Can you feel it? The rush to deliver hot tech news before the world cocoons into holiday hibernation. This week Apple launched iOS18.2, which finally brought Genmojis to the masses and a huge update to the still-new Camera Control not-a-button. I got the inside track on its development direct from Apple.
Not to be outdone, Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm finally gave us a look at the new Android XR platform they’ve been working on, and some of the first hardware to support it. Project Moohan (it means ‘infinity’ in Korean) is a Gemini-focused Vision Pro competitor. It’s interesting, but as Hamish Hector points in his op-ed linked below, the real excitement might be found in the still-to-come AR glasses.
It’s been a huge week in AI, too. Obviously, there are the Apple Intelligence updates in iOS 18.2, but the bigger news has been teased out over 12 days(!) by OpenAI. All I can say is that when it comes to the company’s newly launched Sora video generation platform, you’ll never forget your first time.
Even Microsoft got in on the announcement action, introducing something truly useful for Windows: Air Drop-style sharing between iPhones and Windows. I’ve been waiting years for this.
It’s all been very exciting, but some of us (read, me) are already turning our attention to the new year. 2025 will be AI’s biggest year yet, but the tech industry will also be in a state of flux thanks in part (in the US at least) to some new rules about regulation, consolidation, and especially tariffs.
Oh, and I did mention that those twinkling lights you can see in the distance are not Christmas lights – they’re the giant neon, flashing lights of Las Vegas, host to the CES 2025 tech expo, which is less than a month away. Stay tuned for lots more on that front, and enjoy your weekend.
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The week in Apple
The iPhone 16 models came with a new physical control (Future)
This year's iPhones were the first to get Camera Control, which gives users more precision when shooting photos and video. In an exclusive chat with TechRadar, three Apple executives who worked on the innovation explain the thinking behind it.
ChatGPT developer OpenAI has made its AI video generator Sora available to paying subscribers, so the TechRadar team has been giving it a whirl – and our early impressions of this groundbreaking new technology are most definitively positive.
Meet Project Moohan: it's the long-awaited mixed-reality headset from Google and Samsung, and it arrives alongside the new Android XR software platform. We've got all the details right here – including when you might be able to buy it.
Windows PCs and iPhones can now play a little more nicely with each other, after Microsoft rolled out an AirDrop-style file sharing system to early testers. It means sharing files between an iPhone and a Windows computer will just take a few clicks.
The holidays are almost here, but the big streamers aren’t forcing festive-themed content on us: this week's streaming list includes plenty of non-Christmas delights to try and enjoy at this most wonderful time of the year, including Dream Productions and Joker 2.
