Kalakshar US

Google has officially voiced support for Right to Repair (R2R) legislation. Specifically, the company supports Oregon’s SB 542, championed by State Senator Janeen Sollman (D). Although Google’s motives could be less about newfound altruism and more about shaping regulatory action that seems increasingly inevitable, “a win’s a win,” as they say in sports.

The company expressed its new R2R stance in a blog post and white paper published Thursday. “Today, we’re excited to reaffirm our support for the Right to Repair movement by releasing our first white paper on repair while endorsing proposed Oregon Right to Repair legislation that offers a compelling model for other states to follow,” the company wrote.

Google lobbied against Right to Repair legislation as recently as March 2021 when it opposed the HB21-1199 R2R bill in Colorado. It’s also on record opposing AB1163 in California. The company’s stance had already shifted before today, in line with the direction of regulatory winds. (It partnered with iFixit for self-repairs starting in 2022.) But Google suggesting its announcement today is merely “reaffirming” a value it’s always stood behind (while ignoring documented evidence to the contrary) appears disingenuous.

Google’s suggestions for regulators

Google’s language in the white paper reveals a legislation-shaping tactic. An entire section titled “Policy Perspective” breaks down the language and boundaries the company believes R2R regulations should contain.

Within this policy section of the paper is a passage about “design flexibility,” urging lawmakers not to hamstring device makers by implementing strict design codes. “Well-intentioned regulations that set specific design requirements and standards in an effort to improve repairability may have unintended consequences that inhibit innovation and inadvertently lead to bad outcomes, such as more e-waste,” Google wrote in its white paper. “Design-related policies for repair should focus on defining repairability outcomes rather than setting strict design standards.”

Another item in the policy section, “reasonable implementation period,” calls for regulations that won’t disrupt existing manufacturing schedules. “Consumer electronics operate with lengthy product development timelines, often spanning years,” Google wrote. “New regulatory measures should phase in on a sensible timeline that ensures manufacturers can meet new requirements without undue burden. Regulations should not apply to products that are already designed and launched as such measures are problematic and may have negative unintended consequences, such as creating more e-waste.”

Neither of those requests seems egregiously unreasonable — and the points about e-waste could be taken at face value — but, coincidentally or not, they do also align with Google’s business interests.

An Apple dig and… Project Ara?

Google squeezed in a dig at Apple, too. “Policies should constrain OEMs from imposing unfair anti-repair practices,” the paper reads. “For example, parts-pairing, the practice of using software barriers to obstruct consumers and independent repair shops from replacing components, or other restrictive impediments to repair should be discouraged.”

Of course, Apple is notorious for parts-pairing, the practice of digitally linking part serial numbers to the device serial, locking out third-party repair services (and leaving the people who paid them with obnoxious incompatibility warnings).

Project Ara, which made it to the Google graveyard before hitting store shelves, was shouted out in the white paper.

Google’s paper highlights examples from its history of supporting R2R and similar initiatives, even calling out the (cancelled) Project Ara modular phone from a decade ago as an example of projects that “push the boundaries and better understand our users’ needs for repair.” (If it had only made it to consumers.)

The paper also touts Google’s buildouts of its repair capabilities, seven years of software support for Pixels and seven years of support for hardware parts. All of this can be seen as a resounding victory for the R2R movement, even if corporations’ motives continue to be less noble than they like to let on.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-claims-to-reaffirm-right-to-repair-support-three-years-after-lobbying-against-it-205828956.html?src=rss 

Even though Apple didn’t have an official presence at CES 2024, the trade show still had a whole area dominated by mixed reality tech. One of the most popular booths there was none other than Xreal (formerly Nreal), which decided to ride on the Apple Vision Pro hype train and unveil its latest AR glasses, the Xreal Air 2 Ultra, in Las Vegas. The Chinese firm claims that its latest headset makes “an affordable alternative to” the likes of the $3,499 Vision Pro, though it’s currently priced at $699 — a tad more than the $499 Meta Quest 3 — as Xreal attempts to lure developers into its ecosystem.

Unlike the rest of the Xreal Air 2 series, the Air 2 Ultra finally brings back 6DoF (six-degree-of-freedom) tracking — a first since the Nreal Light. In other words, you can physically walk around a virtual space, rather than being stuck in one spot. The 6DoF tracking is mainly handled by the two front-facing 3D environment sensors which, according to Xreal founder and CEO Chi Xu, are an advancement over prior models, and are less physically obtrusive compared to the ones on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. As with the Light, the Air 2 Ultra also supports hand tracking for interacting with virtual objects directly.

There’s also a slight upgrade in the display department, featuring a wider 52-degree field of view — up from 46 degrees on the Air 2 and Air 2 Pro. It should otherwise be the same Sony micro OLED panels with a crisp 1080p resolution for each eye, along with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a brightness of up to 500 nits. Likewise, the Air 2 Ultra inherited the electrochromic dimming feature from the Pro, which offers two shade levels to minimize distraction from the outside world.

Given the extra hardware for 6DoF and hand tracking, it’s no surprise that the Air 2 Ultra weighs slightly more than the Air 2 Pro — 80 grams versus 75 grams, but it still looks like a pair of regular sunglasses, and I definitely wouldn’t mind wearing them in public. Xreal did its best to minimize the weight gain using a titanium frame, and obviously, these glasses still require an external power source — a smartphone or a PC — via USB-C. I had a total hands-on time of around 20 minutes, and at no point did I feel any discomfort, though there’s no telling if that would be the case if I kept on going for the rest of the day.

Given the lack of third-party apps at the moment (I do miss the Angry Birds demo on the Nreal Light), Xreal could only offer a concept demo to show off the Air 2 Ultra’s 6DoF experience. This mainly involved a massive virtual desktop showing multimedia players, or a social media window showing the latest messages from my made-up friends, or a personal 3D cinema with a library of three movies. To the left, there was a vertical slider for changing colors on a smart light bar in the real world. I was also given three AR hexagonal discs: one for toggling between work profile and casual profile, one for switching between the casual modes (contacts, social and movie) and one for displaying a virtual pet.

The overall room tracking worked smoothly, even as I walked up to the large 3D avatars on my right, but things got a little trickier when it came to hand interaction. The hand tracking alone seemed fine (at least according to the skeletons rendered over my hands), but I struggled to pinch the light bar’s color slider — it ended up at the wrong hue on several occasions. The interaction with the AR cardboard discs was also laggy at times, though I did enjoy being able to bring my virtual pet on one of the discs up close — I couldn’t pick a favorite between the dung beetle and the fiddler crab.

In response to the technical issues I ran into, Xreal’s Xu pointed out that his team had been experiencing the same since the show floor opened. Our demo unit also crashed once, but it was fine after a reboot on the smartphone — an Oppo Find X5, which got worryingly warm right before it gave up. This goes to show that the Air 2 Ultra performance is only as good as the computational device it’s attached to.

Speaking of which, Xreal says these glasses are also compatible with the Samsung Galaxy S22 and S23, along with Apple’s iPhone 15 and any Windows or Mac machine that can run the company’s Nebula environment. Xreal is also developing a dedicated companion device to go with the Air 2 Ultra, though there’s no word on specs nor time frame.

Considering the show floor hiccups, it’s only fair to revisit the Xreal Air 2 Ultra in a less chaotic environment later — especially when more developers are on board after it starts shipping in March. Still, we wouldn’t go as far as agreeing with Xreal’s implication that its AR glasses can totally replace Apple’s Vision Pro, as only the latter — and any VR headset, for that matter — is able to offer a completely immersive experience. It’ll ultimately boil down to the range of apps on each platform, but if you’re looking for something that you wouldn’t mind wearing for prolonged periods, then the Air 2 Ultra would most likely be the better choice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/xreal-air-2-ultra-hands-on-next-gen-ar-glasses-in-need-of-killer-apps-203943588.html?src=rss 

You can one day use your tongue as a mouse for your laptop, tablet or phone, thanks to a new product that made its first public appearance at CES 2024. The MouthPad (an obvious spin on the word “mousepad”) is what its makers call a tongue-operated touchpad that “sits at the roof of your mouth” and can be connected to your devices just like a standard Bluetooth mouse. I got to see the MouthPad here in Las Vegas, where it’s making its first public appearance since its announcement last year, though, to be clear, I did not put it in my mouth to try out for myself. Instead, I watched as the company’s co-founder Tomás Vega used the device to navigate an iPhone and open the camera as we took a selfie together. 

The MouthPad is basically like a retainer with a touchpad, battery and Bluetooth radio built in. It’s made of a resin that the company says is the same “dental-grade material that is commonly used in dental aligners, bite guards and other oral appliances.” The device’s battery was made by a company called Varta, which MouthPad’s makers also said has “a long track record of producing safe, medical implant-grade batteries.” All this is to say that while it can feel strange to put a battery-powered electrical device in your mouth, at least it might be reassuring to know that this uses technology that has existed in the oral health industry for a long time.

I watched Vega place the 7.5-gram mouthpiece right on his palette, where it sat surrounded by his upper teeth. He closed his mouth and the iPhone he held up showed a cursor moving around as he opened apps and menus. I asked him to open up the camera and he obliged, and we took a selfie. This was evidently not a pre-recorded demo paired with good acting. 

Now, because I didn’t try it myself, I can’t tell you if it’s comfortable or easy to use. But the specs sheet states that the MouthPad is about 0.7mm (0.027 inches) thick, apart from where there are capsules, while the touchpad itself on the roof of the mouth is 5mm (0.19 inches) thick. From what I saw, it didn’t look much bulkier than my own retainers, and when Vegas smiled after putting the MouthPad on, I could only really see one small black piece on top of one of his teeth. 

You’ll have to take out the MouthPad when you’re eating, but you can speak while it’s in your mouth. You might have a slight lisp the way you would with regular retainers, but I could understand Vega perfectly. The company said that the device currently lasts about five hours on a charge, though the team is working on improving that to eight hours by March. Recharging the device takes about an hour and a half, though Vega and his team said that, of the 30ish people that currently have a MouthPad, most users tend to charge theirs when they’re eating and rarely seem to run out of juice.

The company explained that the MouthPad uses Apple’s Assistive Touch feature to navigate iOS, but it can be recognized by other devices as a Bluetooth mouse. It’s already on sale for those who sign up for early access, but general availability is coming later this year. Each MouthPad is individually 3D-printed, based on dental impressions sent in by customers as part of the ordering process. Early access users will also receive assistance from the company during setup and calibration, as well as throughout their use of the device.

Tongue-operated controllers are not new, but MouthPad is one of the more elegant and sophisticated options to date. It also works with a wide variety of devices and seems far enough along in the production process to be ready for sale. Whether the human tongue is a suitable organ for computer interactions, however, is something we can only determine after longterm use in the real world. 

We’re reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-mouthpad-turns-your-tongue-into-a-mouse-for-your-phone-184541021.html?src=rss