Category: Technology

Just like a minor upgrade in specs, Apple’s latest M5 MacBook Pro gets the slightest improvement when it comes to repairability. According to iFixit’s teardown, the M5 MacBook Pro is the first of its kind that lets you replace the battery without having to remove the trackpad. However, Apple’s official method of replacing the battery still requires navigating an arduous process that may steer most users away.

For anyone willing to tackle the DIY repair, Apple’s Self Service Repair Store only offers a Top Case with Battery and Keyboard in its product parts catalog. Since the only option to replace the battery is buying this main chassis part with both the keyboard and battery pre-installed, MacBook Pro owners will also have to disassemble an irritating number of unrelated screws and hardware — except for the trackpad — just to replace a battery. However, iFixit confirmed that Apple included a slightly upgraded 72.6Wh battery with the latest MacBook Pro compared to its predecessor’s 72.4Wh battery.

It’s minor progress for battery replacement, so iFixit still gave the M5 MacBook Pro a four out of 10 repairability score, meaning it’s possible to do yourself, but it’s “tougher than it needs to be.” The latest score is a bump down from the M1 MacBook Pro that earned a five out of 10, but Apple has made incremental steps towards making MacBook repairs more accessible.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/apple-makes-the-m5-macbook-pros-battery-ever-so-slightly-easier-to-replace-154124765.html?src=rss 

Spotify recently came under fire for running recruitment ads for ICE, which ask users to “join the mission to protect America” and to “fulfill [their] mission,” in the US. Despite music labels calling on the streaming service to stop serving ICE recruitment ads, Spotify doubled down. A spokesperson for the company told The Independent that the ads are “part of a broad campaign” by the US government running across different channels and that they do not violate its policies. The spokesperson advised users to just mark ads with a thumbs up or down so that the app can learn their preferences. 

In addition, several artists have pulled their music from Spotify recently over its CEO’s, Daniel EK’s, investments in European defense tech firm Helsing. The defense company builds drones, aircraft and submarines, and it also sells AI software that can analyze sensor and weapons data from battlefields. Spotify has been facing backlash for its payout rates, which artists argue are unfair and lower than what other services pay, over the past few years as well. 

So if you want to cancel Spotify, whether for any those reasons or another one altogether, you can follow the instructions below. 

How to cancel via web:

1. Log into your Spotify account in your browser. 

2. Go to Account in the dropdown menu that shows up when you click on your Profile. 

3. Find Cancel Subscription under the Subscription section. 

4. Spotify will tell you that you’ll hear ads every 15 minutes on a free account, along with the date when your premium access will end. Click “Continue to cancel” at the bottom of the screen. 

If you’re on mobile, make sure to request the desktop site after you log into your account on your mobile browser. Take note that if you’re part of a Spotify Family or Duo plan, only the plan manager will be able to cancel your subscription altogether. If you follow the same steps above as a member, you’ll only remove your account from the plan, but the manager will continue paying for it. 

How to cancel via third-party provider:

If you pay for your subscription through third-party providers, you can follow these instructions instead.

Cancel via Google

1. Fire up the Google Play app and tap on the icon for the account you use. 

2. Go to Payments & subscriptions. 

3. Tap on Subscriptions. 

4. Find Spotify among your subscriptions and tap on it. 

5. Tap on Cancel Subscription at the bottom of the screen, select a reason for cancellation and confirm it. 

Cancel via Apple

1. Go to Settings in your iPhone or iPad. 

2. Tap on your name and go to Subscriptions. 

3. Find Spotify and go through the cancellation process. 

Cancel via carrier

Instructions for this may vary, depending on your carrier. Generally, however, you can follow these steps. 

1. Log into your carrier account on its website. 

2. Find the option to manage your subscriptions under your account. 

3. Find Spotify and go through the cancellation process. 

What happens after you cancel

You’ll still have access to Spotify’s premium features until your next billing cycle begins. That means you still won’t encounter ads and will have access to offline downloads, as well as unlimited skips and higher audio quality. You’ll be able to access your Spotify library even with a free account, but if you want to find another streaming service to pay for, you can check Engadget’s list of best music streaming services in 2025. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/how-to-cancel-your-spotify-subscription-133022215.html?src=rss 

If you’re moving on to a new Apple Watch, selling your current one or fixing some software hiccups, you’ll probably need to disconnect it from your iPhone. Apple calls this unpairing; it’s the step that wipes your watch, breaks the connection to your phone and removes Activation Lock so the next person can use it. The good news is that unpairing is straightforward whether you have your iPhone nearby or not. Here’s how it works, along with why you might want to disconnect your watch in the first place.

How to disconnect Apple Watch using your iPhone

The simplest way to unpair your Apple Watch is through your iPhone.

Keep your iPhone and Apple Watch close together.

Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

Navigate to the My Watch tab, then All Watches at the top.

Tap the info button next to the watch you want to disconnect.

Select Unpair Apple Watch, then select Unpair [your Apple Watch name].

If you have a cellular model, choose whether to keep or remove your cellular plan. Remove it if you’re selling or giving away the watch. Keep it if you plan to pair it again later

Enter your Apple Account password when asked to turn off Activation Lock, then select Unpair.

Your iPhone will create a backup before erasing the watch. When you set up a new Apple Watch, you can choose to restore from that backup and carry on with your data and settings intact.

How to disconnect Apple Watch without your iPhone

If you don’t have your paired iPhone with you, you can still reset your Apple Watch directly. This will wipe your data, but won’t create a backup and Activation Lock will remain, so keep that in mind if you want to save your information.

On your Apple Watch, open Settings.

Select General, then scroll down and select Reset.

Select Erase All Content and Settings.

Enter your passcode if prompted.

For cellular models, choose whether to keep or remove your plan.

Your watch will erase itself and restart as if it were brand new.

Why you should disconnect your Apple Watch

There are a few reasons you might want to unpair your Apple Watch. Maybe you’re upgrading to a new model and need to start fresh. Maybe you’re trading it in, selling it or handing it down to someone else. You might also need to disconnect your watch if you’re troubleshooting. Sometimes a clean reset is the easiest way to fix syncing issues, missed notifications or fitness data that isn’t updating.

Whatever the reason, unpairing keeps your data safe, makes sure a backup is stored and disables Activation Lock. That last step is important because if you skip it, the next owner won’t be able to use the watch.

What happens to your data when you disconnect your Apple Watch?

When you unpair your Apple Watch using your iPhone, the watch creates a backup that includes app data, settings and most health and fitness information. This backup is stored on your iPhone and will transfer to iCloud if you have backups turned on. That makes it easy to restore everything on a new watch.

If you reset from the watch without your iPhone, a backup is not created. Your data will be erased and the watch will be wiped clean, but Activation Lock remains.

Activation Lock is tied to your Apple Account and helps keep your watch secure if it’s lost or stolen. It turns on automatically when you pair your watch with your iPhone. That’s why unpairing isn’t the same as a simple reset. You need the Apple Account and password associated with the watch to turn off Activation Lock.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/how-to-unpair-your-apple-watch-from-your-iphone-120052222.html?src=rss 

We finally have a release date for Mouse: P.I. for Hire. The delightfully animated game, which marks Troy Baker’s first time playing a rodent private eye, is slated for March 19, 2026.

Based on its trailers, you’d be forgiven for viewing Mouse: P.I. for Hire as Cuphead meets Doom. Although it does include FPS action, Engadget’s Jessica Conditt discovered surprising depth behind its whimsical brutality. The game “has more to offer than shock-value cartoon violence,” she wrote. “This is a clue-gathering, photo-snapping, girlfriend-avenging, noir detective simulator that happens to star a bunch of slick-talking mice and rats, and I’m fully into it.”

Baker plays Private Investigator Jack Pepper, the game’s protagonist. When he isn’t hunting clues or sneaking around during the game’s quieter moments, he’ll have a delightful arsenal on hand. This includes wacky ones like a turpentine gun that melts the inked “skin” of your foes. Fun stuff.

Like Cuphead, Mouse‘s most obvious point of comparison, it uses hand-drawn frames to recreate that old-school style. It also deploys an original jazz soundtrack recorded by an orchestral ensemble. It’s all presented in a gritty, film noir aesthetic.

You can check out the release date trailer below. Mouse: P.I. for Hire will launch next March on PC, Switch 2, Switch, PS5/4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/mouse-pi-for-hire-arrives-in-march-2026-195454228.html?src=rss 

We all have anecdotal evidence of chatbots blowing smoke up our butts, but now we have science to back it up. Researchers at Stanford, Harvard and other institutions just published a study in Nature about the sycophantic nature of AI chatbots and the results should surprise no one. Those cute little bots just love patting us on our heads and confirming whatever nonsense we just spewed out.

The researchers investigated advice issued by chatbots and they discovered that their penchant for sycophancy “was even more widespread than expected.” The study involved 11 chatbots, including recent versions of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and Meta’s Llama. The results indicate that chatbots endorse a human’s behavior 50 percent more than a human does.

They conducted several types of tests with different groups. One compared responses by chatbots to posts on Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole” thread to human responses. This is a subreddit in which people ask the community to judge their behavior, and Reddit users were much harder on these transgressions than the chatbots.

One poster wrote about tying a bag of trash to a tree branch instead of throwing it away, to which ChatGPT-4o declared that the person’s “intention to clean up” after themself was “commendable.” The study went on to suggest that chatbots continued to validate users even when they were “irresponsible, deceptive or mentioned self-harm”, according to a report by The Guardian.

What’s the harm in indulging a bit of digital sycophancy? Another test had 1,000 participants discuss real or hypothetical scenarios with publicly available chatbots, but some of them had been reprogrammed to tone down the praise. Those who received the sycophantic responses were less willing to patch things up when arguments broke out and felt more justified in their behavior, even when it violated social norms. It’s also worth noting that the traditional chatbots very rarely encouraged users to see things from another person’s perspective.

“That sycophantic responses might impact not just the vulnerable but all users, underscores the potential seriousness of this problem,” said Dr. Alexander Laffer, who studies emergent technology at the University of Winchester. “There is also a responsibility on developers to be building and refining these systems so that they are truly beneficial to the user.”

This is serious because of just how many people use these chatbots. A recent report by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society suggested that 30 percent of teenagers talk to AI rather than actual human beings for “serious conversations.” OpenAI is currently embroiled in a lawsuit that accuses its chatbot of enabling a teen’s suicide. The company Character AI has also been sued twice after a pair of teenage suicides in which the teens spent months confiding in its chatbots.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/surprising-no-one-researchers-confirm-that-ai-chatbots-are-incredibly-sycophantic-185935470.html?src=rss 

Instagram’s latest feature should make it easier to resurface videos you’ve viewed. On Friday, Adam Mosseri revealed a new watch history for Reels. “Hopefully, now you can find that thing that you were trying to find that you couldn’t find before,” the Instagram CEO said.

We could see the feature coming in handy. For example, when you see something interesting but lose it due to an accidental tap or app refresh.

You can find it on Instagram under Settings > Your activity > Watch history. The feature lets you sort by newest to oldest or vice versa. You can also jump to a specific date or date range, and filter by the account that posted it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-adds-a-watch-history-for-reels-175555668.html?src=rss 

There’s been another turn in WordPress creator Automattic’s ongoing legal battle with WordPress provider WP Engine. In a counterclaim Automattic filed as part of WP Engine’s lawsuit against the company, the WordPress creator claims investment from private equity firm Silver Lake led WP Engine to violate its trademarks and fail to contribute to the open-source WordPress project.

Automattic believes that following a $250 million investment from Silver Lake, which gave the firm a controlling interest in WP Engine, the hosting provider “sought to inflate its valuation and engineer a quick, lucrative exit.” It allegedly did that, per the counterclaim, by describing itself as the “WordPress Technology Company” and allowing its partners to refer to it as “WordPress Engine,” violations of the WordPress trademark. Automattic claims products WP Engine released like “Core WordPress” and “Headless WordPress” further obfuscated who created and developed the blogging platform’s technology, while the company also failed to commit a promised “five percent of its resources to support the WordPress project.”

The counterclaim goes on to say that Automattic and WordPress co-found Matt Mullenweg tried to work out these issues with WP Engine by offering a “fair trademark license,” but the company only “pretended to engage in licensing discussions,” while actually delaying any kind of agreement because it would “impact its earnings.” Keeping earnings up was important to WP Engine because Silver Lake was allegedly trying to sell WP Engine at a $2 billion valuation, and had even made “overtures to Automattic” about it.

That’s a different story than the one WP Engine spun in its original lawsuit against Automattic, which accused Mullenweg of “abuse of power, extortion and greed.” WP Engine’s original complaint claimed that Automattic asked the company for eight percent of its monthly revenue as a royalty payment. Mullenweg’s attempts to punish WP Engine were seen as so aggressive at the time that over 100 Automattic employees voluntarily left the company in response. WP Engine won a preliminary injunction in response to its lawsuit, but it seems like the story might be more complicated than it originally appeared.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/wordpress-creator-files-countersuit-against-wp-engine-over-trademark-violations-182123827.html?src=rss 

Rivian has agreed to settle a 2022 shareholder lawsuit. The automaker will pay out $250 million to qualifying investors if the agreement is approved. The lawsuit stemmed from alleged deception surrounding a March 2022 price hike for the R1S SUV and R1T truck.

The class-action lawsuit alleges that Rivian misled investors around the time of its 2021 IPO. The core accusation is that the automaker failed to disclose that the R1s and R1T were initially priced lower than their production costs. Shareholders claim this made the eventual price increases inevitable, something they (understandably) believe Rivian should have shared.

Rivian raised the base price of the R1S and R1T by $12,000 in March 2022. That initially included most reservations. However, the company quickly reversed course on the last bit: Following a backlash, it allowed customers who pre-ordered before the announcement to pay the original price after all.

Rivian framed the settlement as a chance to move forward. “The company denies the allegations in the suit and maintains that this agreement to settle is not an admission of fault or wrongdoing,” the automaker wrote in a statement. “However, settling will enable Rivian to focus its resources on the launch of its mass market R2 vehicle in the first half of 2026.”

The US District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division, will still need to approve the settlement.

News of the proposed agreement comes a day after Reuters reported that Rivian is laying off 4.5 percent of its workforce (over 600 workers). Last month’s expiration of $7,500 tax credits and President Trump’s tariffs, combined with weakened EV demand, are making profitability more of an uphill climb.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/rivian-agrees-to-settle-shareholder-lawsuit-for-250-million-171251731.html?src=rss 

Amazon is offering a hefty discount on the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus. The video doorbell has dropped from its regular price of $150 to $80 in a limited-time deal.

That’s a discount of 47 percent for this particular model. It also matches the record-low price we saw for the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus during the Prime Day event earlier this month.

The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus has a more expanded field-of-view compared with earlier models, allowing for head-to-toe views of whoever’s at your doorstep. There’s support for color night vision, along with motion detection and the ability to set up privacy zones.

Amazon says the Battery Doorbell Plus is easy to set up using the Ring app and mounting tools. The company added that there’s a quick release system for the battery pack, so you can take it inside for recharging without having to unscrew a cover.

Naturally, the device is connected to the Alexa smart home ecosystem, so you’ll be able to receive motion alerts on compatible Echo devices or see a live view of the camera’s feed on an Echo Show, Fire TV or Fire Tablet. You’ll be able to chat to whoever’s at the door too, via the doorbell’s two-way communication system.

A Ring Home subscription is required for you to receive package alerts — this feature will let you know when the doorbell’s camera detects a package within a particular zone. The subscription also includes the option to save recorded videos for up to 180 days, among other features.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-battery-powered-ring-doorbell-is-back-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-154029007.html?src=rss