Plus: Inside the iPhone lock-screen makeover, and good riddance to Internet Explorer | We got the lowdown on Apple's iPhone lock-screen revamp | Another reason to buy a new TV
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I’m going to rebrand this newsletter as the (un)official start of the weekend: the key’s in the ignition, the words below are the fuel pumping into the gas tank, and at the end you can take off for Fun City, equipped with all you need to know about the past week's goings-on in the world of tech.
And a few weeks from now the fun is really going to begin if you’re looking for a deal on a new Amazon Echo speaker, laptop, TV, pair of earbuds or other gadget – Amazon has stopped teasing us, and has confirmed that Prime Day 2022 will be July 12-13, which will be the first time the event has taken place over a Tuesday and Wednesday.
So mark that date on your calendars (and don’t buy an Echo before then, because they’ll be a lot cheaper on Prime Day), and then crack on with this week’s journey into the weekend – starting with an exclusive interview that I’m very proud to have on the site.
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Apple has added new functionality to the lock screen with iOS 16 (Future)
The highlight of the week for me is our US Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff’s interview with Apple head honchos Craig Federighi (engineering) and Alan Dye (design). He got the pair to open up about how they created the new iOS 16 lock screen, which allows for more visually-appealing widgets, and the ability to have your portrait photos interact gracefully with the clock.
These sound like small changes – and I suppose they are, in the context of what a smartphone is capable of – but they’re pretty striking visually, and that matters to a lot of iPhone users, given that the lock screen is the first thing you see when you pick up your phone.
What impressed me most about the interview wasn’t the access Lance managed to get, but the way he managed to extract so much information about what this new lock screen will mean for users. Apple is excellent at media-training its executives, and it can sometimes be hard to get any interesting information out of them, so I really enjoyed reading this.
New TVs like LG's G2 OLED support the ATSC 3.0 standard (LG)
I must admit I wasn’t aware of the new ATSC 3.0 / NextGen TV standard that’s being rolled out across the US – but it’s a timely reminder that if you’re in the States and looking for a new TV, then getting one with an ATSC 3.0 tuner might not be a bad idea.
The new features the standard enables are pretty cool: it’ll allow you to get 4K TV with HDR, adding in immersive Dolby services, as well as providing data alongside so that your TV won’t always need to be connected to Wi-Fi if you want to see sports scores, for example.
Our new US AV Editor Al Griffin does highlight one potential issue though: current ATSC 1.0 broadcasts aren’t supported by the new standard, so you’ll need to get a small HDMI-connected add-on if you want to continue watching your ‘old’ TV signal.
The Sony LinkBuds S are made for ears of every size (Future)
I may have mentioned in the past that I’ve not got the best-shaped ears when it comes to finding in-ear buds that fit comfortably – I don’t seem to have any of the gristly crenulations needed to lock them in place, instead possessing a pair of large, smooth, featureless listening dishes.
Becky Scarrott, our Senior Audio Writer, also has an issue with earbuds, but it’s the opposite one to me: she can never find buds small enough to fit her. So the new LinkBuds S from Sony surprised her, because they unusually come with XS tips, meaning she’s now got perfectly-formed seals for her ears.
As they’re made by Sony, the sound quality is excellent too; so if you share Becky’s ear-woes – or just want a great pair of buds, as there are fits for all sizes – then check out her review.
Internet Explorer is no more, and we're not complaining (Shutterstock / Future)
I wish I wasn’t old enough to remember the advent of Internet Explorer, but, as it was for many people, using Microsoft’s ubiquitous web browser was one of my first interactions with this crazy thing known as ‘the internet’.
Thankfully, Microsoft finally shuttered IE this week, and the aforementioned Lance Ulanoff (he’s had a busy week) has written a perfectly on-point takedown explaining why it was a terrible browser, recalling the underhand tactics Microsoft employed to crush its rivals, and celebrating the choice of browsers users have today.
It’s a great, quick-burst read that’s full of insights into the browser market over the last quarter of a century – and it sounds like, despite Internet Explorer ultimately being a failure for Microsoft, it might not be all over for the computing giant in the browser wars – its current Edge browser is pretty good, after all.
An example of what Adobe's Photo Restoration filter can do (Adobe)
I regularly get blown away – and also made a little uneasy – by the things some people can do in Photoshop (note that I don’t say ‘I can do’, because I’m terrible at it); and the latest ‘intelligent’ AI feature that Adobe has unveiled has me feeling the same way.
The Photo Restoration tool is one of the brand’s AI-powered ‘Neural Filters’, and it can analyze old, creased and faded photos, and restore them at the click of a button by detecting and fixing scratches, blemishes and other flaws.
It’s not available to users yet, but it’s another example of the brand thinking about what people want to do with its software, and providing them with easy-to-use tools for those jobs. Photo Restoration is certainly more useful than it is unnerving, but as the AI inside Photoshop gets more advanced it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be able to make every photo look ‘perfect’ with one click of a button – and that somehow makes me feel sad.
Staying with AI imaging, and if you’ve spent any time on the internet over the last fortnight, especially on Twitter, you’ll have seen loads of really odd artwork. Demigorgs from Stranger Things shopping for wedding dresses. Cats framed by an alien skyline. Bears doing unnatural things (for a bear).
A new wave of AI image creation is sweeping the web thanks to Dall-E mini, which has quickly become one of the most popular such apps around. It’s rather frightening how accurate some of the pictures are, and another reminder that AI can create content every bit as vivid and bizarre as anything we humans can imagine.
The signal was picked up by the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), located in southwest China's Guizhou Province (Jeff Dai (TWAN) / NASA)
It’s not entirely clear whether a group of Chinese scientists working on the world’s largest radio telescope really has heard from aliens, so I thought ‘I’ll come back to this when something’s confirmed’.
But then I read the piece, and I was fascinated to learn about this gray area of extraterrestrial hunting. The scientists have definitely picked up something that appears to originate from a region of the galaxy that could potentially support life, and it has the hallmarks of an alien signal.
It might also, however, just be interference from human radio traffic, and the team is frantically trying to repeat the experiment to see if it can find the signal again. I also learned that a previous similar ‘discovery’ was actually scientists microwaving their lunches, so…
Either way, Live Science has put together a great piece that explains the history of the hunt for such signals, and it’s a really engaging read.
This is from the editor
That’s me for another week, and I’ve enjoyed the eclectic range of stories I’ve shared with you – there were loads to choose from, and hopefully you liked the mix.
So to the usual PSA’s: if you have any interesting thoughts on the above, or anything else tech-related, I want to hear them. I’ve been having some lively conversations with readers recently about whether a larger iPad is really needed, or if we need to think more about bridges, among other things.
If you want to get in touch, please email me, remembering to include NEWSLETTER in the subject line. And if you’d like to share this newsletter with your loved ones (or hated ones, I’m not fussy), and encourage them to subscribe, I’d appreciate it.
See you next week!
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