Apple released VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday with the most notable feature being improved personas of users.
Additionally, users can also now set up their personas without holding the device through Settings>Persona and selecting “Hands-free Capture” mode after initial steps for setup.
The new version of VisionOS also introduces Mobile Device Management (MDM), for enterprises to manage their devices.
This enables admins to set up devices for custom configuration, install apps at scale, and perform a remote erase of the device.
“We know that in order to unlock all of [the power of the Apple Vision Pro], businesses are going to want to manage these devices at scale.
Roku users around the country turned on their TVs this week to find an unpleasant surprise: the company required them to consent to an arbitration agreement in order to access their device.
Users (at least, this user) received an email the day before saying that “we have made changes to our Dispute Resolution Terms, which describe how you can resolve disputes with Roku.
We encourage you to read the updated Dispute Resolution Terms.
But there really is something rather despicable about totally disabling a user’s device until they agree, and having basically anything the user does count as agreement.
Don’t delay or, when people sue them over how they held devices hostage in order to coerce them into consumer-hostile dispute resolution terms, you won’t be able to join in on the fun.
Samsung is bringing its Galaxy AI features to more devices through a new One UL 6.1 update coming in late March, the company announced today.
The features are coming to the Galaxy S23 series, S23 FE, Z Fold5 and Z Flip5, as well as Tab S9 Ultra, Tab S9+ and Tab S9.
The AI features were first introduced for the Galaxy S24 series, but will soon be available to even more Samsung users.
As nearly every tech company is introducing and expanding their AI-powered features, it makes sense for Samsung to make its features more widely accessible.
In addition, a new “Note Assist” feature will let users generate summaries and translate notes, while a “Browsing Assist” feature will provide them with quick summaries of news articles.
All smartwatches should offer multiple days of battery life, full stop.
According to a blog post, the company took a “three-year hiatus and a reflective pause following the OnePlus Watch 1.”Battery is precisely the sort of thing OnePlus needs to lean into.
That said, it doesn’t take hours of direct conversations with users to know that battery life is paramount on smartwatches.
Perhaps leaning into battery life in a meaningful way will improve its fortunes for round two.
That said, anything that re-centralizes the importance of better battery life is probably a net positive for the category.
1Password, the AgileBits-owned password management software developer, today announced that it has acquired Kolide, an endpoint security platform, for an undisclosed amount.
According to 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner, Kolide founder and CEO Jason Meller and all of Kolide’s 30 employees will join 1Password “as an intact team.” Meller has taken on the role of VP of product at 1Password.
Kolide’s platform, which Meller co-launched in 2016 with Mike Arpaia and Zach Wasserman, offers security-related endpoint alerts, remediation and more delivered via Slack.
Kolide attempts to prevent unknown endpoint devices from accessing corporate apps.
Prior to the acquisition, Kolide managed to pull in $26.6 million in venture capital from OpenView, Matrix and other VCs and angels.
Since launching its self-repair program in August 2022, Samsung has been aggressively adding new devices to the mix.
Another upgrade this week brings the current offering up to 50 products (when you factor in variants like the Plus and Ultra), including smartphones, tablets, TVs, laptops, monitors, soundbars and even a projector.
There are 14 new devices in all, including the Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, Galaxy Tab S9 series, the Galaxy Book 2 series and the aforementioned projector, Freestyle 2.
The news also finds Samsung adding a number of different parts options, including speakers, the SIM tray, side key and volume buttons on Galaxy phones and tablets.
Samsung’s approach is generally more in line with Google’s in terms of access to tools and parts.
Murena, a French startup that sells “de-Googled” smartphones replete with its own flavor of Android, is launching an own-brand mobile network as it throws its hat into the fast-growing mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) ring.
Murena Mobile, as the new service is called, is built atop T-Mobile and is available to U.S. customers only.
With Murena Mobile now thrown into the mix, it has another recurring revenue stream to lean on.
Additionally, customers can’t actually sign up for a Murena Mobile plan at the same time as buying one of its eSIM-supported devices — they have to complete that transaction separately.
“In the future, we could think about a complete package with phone, cloud plan and a mobile plan all combined in a monthly subscription.”
The rabbit r1 will use Perplexity AI’s tech to answer your queriesOne of the standout gadgets of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the rabbit r1, will use Perplexity AI’s tech to answer user queries, both companies said in an announcement.
Perplexity noted that the first 100,000 r1 buyers will get one year of Perplexity Pro for free.
We're thrilled to announce our partnership with Rabbit: Together, we are introducing real-time, precise answers to Rabbit R1, seamlessly powered by our cutting-edge PPLX online LLM API, free from any knowledge cutoff.
The 5th batch of 10,000 rabbit r1 devices has sold out.
Pre-orders for the 6th batch, totaling 50,000, are available now at https://t.co/R3sOtVWoJ5 Expected delivery date for the 6th batch is June – July 2024.
And major features like multi-admin, which in theory allows Matter devices to work with every smart home platform simultaneously, remain broken pending future standards patches.
Lockly also announced at CES that its $80 Matter Link Hub, which allows users to manage older Lockly devices from Matter-supporting apps and devices, will become available later this year.
Aqara Hub M3Aqara, the smart home upstart, brought its long-teased Matter-compatible hub — the Hub M3 — to CES 2024.
Roborock S8 MaxV UltraRoborock, a longtime fixture of the robot vacuum cleaner market, launched its first Matter-compatible vacuum at CES: the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.
But Amazon became the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs this week.
Google announced today at CES that it has collaborated with Samsung to combine their sharing solutions into a singular cross-Android solution under the Quick Share name.
The new offering grows the network of devices that users can share content with across the Android ecosystem, including Chromebooks.
Back in 2020, Google introduced Nearby Share to make it easy for users to share files across devices.
Samsung also has its own similar capability called Quick Share.
Google also announced that it is working with PC manufacturers like LG to expand Quick Share to Windows PCs as a pre-installed app.
