Author: Stuff writer

QVWI held its local launch event at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit in Midrand earlier this week. If you’ve never heard of the brand before we wouldn’t blame you. It’s a new consumer electronics brand under Chinese holding company Skyworth Group and is prepping to roll out its ecosystem of devices, apps, and services to the South African market. The complete list of hardware it plans to bring to SA isn’t yet finalized and it’s not going to launch every product all at once. But we have an idea of the gadgets it’ll start with, based on what it showed…

We’ve all been waiting for radical innovations in batteries for years. That innovation has arrived. “The new Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries will make a big difference to South Africans,” says Ryan Martyn of Syntech, importers of Gizzu products. “They support new functionalities like fast charging and many more charging cycles. “Our first-generation products could do 500 charging cycles. The newer ones will do 3,000.” The practical benefit for South Africans is that you can leave them plugged in to constantly charge and serve as a functional UPS. They can also support power-hungry appliances like air fryers, hair dryers, and…

Oh yes, the Roomba – when robots finally did our bidding, just like sci-fi predicted! Well, it wasn’t quite like in the films. The excellently named iRobot company did manage in a small way to “make it possible for housekeeping to be something you do by choice”. But its Roomba wasn’t a humanoid robot cleaner. It looked more like a squashed Dalek (unable to traverse stairs, or even a thick rug) crossed with a dying fly. Rather than mapping out a room, it spiralled out until it hit something, cleaned along the edges, and repeated that dance until the battery…

It wasn’t just the iMac. Remember when all techy kit had to have a transparent blue shell? Bondi blue, thank you. And at the time, this made the iMac, unlike any computer you’d ever seen. Until then, desktop PCs had been boring and beige – even Apple’s. The iMac was different. You wanted to show it off. Geeks could peer at its innards, while normal people would be intrigued by a piece of tech actually designed for real humans. Well, apart from the hockey-puck mouse. Steve Jobs claimed it was “the coolest mouse on the planet”. It wasn’t. It was…

One of the many benefits afforded to Android users is the ability to easily install apps outside of unofficial channels. What some people might not know is that it’s already technically possible for Apple users too. Let’s explore the world of sideloading on Android and iOS. The Basics Get onside In the context of mobile, sideloading means installing apps from outside of an app store – like you’ve been able to do on PCs and Macs forever. Apple argues this is a security threat. But sideloading allows you to dodge lock-in and install apps and games that Apple and Google…

The Basics: iPadOS & macOS Manage multitasking Strap in! Apple’s added a new windowing system to the Mac and iPad: Stage Manager. This is like a simplified take on Mac windows. You’ll need a 2018 or newer iPad Pro, or an M1 iPad Air – and only M1/M2 iPads get upcoming external display support. (Note: you can still use Split View on iPad and normal windows on Mac.) Boost browsing Safari now supports Passkeys, which will eventually consign passwords to oblivion. Until then, you can edit suggested strong passwords to deal with site-specific demands. Website settings and extensions sync between…

Doo doo-de-doo, doo-da-doo doo-de-doo, doo-da-doo, da-doo-doo doo-doo-doo… Indeed. But Tetris was five years old before Nintendo used it to flog millions of Game Boys and drive a generation of gamers mad by lodging Korobeiniki in everyone’s brains. Alexey Pajitnov had drawn from his love of pentominoes while creating a game to – ahem – ‘test’ new hardware that had arrived at a research institute in Russia. His initial design was a static two-player effort where players would take turns flipping pieces on a glowing Electronika 60 display. But… doo doo-de-doo. And also, fun. That version of Tetris sounds dreadful. It…

You never know when inspiration will strike. Usually, that tends to happen at the least opportune time. Instead of letting your ideas go to waste, use these apps to create a rough draft that you can flesh out later. Remixlive Decks? Knobs? Get with it, Gramps: these days electronic music makers tap buttons on a grid to fire up beats. At least, they do if they use Remixlive. It’s head-bobbing fun, with the added advantage that you don’t need any talent to create something fit for debut at AfrikaBurn – although you can dig into sequencing, song creation and…

GoPro made its Hero 11 Black to be a durable camera, capable of keeping up with your extreme lifestyle. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to record a vlog about the history of the postage stamp if you want to. The basic principle is the same, only with slightly fewer backflips. But while the Hero 11 Black is an excellent bit of camera hardware, there’s always something we wish it could do better. The battery runs out, the microphone could do with an upgrade, the microphone could do with an upgrade (again)… you get the idea. Here…

The Basics Don’t think it’s Twitter Mastodon’s somewhat bumpy onboarding makes people think it’s tricky. And in use, many assume it’s identical to  Twitter. Neither point is true. The service is simpler than it first appears, yet it has nuances that set it apart from the Musk mound. There’s more emphasis on discussion, so dial down the noise – and ramp up thoughtful chat. Select a server Mastodon is decentralised. Choose a server when signing up (either in the app or at joinmastodon.org), from large general-interest ones to niche topic-orientated ones. Ideally, peruse admin policies first and see how feedback…