These days, the path of least resistance in laptop design is straight-up knocking off the MacBook. We’ve certainly seen our share of egregious cases over the years. Microsoft, however, has defiantly forged its own path with industrial design across the board. Its products are largely interesting and innovative — something not every hardware manufacturer can…
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The global pandemic made some industries and utterly decimated others. The world of connected fitness falls firmly into the former. Along with top names like Peloton, Mirror had a banner year, including, most notably, sportwear company Lululemon’s acquisition of the brand for $500 million in June. It’s an impressive number for the five-year-old company, which…
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Williesha Morris Contributor Williesha Morris has been a journalist and freelancer off-and-on for over a decade. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, playing video games or chatting about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2011, a product developer named Fred Davison read an article about inventor Ken Yankelevitz and his QuadControl video game controller for quadriplegics. At…
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Over the past several years, institutional investors had largely shied away from China’s e-cigarette makers, an industry that was teeming with shoddy workshops and lacked regulatory oversight. But investors’ attitude is changing as China sets in motion its strictest ever regulation on electronic cigarettes. Myst Labs, a Chinese e-cigarette maker co-founded in 2019 by Chenyue…
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SoftBank has picked its bet in China’s flourishing industrial robotics space. Youibot, a four-year-old startup that makes autonomous mobile robots for a range of scenarios, said it has notched close to 100 million yuan ($15.47 million) in its latest funding round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, the Seoul-based early-stage arm of the global investment behemoth.…
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We test out Apple’s lost item finder, Google Fi gets a new unlimited plan and Facebook tests new video ad targeting features. This is your Daily Crunch for April 22, 2021. The big story: First impressions of Apple’s AirTags AirTags are Apple’s new Tile competitor designed to help owners locate lost objects. They use Bluetooth…
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A lot has changed in the last decade-ish of instant photography, yet all the while the boxy build of instant cameras has stayed more or less intact. Modern instant shooters have slimmed down and put on a variety of calming pastel tones, but they’re not exactly slender. But lo, Polaroid — the new Polaroid, not…
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Samsung announced Galaxy Upcycling a few years back, but has largely been quiet on that front, aside from some stage time at CES back in January. Today the company announced that Upcycling at Home is being opened to beta today for users in the U.S., Korea and the U.K. It’s a pretty novel program, in…
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The big news from today’s Spring Loaded event is, as anticipated, a new version of Apple’s high-end tablet. The new iPad Pro is the first in the line to adopt the M1 chip introduced on the company’s Mac line. The new chip sports an 8-core CPU, with performance up to 50% faster than the A12Z…
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It’s been a strange few years for Fitbit. After defining the fitness tracking space, the company was a bit late to the smartwatch trend, but was still able to ride that wave to a rebound. But while watches have received most of the press the now Google-owned company has garnered in recent years, bands still…
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