Kalakshar US

Amazon may be muscling into the field of augmented reality glasses. According to a report by The Information, sources claimed that the company is working on AR glasses for consumers, allegedly with plans to release the product in late 2026 or early 2027.

Insiders told the publication that the project, internally dubbed Jayhawk, would equip AR glasses with microphones, speakers, a camera and a full-color display in one eye. Amazon is reportedly using Chinese company Meta-Bounds for the AR tech.

Amazon is also working on a separate model of AR glasses specifically for its delivery drivers under the codename Amelia. This productivity-focused option, which would reportedly shave seconds off drivers’ times, could be ready by the second quarter of 2026, according to The Information‘s sources.

If Amazon does release these AR sets, it will primarily be in competition with Meta, which already sells simpler smart glasses with Ray-Ban. The social media company is expected to launch a new product currently dubbed Hypernova at its Connect conference next week, a set that pushes more into a true augmented reality experience with a similar one-eye AR concept.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/amazon-is-reportedly-developing-separate-ar-glasses-for-customers-and-its-drivers-230826640.html?src=rss 

David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, plans to make HBO more expensive, and passwords a lot harder to share, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Zaslav shared his general outlook on the state of television at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, with the main theme being that HBO Max’s content is good and Zaslav thinks he should be charging a lot more for it.

“The fact that this is quality — and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production and streaming quality — we all think that gives us a chance to raise prices,” Zaslav said. “We think we’re way underpriced.” HBO Max most recently raised prices in 2024, back when it was temporarily called Max. As of right now you can get an entry-level Basic with Ads plan for $9.99 per month, while the ad-free Premium plan costs $20.99 per month. Zaslav clearly thinks he can get more, though.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been more open about its plans to address password-sharing. During an earnings call in August, the company said it wanted to close all loopholes for sharing passwords by the end of the year. While it’s great that people continue to be drawn to HBO content, “it’s all tricky with the password sharing,” Zaslav said. “We’re going to begin to push on that.”

Price hikes and password sharing crackdowns have been thoroughly normalized by Netflix and other streamers. HBO Max following suit should be more than expected. Stating those plans so plainly doesn’t improve the image of Zaslav as a Hollywood villain, but that’s the least of his worries given the planned break-up of Warner Bros. Discovery.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/hbo-max-is-going-to-get-a-lot-more-expensive-ceo-promises-221656560.html?src=rss 

When the video kicking off Apple’s “Awe dropping” event began yesterday, I was pleased to see a HomePod in the opening shot. I hadn’t given any thought to Apple’s beleaguered smart home speaker in ages, so I was all set for Tim Cook and crew to deliver an actual surprise and reveal new stuff for HomePod. When the entire presentation then passed without another peep about the product, I was disappointed, but resigned.

HomePod has always been behind the curve. When smart speakers first came on the scene, the sector was quickly dominated by Amazon and Google, with Sonos as the boutique third-party option. Apple announced the HomePod in June 2017, almost three years after Amazon unveiled its original Echo speaker. 

The HomePod arrived too slow and cost too much, and (in an echo of the company’s current woes) Siri was too unhelpful, for the smart speaker to really claw back much market share from its rivals. The Mini iteration came out in late 2020, and the second-generation HomePod in February 2023 added support for Thread smart home standard. Not exactly pushing the boundaries of smart speaker innovation.

And things got worse for the poor HomePod as voice-controlled AI assistants have transitioned away from being centered around dedicated speakers. AI is now being integrated ever-more tightly into our smartphones and computers, with less need for a separate intermediary device. Which brings us to the ongoing issue of Apple’s shaky foothold in the AI race.

Apple has been promising a big overhaul to Siri for awhile, with the new and improved version currently not due until spring 2026. To show off that new AI assistant, Apple is reportedly working on an interactive smart home hub that is expected to have HomePod-like audio capabilities baked in, but won’t be ready for launch until at least 2027. What’s a company to do in the interim?

It makes sense for Apple to hold back on any big developments to its existing Siri-centric smart home speaker. I get it. But I could have been hyped to see a stripped down HomePod that focused more on being a speaker than on being smart. I have a Sonos that I love, and part of me assumed that I would eventually upgrade to an Apple offering. The AirPods are such a great element in the Apple ecosystem, and I use mine almost daily. Having a powerful, high-quality home speaker that delivers the easy interconnectivity that’s such a big part of Apple’s value proposition might have helped bridge the time gap, keeping Apple in people’s minds as a player in home tech while the company works on its next, more innovative move. Take one step back to take three steps forward.

In practice, though, it feels like the window for the HomePod to become a star in Apple’s lineup has shrunk to almost nothing. As I now look at the recent trends in AI and home tech, I don’t see an obvious space for a smart speaker. That’s not limited to Apple; it’s also pretty telling that both Amazon and Google haven’t been giving much love to their smart speakers either. In fact, a majority of Engadget’s favorite smart speakers this year are from specialist Sonos as the big tech names have put their focus on AI instead of audio. We’ll still have smart speakers, but they’ll be folded into multi-purpose gadgets and pitched as general smart-home aids. 

To be clear, there’s been no indication that Apple will sunset the HomePod. But my personal prediction is that HomePod will stay on the sidelines for now and get pushed even farther away from the spotlight when the new smart home products are unveiled, receiving only occasional attention until Apple officially and quietly pulls the plug for good. And so will end the life of a star-crossed product that never got the chance to shine at its full potential. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/as-apple-pursues-ai-spare-a-thought-for-the-poor-homepod-223250670.html?src=rss 

Sony is finally catching up to something Nintendo and Microsoft have had for years. The new PlayStation Family app mainly serves as a mobile extension of on-console parental controls. However, parents also get a few extra perks in the mobile version.

The app includes a “thoughtfully guided” onboarding process. (I imagine many people will prefer their phone or tablet over the console for that.) Once things are set up, parents can do everything they already could on the console. This includes setting playtime limits, viewing activity reports (daily and weekly), managing spending and creating content filters. Parents can also use the app to configure privacy settings for social features.

One of the mobile app’s nicer perks is real-time notifications of what the child is playing. Parents can also approve or deny requests from their children for extra playtime or access to restricted games from within the app. That feature will likely get a lot of use.

Although it’s a welcome rollout, Sony is quite late to the party. The Xbox Family Settings app launched over five years ago. Nintendo’s parental controls came even earlier, alongside the original Switch’s arrival.

The app starts rolling out globally starting today. If you don’t see it yet, you can try the storefront links for iOS or Android.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sony-is-rolling-out-a-playstation-parental-controls-mobile-app-195002596.html?src=rss 

As part of a new test, Meta will let anyone rate a Community Note or request one for a post, Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer Guy Rosen shared on X. After testing the feature in March, the company formally introduced Community Notes as a replacement for its fact-checking program in April of this year.

You have to apply to actually write Community Notes, but Meta’s new test means that anyone who sees one can rate it to signal whether it’s helpful or not. They’ll also be able to request a note if a post is incorrect or needs additional context. Based on the screenshot Rosen shared, Meta’s rating system is a simple thumbs up or down, but the fact the company is opening the system up to more input at all is one sign of its continued expansion.

The test also includes a new system for notifying users if they interact with a post that receives a Community Note. Meta did something similar with posts that were fact-checked in the past, so this seems like a good way to let people know if they’ve read something misleading. Don’t expect to be receiving those notifications too often just yet, though. Rosen says that while there are over 70,000 people writing Community Notes and over 15,000 notes have actually been written, only six percent have been published. Meta is still very early in this whole process.

Community Notes are just one component of a larger right-wing turn Meta has taken in the wake of Trump’s reelection. While the system has been styled as pro-free speech, it doesn’t necessarily offer the same ability to counter misinformation that fact-checking does. For example, multiple reports found that X’s Community Notes program did little to address the platform’s misinformation problem.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-tests-letting-anyone-rate-community-notes-201208279.html?src=rss 

The AirPods Pro 3 Apple introduced at the iPhone 17 event yesterday have better active noise cancellation and foam-filled ear tips, but their most important new feature is a subtle one: Apple came up with even more reasons for you to never take them out.

Wearing headphones while you’re talking to someone or interacting in public was at one point a social faux pas, but the ubiquity of AirPods and new features Apple has added have started to change that. The AirPods Pro’s Conversation Awareness feature, which can automatically duck audio while you’re talking to someone, is the simplest expression of this idea, but the vast majority of the improvements the company has made to its wireless earbuds have also created reasons to keep them in.

Take the hearing health features Apple debuted in 2024. Not only do they let your AirPods Pro act as a tool for checking your ear health, they can also act as a hearing aid and even hearing protection in a loud environment. With the AirPods Pro 3, you can add heart rate monitoring and live translation to the growing list of reasons to constantly wear AirPods. The Pro 3’s new heart rate sensor means you can use them to track some workouts and display your health metrics on your TV during an Apple Fitness+ class, a feature usually exclusive to the Apple Watch. The Live Translation feature, meanwhile, lets your AirPods translate the world around you, and can even beam your translated voice into another pair of AirPods Pro 3. The fact the feature will also be available on AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 should make keeping your headphones in even more common, too.

It’s hard to say how useful these new AirPods Pro 3 features will be without trying them, but they do highlight how much Apple seems to view its headphones as more than just an add-on purchase to every iPhone. Not many people are going to buy the $249 AirPods Pro 3 as a replacement for the $249 Apple Watch SE 3, but the fact the headphones can fill in for the smartwatch could be attractive to some. More importantly for Apple, it could make it easier to convince someone to subscribe to Fitness+ or buy an Apple Watch if they like the company’s approach to tracking workouts.

Apple has reportedly investigated going further down the path of making the AirPods Pro even more of a standalone device. Bloomberg reported last year that the company has explored adding cameras to AirPods so they can be used for Apple Intelligence features and visually understand the world around you. Whether or not that ever happens, the more immediate explanation for all this feature-creep is that making AirPods an always-on wearable is good for the company’s bottom line. The relationship between the AirPods and the Apple Watch could become similar to the iPad and the Mac in time. New features get added, and functionality continues to overlap, but the devices are always distinct and useful enough that many people are compelled to buy both.

Maybe there’s a future where your AirPods feel as essential to daily life as a smartphone does, and we’re wearing them all the time. For now though, Apple seems to have decided that tiptoeing towards that wearable future is a pretty good way to sell new wireless earbuds in the present, and maybe several of its other products in the process.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/apple-is-slowly-morphing-airpods-into-an-always-on-wearable-203511552.html?src=rss