Business Articles

Using devices like Apple's Vision Pro, the tech giant aims to provide its customers with a more personalized, interactive and informative shopping and support experience. Recently obtained patents reveal Apple's plans to broaden its utilization of augmented reality.

Sonos has announced that it will be entering a new multi-billion dollar product category in 2024, which will “complement current Sonos devices” and will “delight customers and drive immediate revenue.” It is believed the new category is headphones, based on a leaked internal memo that confirms Sonos has a headphone division.

More than 730 employees out of 770 have now threatened to leave OpenAI if the current directors don’t resign and ex-CEO Sam Altman isn’t reinstated as CEO. The development follows a volatile few days where the OpenAI board strangely fired Altman. Interestingly, where the OpenAI board terms failed communication on the part of Altman as the primary reason for his firing, OpenAI co-founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk demands answer to whether "OpenAI is doing something potentially dangerous to humanity".

Meta had asserted its "commitment" to responsibility in developing its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) products, with a dedicated team within the company to fulfil that promise - but no longer. Its members still have positions within the company - just within other divisions, mostly involved in its generative AI concerns.

As a result of the burgeoning demand for artificial intelligence (AI), the stock of graphics chip maker NVIDIA has surged over 240% YOY, making its CEO Jensen Huang one of the richest people in the world.

Ultrahuman, the company behind the Ring AIR, is being sued in the US by its competitor, Oura. The brand claims that Ultrahuman’s smart ring has copied the design and functionality of the Oura Ring, including the app UI. Plus, Oura alleges that Ultrahuman has infringed patents and copyrights.

Despite the owner driving the electric pickup for over a year and more than 24,000 miles (38,624 km), Rivian is buying an owner's R1T at full retail price. While using the pickup truck as a work truck, the owner has faced myriad issues, including four that required towing. Despite all the issues that interrupted his agriculture business, Mitch Dumke still reviewed the R1T very positively.

Truth Social, the social network founded by former President Trump as a rival to major social media platforms, has reportedly lost US$73 million since its launch last year.

As other traditional carmakers start to get cold feet on EVs thanks to reduced demand, both Hyundai and Kia reiterated their successes in electrification and their commitment to continued expansion in the sector. The executives went so far as to say that capacity was the limiting factor rather than demand.

Under the headline "Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive", non-commercial messenger Signal provides interesting insights into the infrastructure of a messenger app and its costs.

Elon Musk is facing criticism for sharing a tweet that falsely accused Jewish people of inciting anti-white sentiment. He also threatened to file a lawsuit against media watchdog Media Matters amidst advertisers leaving X.

The Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are thought to launch with what Samsung might call the best and most powerful chipset it has ever made in the Exynos 2400. The SoC's projected bragging rights are also now believed to include production using FOWLP, a cutting-edge technique tipped to enhance bandwidth and performance by up to 15% in chips that take up to 40% less space.

While SpaceX's Starship just exploded over the ocean, its Falcon rocket is on a back-to-back mission to launch 45 new Starlink V2 satellites over the weekend. A new, more powerful Starlink antenna for standard residential users is being distributed by SpaceX for testing.

Sam Altman has been fired from his position as CEO of OpenAI. A co-founder of the company, Altman was dismissed by the board after it lost confidence in his ability to continue in the role.

A new study has highlighted the crucial importance of the Internet in the contemporary world and the possible ramifications of even short-term outages. The United States and China alone would account for US$21 billion in damages, nearly half the total.

Four pictures have appeared on Reddit that allegedly show the next-gen version of the most prestigious Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12. The new model appears to feature a revamped design and a haptic trackpad without dedicated TrackPoint buttons.

CheckMag Even before rumours started circulating about Apple creating its own electric vehicle, some of Apple's business practices shared a lot in common with electric vehicle manufacturers. While not uncommon in the tech industry, they set a worrying precedence for both the way business is conducted and products purchased in the future.

The exclusive collaboration with TSMC seems to be coming to an end as AMD is now reportedly collaborating with Samsung for the upcoming Zen 5 Prometheus processors. TSCM would still handle the production of the advanced cores on the cutting-edge 3 nm nodes, whereas Samsung is to produce the "basic" Zen 5c efficiency cores on its 4 nm nodes.

CheckMag Most gaming laptops have extravagant and eye-catching designs, something that isn't necessarily welcome in the workplace. If you want one single laptop for gaming and taking to the office, the 16-inch Lenovo Legion Pro 5 might just fit the bill thanks to its discreet looks and powerful components.

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled the first of 400 planned EV charging hubs. The charging hub features 400 kW chargers from ChargePoint, and there is a bay designed for wheelchair-accessible cars, vans, and vehicles with trailers. There is also a luxury charging lounge replete with snacks, drinks, and a restroom, making the wait more bearable.

TrendForce's research on the third-party SSD space has found that Kingston was its #1 brand in 2022. The company had weathered the supply storm of 2021 to remain a market leader. It attributes its success to the ability to offer both cost-effective and high-end drives for both gaming and non-gaming use-cases, and to the continuing demand for PCIe 4.0 NVMe.

Microsoft has finally unveiled its own custom silicon. The Maia 100 is Microsoft's AI accelerator designed for the Azure stack to train OpenAI's complex LLMs. The Cobalt 100 is an ARM-based chip with 128 cores aimed at optimizing power efficiency across Azure datacenters. Additionally, Microsoft has announced new Azure VMs powered by Nvidia H100 and AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs.

Even after leaving Russia, tech companies like Google, Wikipedia and Apple are still facing fines from the courts. They are charged with disseminating misleading information or disregarding data localization regulations.

BMW is shifting focus to electric vehicles at its Munich plant, putting the full brunt of its main R&D centre behind the new tech. The brand will, however, continue to make internal combustion engines — just not in Germany. The Munich plant already has over two years of i4 production under the belt, and BMW will start retraining employees for more EV models.

ViewSonic has brought the LDP216-251 to market, a 216-inch monitor intended to be used in offices. The ViewSonic LDP216-251 delivers 600 nits peak brightness, weighs in at 500 kg and consumes 4,000 W of power.

Unveiled earlier this year and currently the fastest solution available for smartphones and tablets, the LPDDR5T memory from SK hynix is now shipping to corporate customers. Such a client is Vivo, a brand that announced two MediaTek Dimensity 9300-powered handsets that use the new memory, namely X100 and X100 Pro.

Tesla has removed language from its Cybertruck sales agreement that required buyers to grant Tesla first right of refusal should the buyer of the Cybertruck decide to sell it within the first year of ownership. It's unclear why Tesla removed the clause, but it's unlikely to be because it's unenforceable — Ford has already proved that they can be binding.

To help with asynchronous work, Zoom has added a new feature that allows users to record, edit, and share videos. It seeks to eliminate the need for unnecessary emails or meetings.

Google will delete inactive accounts and their associated content starting Dec 1, 2023 (no sign-in for 2+ years). Inactive accounts increase hack risk and use up storage space. Users should sign in or delete unused accounts to avoid deletion.

Weighing just 1 kg, an OLED display with 5 million pixels and a CPU that exploits its full potential despite its slim design: the outstanding final score of the Asus ExpertBook is hardly surprising. Only one aspect should be viewed critically.

Volvo recently presented its first fully electric van, the EM90. Based on the Geely Zeekr 009, the Volvo EM90 is therefore a luxuriously equipped electric MPV with plenty of space and comfort as well as high safety standards thanks to modern assistance systems.

AMD has now unleashed the latest variant of its Radeon PRO series of graphics cards for workstation-type PCs. The W7700 is a medium-power example of its new generation, yet is touted to help achieve enterprise-grade AI and CAD results with RDNA 3 and GDDR6 memory. These specs are backed to deliver a price-to-performance rating of up to 1.7x that of its predecessors.

Scientist Young Suk Jo has created a new technology that aims to use ammonia as a cheaper and lower-emission fuel in the transportation industry. Ammonia offers a higher energy density compared to hydrogen, making it a significant alternative for creating a climate-friendly transportation network.

The US smartphone market grew by just over 20% in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the second, according to the latest industry research. This up-tick was attributed to the launch of the latest iPhone 15 series, which accounted for no less than 34% of Apple's entire handset business in the country for that quarter. Then again, the OEM's shipments failed to recover compared to their performance in 2022.

BMW is launching what it calls “highly automated driving” features in Germany. While Germany gets the SAE Level 3 Personal Pilot L3 system, the current Highway Assistant suite is limited to Level 2 in the US and Canada. BMW's Level 3 system will cost €6,000 (around US$ 6,800), and it is fully functional at night. Currently Tesla FSD Beta is generally thought of as Level 2.

Mini aims to bring the John Cooper Works brand into the modern era with its new electric drivetrain, but the brand will continue to focus on the fun side of driving in its performance EVs. Mini Coopers are known for their nimble handling and fun driving characteristics, while electric cars are often heavy, despite great acceleration.

Samsung's latest product for the South Korean market is pitched as a business device - however, a closer look reveals that it is not just any work smartphone, but one with some of the same specs as the Galaxy S21. This ex-flagship reincarnation is also thought to join the Galaxy M series should it be released to the global market soon.

Some people need more memory than everyone else - especially when virtualization comes into play. Often, laptops with a high amount of RAM are pretty big or heavy. The key selling point of the maximum configuration of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11: It is neither of those things while providing 64 GB of RAM.

The increasingly popular electric vehicle (EV) brand Polestar is definitely making its own smartphone, according to a new leak. An alleged preview for the device reveals a modern design with design cues suspiciously similar to those of an Android brand also closely associated with an automotive manufacturer in China.

Qualcomm has lost its partner in satellite-based connectivity, thereby ending the OEM's aspirations to bring the feature to next-gen smartphones via its own Snapdragon platform. Meanwhile, the technology's spread in the Chinese market remains unchecked, with companies such as OPPO and Honor pledging to integrate it into their next flagship devices.

Replacing Mail, Calendar, and the classic Outlook, Microsoft's new Outlook for Windows might be a security problem for some users. Available as a part of Windows 11 and as a standalone app, it shares all emails, contacts, and events with Microsoft. The new Outlook can read, create, share, and even delete data.

Volkswagen plans to bring an affordable EV to market in the US at under US$35,000 within the next three to four years. The German brand aims to manufacture the as-yet-unnamed EV in North America to take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives.

Lucid Motors will start installing Tesla's NACS hardware in its vehicles in 2025. Lucid's CEO, Peter Rawlinson, was previously hesitant about adopting the charging standard, citing high voltage as a priority. Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, took to social media platform X to gloat about Lucid's adoption of the charging standard.

Ossia asserts that it is ready to bring its Cota Real Wireless Power to any USB type-C device with its new Universal Adapter. Furthermore, the compact gadget is touted to charge a compatible device over the air, received from a Hub located within a 30-foot range. The OEM touts this latest product as the next step toward a world where electrical power works more like Wi-Fi than it does an Ethernet connection.

Philips has released the 49B2U5900CH, an ultra-wide monitor that is equivalent to having a pair of 27-inch and 16:9 monitors sat next to each other. The Philips 49B2U5900CH will be available later this month in multiple markets with a 450 nit, 1440p and 75 Hz panel.

Volvo has signed an agreement with Chinese-owned Italian press maker IDRA for two 9,000-ton gigapresses. It plans to install these gigapresses in the new Slovakian EV plant. Gigacasting aims to simplify component manufacturing and cost, but there are questions about the quality and safety of the process's resulting parts.

Shuntaro Furukawa, the president of Nintendo, has made some interesting comments in regard to numerous Nintendo Switch 2 rumors. At a recent press conference, the executive managed to deny certain well-known Switch 2 reports while seemingly making sure to use the correct language in his carefully worded dismissals.

The upcoming Polestar 5 electric four-door GT car will use SK On's 56 cm NMC cells. The South Korean battery maker claims these cells offer high energy density and meet high safety standards, particularly for thermal protections. The Polestar 5 EV boasts 884 hp and 900 Nm of torque from a dual-motor AWD setup.