They grow up so fast
Even after unveiling a slew of refreshed products — capped off with the AirPods Max 2 — Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reckons there’s more to come from Apple. Just one more, really, if we’re only talking about the first half of the year. That’d be the iPad 12, which has been on the cards since last year.
The Fruit Company’s next generation of iPhones is set, as ever, to debut in September. The mainline iPad, without the Air or Pro monikers to root for, presents a gap in Apple’s release strategy. The tablet will jump from the A16 to the A18 chipset, it’s said. It’s faster, sure, but it also brings Apple Intelligence to the fore.
“The product has long been on the road map for a release in the iOS 26.4 time frame, which runs until May,” Gurman wrote. The “hardware is ready to go,” he continued, noting that there are several reasons why a device might be delayed, especially in the present RAM-afflicted climate. We doubt anyone would really mind.
Life imitates art. Hisense imitates Samsung
Hisense just took the wrapper off its 2026 Hisense S7 CanvasTV 4K QLED Google TV (or S7SG), and it looks as clean as you’d hope from a proper Samsung ‘The Frame’ competitor. This model, even though it shares many features with Hisense’s first model, adds a smaller 50in to the rotation, and keeps the 55in, 65in, 75in, and 85in sizes.
At its heart, this still rocks a 4K LCD panel like its forebears and the same 144Hz refresh rate, great for sullying artistic side with… whatever that is. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision IQ support have also found their way back into the fold. The whole arty look is most reliant on the Hi-Matte display and the thousands of artworks available.
It’s incredibly thin, too, enabling a more seamless transition to the wall to help sell the lie that it’s a TV in cosplay. Google TV runs the show, while a 2.0.2 sound system and four HDMI ports help keep it modern. If that’s not enough, maybe the VRR, ALLM, and FreeSync Premium support will be enough to do the trick? There’s still no telling what the TV will cost. Hopefully, we also get to see a local launch.
Reddit shoots itself in the face
Reddit has a bot problem. Or rather, bots have a Reddit problem. The platform is currently overrun with the things, and the company is now thinking up ideas for a fix. Its latest idea, according to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, is to deploy Face ID or Touch ID to curb the ever-growing bot menace.
He said as much during a TBPN podcast, where he also stated the company was still “weighing” its options. We should note that the change, if implemented, would affect everyone. Users in the UK, for instance, already have to put up with age verification by sending in selfies or having their ID checked at the door.
These might solve the bot problem, of course. But is it worth sacrificing your privacy? That’s a question that’ll need answers if Reddit goes down this route. Willingly handing over your biometrics can be a recipe for disaster, as happened to users at Discord. That’ll show them, we guess?
Sony serves up ‘fake’ frames for PlayStation
While Sony has chased AI-upscaled images through its PSSR pipeline in recent years, it now has frame generation in its sights. The PC Master Race knows the technology well — which allows the underlying tech (AMD’s upcoming FSR Redstone suite, in this case) to throw more frames at your eyes using, well, AI.
The feature, likely being saved up as a PS6-exclusive feature, seeing as Sony’s PlayStation lead system architect, Mark Cerny, said the feature won’t be coming soon, and certainly not this year. That’s… fine by us. The PS5 Pro, which recently got an updated PSSR 2, will likely keep Sony busy for a good while. And customers, too.
“Just to clarify a few things about the collaboration with AMD, the new PSSR uses the same core co-developed algorithm as FSR Redstone’s Upscaling (to avoid confusion, I’ll use the new names today rather than FSR4),” Cerny shared. “FSR Frame Generation is also based on co-developed technology (or as my good friend Jack Huynh puts it, ‘co-engineered technology’). I’m very happy with how that work is progressing, and an equivalent frame generation library should be seen at some point on PlayStation platforms.”
