Hardware, as the saying goes, is hard; but there remains an opportunity for startups that focus on specific niches to build viable businesses. In the latest example, reMarkable, the Oslo, Norway-based maker of a simple and slick $299 e-paper tablet of the same name, says that it has passed 1 million devices sold since 2017 and recently raised money at a $1 billion valuation after making revenues of $300 million and operating profits of $31 million in 2021.

Founder and CEO Magnus Wanberg said reMarkable is not disclosing the amount of the investment, nor who was involved, except to say that it’s a minority stake in the company and that it came from multiple international (not Norwegian) investors. The company employs 300+ people and Wanberg says it is still “majority employee owned.”

“Nothing’s fishy but we’re keeping it confidential,” he said when I asked why the reticence on the investment. He noted that while the deal was made last year, the startup is disclosing it now as “a good indication, a signal out to the world” of how the company is doing. “This is just sprinkles for us,” he said more than once during our interview.

Spark, which led a $15 million investment into the company in 2019 (when it had sold a mere 100,000 devices), remains a shareholder in the company, Wanberg added. And it seems that the startup is open to raising more to invest in growth (perhaps another reason for speaking about its latest investment now).

reMarkable’s growth and milestone investment are remarkable (sorry had to do it) in themselves, but what is also interesting is to consider why and how a company like reMarkable is finding traction.

A large number of consumers definitely do not seem to mind being very online, but there is definitely a seam of users looking for ways to use new technology that doesn’t at the same time spell being locked into the litany of pings and distractions that come with so much connected technology today. And increasingly we are seeing companies building for that seam of users. reMarkable is one of them. Wanberg believes that this company’s success to date is due in large part to the focus it has on “focus.”

“The future of the tablet as we see it is in the direction that Apple and others are heading, a fusion of laptop and tablet forms,” which complements how people also use smartphones, he said in an interview. “But our offering is a third device, a focussed space for books, drawing and notes, where you can really avoid distractions and procrastination. That is our positioning.”

Even its small concessions to aesthetics — the sound and feel of reMarkable’s pen on its screen are more akin to a writing utensil moving across paper than a stylus gliding on the glass of your iPad — feel in aid of trying to help people forget they are using a piece of electronics.

The company’s business model was originally banked around selling hardware, which today is used by “hundreds of thousands” of active users. The company’s reMarkable 2 model, launched in 2020 as the Covid-19 outbreak went global, really rode the wave of more people doing more things at home and trying to find more nuanced uses for their quiet time.

But in October of last year reMarkable made a bet on aligning itself closer with that idea of focus, launching a subscription service called Connect.

While others like Apple have also built out recurring services businesses based around its hardware, this was an especially important milestone for reMarkable, which has only released two devices since being founded in 2013 and touts that you do not need to buy a new device for at least 10 years when you buy one.

Billed monthly in two tiers (normal at $7.99/month and “lite” at $4.99/month), Connect is how the startup plans to make a substantial part of its money going forward (indeed, when I asked it declined to give any projections for device sales for 2022). Among its features, Connect provides continuous software updates; cloud storage; connectivity with Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive if you want it; an extended warranty for the tablet; handwriting conversion; screen sharing and a feature to send by email — in other words, a few features to get information into and out of your reMarkable tablet, but otherwise nothing especially real-time and dynamic.

In this way, even though it calls itself a tablet, the reMarkable is more like an e-reader, Wanberg said.

“With an E-reader and you own and use it for quite a long time,” he explained. “In our business, it’s not a new-model-every-year dynamic. There is no emphasis on new model ownership. We don’t want to force our company to slap on some iteration for the sake of it. There is true innovation, major steps in terms of what we can offer the customer. We also think it’s great from a sustainability perspective [to move away from] pushing out new hardware.”

Wanberg didn’t disclose how many have adopted Connect so far, only noting that so far it has had a “great response” as reMarkable “tries to prove to customers that we can serve them on a running basis.” Given that Connect only launched in October of last year, it may be too early to tell. Its $31 million operating profit in 2021 was more than triple its profit in 2020 ($10 million), but reMarkable noted that this was “driven largely by sales of its latest paper tablet.”

Meet Pixy, Snap’s little flying companion. Pixy is a mini drone that can act as a camera sidekick when you can’t ask someone to take a video of you. It’s yellow, it’s cute and it’ll be available in the U.S. and in France for $229.99.

“Today, we’re taking the power and magic of the Snap Camera — the spontaneity, the joy, and the freedom — to new heights. A new camera to match the limitless potential of your imagination. Meet Pixy, the world’s friendliest flying camera. It’s a pocket-sized, free-flying sidekick for adventures big and small,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said during the Snap Partner Summit keynote.

Pixy isn’t your average drone as there is no controller and no SD card. It feels like the company has optimized the device so that it’s easy to pick up and get started. There’s a button to activate the device and a camera dial to select the flying mode.

There are four preconfigured flight paths. You can tell Pixy to float, orbit around you or follow you as you walk or run. You select the right mode, press the button and Pixy takes off from your hand.

When you want to stop recording, you place your hand below the drone. Pixy will automatically land in the palm of your hand. And here’s what it looks like in action:

For readers who like specifications, Pixy captures 2.7k videos and 12MP photos. It’s very lightweight as it only weighs 101g with the replaceable battery. On a single charge, you can capture five to eight flights.

Once the drone is done shooting a video, you can open Snapchat on your phone. Videos from your flights are automatically transferred wirelessly to your phone. By default, they are stored in your Snapchat Memories.

Of course, you can then view these videos, edit them, send them and share them. If you’re already familiar with Snapchat’s editing features, you’ll be able to use the same editing tools for your Pixy videos. You can also apply some effects to your videos, such as Hyperspeed, Bounce, Orbit 3D and Jump Cut.

And… that’s about it. It’s a neat little drone and it seems like the Snap team in charge of this project had a lot of fun developing it. It’s not going to change the company’s bottom line but it’s definitely cool.

There are not a lot of use cases for Pixy though. In many places, you can’t use drones legally. For instance, drones are banned in Paris. Not just some areas, but the entire city of Paris. Similarly, you won’t be able to use it when you go to the Grand Canyon national park as drones are also illegal over there.

But if you think you absolutely need something like Pixy in your life, you should act fast. Snap is implying that Pixy isn’t going to be available forever. You can buy it while supplies last on Pixy.com.

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged.

Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to confirm how it will negotiate with Member State governments on the detail of the legislation.

The Council adopted its position on the common charger proposal back in January.

The IMCO committee voted 43:2 in favor of a negotiation position that will push to standardize charger ports for a range of mobile devices on USB Type-C, including smartphones, tablets, handheld games consoles, e-readers, digital cameras, electronic toys and more — with MEPs voting to expand the original proposal to cover laptops, among other additional products.

The committee backed exemptions for devices when they are too small to house this type of port — such as smart watches, health trackers, and some sports equipment. Although larger devices in those categories would still be in scope under this amended version of the proposal.

MEPs also voted to press the Commission to address growing use of wireless charging — a development that could enable device makers to circumvent charger port rules — by presenting a strategy that allows for “minimum interoperability” of any new charging solutions by the end of 2026.

“The goal is to avoid a new fragmentation in the market, to continue to reduce environmental waste, ensure consumer convenience and avoid so-called “lock-in” effects created by proprietary charging solutions,” it said in a press release.

MEPs were also focused on labelling, saying they want to see clear information on new devices about charging options and whether a product includes a charger or not to support consumers in making more sustainable purchasing decisions to reduce the amount of new e-waste generated.

Parliamentarians have been pressing the bloc’s executive body to legislate to tackle e-waste for years. However the Commission preferred to pursue an approach of engaging with the industry to get to a common charger voluntarily.

And while there has been a reduction in proprietary chargers over the years there still isn’t a single charger that’s compatible with all in-scope devices. Hence the EU’s executive body finally came forward with a legislative proposal last year.

Commenting on the IMCO vote in a statement, rapporteur Alex Agius Saliba said: “With half a billion chargers for portable devices shipped in Europe each year, generating 11,000 to 13,000 tonnes of e-waste, a single charger for mobile phones and other small and medium electronic devices would benefit everyone. It will help the environment, further help the re-use of old electronics, save money, and reduce unnecessary costs and inconvenience for both businesses and consumers.

“We are proposing a truly comprehensive policy intervention, building on the Commission’s proposal by calling for the interoperability of wireless charging technologies by 2026 and improving information given to consumers with dedicated labels. We are also expanding the proposal’s scope by adding more products, such as laptops, that will need to comply with the new rules.”

Spotify’s $90 in-car entertainment system “Car Thing,” which went on sale to the general public in February, is gaining a number of new features. The company announced today it would add one of users’ most-requested features — the ability to add songs and podcasts to a queue — alongside other updates involving voice commands, playlists, responding to phone calls, and controlling other media.

The music streaming system is meant to offer consumers an option to more easily listen to Spotify while in the car if they don’t already have a built-in media and entertainment system, or a vehicle that supports Android Auto or Apple’s CarPlay. Or it could be used with those other systems if people just happened to prefer Car Thing’s interface.

As Car Thing already connects to the vehicle via USB, Bluetooth, and Aux in order to stream Spotify from the driver’s phone, it makes sense to allow the device to work with other phone functions, too.

Spotify says device owners will now be able to see incoming calls and dismiss or answer them through the Car Thing interface. They’ll also be able to play and control other media in the car using the device, then switch back to Spotify using either presets, voice commands or by tapping the screen.

Image Credits: Spotify

Another update will bring the requested “add to queue” functionality.

There are a number of ways to use this feature, Spotify noted. Car Thing users can either tap “add to queue” icon next to a track in their tracklist; use the device’s dial to highlight the track then press and hold to add it to the queue; or use voice commands (e.g. “Hey Spotify, queue [song name]”). Users can also view the queue at any time by saying “Hey Spotify, open my queue,” or by pressing and holding the dial while in the “Now Playing” view.

The company additionally updated Car Thing’s set of voice commands to allow device owners to request personalized playlists by mood, genre, or activity. Spotify already offers a number of regularly updated personalized playlists in its app, but now users can say things like “Hey Spotify, play cozy Sunday RnB,” and the app will generate a playlist based on the user’s request.

Spotify had been working to enter the device market for some time before this year’s public launch of Car Thing.

It first began hardware experiments in 2019, before ultimately settling on the current design that became the new Car Thing. During this period, the device’s hardware and industrial design evolved from a smaller item plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter to a more consumer-friendly product with a big knob, colorful touchscreen, voice control features, and more. Car Thing, so far, has been fairly well-received. Spotify said over 2 million consumers signed up on the waitlist to purchase within a matter of months after Spotify announced the product. It has not yet said how many have sold, however.

At launch, Spotify said the device would soon gain some small software updates, including a “Night Mode” and this “Add to Queue” voice command, among other things, so not all of today’s additions are a surprise.

The new features will begin rolling out to Car Thing owners today.

A growing number of people are looking for ways to live more sustainably amid increasing concerns over the environment and what we humans keep doing to pollute it. Today, a startup called Grover that has built a business around one aspect of that — enticing people to buy and eventually discard less consumer electronics such as phones, monitors and electric scooters by offering them attractive subscriptions to use their stock of new or used gadgets instead — is announcing a big round of funding to expand its business.

The Berlin-based company has raised $330 million — specifically $110 million in equity and $220 million in debt — money that it plans to use both to expand its stock of devices as it gears up for more user growth; but also build out more tools and financial services to personalize the experience for individuals, and to encourage more business on its platform through schemes like loyalty programs. 

Energy Impact Partners is leading the equity portion of the Series C, with Co-Investor Partners, Korelya Capital, LG, Mirae Asset Group; and previous backers Viola Fintech, Assurant and coparion also participating. Fasanara Capital is providing the debt. The mix of debt and equity is typical for a company building, effectively, a leasing business: it is the same approach Grover took when it raised $71 million for its Series B a year ago.

The round values Grover at over $1 billion, the company confirmed.

Grover has been on a steady pace of growth in the last several years — CEO and founder Michael Cassau said that across its footprint of Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain and the U.S., Grover doubled subscriptions and business in the last year, and it currently has half a million items in its catalogue available for subscription, 2 million registered users and 250,000 active customers (some are subscribing to use more than one gadget). That growth has been riding on several concurrent market trends.

The first of these is the push for more sustainability and a new appreciation for the so-called “circular economy” approach — spurred not just by a greater consciousness around environmental issues but a turn towards mutual support around Covid-19, where many people were communicating (sometimes for the first time) with those living close to them, sharing resources to get through the difficulties of the pandemic. Sometimes those resources were used goods being passed on or sold cheaply to others: it opened the door to a different way of thinking for a lot of people.

That collective shift was also pushed along by a second trend, which was a tightening in the global economy, which has compelled consumers to consider spending less on some discretionary items.

“We see ourselves as simplifying access to a part of your budget,” Cassau told TechCrunch in an interview.

And the idea of spreading out an expense on a good that may be used but is still in good shape appears to be appealing more now than it might have in the past.

“We see very strong demand for even second or third year products,” Cassau said. “Some want the latest items, and this applies particularly to brand new phones, but a huge body of individuals are happy with an iPhone 11 or even iPhone 10. You’re seeing that also in the secondary market,” he added referring to the likes of Back Market (which itself raised a huge round on a huge valuation earlier this year) where people can acquire refurbished devices. And it’s a movement that is playing out in other categories, too, with Vinted (out of Lithuania) now valued at $4.5 billion for its used-clothes marketplace. “It’s a huge business, one that is even overtaking primary in some markets.” Cassau said he sees Back Market as a key competitor in its area.

On average a product sees at least four owners over “several years”, but some items are outliers, with a GoPro camera in its stock, it said, circulated 27 times.

Grover got its start with — and still counts — consumers as its primary customers, but it’s also seeing a burgeoning interest in the area of B2B, where some consumers are now also picking up subscriptions for items to use in their business lives, and companies are also starting to engage with Grover to pick up multiple devices to equip their teams, offices, temporary staff and generally as part of a bigger effort to reduce their overheads and fixed costs.

The startup has also been building out a range of what Cassau described to me as “embedded finance” products — financial services it offers alongside its subscription business, which Grover has not built from the ground up but has customized by using fintech APIs built by others.

In its case, it’s been offering users Grover Card, built with Solaris Bank, which people can use as their payment card out in the word, which gives users 3% “cash back”, earning money towards their monthly subscriptions each time they spend money on the card.

Cassau said that the card adoption has had a strong correlation with people taking out more subscriptions with the company, often going from one to three items. Power users on Grover might spend as much as €60 each month on their subscriptions, he added.

Grover has a one year purchase option today, where users can buy an item they’re subscribing to for €1 after that time, and some 10% of its customers opt for that, he said, but most rent, return and exchange for their next items. You can also rent in segments of between 1 and 18 months.

The funding is coming at an interesting time in the venture world: we and others have anecdotally been hearing that funding, especially later-stage and larger deals, has largely dried up in recent months, in part because of the slower rate of public listings and other exits and general caution trickling down over that and other issues like conflict in Europe, with the war in Ukraine and Russia’s actions hanging over us all.

In that context, Cassau said that Grover hadn’t faced challenges in its own efforts to raise money although he could definitely see the “change in the markets starting in January.”

He continued: “I don’t think we have been a boom-and-bust raising kind of company,” he said. “We are naturally developing into this valuation, so we saw less of the effect of that backlash than others might have seen.”

Indeed, one hopes that areas like attention to sustainability and services that are helping ordinary consumers live in a way that respects that concept with less and less friction are not “trends” but are shifts that are here to stay.

“Grover has succeeded in pioneering the subscription economy for consumer electronics, a move that is critically important as we build a net zero world,” said Nazo Moosa, managing partner at Energy Impact Partners, in a statement. “The intersection of society’s linear consumption habits and climate change is an important focus area for EIP’s second fund, which closed at one billion dollars last year. We believe Grover will reinvent society’s relationship with consumer tech, and as a result allow us to continue using the products we need while minimizing harm to our planet. Our investment in Grover is part of a mission to help scale start-ups from all over the world who have the ability to advance the transition to a more sustainable future, and we look forward to working closely with Grover as they move into this next exciting phase.”

Meet the Devialet Dione, a brand new speaker from high-end speaker manufacturer Devialet. With this new product, the company is entering a new market — home cinema sound systems. The Devialet Dione is an all-in-one soundbar compatible with Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 and it costs $2,400 (€2,190).

“We are at the high end of the market but we have a product that is an all-in-one audio system,” Devialet CEO Franck Lebouchard told me. What he means by that is that you shouldn’t compare the Dione with an average soundbar.

For instance if you’re trying to find an equivalent device in Sonos’ lineup, Lebouchard says you should compare Devialet’s speaker with the Sonos Arc soundbar paired with two Sonos One speakers and a Sonos Sub. And that package currently costs more than $2,000 as well.

“The tech achievement is that we managed to put everything in a single device. It means that we had to make 17 speakers fit, which is unheard of,” Lebouchard added.

The company set up a testing room in its office in Paris and I could listen to the Devialet Dione with a large TV. We tried the speaker with the first few scenes of Mad Max: Fury Road. We also listened to some music.

And, sure enough, the speaker sounds great. It produces some immersive sound and it feels like you’re sitting in a movie theater rather than in front of a TV.

This isn’t a full review. I’m not an audio professional so I don’t know how the Devialet soundbar sounds like when you compare it with the current top-of-the-line soundbars. I would recommend listening to the Devialet Dione in a store before buying it anyway.

“In a Sennheiser soundbar, you’ll find 12 speakers. We put 17 speakers. It’s not completely magical, but when you can fit five more speakers in it, you can hear it,” Lebouchard said.

Image Credits: Devialet

The device itself is a dense soundbar. It weighs 12kg and it is quite long — 1.2 meters. You should think about getting a speaker like that if you already have a very large 55-inch TV.

When it comes to design, it is a bit more discreet than previous Devialet speakers. The signature egg-shaped Devialet design has been replaced with a more traditional polygon with sharp edges and corners.

The only thing that stands out is a tiny sphere at the center of the device. There’s a speaker inside that sphere and it pivots. This way, if you want to fix the soundbar to the wall, you can rotate the sphere so that it’s always facing you.

Inside the device, there are 17 different speakers — nine full-range drivers and eight rectangle subwoofers. Those subwoofers have been designed to fit the specifications of a soundbar. Again, what makes the Devialet Dione stand apart is that you don’t need a separate subwoofer (or satellite speakers).

The device also has its own digital-to-analog converter. In fact, the Devialet Dione uses the same system on a chip that you can find in the company’s flagship products, the Phantom product line. Devialet has multiple patents for this specific chip and promises a sound with zero background noise, zero saturation and zero distorsion.

And if you’re playing a movie that doesn’t support Dolby Atmos, the Devialet Dione can “upscale” the sound signal to 5.1.2 audio. There’s also a live balance feature that helps you hear dialogues.

When it comes to connectivity, you plug the Devialet Dione to your TV using an HDMI cable with support for eARC and CEC. You can also use the soundbar as a standalone speaker to listen to music.

The Devialet Dione connects to your local network using Wi-Fi or Ethernet. It also supports Bluetooth 5.0 and uses the same Devialet app. You don’t necessarily have to use the app to play some music as you can use Spotify Connect or AirPlay 2.

Image Credits: Devialet

Not just for audiophiles

The company thinks there’s a market opportunity with the Devialet Dione as streaming services release blockbuster movies on their services from day one. “We realized that it’s a market that is taking off,” Lebouchard said.

“Our typical client is someone who has a beautiful 55-inch TV or bigger. And they want sound quality to be as good as image quality. It’s a bit different from the typical Devialet client, who is someone who listens to a lot of music,” he added.

In 12 months, if the company wants to reach its business goals, the Devialet Dione should represent 20% of the company’s revenue. And every time the startup launches a new product, it can lean on its dense network of points of sale. There are currently 1,900 Devialet points of sale around the world.

While the company has stopped talking about funding rounds since its Series A in 2015, Devialet has raised another €70 million across two rounds. The last funding round was a €50 million round with the company’s existing investors in January 2020.

Devialet is launching the Devialet Dione today in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Pre-orders also start today for other markets.

Apple finally delivered what many have been asking for in the Apple enthusiast community: A first-party display that doesn’t cost a minimum of $5,000. The new 27-inch Studio Display instead costs $1,600, which is still a lot more than a lot of people want to pay for a monitor, but it’s still probably a welcome addition for many. Apple even put a whole-ass A13 chip inside, which is more powerful than the chip that currently powers the 4K Apple TV.

Which begs the question: Why isn’t the Studio Display also an Apple TV?

It’s already got the chip — it might be missing the onboard storage but adding that would be a pretty insignificant task in the quantities required to run tvOS and a few media apps. There are also examples of other companies already doing this: Samsung M-series Smart Monitor’s have a smart TV mode with their awful homespun software onboard.

I floated this idea in the TechCrunch Slack and got back some tepid takes about why it doesn’t make sense — you’re hooking the Studio Display up to a Mac that can ostensibly replicate all the functionality of an Apple TV and do a lot more besides, for instance.

But actually, the native Apple TV app on macOS is kind of busted. And to get Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video etc. requires going to all their respective sites separately using the browser which is far clunkier and less elegant than just installing apps to a simplified home screen. Again, there’s a reason Samsung created a line of hybrid smart TV-monitors, and even added more models to the lineup over time.

What’s more, I’m willing to bet the Studio Display would actually be a pretty compelling purchase as just a TV on its own. The industrial design is on point, and beats the hell out of most modern television designs, even among the class of TVs that occupy a higher price bracket just on the basis that they look better in a living room (Samsung’s Frame and Serif lineup, for example).

Think of this like a stretch goal, but the Studio Display would also make a killer Apple TV because of its built-in webcam, speakers and mic. It could be an amazing headless Zoom (or equivalent) machine for a more lean-back video conferencing experience.

I think that’s a bit far afield, however, and it would also require some re-architecting of tvOS and what kinds of apps and services it supports. Apple could’ve added Apple TV functionality to this monitor at essentially no additional cost, however, thanks to that curious A13 chip inclusion, and consumers could either take advantage, or just use it as a regular monitor — it’s all upside.

In a perfect world, a future firmware update would include tvOS and make this happen post-purchase. As it stands, I don’t think the Studio Display has any (enough?) storage on board to reasonably run the OS and apps for Apple TV, which strikes me as just a little bit of a missed opportunity.

It is TechCrunch tradition to look at Apple’s stock price during, and after its major events. Why? Because we enjoy it, and we’re always curious what impact the company’s news has on its actual financial worth. The answer is usually very, very little.

This may surprise you. After all, Apple details its new hardware and software at its confabs, which means that the goods it intends to sell in the coming quarters are being shown off before investor eyes for the first time. Sure, Apple leaks more than it used to, but that doesn’t mean that everything comes out early — its events are still events.

Why don’t investors seem to care about products? It’s a little fuzzy, but data indicates that Apple could launch anything short of a car and still get blanked by the capital classes.

Anyway, here’s a chart of Apple’s share price, along with price data from a Very Special Guest:

It was a wild day in the markets. Stocks were down! Then they went up! And then they went down! If you watched the ticker-symbol world today, it’s fine to reach for your favorite psychoactive at this point and chill. You deserve it.

You can see those same  ups and downs in the above chart, which pits Apple and Intel against one another on a one-day timeframe. Why the two companies? Because Apple released a lot of notes on its chip work, the very industry that Intel once ruled from what felt like an impenetrable market position. In spite of that, Apple made many a headline today thanks to even more new chips, and the fact that it is building new computers to house them.

So, up goes Apple and down goes Intel? Right? There was some hubbub that Intel’s shares fell when Apple announced its M1 Ultra chip, so I charted the two at the same time, and asked myself to find the dip afterwards, without checking timings from my notes. Good luck, yeah?

By the end of regular trading, Intel actually came out ahead. After Apple announced neat new silicon.

Is the stock market a meaningless random-number generator? No, not completely. But the above data does help us better understand what the stock market actually is, at least for the largest companies. Namely it’s a macro-sentiment engine powered by a million vampire computers, not moved about not by pedestrian things like new phones, but instead by alchemical analyst expectations, and newly-announced share buybacks — paid for with debt, natch.

While investors paid no attention to what Apple announced today, I paid attention to investors not paying attention to what Apple announced today. What follows is my notes sheet (typos and all) from the event, which as you can tell led to a simply brilliant piece of post-beauty poetry:

+1.57%  at start

Naz +2.11% [rebound!]

stocks going up, now 1.98% AAPL

new iphone colors LOL

apple silicon – new daoly high +2.19

Now into the Iphoen and ipad news – back down to 1.77% = naz +2.3%

Chips – naz falling some, apple now up just 1.1%

Talking chips with randos, now just up 1% — naz 1.27%

new Mac Studio – now up jsut 0.66% – naz 1.13

INTEL LOST GROUND AT 1:20 – around chip timing?

new max expensive

We’ll be back for Apple next event with another episode of “does anything matter.”

Apple announced a handful of new products in a pre-recorded online event. And the company announced a brand new desktop computer called the Mac Studio. It’s a small tower computer that looks a bit like two Mac Mini computers stacked on top of each other.

It has an SD card slot and two Thunderbolt 4 ports at the front. Half of the interior is occupied with the thermal system to keep the system cool during heavy load.

At the back of the device, you’ll find an additional four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10 Gbps Ethernet port, two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI port and a “pro” audio jack port. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.

The Mac Studio features Apple’s own systems on a chip, including the newly announced M1 Ultra. The M1 Ultra is an even faster variant of the M1 chip — it’s more powerful than the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra. And this new chip lets you do a lot of things. For instance, you can connect up to four Pro XDR displays and a 4K TV.

Image Credits: Apple

The Mac Studio comes with an M1 Max or an M1 Ultra system on a chip, and Apple shared some performance charts for the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra. With the M1 Max, You can expect 3.4x faster GPU performance compared to the Radeon Pro W5700X in the Mac Pro. You can expect a 90% jump in computing performance compared to the 16-core Mac Pro.

If you max out the existing Mac Pro, the M1 Ultra is supposed to be 80% faster than the fastest Mac Pro. And it supports up to 128GB of memory. The M1 Max is limited to 64GB of memory.

The Mac Studio with an M1 Max chip, 32GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage costs $1,999. The Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra chip, 64GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage costs $3,999. They’ll be available on March 18.

Image Credits: Apple

Image Credits: Apple

Apple is set to announce new hardware today. The company is holding a (virtual) event at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. in New York, 6 p.m. in London, 7 p.m. in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live.

Rumor has it that the company is set to announce a refreshed iPhone SE. While the smartphone could keep its iconic iPhone 6/7/8/SE design, it could feature an updated system on a chip and a new 5G modem.

Apple could also unveil an updated iPad Air. Once again, it seems likely that the company is going to refresh the internal components. The new iPad Air could be as speedy as the latest iPad mini that was released six months ago.

But it’s going to be more interesting to see what Apple has in mind for the Mac lineup. As Apple is in the process of refreshing its entire Mac lineup to replace Intel CPUs with Apple chips, there are still some big Mac updates coming this year, such as a new Mac Pro or a new iMac Pro with Apple internals. The company could also update its entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini or the MacBook Air.

You can watch the livestream directly on this page, as Apple is streaming its conference on YouTube.

If you have an Apple TV, you can open the TV app and look for the “Apple Special Event” section. It lets you stream today’s event and rewatch old ones.

And if you don’t have an Apple TV and don’t want to use YouTube, the company also lets you livestream the event from the Apple Events section on its website. This video feed now works in all major browsers — Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

We’ll be covering the event and you can follow our liveblog for real-time commentary.

Invites just went out for Apple’s next big event, scheduled for 10 AM PT (1 PM ET) on March 8. It will be an online event broadcasting from Apple Park. Anybody will be able to watch it from Apple’s website.

The invite features an Apple logo that looks like the entrance of a neon tunnel. It says “Peek performance” and rumor has it that Apple has plenty of hardware devices to announce this year.

Bloomberg first reported that Apple was planning to hold an event on March 8. Even though there are some tragic events happening in Ukraine, it sounds like Apple still wants to go forward with an online event.

The company could use this opportunity to introduce a refreshed iPhone SE with 5G connectivity, an updated iPad Air with better specs across the board and new Mac models with Apple Silicon.

Apple has been refreshing its entire Mac lineup to replace Intel CPUs with Apple chips. There are many possibilities for new computers, such as a new entry-level MacBook Pro, a more powerful Mac Mini, a redesigned MacBook Air or even some new Mac Pro and iMac Pro models. The company isn’t going to release all new Mac models at once though, so we’ll have to wait a few days to learn more.

We will cover the event, so stay tuned.

The market for mechanical keyboards has boomed in recent years and the pandemic only added fuel to it as people looked to improve their home setups (and spend their stimulus checks). Today, you can find anything from a $20 AliExpress special to a $600 Keycult board — before keycaps and switches, if you can even get one. And then there is Angry Miao‘s Am Hatsu, a wireless ortholinear split ergo keyboard with an aluminum body that sold for $1,600 (but with switches and keycaps). It can charge wirelessly and if you opt for the company’s Cybermat, you’ll never have to think about charging it. That’ll set you back another $380, though.

So, for $2,000, you get a whole new typing experience and a heck of a learning curve, but you’re going to have a hard time finding one. Angry Miao tells me it doesn’t currently have plans for another Am Hatsu production run, so chances are the prices on the secondary market will be quite a bit more than the original retail price.

Now, let’s just get this out of the way at the outset: Whether any of this is worth the money is a decision you can only make for yourself. At this price, it’s either something you dismiss at the outset or an impulse buy to reward yourself for your smart crypto investments. I’m not sure there’s a lot of room in the middle.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

If you’re new to mechanical keyboards and want to be able to customize your experience, a GMMK Pro, Keychron Q2 (or the upcoming Q3) or a Cannonkeys Bakeneko65 will all give you a great experience for less than $250, all in. Or if you don’t even want a custom experience, just get a Leopold or a Ducky and call it a day. But if you are in the market for a split ergo, you don’t have a ton of choices. Still, an Ergodox EZ or ZSA Moonlander will get very close for a fraction of the price — and may have some advantages, too. And there’s always the Kinesis Advantage 2, with its single-piece design but a similar concave kind of ortholinear layout. Or if you just want to dip your toes into ortholinear keyboards, a Drop Planck or Preonic would make for a good entry point.

While you may not have heard of them before, Angry Miao isn’t completely new to the mechanical keyboard market. With the Cyberboard, which features a large LED panel at the back of the board, the company had a bit of a cult hit that has now sold out of three production runs after plenty of positive reviews. The company tells me a new, Matrix-themed Cyberboard should launch next month.

Angry Miao’s Cyberboard. Image Credits: Angry Miao

Am Hastu plays in a different market than the Cyberboard, though, and definitely isn’t for everyone. Just learning to use this new layout is a challenge. With keys that are in a straight line instead of the staggered layout of traditional keyboards split between two sides, you do get the benefits of being able to relax your shoulder muscles and barely having to move your wrist. But just think about relearning to use your right thumb for pushing space and CTRL or your left thumb for backspace and enter. And that’s before you learned the layering system for typing numbers because, like many similar boards, the Am Hatsu doesn’t have a number row, let alone F-keys or arrow keys. There’s a reason 65% boards are so popular in the mechanical keyboard community. They give you all of those (minus the F-keys) in a nice compact format that even has space for page-up and page-down buttons.

I’ve spent a week with the Am Hatsu now and am typing this story on it, but it isn’t for the faint of heart. My regular typing speed is nothing special, at somewhere between 80 to 90 words per minute. It went down to closer to 15 words starting out and slowly moved back to 30 after a week. That’s not great, but it is also not an indictment of the Am Hatsu. It’s simply a layout you have to get used to.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

If you take the plunge, though, the hardware itself is absolutely beautiful. Angry Miao talks a lot about how the Am Hatsu’s distinct aluminum body was machined with a five-axis CNC machine. That’s not a cheap process, but it shows. The build quality here is something else. I don’t think you’ll be able to find any split ergo keyboard that comes anywhere close. Angry Miao says the design was inspired by HBO’s Westworld. I guess I can see that, with its black and white color scheme and overall design language, but it’s not all that important. The less said about Angry Miao’s NFT scheme, the better (I find that holds true for all NFTs), but to get a board, you basically have to buy an NFT on OpenSea, which you can then trade in for a physical board.

The design is rounded out by small LED strips on the inner side of each half that show that the individual sides are on, and their respective charging state. They are pretty unobtrusive and mostly just add a nice touch of color to the board.

The battery is supposed to last about two weeks of daily use on a full charge. With the Cybermat, it won’t matter since it’ll just draw power from that, but otherwise, there’s a USB-C port underneath each half. That’s not a great place for it. It’s either a way to sell more Cybermats or just a matter of design over function, since the design team clearly tried to hide any ports and screws, leaving only the underside for the charging port. You’d think designers had learned from Apple’s infamous Magic Mouse 2.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

The Bluetooth connection works very well, though, and I didn’t notice any lag. Unsurprisingly, you can’t use the keyboard when it’s wired to your computer. It’s Bluetooth or bust.

Another design choice I can understand better but don’t like is that for $1,600, you’re stuck with one kind of switch, Angry Miao’s Icy Silver switches. These are linear switches (so there’s no tactile bump like you might know from a Cherry Brown switch; you can insert your own joke here how Cherry Browns are objectively the worst switch and barely semi-tactile anyway). I like linear switches, so this works for me, but this is not what’s called a “hotswap” board, so you can’t change the switch for something closer to your personal preference.

For what it’s worth, the TTC-made “Icy Silver” switches feature long dual-stage springs that take an initial force of 45 grams to activate. That’s a bit lighter than the popular Gateron Yellow switches with an actuation force of 50 grams, and slightly heavier than the TTC Icy Speed switches on which Angry Miao’s switch is based. Most importantly for keyboard geeks, though, these are really smooth switches and I have yet to feel any scratchiness or ping noise (and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, just know that that’s a good thing).

The keycaps, I’m not too fond of. These are a variation of Angry Miao’s see-thru Glacier keycaps and they are a bit too thin and smooth for my taste. They look great, but I’d likely replace them with a PBT set, though finding a set with all the right keycaps for this unusual layout may prove to be tough.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

If you’re really into mechanical keyboards, you’ll now ask: but does it thocc? Thocc is all about the sound the keyboard makes, with a lot of people preferring a kind of deeper sound, but in reality, nobody really knows. The Am Hatsu doesn’t have that deep sound. It’s more of a higher-pitched one, but not unpleasant by any means.

With most enthusiast keyboards, you can easily change the sound profile. High-end boards typically come as DIY kits that allow you to make changes to the design. The Am Hatsu does not. This isn’t meant to be a keyboard for tinkerers. Indeed, you’re not going to easily find a screw to even open up the board. Sadly, that also goes for the software. You can modify what every key does, but you only get the two default layers to work with. As of now, you can’t add additional layers, something that’s pretty standard, especially in the world of small and ortholinear keyboards that.

But let’s talk about the Cybermat, too. It’s a heavy piece of hardware, weighing in at just over nine pounds, made out of a single 900x340mm piece of aluminum, making it a bit thinner than the standard 900x400mm size that’s typical for deskmats.

The version I tested is the company’s second iteration and, like the Am Hatsu, it’s something else. We’re basically talking about a giant wireless charging station, powered by a 90W GaN charger that features a total of 12 charging coils, two at the sides, mostly for charging your phones and the rest in the middle for charging the two keyboard halves — or you could use those for phones and other devices, too.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

It comes with a deskmat to put over it that shows you exactly where the coils are. Angry Miao says the mat was inspired by Tesla’s Cybertruck and that inspiration isn’t hard to see, with its hard edges around the corners and at the bottom of the mat.

There is a small cutout in the back-left corner with charging indicators for the four charging zones and the USB-C plug.

The company says the mat offers all kinds of security features, including overcurrent protection, overvoltage protection, undervoltage protection, overheating protection and short circuit protection, as well as foreign object detection. I admit I still felt a bit uneasy putting a cup of coffee on it since I don’t have the best track record of keeping coffee off my keyboards.

It’s a solid piece of hardware (I mistakenly stepped on it once while I was setting it up and it didn’t budge). The price is hard to swallow, but the same goes for the keyboard. It’s not a gadget you just buy to give it a whirl and see if it works for you.

For both the Am Hatsu and the Cybermat, Angry Miao is pretty clear that you only have 72 hours after receiving it to make a return — and only if it’s unused. Essentially, sales are final, which may be a hard pill to swallow, given the price.

This kit isn’t something that makes for an easy buying recommendation. If it’s exactly what you’re looking for and money isn’t an issue, go for it. If you’re on the fence, maybe try one of the more affordable options first. You won’t be able to find the build quality and eye-catching design of the Am Hatsu anywhere else — but that goes for the eye-watering price as well.