a clear brief. They wanted an object with real material quality that a kid would be proud to leave out on the counter, with no toy vibes and no shrunken smartphone. That explains the proportions, which read like a proper desk phone rather than a plastic play set. It also explains the small display, which shows who’s calling and lets a child browse the address book, while YAPA insists the whole thing is built around voice and ears instead of eyes. Tin Can skips a screen entirely, which is the purist’s route, but I like that a YAPA kid gets to see Grandma’s name light up before answering.

Here’s what I love about the setup. A kid lifts a corded handset, the cord stretches across the living room, and suddenly they’re pacing in circles like every movie character who ever got bad news. Parents build the contact list in the app, so only approved numbers can reach the phone, and they pick the hours for school, dinner, and bedtime. Group calls are supported, which means a whole cousin squad can gossip at once. A real keypad sits right there for anyone who fancies memorizing Grandma’s number, and honestly, more kids should.

The handset costs £99.99, roughly $134, in Electric Lagoon, Cloud Spark, or Flamingo Fizz. Calls between YAPA units are free, while reaching grandparents and parents’ mobiles takes the Pro plan at £9.99 a month, roughly $13, or £99.99 for a year. Pinwheel Home, its closest US rival, costs $79 with $6.99 or $9.99 monthly plans for real numbers, so the pricing structure is nearly identical. YAPA’s first batch is on pre-order in the UK, with Europe coming soon. I couldn’t find any word on a US launch, so American parents will keep eyeing Tin Can and Pinwheel for now.

Retro always boomerangs. Vinyl came back, film cameras came back, and adults are paying real money for phones like the Light Phone III just to feel less glued to a screen. Kids deserve their own version of that reset, and a bright orange cord is a much friendlier invitation than a lecture about screen time. A generation raised on tapping glass is about to find out what a satisfying hang-up feels like. I give it a week before the first dramatic slam echoes through a house, and I hope a parent smiles when it does. You can see the colorways and preorder details at YAPA’s site.

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This $30,000 Porsche 911 sofa has a mini-bar where the engine should be

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Would you pay $30,000 for a Porsche that isn’t a Porsche? Or rather, a Porsche that doesn’t get you from A to B? It does, however, make for the ultimate f-you money bachelor-pad flex, though. Think about it: no parking tickets, no valet, and no friend asking for a ride to the airport. You still get the headlamps, the silhouette, and the smug look from guests, all without ever visiting a gas pump.

The Porsche in question is the Arkadia-life P01 Classic, a single-seat sofa (yes, really) shaped like an early 911, with a tan leather armchair sitting where the hood should be. Arkadia-life never actually says Porsche, and its copy only cites 1960s GT sports cars, but the round headlamps do the talking. It carries a fridge, a wine chiller, wireless charging, and a British SENSONUM sound system inside a 485-pound body. The company credits Italian artisans and lists a showroom in Shanghai. The base price is about US$30,000, per the coverage I found, since the product page just says get a quote.

Designer: Arkadia-life

A 911 body with an armchair hood

Round bulging headlamps, a thin chrome bumper, and a louvered rear lid read as an early 911, even though Arkadia-life leaves the name out of its copy. The 911 launched as the 901 at the 1963 Frankfurt show, shaped by Ferdinand Alexander “Butzi” Porsche, and that round-eyed fastback survives shrinking better than most shapes. At chair scale the headlamps take over, so the whole thing looks mildly startled to find itself in your living room. The channel-quilted cowhide seat echoes period sports car buckets and wraps around you like a shell between those headlamps. The catch is the high fenders, which kill any sideways sprawl, so movie night is a solo mission.

Ron Arad bolted a salvaged Rover seat to a steel frame in 1981, which started a long tradition of furniture designers raiding garages. Luc and Andre showed a 9Eleven sofa modeled on the rump of a 991 Series 911 at Geneva in 2014, from about $20,000 with an optional smartphone-controlled minibar. We covered the 911 Writing Desk in 2018, built from original body parts, and the Stool 911 in 2017, which borrowed only the arch of the headlamps. Each of those took a slice, while the P01 keeps the nose and the tail in one piece. Arkadia-life took the whole cake and then installed a fridge in it.

Fridge, wine chiller, fender drawers, and a minibar for an Engine Block

The page promises seven storage compartments, covering a refrigerator, a wine chiller, adjustable cup holders, and wireless charging. The fridge measures 220 by 340 by 140 millimeters (about 8.7 by 13.4 by 5.5 inches), which fits a laid-down wine bottle or a handful of cans. In the photos, the fender drawers swing out sideways to show off watches on one side and model cars on the other. The rear lid lifts on prop rods to reveal three trays, one holding champagne flutes. Where a real 911 keeps its flat-six, the P01 keeps a bar, and I think that is the best joke in the design.

A British SENSONUM system pairs a pro amplifier and subwoofer with more than a dozen speakers, tuned from your phone over Bluetooth. Five knock-sensing controls run the interface, so rapping your knuckles on the fender finally accomplishes something. Polychromatic lighting runs along the base, and in the photos it makes the heavy body look like it is hovering. The P01 is rated at 220 volts and 500 watts, and the page says the power cord complies with local mains regulations. The crate measures about 77 by 69 by 37 inches (1,950 by 1,750 by 950 millimeters), so measure your doorway before you start dreaming.

Paint, price, and the bachelor pad

The US$30,000 base price comes from coverage I found, since Arkadia-life’s page just offers a Get a Quote button. Paint is where the upsells live: GT Silver and Jet Green are included, Miami Blue, Crayon, Gold Bronze, and Panther Black add $750, and Cassisrot, Speed Yellow, and Absolutrot add $1,350. Several of those names echo Porsche’s own paint palette, which backs up the 911 reading. For comparison, Inspired Design’s 2006 Porsche 917 couch was limited to 17 pieces at £3,995 (about $7,500 then), and Vitra’s Porsche Pepita Eames Plastic Side Chair came in at 911 euros (about $970). Neither of those has a fridge.

Arkadia-life also sells the P02 Max Wall Speaker for US$3,000 in its openable version, a modified-ABS front end you hang on the wall and fill with a humidor, jewelry, or model cars. That is the budget route to the vibe without the 485 pounds. The P01 is for the bitcoin bro who timed one coin in 2021, says generational wealth at brunch, and finally found an asset with a cold drink for when the charts go red. We rounded up automotive-inspired home objects in 2020, including a Porsche Design speaker made from GT3 exhaust pipes. The garage keeps the engine, the living room keeps the feeling, and your friends keep asking if it drives.

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This $175 Wii-style Smart paddle turns your TV into a pickleball court

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Pickleball has officially escaped the court. At some point in the last two years, it stopped being ironic and became a lifestyle: parking lots of suburban rec centers filled up, TikTok feeds followed, then came the celebrity investors, the professional leagues, the branded paddle drops, and the kind of mainstream saturation that tells you a sport has officially graduated from niche to undeniable. Getting turned into a Wii-style digital pastime is, at this point, a rite of passage for any sport that has truly made it. Tennis got there. Golf got there. Boxing, baseball, bowling. MegaShot Pickl+ is the moment pickleball collects that particular badge, and it does so with an actual sensor-embedded pickleball racket for authentic gameplay, not some generic rectangular controller.

The smart paddle pairs with your phone, tablet, or laptop over Bluetooth and sends the game to your TV (via an included cable) for big-screen play, mimicking your real swing movements on screen and firing haptic feedback through the handle on every hit. A split-screen mode lets you play multiplayer on the same screen too, making it a great family entertainer. No court reservation, no weather to negotiate with. The Wii taught an entire generation that swinging something in your living room could feel surprisingly real. Pickl+ is betting that a generation raised on that premise is ready to do it again, this time for the sport that has genuinely taken over the world, and without an extra console to add to the mix. The Starter Edition is on Kickstarter now for $175, down from a planned retail price of $249. Pickl+ will be compatible with sports like tennis, ping pong, and badminton with more racket sports planned for the same smart-paddle platform.

Designer: MegaShot

Click Here to Buy Now: $175 $249 (30% off). Hurry, only a few left!

Under the hood, Pickl+ is built around a 9-axis sensor that reads the angle, speed, and arc of every swing for precise motion tracking. The haptic feedback responds distinctly to different kinds of hits, making the on-screen action feel genuinely tied to what your arm is actually doing. The paddle weighs around 300 grams, carries a 2000 mAh battery rated for up to five hours of continuous play, and charges over USB-C. Bluetooth 5.2 handles the wireless pairing, while an MHL cable connects your phone to the TV when the living room demands a proper screen. The app runs on Android 14+, iOS 18+, Windows, and macOS. Setup is as minimal as it sounds: download, charge, pair, connect, play. Unlike the Wii, Switch, or the Meta Quest, no extra console or hardware needed.

Most gaming hardware asks you to adapt to the machine: learn the buttons, the gestures, the control scheme. Pickl+ goes the other direction. You know how to hold a paddle, and you know what a swing feels like. Rather than turning a conventional controller into a sports accessory, Pickl+ turns the sports object itself into the controller. The technology is essentially trying to disappear into the physical experience, which is part of what makes it a more interesting object than just a clever game controller.

Ten-plus game modes ship at launch, including Streak, Practice, Split Mode, Career, Local Multiplayer, Target, and Beach Mode, with more already in the pipeline. VIP unlocks exclusive virtual courts, daily bonus challenges, glowing paddle effects, custom ball trails, and profile cosmetics.

Before the Kickstarter campaign went live, the beta version of the paddle was showcased at New York Toy Fair, where people across different age groups, including gaming enthusiasts and industry experts, got hands-on time with the motion tracking, gameplay, etc. It gave MegaShot an early real-world read on how quickly people understood and enjoyed the experience. Motion gaming can look impressive in a controlled demo; the real test is whether someone can pick up the paddle, understand what to do, and immediately have fun. New York Toy Fair gave MegaShot that read before asking anyone to back the campaign.

MegaShot arrived at this with receipts. Before Pickl+, the company built a smart bat, which sounds hyperlocal until the numbers land: 100,000+ units sold worldwide, 2,700+ Amazon reviews, and ratings above 4.5 across Google, Amazon, the Play Store, and iOS. The Smart Bat earned the team a spot on Shark Tank India, coverage across major publications, and placement on Walmart shelves. Cricket was a demanding proving ground, the kind of sport where precision hardware lives or dies by real player feedback. That foundation gave MegaShot a validated tech stack, a battle-tested supply chain, and the track record that earns trust going into a bigger, more globally ambitious launch.

Pickleball is the entry point for something larger. The same paddle hardware is designed to eventually support tennis, badminton, table tennis, and squash, with the VIP Pass carrying across sports as they are added. That roadmap turns Pickl+ from a single-sport product into a platform for multiple racket-sport experiences, which changes the value calculation considerably. The most globally accessible racket sport of this decade is also, as it turns out, the perfect vehicle for a company that built its credibility in one market and is now ready to find out how far a smart paddle can travel.

The Starter Edition, one smart paddle and an MHL cable, is available at its $175 Kickstarter launch price, versus a planned $249 retail price. Duo packs start at $275 for two paddles with a cable, while the Starter VIP Duo Pack, which throws in a VIP Pass, runs $315.

The Signature Edition, the premium single-paddle option, comes in at $349. The Signature Duo Edition bundles two premium paddles with cables, a VIP Pass, and protective sleeves for $499. Worldwide shipping begins in early 2027, covering the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, UAE, and India.

Click Here to Buy Now: $175 $249 (30% off). Hurry, only a few left!

The post This $175 Wii-style Smart paddle turns your TV into a pickleball court first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple’s iPhone 18 is getting a ‘cheaper’ A20 chip to keep the overall phone affordable

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Apple has a long habit of handing last year’s brain to this year’s regular iPhone. The iPhone 15 shipped with the A16 chip while the 15 Pro got the shiny new A17 Pro, and nobody stormed Cupertino with pitchforks. It works because people shop for cameras and battery life, and nobody has ever asked a store clerk about die size. The iPhone 18 is about to run the same play with a twist. This time the regular model gets a brand new A20 chip, except it arrives months after everyone else’s.

The chip is the A20, and a leaked solder ball map analyzed on Weibo by user 白饭炒白米饭 (reported by Notebookcheck on October 1) suggests it is a slimmed down sibling of the A20 Pro. That Pro chip already powers the iPhone 18 Pro, starting at $1,199, and the iPhone Duo, starting at $1,999. Both reportedly use TSMC’s 2nm process, but the standard version supposedly keeps the AI hardware and trims the GPU, cache, and clock speeds. The base iPhone 18 is expected in spring 2027, and Apple has announced no price or date. So what does Apple cut when it wants a cheaper 2nm chip, and what does it refuse to touch?

Designer: Demon’s Tech

A Smaller Die Than Last Year’s Chip, on a Pricier 2nm Node

The standard A20’s bare die is estimated at 70 to 80 mm², which would make it smaller than the A19 at 82.8 mm² and well under the A20 Pro’s 98.8 mm². A die is the actual slab of silicon, and every square millimeter you shave off means more chips per wafer and a lower bill. On 2nm the savings count for more, since Notebookcheck’s report notes those wafers cost significantly more than earlier nodes. Our own look at the base iPhone 18 pegged its body as basically an iPhone 17 in disguise, so there is no fresh industrial design to pay for either. Apple looks to be spending the budget on silicon instead.

Apple reportedly gets there by halving the cache. The standard A20 is expected to carry 8 MB of L2 cache for its two super cores and 4 MB for its four efficiency cores, which is 50% less than the A20 Pro. Cache is the small, ultra fast memory sitting right next to the processor cores, so a smaller helping can mean slightly more trips out to slower memory under heavy load. It is also one of the most direct ways to shrink a die, because SRAM, the circuitry cache is built from, has scaled poorly on recent chip nodes. Honestly, it is the smartest corner to trim, since you will never see a cache spec on a phone box.

Why the A20 Pro Gets Fancy Packaging and the A20 Skips It

The A20 Pro reportedly uses WMCM, short for wafer-level multi-chip module, which places the processor and its memory side by side instead of stacking one on the other. That layout lets the chip connect straight to the vapor chamber, the cooling plate Apple introduced with the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple says the new Pro design delivers up to 40% better sustained performance than the 17 Pro. The standard A20 is expected to stay with traditional package-on-package, where the memory sits on top of the chip like a hat. A hat is cheap and compact, but it also traps heat right where you do not want it.

Packaging is how Apple reportedly gets the A20 Pro to 4.93 GHz, a figure from the leak analysis that Apple has never confirmed. The standard A20 is expected to clock considerably lower, so it likely does not need the same cooling tricks. Pair that with an expected 5-core GPU against the Pro’s 7 cores, and the gap could show up in a long gaming session. Past base chips trailed their Pro siblings by one GPU core, so a two-core deficit would be wider than usual. The vapor chamber stole the show in the iPhone 17 Pro teardown we covered, and the leak says nothing about the base model getting similar cooling.

The AI Hardware Apple Keeps, and What Spring 2027 Looks Like

The AI side of the chip reportedly survives the cuts largely intact. The leak says the A20 keeps the same dual 16-core Neural Engine as the Pro, the dedicated block that handles on-device AI tasks, along with its own 4 MB cache. The system-level cache, a shared pool of memory every part of the chip can tap, may grow from the A19’s 12 MB to 16 MB. The memory bus is also expected to widen to 96 bits, matching the Pro, which means more data can flow to the chip per second. In real life that means live translation and photo cleanup running on the phone instead of waiting on a server.

The iPhone Duo (the one with the open and close animation we gushed over) runs the same A20 Pro, so Apple’s fall lineup now shares one chip. The base model is expected to follow in spring 2027 with a lighter version of that platform. Apple has confirmed no date, price, or chip for it, so every number here is a leak. The iPhone 17 started at $799 and the Pros just rose $100, so the base model’s price is the number to watch. Back in the A16 days the hand-me-down chip was a consolation prize, but this time the regular iPhone gets a fresh 2nm brain with a little muscle trimmed, a deal I would happily take.

The post Apple’s iPhone 18 is getting a ‘cheaper’ A20 chip to keep the overall phone affordable first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple’s iPhone 18 is getting a ‘cheaper’ A20 chip to keep the overall phone affordable

Posted on by

Apple has a long habit of handing last year’s brain to this year’s regular iPhone. The iPhone 15 shipped with the A16 chip while the 15 Pro got the shiny new A17 Pro, and nobody stormed Cupertino with pitchforks. It works because people shop for cameras and battery life, and nobody has ever asked a store clerk about die size. The iPhone 18 is about to run the same play with a twist. This time the regular model gets a brand new A20 chip, except it arrives months after everyone else’s.

The chip is the A20, and a leaked solder ball map analyzed on Weibo by user 白饭炒白米饭 (reported by Notebookcheck on October 1) suggests it is a slimmed down sibling of the A20 Pro. That Pro chip already powers the iPhone 18 Pro, starting at $1,199, and the iPhone Duo, starting at $1,999. Both reportedly use TSMC’s 2nm process, but the standard version supposedly keeps the AI hardware and trims the GPU, cache, and clock speeds. The base iPhone 18 is expected in spring 2027, and Apple has announced no price or date. So what does Apple cut when it wants a cheaper 2nm chip, and what does it refuse to touch?

Designer: Demon’s Tech

A Smaller Die Than Last Year’s Chip, on a Pricier 2nm Node

The standard A20’s bare die is estimated at 70 to 80 mm², which would make it smaller than the A19 at 82.8 mm² and well under the A20 Pro’s 98.8 mm². A die is the actual slab of silicon, and every square millimeter you shave off means more chips per wafer and a lower bill. On 2nm the savings count for more, since Notebookcheck’s report notes those wafers cost significantly more than earlier nodes. Our own look at the base iPhone 18 pegged its body as basically an iPhone 17 in disguise, so there is no fresh industrial design to pay for either. Apple looks to be spending the budget on silicon instead.

Apple reportedly gets there by halving the cache. The standard A20 is expected to carry 8 MB of L2 cache for its two super cores and 4 MB for its four efficiency cores, which is 50% less than the A20 Pro. Cache is the small, ultra fast memory sitting right next to the processor cores, so a smaller helping can mean slightly more trips out to slower memory under heavy load. It is also one of the most direct ways to shrink a die, because SRAM, the circuitry cache is built from, has scaled poorly on recent chip nodes. Honestly, it is the smartest corner to trim, since you will never see a cache spec on a phone box.

Why the A20 Pro Gets Fancy Packaging and the A20 Skips It

The A20 Pro reportedly uses WMCM, short for wafer-level multi-chip module, which places the processor and its memory side by side instead of stacking one on the other. That layout lets the chip connect straight to the vapor chamber, the cooling plate Apple introduced with the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple says the new Pro design delivers up to 40% better sustained performance than the 17 Pro. The standard A20 is expected to stay with traditional package-on-package, where the memory sits on top of the chip like a hat. A hat is cheap and compact, but it also traps heat right where you do not want it.

Packaging is how Apple reportedly gets the A20 Pro to 4.93 GHz, a figure from the leak analysis that Apple has never confirmed. The standard A20 is expected to clock considerably lower, so it likely does not need the same cooling tricks. Pair that with an expected 5-core GPU against the Pro’s 7 cores, and the gap could show up in a long gaming session. Past base chips trailed their Pro siblings by one GPU core, so a two-core deficit would be wider than usual. The vapor chamber stole the show in the iPhone 17 Pro teardown we covered, and the leak says nothing about the base model getting similar cooling.

The AI Hardware Apple Keeps, and What Spring 2027 Looks Like

The AI side of the chip reportedly survives the cuts largely intact. The leak says the A20 keeps the same dual 16-core Neural Engine as the Pro, the dedicated block that handles on-device AI tasks, along with its own 4 MB cache. The system-level cache, a shared pool of memory every part of the chip can tap, may grow from the A19’s 12 MB to 16 MB. The memory bus is also expected to widen to 96 bits, matching the Pro, which means more data can flow to the chip per second. In real life that means live translation and photo cleanup running on the phone instead of waiting on a server.

The iPhone Duo (the one with the open and close animation we gushed over) runs the same A20 Pro, so Apple’s fall lineup now shares one chip. The base model is expected to follow in spring 2027 with a lighter version of that platform. Apple has confirmed no date, price, or chip for it, so every number here is a leak. The iPhone 17 started at $799 and the Pros just rose $100, so the base model’s price is the number to watch. Back in the A16 days the hand-me-down chip was a consolation prize, but this time the regular iPhone gets a fresh 2nm brain with a little muscle trimmed, a deal I would happily take.

The post Apple’s iPhone 18 is getting a ‘cheaper’ A20 chip to keep the overall phone affordable first appeared on Yanko Design.