We still can’t stop thinking about the Apple Vision Pro. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with CNET’s Scott Stein about our post-review impressions of Apple’s headset. We’ve got further thoughts about using it in public (maybe don’t), the isolation of being sealed off from the world, and the way falling asleep with the Vision Pro on can make you lose your sense of reality. We also discuss Mark Zuckerberg’s impression of the headset, and why he thinks the Quest 3 is ultimately a better product. (We agree, with caveats.) In other news, we explore how Arc’s ad-stripped AI mobile search app may be good for its users, but ultimately bad for web creators.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Topics
Last thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro with CNet’s Scott Stein – 1:11
Arc Browser AI summaries prompts the question “Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?” – 38:06
Waymo self-driving car attacked and set on fire during Lunar New Year celebration – 49:22
Stealth piracy app Kimi briefly passed Netflix on Apple’s App Store charts – 52:48
Lyft stock spikes after typo in earnings report – 55:12
I’ve been using the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ studio monitors for a couple of months now. And initially, I wasn’t sure what to make of them. They’re solid studio monitors with 4-inch woofers and 1-inch silk tweeters. They sound good and look good. But the pitch — the reason these things cost $800 for a pair — is that they’re wireless. And not, “they’re studio monitors that also happen to have Bluetooth” wireless, though they have that as well. They include AIAIAI’s low-latency 2.4Ghz wireless tech that made its debut on the Studio Wireless+ a couple of years back. Plus they have sizable batteries, allowing them to run for up to 20 hours without any cables at all.
I was skeptical of the Studio Wireless+, but was eventually won over by the surprising convenience of not being tethered to my audio interface by a 3-meter long coiled cable. The Unit-4 have a somewhat tougher case to make, though. The cables that keep my current PreSonus monitors tethered to my desk don’t get in the way. I don’t have to unplug them to put on my guitar and I don’t trip over them while grabbing a synth from the shelf. Instead, the Unit-4 are meant to solve a very specific problem: needing studio quality monitors when you’re not in your studio.
As you might imagine, this is not a thing I find myself needing terribly often. I’m sure that someone out there, likely professional musicians who spend significant time on the road, would immediately see the appeal. But for a hobbyist like me, finding a use case is harder.
Before we get too deep into the “why,” let’s talk a little bit about the “what.” Until now AIAIAI has focused exclusively on headphones. A more conservative company might have simply made some bog-standard studio monitors and called it a day. But today you can get bog-standard studio monitors, and pretty decent ones at that, for not much money. So rather than just add more noise to an already saturated market, AIAIAI looked to see what it could do that would be unique.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The somewhat surprising answer it got from some artists was wireless, battery-powered monitors. So it took the low-latency W+ Link technology it had developed for Studio Wireless+ and adapted it for use in a pair of 4-inch studio monitors. Where Bluetooth latency can be all over the map, ranging from around 40ms under ideal conditions with the latest hardware, to well over 100ms, W+ Link is a consistent 16ms. It’s not zero latency, but it’s close enough for a quick recording session or a casual jam.
Because of their size you’re not gonna get a ton of bass out of them. You get a surprising amount more low end just by jumping up to 5-inch woofers. But, it’s not like the Unit-4 lack oomph. They’ve got a decent amount of punch and a reasonably flat frequency response. That said, as with the Studio Wireless+, I find their tone a touch on the dark side.
There is an app for iOS and Android, though, where you can tune the EQ to your liking. I personally scooped the mids and cut the sub bass just a smidge to help brighten up the sound ever so slightly and keep things from getting muddy in my small attic studio. But there are also useful presets in there depending on where you are and what orientation the speakers are in, whether that’s horizontal on your desktop or on a picnic blanket in a park.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
While it’s purely subjective and of little practical value, the Unit-4 look great in any orientation or setting. They’re much better looking than most studio monitors. They’re sleek, black and have a stylish metal speaker grill that attaches firmly with the help of a few magnets. A ring of white light glows around the woofer when they’re powered on too. Like I said, it makes no functional difference, but they’re certainly a visual upgrade from my PreSonus Eris E5s.
There are a few design choices that I can quibble with, however, even if I understand the reasoning (usually to shave size and weight). First off, the Unit-4 lack XLR hookups. This isn’t unheard of on portable studio monitors, and they do have balanced TRS connections, but combo XLR / TRS jacks are pretty ubiquitous at this point and wouldn’t have required much more room.
The power bricks for each speaker are also enormous.Obviously, putting those components inside the speaker, along with their sizable 77Wh batteries, would have dramatically increased their size and weight. But it seems odd that, what I believe are, the largest power bricks in my home currently belong to the Unit-4, while none of the other studio monitors or speakers I own have external power supplies at all, just standard AC cables. They weigh more than a pound each, which means that, despite AIAIAI bragging that the Unit-4 only tip the scales at 2.5kg (or about 5.5 pounds), if you were to hit the road with two monitors and the chargers for each you’d be looking at a total weight of close to 14 pounds.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
That’s hardly unreasonable if your definition of portable is simply that you can move them from place to place — nobody is taking the Unit-4 with them on a whim on the off chance that they might need a studio monitor. Still, I will say that I think AIAIAI should include the carrying case if they’re pitching the portability factor, rather than it being a $70 add-on.
My biggest issue, though, was the decision to remove the battery from the transmitter. The X01 Transmitter that comes with the Studio Wireless+ has a built-in battery. The X02 Transmitter that is packaged with the Unit-4 does not. The perk of this is that, when used as a USB-C audio dongle with a laptop, it’s nice and discrete. The downside is that if you use the minijack output you need to provide your own power, preferably via a powerbank, rather than an AC adapter to minimize opportunity for interference or ground loops.
Part of AIAIAI’s rationale for ditching the battery was that, well, batteries have a tendency to wear out. And this way, you don’t have to chuck the whole transmitter just because it won’t hold a charge anymore. But, the company has figured out how to make practically every part of the studio monitors removable and replaceable (including the battery), so it seems like doing that for the transmitter shouldn’t have been too tough.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The lack of a battery is a non-issue if you’re primarily using the Unit-4 connected to a computer. But if you’re using a standalone piece of gear like an SP-404, connecting to a mixer for a jam session or out busking it in a park, the extra cable and external power bank become something else to forget at home and kind of undermine the whole “wireless” thing.
I know that seems like a lot of negatives all in a row, but these are honestly pretty minor complaints. And I think that, if you are one of the people who will get a lot of use out of the Unit-4, they probably won’t deter you. The audience here is undoubtedly smaller than with the Studio Wireless+, though. Where almost any bedroom producer could use a solid set of headphones that can be wired or wireless at a moment’s notice, bouncing from low-latency studio mode to Bluetooth at the flip of a switch. The list of musicians that need the same from their desktop studio monitors is probably pretty short.
I can imagine these being super handy on a tour bus but, I am not a touring musician. Instead where I found the wireless feature most useful was for dabbling with new musical toys from anywhere in my house. Rather than hide in my attic, I could bring one of the Unit-4s down into the living room (but not both), connect the transmitter and a powerbank to say, the Gaia 2 and get some work done while also hanging out with my kids.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
Just for the hell of it, I took the Unit-4 to a park to shoot some review photos. I can’t say that’s something I’d want to do terribly often. Lugging them through the park as I looked for a decent enough place to stage my shoot got tiresome pretty quickly. But, I did put their loudness to the test by cranking the speakers all the way with my SP-404 MKII set to top volume. Quite a lot of people stopped and stared at me with open hostility. They still sounded great, with no distortion and the audio remained clear and punchy even from a few dozen feet away. But, like with the Wireless Studio+, the W+ Link does introduce some noise that becomes noticeable as you approach the 75-percent mark on the volume.
They were handy as just regular ol’ Bluetooth speakers. While it’s been a touch too cold to throw parties in my backyard, I’ve set one of the Unit-4s up outside while I’ve raked the leaves. If I really wanted to make my neighbors hate me, I could turn the speakers all the way up and they’d even be audible over my trimmer and leaf blower.
And thanks to their giant batteries they’d easily be able to last through a few hours of yard work, a raucous BBQ, some late night cleanup and then some. AIAIAI claims over 20 hours of battery life, but doesn’t specify if that’s over Bluetooth or W+ Link. I did a battery rundown test where I left the Unit-4 connected over W+, occasionally playing music through them from Ableton Live and djay Pro with the volume set at 75 percent. The first speaker gave up the ghost after 17 hours and 46 minutes, and the second followed 11 minutes later. Considering the Studio Wireless+ last more than four times as long when on Bluetooth versus W+ Link, it’s safe to assume you’d be able to eke quite a bit more playtime out of the Unit-4 if you were using them strictly as Bluetooth speakers. Of course, if you did that you’d be missing out on the whole point of the Unit-4.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
Even though they’re pricey, perhaps the ideal customer would be a busker. The Unit-4 can cover live performances with low enough latency to not be distracting, are reliable monitors for mixing in a studio, and also loud enough fill up an apartment or yard with tunes for a party. The only thing I wouldn’t want to rely on them for is DJing. While you could work around the latency by feeding both the cue and the live mix to a pair of headphones, it’s just a smidge too much if you really want to make sure your transitions are 100-percent on point.
One other thing worth noting is that the amount of latency you experience with the Unit-4 will vary depending on your source (USB-C vs ⅛” TRS) and even whether you’re on Windows or macOS. If you intend to use the Unit-4 with a Windows PC over USB-C you absolutely need to install the ASIO4ALL driver. Built-in Windows audio drivers have improved over the years, but they still can’t hold a candle to Apple’s Core Audio or Steinberg’s ASIO. To be clear, this isn’t an issue with the Unit-4, but with Windows. For the best results and the lowest latency, your best bet is still to use a dedicated Audio interface and to connect the X02 Transmitter to that using a TRS cable. Of course, that also means you’ll have to bring some way to power the transmitter, whether that’s a power bank or a USB-C power adapter.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
If you are someone looking for a pair of portable studio monitors that let you (more or less) ditch the cables entirely, the Unit-4 are basically the only game in town. They’re stylish, natural sounding and have a completely unique set of features. But they’re definitely more of a niche product than the Studio Wireless+. While their $350 price tag isn’t cheap, the flexibility and broader appeal make them an easier sell. The Unit-4 on the other hand are both quite expensive at $800, and trying to solve a very specific problem. At least I can say unequivocally, they solve that problem quite well.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/aiaiai-unit-4-review-unique-wireless-portable-studio-monitors-130048854.html?src=rss
I’ve been using the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ studio monitors for a couple of months now. And initially, I wasn’t sure what to make of them. They’re solid studio monitors with 4-inch woofers and 1-inch silk tweeters. They sound good and look good. But the pitch — the reason these things cost $800 for a pair — is that they’re wireless. And not, “they’re studio monitors that also happen to have Bluetooth” wireless, though they have that as well. They include AIAIAI’s low-latency 2.4Ghz wireless tech that made its debut on the Studio Wireless+ a couple of years back. Plus they have sizable batteries, allowing them to run for up to 20 hours without any cables at all.
I was skeptical of the Studio Wireless+, but was eventually won over by the surprising convenience of not being tethered to my audio interface by a 3-meter long coiled cable. The Unit-4 have a somewhat tougher case to make, though. The cables that keep my current PreSonus monitors tethered to my desk don’t get in the way. I don’t have to unplug them to put on my guitar and I don’t trip over them while grabbing a synth from the shelf. Instead, the Unit-4 are meant to solve a very specific problem: needing studio quality monitors when you’re not in your studio.
As you might imagine, this is not a thing I find myself needing terribly often. I’m sure that someone out there, likely professional musicians who spend significant time on the road, would immediately see the appeal. But for a hobbyist like me, finding a use case is harder.
Before we get too deep into the “why,” let’s talk a little bit about the “what.” Until now AIAIAI has focused exclusively on headphones. A more conservative company might have simply made some bog-standard studio monitors and called it a day. But today you can get bog-standard studio monitors, and pretty decent ones at that, for not much money. So rather than just add more noise to an already saturated market, AIAIAI looked to see what it could do that would be unique.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The somewhat surprising answer it got from some artists was wireless, battery-powered monitors. So it took the low-latency W+ Link technology it had developed for Studio Wireless+ and adapted it for use in a pair of 4-inch studio monitors. Where Bluetooth latency can be all over the map, ranging from around 40ms under ideal conditions with the latest hardware, to well over 100ms, W+ Link is a consistent 16ms. It’s not zero latency, but it’s close enough for a quick recording session or a casual jam.
Because of their size you’re not gonna get a ton of bass out of them. You get a surprising amount more low end just by jumping up to 5-inch woofers. But, it’s not like the Unit-4 lack oomph. They’ve got a decent amount of punch and a reasonably flat frequency response. That said, as with the Studio Wireless+, I find their tone a touch on the dark side.
There is an app for iOS and Android, though, where you can tune the EQ to your liking. I personally scooped the mids and cut the sub bass just a smidge to help brighten up the sound ever so slightly and keep things from getting muddy in my small attic studio. But there are also useful presets in there depending on where you are and what orientation the speakers are in, whether that’s horizontal on your desktop or on a picnic blanket in a park.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
While it’s purely subjective and of little practical value, the Unit-4 look great in any orientation or setting. They’re much better looking than most studio monitors. They’re sleek, black and have a stylish metal speaker grill that attaches firmly with the help of a few magnets. A ring of white light glows around the woofer when they’re powered on too. Like I said, it makes no functional difference, but they’re certainly a visual upgrade from my PreSonus Eris E5s.
There are a few design choices that I can quibble with, however, even if I understand the reasoning (usually to shave size and weight). First off, the Unit-4 lack XLR hookups. This isn’t unheard of on portable studio monitors, and they do have balanced TRS connections, but combo XLR / TRS jacks are pretty ubiquitous at this point and wouldn’t have required much more room.
The power bricks for each speaker are also enormous.Obviously, putting those components inside the speaker, along with their sizable 77Wh batteries, would have dramatically increased their size and weight. But it seems odd that, what I believe are, the largest power bricks in my home currently belong to the Unit-4, while none of the other studio monitors or speakers I own have external power supplies at all, just standard AC cables. They weigh more than a pound each, which means that, despite AIAIAI bragging that the Unit-4 only tip the scales at 2.5kg (or about 5.5 pounds), if you were to hit the road with two monitors and the chargers for each you’d be looking at a total weight of close to 14 pounds.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
That’s hardly unreasonable if your definition of portable is simply that you can move them from place to place — nobody is taking the Unit-4 with them on a whim on the off chance that they might need a studio monitor. Still, I will say that I think AIAIAI should include the carrying case if they’re pitching the portability factor, rather than it being a $70 add-on.
My biggest issue, though, was the decision to remove the battery from the transmitter. The X01 Transmitter that comes with the Studio Wireless+ has a built-in battery. The X02 Transmitter that is packaged with the Unit-4 does not. The perk of this is that, when used as a USB-C audio dongle with a laptop, it’s nice and discrete. The downside is that if you use the minijack output you need to provide your own power, preferably via a powerbank, rather than an AC adapter to minimize opportunity for interference or ground loops.
Part of AIAIAI’s rationale for ditching the battery was that, well, batteries have a tendency to wear out. And this way, you don’t have to chuck the whole transmitter just because it won’t hold a charge anymore. But, the company has figured out how to make practically every part of the studio monitors removable and replaceable (including the battery), so it seems like doing that for the transmitter shouldn’t have been too tough.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The lack of a battery is a non-issue if you’re primarily using the Unit-4 connected to a computer. But if you’re using a standalone piece of gear like an SP-404, connecting to a mixer for a jam session or out busking it in a park, the extra cable and external power bank become something else to forget at home and kind of undermine the whole “wireless” thing.
I know that seems like a lot of negatives all in a row, but these are honestly pretty minor complaints. And I think that, if you are one of the people who will get a lot of use out of the Unit-4, they probably won’t deter you. The audience here is undoubtedly smaller than with the Studio Wireless+, though. Where almost any bedroom producer could use a solid set of headphones that can be wired or wireless at a moment’s notice, bouncing from low-latency studio mode to Bluetooth at the flip of a switch. The list of musicians that need the same from their desktop studio monitors is probably pretty short.
I can imagine these being super handy on a tour bus but, I am not a touring musician. Instead where I found the wireless feature most useful was for dabbling with new musical toys from anywhere in my house. Rather than hide in my attic, I could bring one of the Unit-4s down into the living room (but not both), connect the transmitter and a powerbank to say, the Gaia 2 and get some work done while also hanging out with my kids.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
Just for the hell of it, I took the Unit-4 to a park to shoot some review photos. I can’t say that’s something I’d want to do terribly often. Lugging them through the park as I looked for a decent enough place to stage my shoot got tiresome pretty quickly. But, I did put their loudness to the test by cranking the speakers all the way with my SP-404 MKII set to top volume. Quite a lot of people stopped and stared at me with open hostility. They still sounded great, with no distortion and the audio remained clear and punchy even from a few dozen feet away. But, like with the Wireless Studio+, the W+ Link does introduce some noise that becomes noticeable as you approach the 75-percent mark on the volume.
They were handy as just regular ol’ Bluetooth speakers. While it’s been a touch too cold to throw parties in my backyard, I’ve set one of the Unit-4s up outside while I’ve raked the leaves. If I really wanted to make my neighbors hate me, I could turn the speakers all the way up and they’d even be audible over my trimmer and leaf blower.
And thanks to their giant batteries they’d easily be able to last through a few hours of yard work, a raucous BBQ, some late night cleanup and then some. AIAIAI claims over 20 hours of battery life, but doesn’t specify if that’s over Bluetooth or W+ Link. I did a battery rundown test where I left the Unit-4 connected over W+, occasionally playing music through them from Ableton Live and djay Pro with the volume set at 75 percent. The first speaker gave up the ghost after 17 hours and 46 minutes, and the second followed 11 minutes later. Considering the Studio Wireless+ last more than four times as long when on Bluetooth versus W+ Link, it’s safe to assume you’d be able to eke quite a bit more playtime out of the Unit-4 if you were using them strictly as Bluetooth speakers. Of course, if you did that you’d be missing out on the whole point of the Unit-4.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
Even though they’re pricey, perhaps the ideal customer would be a busker. The Unit-4 can cover live performances with low enough latency to not be distracting, are reliable monitors for mixing in a studio, and also loud enough fill up an apartment or yard with tunes for a party. The only thing I wouldn’t want to rely on them for is DJing. While you could work around the latency by feeding both the cue and the live mix to a pair of headphones, it’s just a smidge too much if you really want to make sure your transitions are 100-percent on point.
One other thing worth noting is that the amount of latency you experience with the Unit-4 will vary depending on your source (USB-C vs ⅛” TRS) and even whether you’re on Windows or macOS. If you intend to use the Unit-4 with a Windows PC over USB-C you absolutely need to install the ASIO4ALL driver. Built-in Windows audio drivers have improved over the years, but they still can’t hold a candle to Apple’s Core Audio or Steinberg’s ASIO. To be clear, this isn’t an issue with the Unit-4, but with Windows. For the best results and the lowest latency, your best bet is still to use a dedicated Audio interface and to connect the X02 Transmitter to that using a TRS cable. Of course, that also means you’ll have to bring some way to power the transmitter, whether that’s a power bank or a USB-C power adapter.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
If you are someone looking for a pair of portable studio monitors that let you (more or less) ditch the cables entirely, the Unit-4 are basically the only game in town. They’re stylish, natural sounding and have a completely unique set of features. But they’re definitely more of a niche product than the Studio Wireless+. While their $350 price tag isn’t cheap, the flexibility and broader appeal make them an easier sell. The Unit-4 on the other hand are both quite expensive at $800, and trying to solve a very specific problem. At least I can say unequivocally, they solve that problem quite well.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/aiaiai-unit-4-review-unique-wireless-portable-studio-monitors-130048854.html?src=rss
Apple has explained why it's disabling progressive web apps (PWAs) in the EU, it wrote in updated developer notes seen by TechCrunch. The news follows users noticing that web apps were no longer functional in Europe with recent iOS 17.4 beta releases. Apple said it's blocking the feature in the region due to new rules around browsers in Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Web apps behave much like native apps, allowing dedicated windowing, notifications, long-term local storage and more. European users tapping web app icons will see a message asking if they wish to open them in Safari instead or cancel. That means they act more like web shortcuts, creating issues like data loss and broken notifications, according to comments from users seen by MacRumors.
The problem, according to Apple, is a new DMA requirement that it allow browsers that don't use its WebKit architecture. "Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps," the company wrote.
However, the Open Web Advocacy organization disagrees, as it writes in its latest blog:
Some defend Apple's decision to remove Web Apps as a necessary response to the DMA, but this is misguided.
Apple has had 15 years to facilitate true browser competition worldwide, and nearly two years since the DMA’s final text. It could have used that time to share functionality it historically self-preferenced to Safari with other browsers. Inaction and silence speaks volumes.
The complete absence of Web Apps in Apple's DMA compliance proposal, combined with the omission of this major change from Safari beta release notes, indicates to us a strategy of deliberate obfuscation. Even if Apple were just starting to internalize its responsibilities under the DMA, this behaviour is unacceptable. A concrete proposal with clear timelines, outlining how third party browsers could install and power Web Apps using their own engines, could prevent formal proceedings, but this looks increasingly unlikely. Nothing in the DMA compels Apple to break developers' Web Apps, and doing so through ineptitude is no excuse.
The change, spotted earlier by researcher Tommy Mysk, arrived with the second iOS 17.4 beta, but many observers first thought it was a bug. "The EU asked for alternative app stores and Apple took down web apps. Looks like the EU is going to rue the day they have asked Apple to comply with the #DMA rules," he posted on X.
According to Apple's App Store Guidelines, web apps are supposed to be an alternative to the App Store model. Considering that that the EU's DMA is designed to break the App Store monopoly, the move to disable them altogether is bound to cause friction. The EU, Japan, Australia and the UK have previously criticized the requirement for WebKit to run PWAs, according to the Open Web Advocacy (OWA).
Apple said it regrets any impact to the change, but said it was required "as part of the work to comply with the DMA." The company has already been accused by developers of malicious compliance with the DMA over fees for developers to bypass the App Store, with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek describing it as "extortion.".
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-confirms-home-screen-web-apps-will-no-longer-work-on-european-ios-devices-112527560.html?src=rss
Apple has explained why it's disabling progressive web apps (PWAs) in the EU, it wrote in updated developer notes seen by TechCrunch. The news follows users noticing that web apps were no longer functional in Europe with recent iOS 17.4 beta releases. Apple said it's blocking the feature in the region due to new rules around browsers in Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Web apps behave much like native apps, allowing dedicated windowing, notifications, long-term local storage and more. European users tapping web app icons will see a message asking if they wish to open them in Safari instead or cancel. That means they act more like web shortcuts, creating issues like data loss and broken notifications, according to comments from users seen by MacRumors.
The problem, according to Apple, is a new DMA requirement that it allow browsers that don't use its WebKit architecture. "Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps," the company wrote.
However, the Open Web Advocacy organization disagrees, as it writes in its latest blog:
Some defend Apple's decision to remove Web Apps as a necessary response to the DMA, but this is misguided.
Apple has had 15 years to facilitate true browser competition worldwide, and nearly two years since the DMA’s final text. It could have used that time to share functionality it historically self-preferenced to Safari with other browsers. Inaction and silence speaks volumes.
The complete absence of Web Apps in Apple's DMA compliance proposal, combined with the omission of this major change from Safari beta release notes, indicates to us a strategy of deliberate obfuscation. Even if Apple were just starting to internalize its responsibilities under the DMA, this behaviour is unacceptable. A concrete proposal with clear timelines, outlining how third party browsers could install and power Web Apps using their own engines, could prevent formal proceedings, but this looks increasingly unlikely. Nothing in the DMA compels Apple to break developers' Web Apps, and doing so through ineptitude is no excuse.
The change, spotted earlier by researcher Tommy Mysk, arrived with the second iOS 17.4 beta, but many observers first thought it was a bug. "The EU asked for alternative app stores and Apple took down web apps. Looks like the EU is going to rue the day they have asked Apple to comply with the #DMA rules," he posted on X.
According to Apple's App Store Guidelines, web apps are supposed to be an alternative to the App Store model. Considering that that the EU's DMA is designed to break the App Store monopoly, the move to disable them altogether is bound to cause friction. The EU, Japan, Australia and the UK have previously criticized the requirement for WebKit to run PWAs, according to the Open Web Advocacy (OWA).
Apple said it regrets any impact to the change, but said it was required "as part of the work to comply with the DMA." The company has already been accused by developers of malicious compliance with the DMA over fees for developers to bypass the App Store, with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek describing it as "extortion.".
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-confirms-home-screen-web-apps-will-no-longer-work-on-european-ios-devices-112527560.html?src=rss
Over the past week, an app called Kimi curiously outranked well-known streaming services, such as Netflix and Prime Video, in the App Store's list of top free entertainment apps. Now, Apple has pulled the application... most likely because it gave users access to pirated movies. As Wired reports, Kimi was disguised as an app that tests your eyesight by making you play spot the difference in similar photos. In reality, it was nothing of the sort and instead contained bootlegged shows and movies, including recent blockbusters and award-winning films.
Its offerings, however, varied in quality in a way that's familiar to those who used to look for shows and movies online before the advent of streaming services. Kimi's copy of the Emma Stone-starrer Poor Things was apparently grainy and pixelated, while other movies available in high-quality copies had ads blocking the view across the top of the screen. The app was incredibly easy to use: Viewers simply had to download it and fire it up to start watching. It was similar to the now-defunct service Popcorn Time, in that it made pirating movies as easy as watching Netflix. Popcorn Time shut down for good in 2022.
The company told us that Kimi presented itself as a vision testing platform during the review process. It removed the app from its store, as well as the developer from the Apple Developer program, after discovering its bait-and-switch tactics, a spokesperson told us. They added that Apple has no tolerance for scam apps and applications with hidden or undocumented features.
Apple prides itself on privacy and safety and on making sure the apps it makes available for download are on the up and up. When it revealed how it would comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), for instance, it said any alternative app store that makes its way to the company's platforms will need to have stringent rules and moderation tools comparable to its own. Apple itself may have to start keeping an even closer eye on its App Store, though. Viewers have been expressing their discontent online on having to pay for too many streaming services to be able to watch what they want to, and it seems like more and more people are turning to piracy again.
Update, February 16, 2024, 5:08AM ET: This story has been updated to add the information Apple shared with Engadget.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-piracy-app-outranked-netflix-on-the-app-store-before-apple-pulled-it-132013246.html?src=rss
The Apple Vision Pro is officially two weeks old, and the apps are starting to roll in. TikTok was conspicuously absent on launch day, but now our long national nightmare has come to an end. The Vision Pro has a native TikTok app.
This isn’t just the iPad app with a new coat of paint. There are some neat features here that take advantage of Apple’s well-regarded and prohibitively-expensive headset. The navigation bar and like button are moved entirely off-screen, giving users an uninterrupted view of video content.
TikTok
This extends to comment sections and creator profiles, as they both now appear as expansions alongside the feed, which TikTok says provides “a more immersive content viewing experience.” To that end, TikTok integrates with the headset’s immersive environments, so people can watch short-form videos on the moon or surrounded by the lush flora of Yosemite.
TikTok also works with the Vision Pro’s Shared Space feature, allowing the app to exist somewhere in your peripheral as you work on other stuff. The location of the app will remain static, so it’ll be in the same place every time you put on the headset (provided you are in the same room.)
You may notice that these features are primarily intended for content consumers, and not creators. Engadget reached out to TikTok to ask about creator-specific features and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
The app’s available for download right now, though it likely won’t be accessible for TikTok’s core userbase of 10 to 19 year olds. The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500. That’s like an entire childhood of allowances.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-now-has-a-native-tiktok-app-193214818.html?src=rss
The Apple Vision Pro is officially two weeks old, and the apps are starting to roll in. TikTok was conspicuously absent on launch day, but now our long national nightmare has come to an end. The Vision Pro has a native TikTok app.
This isn’t just the iPad app with a new coat of paint. There are some neat features here that take advantage of Apple’s well-regarded and prohibitively-expensive headset. The navigation bar and like button are moved entirely off-screen, giving users an uninterrupted view of video content.
TikTok
This extends to comment sections and creator profiles, as they both now appear as expansions alongside the feed, which TikTok says provides “a more immersive content viewing experience.” To that end, TikTok integrates with the headset’s immersive environments, so people can watch short-form videos on the moon or surrounded by the lush flora of Yosemite.
TikTok also works with the Vision Pro’s Shared Space feature, allowing the app to exist somewhere in your peripheral as you work on other stuff. The location of the app will remain static, so it’ll be in the same place every time you put on the headset (provided you are in the same room.)
You may notice that these features are primarily intended for content consumers, and not creators. Engadget reached out to TikTok to ask about creator-specific features and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
The app’s available for download right now, though it likely won’t be accessible for TikTok’s core userbase of 10 to 19 year olds. The Apple Vision Pro costs $3,500. That’s like an entire childhood of allowances.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-now-has-a-native-tiktok-app-193214818.html?src=rss
On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro, which the company describes as delivering “dramatically enhanced performance” over the previous model. The company’s AI trajectory — viewed internally as increasingly critical for its future — follows the unveiling of Gemini 1.0 Ultra last week, alongside the rebranding of the Bard chatbot (to Gemini) to align with the new model’s more powerful and versatile capabilities.
In an announcement blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis try to balance assuring their audience about ethical AI safety while touting their models’ rapidly advancing capabilities. “Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core,” Pichai summarized.
The company needs to emphasize safety for AI skeptics (including one former Google CEO) and government regulators. But it also needs to stress its models’ accelerating performance for AI developers, potential customers and investors concerned the company was too slow to react to OpenAI’s breakout success with ChatGPT.
Pichai and Hassabis say Gemini 1.5 Pro delivers comparable results to Gemini 1.0 Ultra. However, Gemini 1.5 performs at that level more efficiently, with reduced computational requirements. The multimodal capabilities include processing text, images, videos, audio or code. As AI models advance, they’ll continue to offer a more versatile array of capabilities in one prompt box (another recent example was OpenAI integrating DALL-E 3 image generation into ChatGPT).
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
ALAIN JOCARD via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro can also handle up to one million tokens, or the units of data AI models can process in a single request. Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can process over 700,000 words, an hour of video, 11 hours of audio and codebases with over 30,000 lines of code. The company says it’s even “successfully tested” a version that supports up to 10 million tokens.
The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high accuracy in queries with larger token counts when it has more new data to learn. It says the model impressed in the Needle In a Haystack evaluation. In this test, developers insert a small piece of information inside a long text block to see if the AI model can pick it out. Google said Gemini 1.5 Pro could find the embedded text 99 percent of the time in data blocks as long as one million tokens.
Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason about various details from the 402-page Apollo 11 moon mission transcripts. In addition, it can analyze plot points and events from an uploaded 44-minute silent film starring Buster Keaton. “As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities,” Hassabis wrote.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 Pro with 128,000-token capabilities, the same number at which OpenAI’s (publicly announced) GPT-4 models max out. Hassabis says Google will eventually introduce new pricing tiers that support up to one million-token queries.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
Joy Malone via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro is also adept at learning new skills from information in long prompts — without additional fine-tuning (“in-context learning”). In a benchmark called Machine Translation from One Book, the model learned a grammar manual for Kalamang, a language with fewer than 200 speakers globally that it hadn’t previously been trained on. The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro learned to perform at a similar level as a human learning the same content when translating English to Kalamang.
In a piece of the announcement that will catch developers’ attention, Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform problem-solving tasks across longer code blocks. “When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works,” Hassabis wrote.
On the ethics and safety front, Google says it’s taking “the same approach to responsible deployment” it took with Gemini 1.0 models. That includes developing and applying red-teaming techniques, where a group of ethical developers essentially serve as devil’s advocate, testing for “a range of potential harms.” In addition, the company says it heavily scrutinizes areas like content safety and representational harms. The company says it continues to develop new ethical and safety tests for its AI tools.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 in early access for developers and enterprise customers. The company plans to make it more widely available eventually. Gemini 1.0 is currently available for consumers, alongside a Pro variant that costs $20 monthly.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-gemini-15-pro-is-a-new-more-efficient-ai-model-181909354.html?src=rss
On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro, which the company describes as delivering “dramatically enhanced performance” over the previous model. The company’s AI trajectory — viewed internally as increasingly critical for its future — follows the unveiling of Gemini 1.0 Ultra last week, alongside the rebranding of the Bard chatbot (to Gemini) to align with the new model’s more powerful and versatile capabilities.
In an announcement blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis try to balance assuring their audience about ethical AI safety while touting their models’ rapidly advancing capabilities. “Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core,” Pichai summarized.
The company needs to emphasize safety for AI skeptics (including one former Google CEO) and government regulators. But it also needs to stress its models’ accelerating performance for AI developers, potential customers and investors concerned the company was too slow to react to OpenAI’s breakout success with ChatGPT.
Pichai and Hassabis say Gemini 1.5 Pro delivers comparable results to Gemini 1.0 Ultra. However, Gemini 1.5 performs at that level more efficiently, with reduced computational requirements. The multimodal capabilities include processing text, images, videos, audio or code. As AI models advance, they’ll continue to offer a more versatile array of capabilities in one prompt box (another recent example was OpenAI integrating DALL-E 3 image generation into ChatGPT).
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
ALAIN JOCARD via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro can also handle up to one million tokens, or the units of data AI models can process in a single request. Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can process over 700,000 words, an hour of video, 11 hours of audio and codebases with over 30,000 lines of code. The company says it’s even “successfully tested” a version that supports up to 10 million tokens.
The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high accuracy in queries with larger token counts when it has more new data to learn. It says the model impressed in the Needle In a Haystack evaluation. In this test, developers insert a small piece of information inside a long text block to see if the AI model can pick it out. Google said Gemini 1.5 Pro could find the embedded text 99 percent of the time in data blocks as long as one million tokens.
Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason about various details from the 402-page Apollo 11 moon mission transcripts. In addition, it can analyze plot points and events from an uploaded 44-minute silent film starring Buster Keaton. “As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities,” Hassabis wrote.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 Pro with 128,000-token capabilities, the same number at which OpenAI’s (publicly announced) GPT-4 models max out. Hassabis says Google will eventually introduce new pricing tiers that support up to one million-token queries.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
Joy Malone via Getty Images
Gemini 1.5 Pro is also adept at learning new skills from information in long prompts — without additional fine-tuning (“in-context learning”). In a benchmark called Machine Translation from One Book, the model learned a grammar manual for Kalamang, a language with fewer than 200 speakers globally that it hadn’t previously been trained on. The company says Gemini 1.5 Pro learned to perform at a similar level as a human learning the same content when translating English to Kalamang.
In a piece of the announcement that will catch developers’ attention, Google says Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform problem-solving tasks across longer code blocks. “When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works,” Hassabis wrote.
On the ethics and safety front, Google says it’s taking “the same approach to responsible deployment” it took with Gemini 1.0 models. That includes developing and applying red-teaming techniques, where a group of ethical developers essentially serve as devil’s advocate, testing for “a range of potential harms.” In addition, the company says it heavily scrutinizes areas like content safety and representational harms. The company says it continues to develop new ethical and safety tests for its AI tools.
Google is launching Gemini 1.5 in early access for developers and enterprise customers. The company plans to make it more widely available eventually. Gemini 1.0 is currently available for consumers, alongside a Pro variant that costs $20 monthly.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-gemini-15-pro-is-a-new-more-efficient-ai-model-181909354.html?src=rss