Новости за 15.01.2021

Photo: Belkin

Getting a MagSafe car charger for your iPhone seems like a simple process, but the current landscape is one of trade-offs: there are no all-in-one solutions that will wirelessly hold and charge your phone and are MagSafe certified to provide up to 15W of power. However, manufactures have been finding workarounds.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A discount on HBO Max that was supposed to end today, January 15th, has been extended until March 1st, 2021. The fine print of the offer hasn’t changed: you can get six months of HBO Max for 20 percent off the normal total cost, which is usually $90 before tax. You’ll pay $70 with this deal (it’s like paying just under $12 per month instead of $15), but the catch is that you have to prepay in full and it’s nonrefundable.

Image: Apple

According to 9to5Mac, Apple will be extending its free year-long trials of its TV Plus service to customers until July 2021. The trials were originally included with the purchase of any Apple device (e.g., an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV) and were initially set to last until November 1st, 2020. This is the second extension, with the first extending from November 2020 to February 2021.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

WhatsApp on Friday announced a three-month delay of a new privacy policy originally slated to go into effect on February 8th following widespread confusion over whether the new policy would mandate data sharing with Facebook.

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

In addition to revamped MacBook Pros that ditch the Touch Bar and resurrect MagSafe, Apple is also said to be planning to announce its long-awaited iMac redesign this year — and a pair of Mac Pro refreshes are on the roadmap, too. This is all according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who says the iMac will undergo its most significant overhaul since 2012: Apple will reportedly ditch the chin beneath the screen, cut down on display bezels, and move to a flat-back design. Читать дальше...

A screenshot from Hitman 3. | Image: IO Interactive

Hitman 3 and the World of Assassination trilogy launch on January 20th, and at launch, Google Stadia players will be able to share access to distinct points within a game thanks to Stadia’s State Share feature.

The Humble Store has kicked off its winter sale. Starting today and lasting until January 28th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, the digital storefront is running a slew of discounts across various PC video games.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Medical appointment company Zocdoc is offering to handle COVID-19 vaccine scheduling logistics for hospitals and health systems, many of which have spent the early days of the vaccine rollout struggling to handle the crush of demand for doses. Mount Sinai Health System in New York has been using the company’s tool to handle vaccine appointments since mid-December, and has scheduled over 100,000 appointments since.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon will now allow third-party companies the unprecedented privilege of accessing the core artificial intelligence underpinning its Alexa digital assistant, a first for the company’s AI platform.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble has temporarily disabled a feature which allowed users to filter potential matches based on their political leanings, the service has announced. The feature allows users to identify and filter matches with options such as “Apolitical,” “Moderate,” “Liberal,” and “Conservative.” In a statement given to Mashable, Bumble said it had temporarily removed the feature in the US to “prevent misuse and abuse.”

Photo by Alexander Kramer for The Verge

Apple is planning a major MacBook Pro redesign for the third quarter of 2021, according to a research note written by TF International Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo and reported on by MacRumors, 9to5Mac, and Apple Insider. Kuo calls it the first major redesign of the MacBook Pro since the introduction of the current generation in 2016. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has followed up with a report corroborating many of the same details.

Image: Patr10tic

A developer going by the name of Patr10tic has created an interactive map using GPS metadata and videos from the app Parler to offer a glimpse of what was happening inside and around the Capitol building during the violent protest on January 6th (via Motherboard).

Image: Samsung

Samsung’s future phones will also not come with charging bricks, the company has revealed, but it’s leaving itself some wiggle room. In a Q&A about why it’s no longer including headphones and a charging brick in the box, Samsung says it believes gradually removing the accessories from its phones could help make them more sustainable.

A photo of Spotify’s Car Thing, taken from FCC filings. | Image: FCC filings

Back in May 2019, Spotify announced that it would be publicly testing a voice-controlled smart assistant for cars that the company called “Car Thing.” But nearly two years on, we haven’t heard much from the project — though that might change soon. A Car Thing with a totally new design and a bigger screen has appeared in FCC filings.

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Samsung just revealed the new Galaxy S21 Ultra would be its first Galaxy S phone to support the S Pen stylus, but the company is already saying that S Pen support will come to other devices in the future, according to a statement first given to SamMobile on Thursday.

Image: Xiaomi

With six days left in office, the Trump administration has decided to put one more Chinese electronics giant in its sights: Xiaomi, the world’s number three phone manufacturer. The US Department of Defense is now designating Xiaomi as a “Chinese Communist military company,” meaning it’s now vulnerable to Trump’s executive order that bans the US from investing in such companies — and might force US companies and other US investors to divest in Xiaomi on November 11th, 2021, as reported by Reuters. Читать дальше...

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

During Samsung’s Unpacked event, the company unveiled three new phones as part of the Galaxy S21 lineup — the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and the S21 Ultra — which will be available to preorder starting January 14th and will release on January 29th. As a reminder, their prices range from $999.99 to upward of $$1,379.99.

The Galaxy A32 5G offers a 6.5-inch display and 5,000mAh battery. | Image: Samsung

Echoing a theme that will be repeated a lot more this year, Samsung has announced a very inexpensive 5G phone. The Galaxy A32 5G is debuting in Europe first, starting at €279 for a 64GB version or €299 for 128GB. There’s no official word yet on whether it will come to the US.

BMW is suspending its two-year-old car subscription service, The Verge has learned.

Image: Intel

Intel is updating its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) lineup of miniature computers with its 11th Gen processors, and it’s again including a gaming-focused model. The NUC 11 Enthusiast is a follow-up to the NUC 8 Hades Canyon from 2018, which managed to pack triple-A gaming performance (not to mention I/O that rivaled a full-size desktop) into a tiny enclosure.

Photo: Marvel Studios

WandaVision is the Marvel universe’s most comic book show yet, if not in content at least in concept. It’s a dense-looking storyline that will be released on an episodic basis, with characters and a setting that are virtually impenetrable to new viewers — so much so that Marvel Studios even went so far as to produce a clip show recapping the critical moments of the 23-odd films that precede it.