Author: Brett Venter

Apple may have announced a pair of iPhone 13 models but that just means that the well-heeled (and obsessed) also have the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max to look forward to. These are typically the camera powerhouses, which is saying something when stacked against the photography improvements to the stock iPhone 13s, but there’s also loads of power to look forward to. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s 2021 pair of Pro smartphones. Paging the iPhone 13 Pro Apple’s new Pro phones are, obviously, more powerful than last year’s models. But, as with the last few years,…

Apple’s gone and made its Watch Series 7 official and, as we expected, they haven’t done a bloody thing about the battery life. You’re still looking at eighteen hours on a charge, only this time Apple’s speeded up your charge time so you can actually use it while you sleep as well. Eight minutes will net you eight hours of sleep tracking, while 45 minutes will get you to 80% of charge. But how about the rest of the device? The Watch Series 7 goes (kinda) big Also as expected, Apple’s newest Watch hasn’t made many changes to the internals…

We’ve long maintained that Microsoft’s Hololens AR tech is destined for great things, just as soon as folks work out how to make it work without costing $3,000 for a single headset. We’ve seen them do some amazing things so far — to the point that the US military wants a bunch of them for training purposes. But now they’re working out in space, on board the International Space Station (ISS). Hololens facilitates NASA’s T2AR Earlier this year, astronauts on board the ISS made use of Microsoft’s Hololens hardware — in conjunction with custom-built software made by NASA — to…

‘If it’s not broken, why fix it’ seems to be Amazon’s approach to the user interface (UI) for its Kindle range of e-readers. The incredibly well-loved (in the Stuff offices, at least) device only rarely sees an update to how it functions on a software level. So when something new turns up, it’s worth paying attention. Something new from the Amazon If you’re fond of nothing more than a good (digital) book, then the change in your Kindle’s general look and feel is something you’re going to be intensely interested in. The folks over at Ars Technica spotted Amazon’s new…

The main question we have about Apple’s 14 September event is whether it’s going to be an event like the one(s) in 2020 or if we’re heading back to 2019 in terms of presentation. If it’s 2019, then we’ll see everything Apple has to offer the world in one two-hour-ish event. If we’re looking at a repeat of 2020, then we’re only likely to see one of the following topics covered, with followup events taking place a little later in the year — which is great for Apple, but it gets a little… exhausting. But we’ll deal with the event…

Everyone wants to go to space and the US Department of Defense (DoD) is hoping to increase the number of missions that can travel outside of Earth’s orbit. The agency aims to achieve this by soliciting proposals for new commercial propulsion systems, specifically nuclear tech that “…enables high delta-V and electrical power to payloads, while maintaining fuel efficiency”. Going nuclear on the Department of Defense Nuclear powered spacecraft are not a new phenomenon, having been used for everything from generating electricity to making sure that tech doesn’t freeze out in space. The DoD is specifically looking for a nuclear propulsion…

Lego might be the brick with a thousand uses but the company’s various partnerships, with Nintendo, Disney, Land Rover and pretty much anyone else who wants a licensed set, are more or less designed to suck money out of wallets and into Danish bank accounts. It’s Ninty who has the most recent new set of constructible bricks for fans to marvel over — a new 2,064-piece Super Mario 64 Question Mark Block construction that a) looks like a Mario question mark block and b) conceals tiny little Mario 64 dioramas inside. Any more questions, Nintendo? Unlike other Nintendo sets from…

Samsung, at Global Tech Korea 2021, has unveiled a new take on its flexible screens. Well, flexible is the wrong term — the South Korean company is billing this particular 13in OLED panel as ‘stretchable’, because that’s just what it does. Its presentation consists of a 2D image of lava flow, augmented by bumps and curves that make it look as though the liquid-hot magma is bubbling and boiling on the screen. Which, you know, is pretty and all but not massively useful at this point. Samsung needs this… why? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg2Izr6krY0 This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the company do…

It takes a long time to send something to space but the James Webb Space Telescope has taken longer than most. The replacement for astronomy hero Hubble has faced several delays since it was first pitched — it’s over fourteen years late — but NASA finally has a date for this bit of scientific hardware’s ascension — 18 December 2021. Things are looking up for the James Webb Space Telescope The space agency says that, following successful testing of the hardware itself (because you don’t fly more than $10 billion into space without making damned sure it’s going to work),…

Facebook has spent years stealing features from Snapchat and pretending that it’s innovating so it perhaps isn’t surprising that the glasses, called Ray-Ban Stories, the company is launching with Ray-Ban later today remind us a whole heck of a lot of Snap’s first-generation Spectacles. Oh, the Ray-Ban Stories you will tell… See, the glasses themselves are set to be properly revealed at a Facebook event sometime later this evening but, as ever, someone on the internet knows what’s coming in advance. That someone is Evan Blass, who usually spoils all of Samsung’s fun but who is tacking a crack at…