Author: Duncan Pike

After years of rumours, leaks, and teases, the Sonos Ace headphones have officially landed and look to take on industry stalwarts in the active noise cancellation and personal cinema audio game. This is the first wearable audio product from the company which will apparently “transform the way we listen on headphones.” “They’re here! Fans have asked us for years to bring the Sonos experience to headphones – and we knew our first foray into the category needed to champion the type of innovation and sound experience Sonos has become synonymous with,” said Sonos CEO Patrick Spence. The new cans feature…

During Microsoft’s Surface event yesterday, where it announced its new ‘Copilot+’ branding for incoming AI-focused devices, the company revealed two new Surface products that will bear the shiny new badge – a new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, a laptop/tablet hybrid. It also mentioned a few of its hardware partners that are expected to produce new AI machines. Microsoft’s new AI-powered Surface The new Surface Laptop will be available in two sizes, 13.8in and 15in, and will ship sporting Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus processor. The rest of the specs are configurable, starting with 16GB of RAM and…

Yesterday at Microsoft’s Surface event, the tech giant announced “Copilot+ PCs”, the new branding for incoming AI-focused Windows machines. New devices that want to be part of Microsoft’s cool new club will have to tick a few specific boxes to be eligible – they need to have built-in AI hardware and support Microsoft’s new AI features. That built-in hardware takes the form of a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chip, like the one Qualcomm is shipping with its new Snapdragon X-series processors. Although, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Intel and AMD-powered laptops will also offer AI features. Copilot+ PCs…

Data storage and drive manufacturer Western Digital has taken the wraps off its new 6TB portable hard disc drives (HDDs) that boast the world’s highest capacity for the 2.5in form factor to date. Whether you’re looking to horde hundreds of thousands of pictures of your kids or pets, your entire digitised cassette collection (because you know Spotify won’t be around when the world ends), or that really big “homework” folder, a couple of these means you’ll never have to delete anything again. Y’all got any more of them HDDs? The new 6TB capacity will be available across the company’s WD,…

Google’s annual developer-aimed I/O conference kicked off yesterday, 15 May, where the tech giant announced a swathe of new projects and features — with a heavy focus on AI, naturally. The conference is still underway, with the recent crop of announcements focused on Google’s improvements to its Android mobile operating system. The second beta version of Android 15 has just been released and with it, Google has announced a suite of security-related features “[t]o help keep your device and your data safe before, during and after a theft attempt,” it said in a blog post. Don’t even think about it…

Quadrupedal robotic ‘dogs’ have come a long way since Boston Dynamics first unveiled Spot in 2016. The first robo-doggo has since learnt to dance, patrolled factories, received ChatGPT integration, and even made its way to South Africa. On a slightly more harrowing note, Ghost Robotics has seen its Spot-lookalikes outfitted with all kinds of death-dealing equipment like a great big rifle, rocket launcher, and a bloody flamethrower — much to the ire of Boston Dynamics. The latest development, according to a report from The Warzone, is that the United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is testing robotic dogs from…

South African indie videogame developer SpaceSalad Studios and famed SA cartoonist Jonathan ‘Zapiro’ Shapiro have joined creative forces for Point of Order (P.O.O) Weekly, a new South African presidential decision-making simulator game. Slated for release ahead of the country’s upcoming general elections, P.O.O Weekly features a “satirical and parody-style format” as a vessel for its educational content. It “aims to educate, engage and empower” SA youths to address the concerning trend of low voter engagement and “educate players about the complexities of governance”. Getting P.O.O in your SpaceSalad As educational as it’s trying to be, we’ve no doubt there will…

Don’t you hate it when you’re looking for that video, song, or article you saw but can’t quite remember what it’s called or where you saw it? Scrolling through your social media feeds only distracts you further. Eventually, you begin to wonder if you ever saw it at all. Did someone send it to you? Is it even real? Are you real? Windrecorder bills itself as your “personal memory search engine”. It records everything you do on your PC and saves it locally as a video to rewind and search through later. If that sounds eerily similar to Black Mirror’s…

With local advertising for the BYD Dolphin spotted in the wild, stating a starting price of R540,000 for the cheapest of the two incoming models, South Africans will soon have a new affordable EV king. Until now, that title was held by the GWM Ora 03 and its starting price of R686,950. The new BYD Dolphin undercuts that by a sizeable amount. When it officially launches, the Dolphin will be the second vehicle from the Chinese automaker available in South Africa following the launch of the BYD Atto 3 last year which currently starts at R768,000. Swimming with the BYD…

Earlier this week, at its regional ‘Innovative Product Launch’ event in Dubai, Huawei unveiled the Watch Fit 3 — its shiny new affordable fitness tracker. There were a plethora of other devices announced, including a special space-themed edition of the Watch 4 Pro, the new Pura 70 series, refreshes to its MateBook range, and a new tablet. We’re still waiting for local pricing and availability details on most of those but the Chinese company wasted no time in getting the Watch Fit 3 up on its local site with the option to pre-order already available. Doing that will set you…