Apple ditching USB-C (eventually)
How do you make smartphones slimmer than they already are? You nix the charging port. Duh. Smartphone manufacturers have shied away from ditching the now-standard USB-C port in favour of a fully wireless charging solution. Until now. Kinda. According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter this weekend, Apple considered taking that leap with the upcoming iPhone 17 Air, before ultimately deciding against the change.
While Apple will stick with the tried-and-tested USB-C port on the 17 Air, it’s clear where its mind is at. Gurman noted that the device will “foreshadow a move to slimmer models without charging ports.”
“The iPhone 17 Air represents the beginning of a sea change for Apple,” he wrote. “Apple executives say that if this new iPhone is successful, the company intends to again attempt to make port-free iPhones and move more of its models to this slimmer approach.”
Whether Apple will ever take the swing remains to be seen. Portless iPhone rumours have been bandied about by certain industry insiders for years, most notably by Ming-Chi Kuo back in 2021, the likes of which never came to fruition. Gurman reckons that Apple might just be ready to take the plunge… eventually.
Your Amazon device is no longer local
No matter your feelings toward Amazon and its line-up of Echo smart home assistants, users were able to keep their requests native and definitively away from the cloud and any prying ears. Well, no longer. Starting 28 March, certain Echo models will be forced to process their Alexa requests through the cloud, rather than locally.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the change to The Verge after a Reddit user posted an email he received confirming the discontinuation of the ‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ setting that was limited to three Echo devices (Echo Dot 4th Gen, Echo Show 10, and Echo Show 15). Users with these devices and that setting turned on will now default to ‘Don’t save recordings.’
“This means that, starting on March 28th, your voice recordings will be sent to and processed in the cloud, and they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests. Any previously saved voice recordings will also be deleted.”
The change comes soon after the announcement and subsequent rollout of Alexa+ – the retail company’s new-fangled subscription-based AI-powered Alexa assistant. Amazon’s future ambitions clearly lie in the cloud, as noted in the email explaining the discontinuation.
“As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature,” Amazon said in its email to customers about discontinuing the option for local processing.
SpaceX to the rescue
Remember that time Boeing stranded its astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS)? We’re certain that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams haven’t forgotten, considering the two have now been ‘stuck’ aboard the ISS for nine-plus months, awaiting anything but Boeing’s Starliner ship to bring them back to Earth safely. On Friday, SpaceX launched the Crew-10 mission that will finally do just that.
On Sunday, Crew-10 docked at the ISS aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, bringing with it four members (NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov) who will overlap with the astronauts already up there for a few days before Crew-9 members – including Wilmore and Williams – inside of the Dragon spacecraft.
Well, there goes our hopes and dreams
God of War turns twenty this month. And what better way to celebrate everybody’s favourite God of War than with a return to the original game(s), complete with refreshed visuals and, if we’re lucky, an affordable price. Well, too bad. Despite the overwhelming evidence from several ‘leakers’ that some sort of remastered collection was on the way, Sony’s true intentions are finally clear.
The Dark Odyssey collection is headed to God of War Ragnarök, free of charge. We’re willing to bet that those leakers saw the words ‘Dark Odyssey collection’ and made some rather big assumptions. Still, we’re not complaining. Owners of Kratos’ latest adventure will unlock the Dark Odyssey armour and appearance for the God of War, one that previously required players to beat God of War II on the hardest difficulty.
Similar Dark Odyssey apparel will be unlocked for Kratos’ companions and his weapons (and several shields) – all of which can be claimed from any Lost Items chests during play, or automatically claimed while in the Valhalla DLC. The Dark Odyssey update will arrive on Thursday, 20 March.