Author: Duncan Pike

MultiChoice recently announced price increases for its South African customers for nearly all of its DStv and Showmax packages. This shouldn’t come as a shock, considering DStv instituted similar price hikes this time last year, although those were announced sooner in 2024. If you remember 2024’s price hikes, you might also recall that MultiChoice implemented a ‘price lock’ for customers who signed up for its 24-month contract before 1 April 2024. If that is you, you should dodge this year’s increase as well as last year’s. Enjoy that while it lasts. For the rest of you, here’s how much more…

It seems Sonos’ new interim CEO Tom Conrad has a new path in mind for the company. That new path doesn’t involve the company’s almost-complete video streaming device, codenamed Pinewood, that it has been working on for the past few years. That’s according to a report from The Verge’s Chris Welch and his sources at Sonos. Those sources were party to an all-hands call yesterday when Sonos leadership announced its plan to scrap the video streamer, which was already in the beta testing phase. The team working on Pinewood will reportedly be reassigned to other projects as Conrad told employees…

Diesel and petrol price predictions did the up-and-down dance last month, ending with a highly agreeable (albeit small) decrease. We’re sure everyone would’ve liked to see an even bigger decrease, but we’ll take what we can get. Luckily, the latest predictions for March continue the downward trend. These predictions are handed to us hot off the proverbial press from the Central Energy Fund (CEF). Today, the latest fuel snapshot from CEF indicates a decrease for all petroleum-based fuels for April. ‘I’ll have another decrease, please’ Before we get to the important petrol price numbers, it’s worth remembering that these predictions…

Asus Republic of Gamers has just announced its new ROG Flow Z13 for South Africa, for the deep-pocketed gamers who don’t want to sacrifice too much power for portability. This 2-in-1 gaming tablet receives the latest and greatest mobile SoC from AMD and offers a 180Hz ‘2.5K’ touchscreen display, a large 70Wh battery, and enough ports for all your peripherals. And it comes with a Stylus for all the doodlers out there. Take the ROG Flow Z13 with you everywhere The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (yes, that’s its real name) is supposedly one of the most performant mobile SoCs…

Eskom halts load shedding (again) Much of the country groaned when Eskom announced on Friday that Stage 3 load shedding had returned for the weekend. At the time, the country’s power utility expected the power cuts to last until the morning of Monday, 10 March (today) as a result of the sudden loss of 2,700MW of generating capacity (thanks Kusile). Luckily for, well, everyone, Eskom managed to recover enough generating capacity come Sunday, 9 March by successfully bringing Kusile back online. “Coal operations at Kusile Power Station are at optimal levels. All units that were offline as of Friday are…

If you have fun plans for this weekend, you’ll have to have your fun in the dark. Eskom has just announced the return of Stage 3 load shedding from 14h00 today, Friday 7 March. The beleaguered state-owned power utility ‘anticipates’ Stage 3 to last until 05h00 on Monday, 10 March. Time to get those backup power stations out again. Wherefore art thou, electricity? #PowerAlert1 Eskom implements Stage 3 loadshedding from 14:00 today and anticipates to be in this mode until Monday at 05:00, following 98% availability of power supply, due to loss of 2700MW over the past 14 hours. To…

It’s been a busy week for Apple. The Fruit Company’s recently updated Mac Studio follows updates to the iPad Air and MacBook Air. Except here, raw performance is the main focus. This time, that performance comes in two possible flavours – M4 Max and M3 Ultra. As is customary, Apple says that the M3 Ultra is the “highest-performing chip it has ever created.” Until the next one comes along, anyway. Size continues not to matter The exterior of the ‘new’ Mac Studio has no discernable changes. There’s no new Sky Blue colourway, and the I/O options and layout are visually…

It was only a few months ago in January that we said the first Wi-Fi-connected earbuds would probably launch before the end of the year at the latest, but likely sooner. Xiaomi announced its Buds 5 Pro alongside the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in China on Thursday, 27 February. Unsurprisingly, the latter stole the limelight with its impressive camera tech. But since visiting Xiaomi’s rather large MWC booth this week in Barcelona, we know that the Buds 5 Pro are also launching in Europe, so there’s a small glimmer of hope they might make their way to South Africa, although we’re…

It turns out that ‘something’ was a new iPad Air. When Tim Cook teased ‘something’s in the air’ earlier this week, most of the industry waited for his Fruit Company to announce new M4-powered MacBook Air models. It seemed like all signs were pointing in that direction, considering usually-correct Apple psychic Mark Gurman said so and the M3 MacBook Air launched around this time last year. Clearing the Air Well, Apple just proved it’s still got a trick or two up its sleeve and threw everyone a curveball by announcing the ‘new’ iPad Air. We say ‘new’ because it doesn’t…

During the Honor Alpha Plan keynote address at MWC in Barcelona, Spain, the company’s chief marketing officer, Dr Ray Guo, announced a slate of new devices coming to market soon. Four new devices were announced, namely the MagicBook Pro 14 laptop, Pad V9, Watch 5 Ultra, and Earbuds Open. Plenty to see It seems Honor is positioning the MagicBook Pro 14 to be its most performant 14in laptop, sticking either an Intel Core Ultra 5 225H or Intel Core Ultra 9 285H chipset inside and giving it an 80W high-performance mode. Combine that with either 16GB, 24GB, or 32GB of…