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Whether you attach it to a dog's collar, put in on a set of keys or throw it in your purse, there's no denying that AirTags save you a lot of hassle. They get rid of the mental stress that is, "Where on Earth did I put that?" Thankfully, Apple's AirTags are not only convenient, but they're currently on sale. 

Right now, you can get a four-pack of AirTags for just $68, down from $99. For context, a single AirTag normally retails for $29 (currently $24 each), so you're getting four for just over the price of two. This 31 percent discount brings the set to just $3 more than its all-time low. 

There's not much to say about AirTags that hasn't already been said. They use the Find My network to locate your missing belongings and can do so with incredible accuracy. Their main fault is the lack of a key hole, but we've rounded up the best Apple AirTag accessories for 2025 to fix that problem. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/a-four-pack-of-apple-airtags-is-back-on-sale-for-68-125334495.html?src=rss

Wikimedia has seen a 50 percent increase in bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content since January 2024, the foundation said in an update. But it's not because human readers have suddenly developed a voracious appetite for consuming Wikipedia articles and for watching videos or downloading files from Wikimedia Commons. No, the spike in usage came from AI crawlers, or automated programs scraping Wikimedia's openly licensed images, videos, articles and other files to train generative artificial intelligence models. 

This sudden increase in traffic from bots could slow down access to Wikimedia's pages and assets, especially during high-interest events. When Jimmy Carter died in December, for instance, people's heightened interest in the video of his presidential debate with Ronald Reagan caused slow page load times for some users. Wikimedia is equipped to sustain traffic spikes from human readers during such events, and users watching Carter's video shouldn't have caused any issues. But "the amount of traffic generated by scraper bots is unprecedented and presents growing risks and costs," Wikimedia said.

The foundation explained that human readers tend to look up specific and often similar topics. For instance, a number of people look up the same thing when it's trending. Wikimedia creates a cache of a piece of content requested multiple times in the data center closest to the user, enabling it to serve up content faster. But articles and content that haven't been accessed in a while have to be served from the core data center, which consumes more resources and, hence, costs more money for Wikimedia. Since AI crawlers tend to bulk read pages, they access obscure pages that have to be served from the core data center. 

Wikimedia said that upon a closer look, 65 percent of the resource-consuming traffic it gets is from bots. It's already causing constant disruption for its Site Reliability team, which has to block the crawlers all the time before they they significantly slow down page access to actual readers. Now, the real problem, as Wikimedia states, is that the "expansion happened largely without sufficient attribution, which is key to drive new users to participate in the movement." A foundation that relies on people's donations to continue running needs to attract new users and get them to care for its cause. "Our content is free, our infrastructure is not," the foundation said. Wikimedia is now looking to establish sustainable ways for developers and reusers to access its content in the upcoming fiscal year. It has to, because it sees no sign of AI-related traffic slowing down anytime soon. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikipedia-is-struggling-with-voracious-ai-bot-crawlers-121546854.html?src=rss

Samsung is releasing two Fan Edition models of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10, and they're both more affordable than their standard counterparts. The Galaxy Tab S10 FE and the Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ are powered by the Samsung Exynos 1580 chipset instead of MediaTek processors like the standard versions. Samsung's Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ model has a 13.1-inch display, which is bigger than the Tab S10+'s 12.4-inch screen but smaller than the 14.6-inch one on the Tab S10 Ultra. Take note that both models have a refresh rate of up to 90Hz, which is lower than the standard versions' 120 Hz refresh rate. 

That means the standard Tab S10 models are still the better options if gaming is your primary use for a tablet. But again, the new Fan Editions cost substantially less than they do. The Galaxy Tab S10 FE's prices start at $500, and it comes with 128GB and 256GB storage options. Meanwhile, the Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ will cost you at least $650 and come with the same storage options. The standard Galaxy Tab S10's prices start $999, while the Tab S10 Ultra will cost you at least $1,200. 

Like the the standard models, the Fan Edition versions come with AI capabilities, including Circle to Search with Google that makes it easy to look for information simply by encircling elements on your device. Their Samsung Note app also features Math Solver, which can do calculations based on handwriting and text, as well as Handwriting Assist, which can help you tidy up handwritten notes. Both Fan Edition devices will be available in the US starting on April 10. You'll get a $50 credit if you reserve a unit now, and you can buy a Book Cover Keyboard Slim for 50 percent off if you purchase one by May 11. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/samsungs-galaxy-tab-s10-fe-and-galaxy-tab-s10-fe-will-be-available-on-april-10-120019555.html?src=rss

Roblox is again updating its parental control features in an effort to give parents more visibility into (and control over) their children’s activities on the platform. The company is updating its in-app “Safety Center” to counter concerns that Roblox, which unlike social media apps allows children under 13, puts its youngest users at risk.

The company added the centralized hub for parental controls last year, in an update that also added new restrictions on younger kids’ ability to exchange private messages with other users. But while that update gave parents the ability to control some of their children’s settings from their own devices, it was missing some key features like blocking.

With the latest update, parents can now view their child’s friend list and block users on their behalf. Once another user has been blocked, they’ll no longer be able to exchange direct messages with the child and kids will need to get parental approval to unblock the person.

Similarly, parents will now be able to block specific experiences within Roblox. Parents have already had the ability to limit in-app content based on its age rating, but parents have still at times complained about inappropriate content surfacing in certain games. Now, parents can block their young kids from participating in certain experiences. (Importantly, Roblox notes that kids will be able to remove apps from the blocked experiences list once they turn 13.)

Finally, Roblox is adding more “granular insights” to the in-app screen time metrics that allow parents to see how their kids are spending their time on the platform. The Safety Center will now list “the 20 experiences in which their child has spent the‬ most time over the last week, sorted by total time.” Parents can then opt to block specific games or experiences directly from the screen time menu if something seems off.

Roblox’s recent push to beef up safety features for younger users come amid a broader reckoning about the effect that online platforms can have on teens. Platforms have tried to address these concerns by enhancing parental controls and dedicated safety features for teens. But lawmakers are also pushing for change, with multiple states passing measures requiring some form of age verification (some of which have since been struck down). There’s also a bipartisan bill in the Senate to ban all preteens from social media entirely.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/roblox-parental-controls-now-include-a-block-button-120005897.html?src=rss

More than 60% of all purchases last year were made with a credit or debit card, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s up from 45% in 2016. That means big money for credit card companies, which made more than $187 billion last year in processing fees alone.

For businesses that take credit cards — especially smaller ones — it’s an increasingly large expense.

Mac Hay owns a bunch of seafood restaurants and markets on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and he said that credit card swipe fees are sort of like taxes.

“You just kinda take it as a fact. It’s sort of like, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to have to pay them. We’re going to have to pay the credit card processing fees,'” he said.

More than 90% of his customers pay with a card. It’s not like he’s not going to take them, so he doesn’t think about it much.

That is until the end of the month comes around, “and I see what we pay in credit card fees — it’s astronomical.”

Restaurants tend to have thin profit margins — maybe 5% or 10%.

For many, paying between 2% and 4% of every sale to process a card is tough, according to Erika Polmar, executive director and a cofounder of the Independent Restaurant Coalition.

“I talked to a restaurant last week who is paying $15,000 in swipe fees a month,” she said.

Bigger businesses can often negotiate slightly lower fees, but small ones don’t have the leverage.

Plus, “Visa and Mastercard dominate the credit card market in the U.S.,” Polmar said. “80% of credit card transactions are going through those two processors.”

So, she added, there’s not much pressure to offer competitive rates.

The Washington Post reports that members of the White House's National Security Council have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business. National security advisor Michael Waltz and a senior aide of his both used their own accounts to discuss sensitive information with colleagues, according to the Post's review and interviews with government officials who spoke to the newspaper anonymously.

Email is not the best approach for sharing information meant to be kept private. That covers sensitive data for individuals such as social security numbers or passwords, much less confidential or classified government documents. It simply has too many potential paths for a bad actor to access information they shouldn't. Government departments typically use business-grade email services, rather than relying on consumer email services. The federal government also has its own internal communications systems with additional layers of security, making it all the more baffling that current officials are being so cavalier with how they handle important information.

“Unless you are using GPG, email is not end-to-end encrypted, and the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points, including on Google’s email servers," Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Post.

Additionally, there are regulations requiring that certain official government communications be preserved and archived. Using a personal account could allow some messages to slip through the cracks, accidentally or intentionally.

This latest instance of dubious software use from the executive branch follows the discovery that several high-ranking national security leaders used Signal to discuss planned military actions in Yemen, then added a journalist from The Atlantic to the group chat. And while Signal is a more secure option than a public email client, even the encrypted messaging platform can be exploited, as the Pentagon warned its own team last week.

As with last week's Signal debacle, there have been no repercussions thus far for any federal employees taking risky data privacy actions. NSC spokesman Brian Hughes told the Post he hasn't seen evidence of Waltz using a personal account for government correspondence.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/national-security-council-adds-gmail-to-its-list-of-bad-decisions-222648613.html?src=rss

“My Economy” tells the story of the new economic normal through the eyes of people trying to make it, because we know the only numbers that really matter are the ones in your economy.

When Bryan Tetorakis co-opened his bar, Bad Medicine, in Cleveland, he had a vision for the music. “We don’t do any streaming whatsoever. No Spotify, no Tidal,” he said. Instead, music plays on vinyl records through the bar’s high-fidelity stereo system.

The year is off to a rough start for bars and restaurants, and price changes to ingredients like eggs have already caused Tetorakis to make recipe substitutions. “Egg white cocktails … people request them all the time. But egg whites cost about a dollar now, so it gets a little difficult.”

The foam on “Rocket Skates,” a Deftones song and Bad Medicine house cocktail, is now prepared with aquafaba, or simply, chickpea water.

To hear Tetorakis’ full story, use the media player above.

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“Changed little” was the theme of February’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary released Tuesday — 7.6 million job openings, 5.4 million hires, both about the same as in January. 

The numbers of quits and layoffs also didn’t change appreciably, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

February’s numbers reflect the earliest layoffs of federal workers — tens of thousands. But overall, the data shows what looks like a steady, decent labor market.

One item in today’s report did catch our attention, though: Layoffs were up at the smallest of small businesses — ones with fewer than 10 workers.

Eric Saunders, owner of Carolina Landscaping and Cleanup near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has just a couple full-time employees. And with major question marks over how much his customers are willing to spend these days, he sure isn’t hiring.

“Yeah, holding steady. Unless the market changes to where people aren’t so worried about every little cent they have, it’s kind of hard to do anything right now with laborers,” said Saunders. 

Holding steady in the face of uncertainty was kind of the theme of Tuesday’s JOLTS report, said Ron Hetrick, senior labor economist with Lightcast.

“Workers don’t want to go anywhere. Employers don’t want to hire. Everybody just freezes,” said Hetrick. 

Really small businesses, though, were laying off workers at a higher rate than anyone else. Pavlina Tcherneva, an economist at Bard College, said that’s an indicator to watch. Because even though firms with fewer than 10 workers represent just about one-eighth of total employment, “to me, their behavior is bellwether for overall trends in the economy,” she said. 

That’s because small firms have no choice but to respond quickly to a changing economy, Tcherneva said. 

“A small business owner really is working day to day, month to month,” she said. “They don’t have savings, liquidity, access to credit nearly to the same extent as a big company would.”

So when small businesses feel the need to cut costs, reducing workforce is a tempting lever to pull, said Lindsay Owens, executive director of progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative.

“Our measures of small business uncertainty have skyrocketed. And so for me, it is no surprise at all that we’re starting to see the layoffs in small businesses,” Owens said.

But sentiment has soured among businesses of all sizes, said Guy Berger of economic research nonprofit The Burning Glass Institute. It’s just that “a large enterprise is like, we always joke, is a supertanker, right? It takes time to turn around,” Berger said. 

So changes to headcount might take an extra month or two to play out.

Last week, President Trump announced his plans to impose a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles, light trucks and some auto parts. Those tariffs will go into effect on Wednesday, April 2.

This latest tariff is yet another addition to the bill of tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed over his first few months in office, and the inclusion of finished goods adds an extra layer of complexity to the already strenuous situation.

“If a large component of steel or aluminum is in the finished good, we basically need to break everything out into a bill of material, and then that 25% only applies to the steel or the aluminum,” said Gretchen Blough, a customs broker manger.

“Marketplace” host Kristin Schwab spoke with Blough about the current state of trade and how the addition of new tariffs creates further uncertainty for U.S. importers. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Kristin Schwab: Can you catch me up on what’s happened since we last heard from you? What is work like right now?

Gretchen Blough: Well, it’s a little crazy. We have the steel and aluminum tariffs that are in effect, and then we have a bunch of other tariffs that are going into effect tomorrow. The steel and aluminum, that has the 25% tariff on it with no exclusions, no exceptions. But there’s also some finished goods that have this tariff on it as well. If a large component of steel or aluminum in the finished good we basically need to break everything out into a bill of material, and then that 25% only applies to the steel or the aluminum, and then the rest doesn’t have the 25% so that’s presenting a problem for a lot of our importers. Because none of us were expecting that, and if they don’t have that information, then everything has the 25% apply to the entire good, which no one really wants that to happen either. But you have weigh what costs more the storage or the tariff at this point.

Schwab: Well, that’s a that’s a lot of ins and outs. How do you even, how do you even keep track of all the nitty gritty when the rules are constantly changing?

Blough: It’s not always easy. Mostly, we’re relying on the federal register when it’s updated. But that’s not always updated right away. We used to have fact sheets available on the government websites and those seem to have gone away. So, we’re relying on a lot of news publications to get a lot of the information as to how things are going to apply, because we don’t have things readily available. So, we’re trying to keep our customers up to date, and our operations folks up to date. And it’s not always easy to do that when we’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. For example, tomorrow, there’s scheduled to be 25% on Canada, Mexico, and also retaliatory tariffs, which we aren’t quite certain what those are going to include for other countries.

Schwab: So, I talked to a small-scale banana importer yesterday who was talking about how she just doesn’t have a lot of alternatives. She’s got to import from Mexico, right? What are you hearing from your clients about buying in America or buying American.

Blough: Well, you see that a lot on comments, on Facebook posts, but that’s not always realistic. There’s a lot of stuff that you can buy that’s made in America that has foreign components. And you know, it hurts manufacturers here, because now they have to pay more for their components. Buy American, It’s not an alternative. The other thing is if the manufacturing does come back to United States for these component parts, it’s going to take some time to build the plants and get things operational in order to source them here in the U.S.

Schwab: As somebody who has an intimate look on the ground of how tariffs are impacting businesses, also your own work, how much planning can you do for the next few months or the year ahead? Or is it just more of a day by day in the moment kind of workplace right now?

Blough: Well, it tends to be just an in the moment type thing. It’s really hard to plan when, as we saw with the tariffs with Canada and Mexico, they’re on again, they’re off again. They’re on again, they’re off again. You don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day sometimes. And plus, the retaliatory tariffs, we don’t even know what those are going to be.

Schwab: Do you have a long day ahead of you? What are your workdays like right now?

Blough: My workdays are answering a lot of questions. A lot of upset importers right now. I’m kind of explaining everything to everyone, having people that aren’t too happy because they had something on the water and in order to import it, it’s cost 25% more than they were expecting. And people trying to explain to me that they’ve had this purchased for six months. Why do they have to pay this now? And I really don’t have a good answer for them, because I’m just the messenger, unfortunately.

With the first three months of 2025 behind us, quarterly statements for 401(k)s, IRAs and other investment accounts will be arriving soon in mailboxes and inboxes across the country. They’ll be full of minus signs, showing how much investors have lost recently.

Now, we often talk about a “wealth effect” — basically, when the value of assets like stocks and homes goes up, folks feel richer, at least on paper, and they spend more because of it.

So, what about the opposite? Is there a negative wealth effect when people lose money on paper?

Things were going really well for the stock market, until they weren’t, said Rob Haworth, a senior investment strategist and senior vice president at U.S. Bank Asset Management.

“In the end of February, we had the S&P 500 touching new all-time highs, and we finished the quarter in negative territory for the year so far,” he said. The S&P 500 is down 4.5% and the Nasdaq is down 10%, as of March 31.

Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said there’ll be a psychological impact.

“When you see this sharp decline in equity prices, that’s the negative wealth effect. Consumers start to pull back,” she said.

But here’s the thing. For a lot of Americans, the majority of their wealth is in their homes.

“Latest data continue to show appreciation in home prices. So that — in terms of, like, a wealth effect — is still intact,” Bostjancic said.

And as for stocks, history shows that a sharp decline, followed by a quick rebound — like we’ve seen recently — doesn’t usually lead to a prolonged downturn, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.

But, he said, most small investors probably don’t know that. 

“They’re the ones that are most likely to allow their emotions to become their portfolio’s worst enemy,” he said.

One group that’s especially nervous right now: people 55 and up, who are seeing their retirement accounts decline in the midst of rising economic uncertainty, said Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School.

“A lot of financial advisers advocate: Just ride the bumps, you’ll be all right in the long run,” she said.

Mitchell, over 70, is not really listening. “I myself got basically completely out of U.S. equities about two weeks ago,” she said.

As for whether recent losses on stocks will translate into less spending on stuff, Rob Haworth at U.S. Bank said declines of this magnitude don’t always squelch retail sales. 

“The biggest driver we see for consumer spending is really, do people have jobs? And are their incomes growing?” he said.

Bigger, he said, than any potential negative wealth effect from a falling stock market.  

One of the sectors bracing for another round of tariff announcements is agriculture. And on Tuesday morning, we got a window into how that’s affecting farmers’ and ranchers’ moods.

Purdue University’s Farmer Sentiment Index for March slipped on weaker expectations for the future, with 43% of farmers citing shifting trade policy as the top driver of their pessimism. 

Five-year expectations for ag export markets hit an all-time low for the survey. 

Farmers are used to dealing with the unknown, said Kristen Owen, managing director with the research firm Oppenheimer. 

“We usually think about uncertainty coming from weather, coming from pests,” said Owen. 

And we usually think of federal policy as insulating the farm economy from those chaotic forces. But right now, it’s piling on. 

Owen said farmers who were already stressed about breaking even in a tough commodity price environment now have bigger things to worry about. 

“Where do we send grain? And where do we send agricultural products globally?” said Owen. 

If countries targeted by the Trump administration tariffs respond with tariffs of their own, demand could fall for American corn and soybeans, and other ag exports. 

Michael Langemeier, who runs the Purdue survey, said it’s sort of surprising farmer sentiment wasn’t lower in March. 

“A lot of the respondents are thinking that yes, it looks like we’re going to have tariffs, they’re going to have a negative impact on farm income. But they’re expecting some compensation,” said Langemeier. 

Compensation like the billions in federal relief paid to farmers during the last Trump administration trade war. 

Two-thirds of respondents to the Purdue survey are expecting something similar. 

“Farmers would much, much rather have an open and fair and free market that we can sell our products to,” said Josh Gackle at the American Soybean Association. 

Gackle farms soybeans, corn and barley in Kulm, North Dakota, where he said the mood is pretty jittery. 

“If you go to the local cafe and you sit down at a table with neighbors, probably the first thing that comes up is what is the price of soybeans today? What’s the price of corn? What’s the price of wheat?” said Gackle. 

In his small town, Gackle said everyone’s livelihood is tied up in shifting trade policy. 

Cars are about to get more expensive in this country. President Donald Trump plans to impose a 25% tax on imported vehicles starting Wednesday. Parts will be subject to tariffs soon too.

That’s happening as the automotive industry is already phasing out some of its cheapest new vehicles. Specifically, the last two new models with starting prices under $20,000 could soon be gone, according to Car and Driver.

The Mitsubishi Mirage ended production in December. A company spokesperson told Marketplace that dealerships will likely have enough supply to sell the cars into this summer. Meanwhile, Nissan reportedly plans to discontinue its subcompact Versa after this year.

Those moves will continue a long-term trend among automakers toward larger, more expensive models, limiting budget-friendly options for consumers.

There’s nothing fancy about the 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage. It’s a small car available as a hatchback or a sedan. 

In the parking lot of the Mitsubishi dealership he owns near Burlington, Vermont, Tim Bedard showed the sedan version in black and listed some of its features.

“It has the power locks, the windows, cruise control, tilt steering wheel, air conditioning,” Bedard said. “It has enough amenities to make it comfortable.”

Mitsubishi dealership owner Tim Bedard thinks discontinuing the Mirage leaves a hole in the market for budget-conscious buyers. Behind him is a 2024 model. (Henry Epp/Marketplace)

But there was no getting around the fact that there’s just not a lot of room inside. The small size, Bedard said, contributes to its real selling points.

“The beauty of the car is: price tag, warranty, fuel efficiency.”

It starts at just over $18,000, it has a 10-year warranty and the hatchback version gets 39 miles per gallon (the sedan: 37 mpg) — better than any car that isn’t a hybrid.  

And that sticker price? It’s $30,000 less than the average new car right now, according to Kelley Blue Book. So, Bedard said, it makes sense that about a third of the new vehicles he sells are Mirages.

But they’re not likely to turn many heads.

“No one’s like, ‘Oh, wow, you have a Mirage. Wow, cool,’” said Clayton Seams of Toronto, Ontario. He owns a 2021 Mirage.

Seams is an editor with the Canadian automotive publication Driving. He had some strict criteria when he was shopping for his own car: He had $15,000 cash, he wanted to buy a car with a loan or lease, and he wanted something that was easy to drive and park in the city. The Mirage fit the bill. But it has its limitations.

“It’s very noisy at highway speed, and the stereo is honestly not very good,” Seams said.

Despite that, he really likes it.

“It just felt like driving a car from the ’90s,” he said. “It was simple, it had a manual transmission.  It was charming, in a way, of how basic it was.”

The Mitsubishi Mirage comes as a hatchback. Increasingly, automakers have replaced small hatchbacks with SUVs. (Henry Epp/Marketplace)

But basic is not what most car buyers are looking for these days.

“We like SUVs, trucks, vehicles with just more cargo capacity,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at automotive site Edmunds. “So even if it is a bit on the smaller side, it still is more of an SUV format rather than a sedan format with a trunk.”

For years now, she said, sales of larger vehicles have been climbing. Demand for affordable, smaller cars, on the other hand, has been dropping off, “despite the fact that a lot of Americans are dealing with financial difficulties right now.”

Automakers have responded to that declining demand by dropping smaller vehicles from their lineups, Caldwell said. Small hatchbacks like the Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit have all bitten the dust in the last five years.

But the change isn’t just about consumer preferences. Bigger vehicles are more profitable for car companies. That’s because making a subcompact isn’t all that much cheaper than making an SUV, according to Patrick Olsen, editor-in-chief at Carfax.

Some newer SUVs are even built on the same platform as the old subcompacts. Honda’s HR-V, for example, is the sibling of the discontinued Honda Fit. 

“So for not a lot more cost and material in terms of aluminum or steel to build a car, they could put a higher price tag on it because there’s more demand for that vehicle,” Olsen said.

Federal fuel economy regulations play a role too. The Trump administration is reviewing them, but right now, they require smaller vehicles to get better mileage than bigger ones. Olsen said that gives carmakers an incentive to go large. 

“It is a lot easier for automakers to build bigger SUVs, bigger pickup trucks, because it’s easier to meet those standards than it is for the smallest of vehicles,” he said.

Not everyone in the car industry is on board. Burlington Mitsubishi owner Tim Bedard thinks the increasing focus on larger vehicles has thrown the new-car market out of whack.

“With the influx of SUVs and crossovers that have taken over the market, we kind of lost sight [of the fact] that life was and has gotten very expensive for most people, and [they] can’t afford an average crossover or SUV of $30,000,” he said. “What’s the consumer do now?”

At least until the summer, Bedard expects to have Mirages available on his lot. After that, a used vehicle might be the price-conscious consumer’s best option. But they’re 32% more expensive than they were just before the pandemic.

An Arkansas law requiring social media companies to verify the ages of their users has been struck down by a federal judge who ruled that it was unconstitutional. The decision is a significant victory for the social media companies and digital rights groups that have opposed the law and others like it.

Arkansas became the second state (after Utah) to pass an age verification law for social media in 2023. The Social Media Safety Act required companies to verify the games of users under 18 and get permission from their parents. The law was challenged by NetChoice, a lobbying group representing the tech industry whose membership includes Meta, Snap, X, Reddit and YouTube. NetChoice has also challenged laws restricting social media access in Utah, Texas and California.

In a ruling, Judge Timothy Brooks said that the law, known as Act 689, was overly broad. “Act 689 is a content-based restriction on speech, and it is not targeted to address the harms the State has identified,” Brooks wrote in his decision. “Arkansas takes a hatchet to adults’ and minors’ protected speech alike though the Constitution demands it use a scalpel.” Brooks also highlighted the “unconstitutionally vague” applicability of the law, which seemingly created obligations for some online services, but may have exempted services which had the "predominant or exclusive function [of]... direct messaging" like Snapchat.

“The court confirms what we have been arguing from the start: laws restricting access to protected speech violate the First Amendment,” NetChoice’s Chris Marchese said in a statement. “This ruling protects Americans from having to hand over their IDs or biometric data just to access constitutionally protected speech online.”

It’s not clear if state officials in Arkansas will appeal the ruling. “I respect the court’s decision, and we are evaluating our options,” Arkansas Attorney general Tim Griffin said in a statement.

Even with NetChoice’s latest victory, it seems that age verification laws are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Utah recently passed an age verification requirement for app stores. And a Texas law requiring porn sites to conduct age verification is currently before the Supreme Court.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/arkansas-social-media-age-verification-law-blocked-by-federal-judge-194614568.html?src=rss

You could call Shinichiro Watanabe's Lazarus a retread of his masterpiece, Cowboy Bebop. That’s not to say the show is bad — based on the five episodes I’ve seen so far, Lazarus is still an entertaining and stylish ride. But I’ve just come to expect more from a legendary creator like Watanabe.

It’s set in the year 2052, a near-future when a renowned neuroscientist released Hapna, a drug that can erase all pain. If that sounds too good to be true, it is: Hapna’s creator Dr. Skinner reveals to the world that everyone who took the drug will eventually die. And then he disappears. Like an evil Willy Wonka, he announces one hope for survival: Find him in 30 days, or humanity is doomed.

To help find Skinner, the government sets up a covert group named Lazarus made up of convicted criminals. And that’s where the similarities come in. There’s the lead, Axel Gilberto, a parkour junkie who resembles Bebop’s reckless and carefree Spike Spiegel. Rounding out the team is Christine, a gorgeous femme fatale; Eleina, a bright young hacker; and Doug, a gruff investigator who has little patience for Axel’s shit. Those are all clear analogs to the Bebop crew of Faye, Ed and Jet. The one new element of the team is Leland, a cute college student who takes on various roles during the show (perhaps he’s just an anthropomorphized version of Bebop’s adorable pup Ein).

There’s a bit of Suicide Squad in the idea of using criminals to find humanity’s greatest villain, but Lazarus doesn’t really justify why that’s the case (that may be answered later in the show’s 13-episode run). And you’d think there would be more government efforts beyond a group of misfits to accomplish a humanity-saving mission. The Lazarus crew get a few chances to bond throughout each episode, but their interpersonal dynamics feel less organic than the Bebop characters, whose relationships were enriched by the pressure-cooker environment of an interplanetery spaceship, ever-present economic struggle and compelling backstories. By episode five of Lazarus, I didn't have any real understanding of these characters, whereas Bebop delivered the seminal episode Ballad of the Fallen Angels by then.

Like Watanabe's Samurai Champloo, Lazarus is best enjoyed if you don’t look too closely at its plot holes or contrivances (Axel’s inhuman parkour abilities make Spike Spiegel’s antics seem tame in comparison). It’s better to sit back and enjoy the incredibly stylish vibes. That includes wonderfully fluid animation by Mappa; a catchy soundtrack by Kamasi Washington, Floating Points and Bonobo (with a great ending theme, “Lazarus” by The Boo Radleys); and bone-crunching action choreography by John Wick director Chad Stahelski. It’s hard not to appreciate all of the talent involved.

Adult Swim

But again, I just wish the whole project felt more original. Lazarus’s premise isn’t far off from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, which involved a terrorist plot to deploy nanomachines that would kill everyone on Mars. It’s also funny to see the show arrive alongside a more inventive show like Max’s Common Side Effects, which deals with the real-world consequences of miracle drugs that could heal any illness or injury. That show’s characters are more grounded and relatable, and it explores why pharmaceutical companies would stop at nothing to kill such a miracle drug.

“The story began with Dr. Skinner... Is he a saint or a devil?” Watanabe said on the Engadget podcast via a translator (while he relaxed in shades with a mountain of records behind him, like the absolute boss he is). “Exactly what does he want to do? That was a big initial driving part of the story. ... What you initially thought of Skinner at [the] start may change throughout the 13 episodes.”

Adult Swim

It’s not a huge spoiler to say that Dr. Skinner isn’t always portrayed as a villain in the show. Before the release of Hapna, he was a famous neuroscientist who pushed humanity to respond to the climate crisis. But instead of listening to him, the world’s countries chose to pursue profit over the future of humanity. With that in mind, it's no shock Watanabe says the inspiration for Hapna was, in part, the opioid crisis.

Throughout flashbacks and short opening monologues, Lazarus gives us glimpses into Hapna’s effect on our main characters, all of which is more compelling than the actual quest to find Dr. Skinner. Did the pill really heal everyone’s pain, or did it just close off their ability to feel true emotions? 

I’m sure newcomers to Watanabe’s work won’t have the same reservations with Lazarus as I do, I just wish the show had the same distinctive identity as his other series. Cowboy Bebop is a jazz-soaked noir; Space Dandy is a hilarious riff on the space opera genre; and Carol and Tuesday is a touching story of two young girls pursuing a pop music career. Lazarus is basically another action thriller, but this time it’s scored to modern jazz and electronic music.

I’m holding out hope that Lazarus matures into a more thoughtful show in its second half. But even if it doesn’t, it’s still worth celebrating anything new from Shinichiro Watanabe. There aren’t many anime directors and writers with his sense of style and excellent taste in music and action cinema. Even if it’s a lesser Watanabe project, it’s still more entertaining and creative than the vast majority of shows bombarding us in the streaming TV era, anime or otherwise.

Lazarus premieres on April 5 on Adult Swim, and it'll be available on Max the day after. Subtitled episodes will be available 30 days after their English dubbed versions.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/lazarus-review-wildly-stylish-but-its-no-cowboy-bebop-170300198.html?src=rss

TikTok's deadline to sell off or cede its US operations is once again approaching. The 75-day extension delaying the enforcement of a nationwide TikTok ban is set to run out Saturday, April 5, unless the company finally reaches an agreement to find a new owner. Who might buy it, and what happens if no deal is reached? Here's the shape of things right now:

Potential buyers

President Donald Trump has suggested that “a deal” is imminent and could be reached before that deadline. What such an agreement will look like is still extremely unclear. A number of interested buyers have come forward, including YouTuber MrBeast, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and Perplexity AI. Oracle, which almost bought TikTok in 2020 and was a key part of TikTok’s earlier negotiations to address national security concerns, is also in the running.

Depending on which bid wins out, TikTok could end up looking very different. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, won’t allow another company to take control of the app’s coveted recommendation algorithm. That means a new owner would have to rebuild TikTok’s central feature. Perplexity AI, for example, has said it would take on this task of reverse-engineering the app's “For You” feed, making it open source and implementing some kind of Community Notes-style fact checking feature. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who joined a group of investors known as “Project Liberty,” has hinted at a vision for TikTok that somehow ties in with blockchain technology.

Option 2

There’s also another, potentially less disruptive option on the table. The White House is also considering a deal that would allow TikTok’s existing US investors to “roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company,” according to The New York Times. Under this arrangement, Oracle could also end up overseeing TikTok’s US data while ByteDance hangs onto its algorithm, as the Financial Times reported in March.

This would likely be a smoother transition than a full-on sale that would require a new owner to rebuild a significant part of the app. Aspects of it are also very similar to terms TikTok already agreed to under a previous agreement with Oracle known as Project Texas. However, this sort of deal may also not be entirely legal, as Politico recently pointed out. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the law passed by Congress and signed by former President Joe Biden last year, calls for a divestment of TikTok and its algorithm.

It’s also not clear whether Chinese officials would be willing to sign off on such an arrangement, though Trump has suggested he could use the threat of tariffs as negotiating leverage. “We’re dealing with China also on it because they may have something to do with it. And we’ll see how that goes,” Trump told reporters over the weekend.

No deal

So what happens if Trump’s “deal” isn’t finalized by Saturday? The answer, it seems, is… probably nothing. Trump has said he would likely extend the deadline again if the clock runs out on the current extension. (Once again, it's not entirely clear if another extension is legal, but CNN reports that a second extension might be an uphill battle if challenged in court.) In the meantime, TikTok is unlikely to go dark like it (briefly) did in January when the ban law first went into effect.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktoks-ban-deadline-is-coming-what-happens-next-162420478.html?src=rss

Apple’s Find My feature has finally been enabled in South Korea, according to a company announcement translated by Apple Insider. This comes after years of public demand in which the finding network tool was absent from the country. The omission was especially odd when you consider that Apple sold AirTags throughout the region. Without Find My, they are basically just puck-shaped paperweights.

The company never explicitly stated why it limited access to Find My in South Korea, but it appeared to be related to local laws that could have allowed the government access to the location data. The service first appeared during a beta test of iOS 18.4, but the official software update makes it available to everyone in the country. Find My has long been functional in South Korea’s outlying territories like Baengnyeongdo and Ulleungdo.

"Find My is an important tool that allows users to grasp the location of the most precious things to them, such as friends, family and personal items, and I am very happy to be able to introduce this function to Korea," said David Dorn, senior director of Apple's service products, in a statement on the company's local website.

The modern iteration of Find My launched in the US in 2019 as part of iOS 13. However, the tool actually dates back to a service called Find My iPhone that started in 2010. Apple recently expanded functionality to let users share the location of a lost item with other people on the network. This is helpful when negotiating the return of a lost item with a stranger.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/apples-find-my-has-finally-launched-in-south-korea-151437244.html?src=rss

If you ever needed a definitive example of how money doesn’t necessarily buy you success or taste, take a look at Amazon’s studio arm. The mega-retailer’s production division, now known as Amazon-MGM, has been making movies for more than a decade. Very few of the entries in its lineup have been world-beaters, but that hasn’t deterred the outfit from persisting. The New York Times is today reporting that under its new head, Courtney Valenti, Amazon’s movie division has plans to own the in-person cinema experience.

Amazon is apparently gearing up to release “up to 14 big, broad commercial films a year to theaters nationwide and around the world.” Each film would spend 45 days in the theaters before heading to pay-per-view and then to Prime Video at some point after. The move comes in the face of shrinking box office receipts and fewer people heading to the cinema in general. Not to mention it’s also planning to produce an equal number of films that’ll go direct to Prime, which seems counter-intuitive given the desire to push people toward theaters.

That doesn’t recognize the shift in viewing habits, especially among younger people, who’d much rather sit and watch YouTube for hours at a time. Or that the box office took a hit because of COVID-19 that it never really bounced back from. Or that a lot of people would rather wait for a film to become available “for free” on a service they already pay for.

It also doesn’t take into account the fact cinemas are becoming increasingly unaffordable, and not that nice a place to sit for multiple hours. Last year, the cinema industry said it would spend $2.2 billion renovating their facilities to lure wary customers back. The planned additions included renovations for chairs and carpets, as well as the construction of ziplines and pickleball courts. Nowhere on the list was mentioned “make cinema tickets cheaper” or “don’t make viewers sit through half an hour of TV adverts before the trailers.”

At the risk of sounding obvious, that’s one hell of a lot of material for one company to put out in a year. Especially when so many competitors with better track records are putting out far fewer films and seeing success. On paper, 14 movies a year feels like the sort of strategy you could last get away with in the 1980s. After all, people had fewer options, cinemas were busier and studios could rely on the triple-whammy of the box office, rental and VHS markets.

It doesn’t help Amazon isn’t pledging to make quality movies, just lots of them, which suggests a mindset that doesn’t value scarcity. After all, there are many instances of things made and sold in small, limited quantities that garner far more attention than something mass-produced. Think about how hard it is for one of those latter-day Marvel movies to stick in the consciousness when you know there’ll be another one along in a month or two.

It calls to mind Amazon’s battles with the Broccolis, until recently the custodians of the James Bond franchise. Let’s not overthink this, they are just silly spy movies — but ones made with a level of craft and attention rarely seen in the modern era. The fact there can be a multi year gap between entries in the series means each film gets far more attention. That was in conflict with Amazon’s apparent desire to use the Bond name to push out a thousand different streaming series, game shows and movies on a regular basis.

And, at the risk of sounding uncharitable, it’s not as if Amazon’s movie slate has been a hit parade thus far. Many of the studios’ buzzier hits were picked up at film festivals rather than coming from inside, while its homegrown fare has floundered. That’s not to say its rivals are doing any better on this front — just read the reviews of The Electric State to show you how badly Netflix is throwing mad money at C+-tier projects.

I often wonder if people look at the success of Disney’s big Marvel tentpoles and assume that it’s easy to replicate. A film like Avengers: Endgame was the payoff to a decade-long plan built from the ground-up on the backs of less successful films. Across 2024, Disney put 15 films into cinemas, but even a mega-behemoth like Disney does it across its seven or eight different divisions.

In terms of attractive pitches, 14 films a year from the people who spent more than $200 million on Red One isn’t particularly compelling. Amazon’s going to have to give people a reason to get out to the theaters, but that’s going to be a challenge if the emphasis is on putting more raw material into the pipeline rather than making anything halfway considered or compelling.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/amazons-new-cinema-plan-is-perfect-for-the-80s-150653674.html?src=rss

The Amazon Spring Sale might be over, but there are still lots of great deals to shop. For instance, there's a 33 percent discount on one of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers for 2025. The Beats Pill is down to $100 from $150 — a record-low price for the speaker.

Let's be honest, that first glimpse of warm weather is here and it's making us dream of sitting by the beach or picnics with friends. The Beats Pill is a solid option to provide the soundtrack to your summer. We gave it in 83 in our review thanks, in part, to its durability. The speaker has an IP67 waterproof rating, so you shouldn't have to worry at all if it gets a bit wet. 

The Beats Pill also offers 24-hour battery life and improved sound quality from its predecessor. However, we have found that the audio does hurt a bit when at loud volumes and it can have an inconsistent bass tone. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/pick-up-the-beats-pill-speaker-while-its-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-140306981.html?src=rss

It’s been five years since restaurants and other businesses around the country were required to close to the public because of COVID. It was abrupt and dramatic yet also feels like lifetimes ago.

But a lot of small businesses are still dealing with the financial fallout today — including the cost of repaying COVID-era loans they took out to survive in 2020 and 2021.

When the pandemic hit, Michael Shemtov owned 10 restaurants in Charleston and Nashville. He ended up closing a bunch of them, but not before taking out federal Economic Injury Disaster Loans to try to keep them open.

“I have $4,000 to $5,000 a month of payments that I make on loans that we took out during COVID to save restaurants that couldn’t be saved,” he said.

Pandemic loans are coming due for lots of restaurant owners at a time when business is slowing.

2021 and 2022 were great years for restaurants, according to Trevor Boomstra at AlixPartners. “People were all wanting to go out to restaurants to reconnect with their friends, spend money.”

But these days, he said that people are going out less and costs are up for almost everything.

Kurt Huffman owns the restaurant group ChefStable in Portland, Oregon, and said that some businesses are still waiting on money the federal government owes them for keeping staff employed during lockdown.

“It’s just a huge amount of money,” he said. “So I think that there’s kind of a financial tail.”

In the last year, he’s heard from a number of restaurant owners saying they want out.

“It’s just been too hard. We kind of dragged ourselves through the pandemic, and we’ve kind of survived,” he said. “But I think the question a lot of people are asking themselves is, ‘Is survival good enough?'”

The answer now for many, he said, is no.

When we reviewed the iPhone 16 Pro last year, Apple Intelligence was barely available. Since then, the iPhone 16 series has benefitted from several new features, apps and improvements. Some (or most) of them were Apple Intelligence features that were teased back at WWDC 2024, months before the iPhone 16 Pro launched.

AI features weren't the only changes this time around, with the iPhone 16 getting an entirely new button. The so-called Camera Control wasn’t just a simple app shortcut, but an elaborate multifunction button that offered a haptic half-press and the ability to swipe across to adjust camera settings and options.

Managing Editor Cherlynn Low said we were still ”waiting on Apple Intelligence” in our initial review. Now, as we hit iOS 18.4, was it worth the wait?

iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence so far Mat Smith for Engadget

Apple Intelligence was late, arriving as part of iOS 18.1 back in October 2024. Initial generative AI features included writing tools like proofreading and rewriting, as well as text summaries and live transcription for phone calls and voice notes in the Notes app. A few months later, iOS 18.2 gave us the Apple Intelligence features that made most of the headlines when first announced at WWDC. That included ChatGPT integration, AI image generation in Image Playgrounds and Genmoji. 

Starting with iOS 18.1, one of the most controversial Apple Intelligence features is actually my favorite: Notification Summaries. It’s a good attempt at taming the wild west of countless group chats across multiple messaging apps, calendar reminders, Substack pings and everything else.

You don't need to update every individual app for Notification Summaries to kick in. As soon as iOS 18.1 landed, my messy WhatsApp chats were streamlined. I thought it cute when my iPhone told me a friend had laughed at my comment, and suggested where we could meet and a date. That was distilled from a ten-message barrage they’d sent.

Mat Smith for Engadget

It’s not perfect, though. Apple had to clarify that notification summaries are AI-generated, and make that clearer beyond a small Apple Intelligence icon. This was after the BBC complained about multiple summaries that twisted the content of some of its headlines. I’ve also had notification summaries that incorrectly guessed the subject of a sentence or entire topic of a thread, but on the whole, it’s a useful utilization of AI smarts.

There are more natural language hooks across most of iOS 18, too. You can now search for images in the Photos app with descriptions, dates, location and more. Those natural-language smarts take on a different function with writing tools, courtesy of Apple Intelligence. Even though I’m not a particularly clean writer (hey, Cher), these writing tools are not all that useful. I haven’t used them much beyond quick email responses to work requests and events, but the ability to proofread, rewrite or check tone may prove useful to some.

The writing tools also work inside the Voice Memos app, which can now transcribe conversations, meetings and more. Here, it helps make things more concise, with options to turn transcripts into summaries, key points, lists and even tables. If the recording is clear enough and they’re not too long, iOS 18 does well on these transcriptions. Several times, the iPhone 16 Pro straight-up declined to summarize a transcript. Why? All I got was a notification that the tools “aren’t designed to work with this type of content.”

Elsewhere, Apple struggles to catch up with AI innovations on rival devices. Like Google Pixel’s Magic Eraser (and all the other Android riffs), Clean Up now allows you to scrub out distracting elements and photo bombers from your pics. However, the results aren’t quite up to the standard of the competition. Sometimes, however, it nails it.

Some Apple Intelligence features have faded into the background after an initial buzz. Image Playground offers the ability to AI-generate your own images and had plenty of users itching to get off the beta waitlist to play around with the app. After a bit of testing, however, I haven’t used it in the months since it launched.

There might be a future for Playgrounds within iOS, though. For instance, Apple’s Invites app lets you embed Image Playground results within your events, which is helpful if you don’t have a photo to illustrate the invitation. As a standalone app, however, it doesn’t quite deliver enough to live on my home screen. It’s gone the way of GarageBand, Pages and Apple Maps on my iPhone.

Genmoji, on the other hand, is easier to use, and I use it often. With it, you can create your own emoji reactions with specific people, objects and backgrounds. I already have several established favorites, like me eating cereal and a chronically late friend with clocks in the background, and I’ll probably continue to make emoji as life demands it. For example, a passenger behind me on a flight to Barcelona last month had three cats with her. So, I made a cats-on-a-plane Genmoji. Exactly what Tim Cook intended.

Mat Smith for Engadget

Some software features are also specific to the iPhone 16 Pro series (and the 15 Pro). Camera Control aside, the new button also offers access to Visual Intelligence with a long press. Visual Intelligence is Apple’s take on Google Lens, tapping visual AI smarts to analyze what your iPhone is pointing at. It can recognize text, like words on menus, and even translate for you. If you get lucky, it’ll even identify the outside of a restaurant and (with some ChatGPT power) tell you the opening hours and what kind of cuisine it offers. It’s particularly effective in identifying landmarks, but busy scenes can quickly derail it. Unfortunately, you can’t tap on a particular object in the frame to clarify specifics. However, the ability to create calendar events from a poster is pretty cool — even if I usually forget to use it.

That’s Apple Intelligence, for now. There are a lot of smart touches, but so far, it isn’t remarkable. I credit Apple’s attempts to make most of its AI features either processed on device, or connected to the company’s Private Cloud Compute, which uses larger server-based models. Apple has reiterated that your data is never stored during these requests. Even with ChatGPT integration, if you don’t use an account with OpenAI, only your request and attachments are sent to ChatGPT. Your Apple Account and IP address are not shared with OpenAI. Apple’s deal with OpenAI means the latter can’t use your request to improve or train its models, either.

The patchy arrival of iOS features, especially Apple Intelligence, isn’t a good look for the company. 

However, the rest of iOS 18 continues to deliver valuable new features and upgrades to the iPhone experience, like the aforementioned Invites app, additional content (and games) for News+ subscribers and my favorite feature since the AirPods introduced noise-cancellation, the ability to nod or shake your head to halt Siri announcements, Fitness prompts and even decline calls. I’m a busy guy!

Cameras and Camera Control Mat Smith for Engadget

With Camera Control, Apple has introduced its most intriguing interface change since the short-lived 3D Touch.” That tech, if you forgot, offered haptic feedback on your screen tapping during the iPhone 6 era. Camera Control acts like a proper manual camera button, even when I know it combines a physical button with elaborate touch sensors. This enables deeper controls by swiping across it or semi-pressing.

Instantly, it works as a basic camera app launcher, just like the iPhone’s Action button has done in recent years. Already, it’s better placed, though, lower on the right edge of the phone, ready for your thumb if held vertically, or index finger when held horizontally. It goes beyond being a launcher, though. Swiping across it lets you adjust zoom, exposure and even toggle the new Photographic Style options. Then, a half-press works as a way to confirm your settings.

Depending on how you use the iPhone’s camera, a lot of the settings might not deserve their place within the Camera Control’s menus. While I often tinkered with Exposure and Zoom, Photographic styles are easier to adjust from the iPhone in the normal touchscreen way. I’m also not going to meddle with simulated f-stops when taking candid shots of my friends and family.

Like Apple Intelligence, Camera Control launched incomplete. When the iPhone 16 Pro first went on sale, it lacked a half-press focus like ye olde traditional cameras, and it took till January 2025 for an AF-AE lock to arrive through iOS 18.3. The feature, however, remains buried in settings and has to be toggled on.

It works well though. You tap on an object you’d like the iPhone to focus on, hold the button halfway, and it’ll lock exposure and focus for as long as you keep your finger down – like a camera. It’s frustrating that we had to wait this long for what seems like a core function of Camera Control.

To be devil’s advocate – and it’s an argument regularly leveled at AI features, both Apple Intelligence and elsewhere – did you need Camera Control? Given how much I use my phone’s cameras, I'd argue that a camera launcher is worth factoring into the hardware. But the Action Button covered that.

Camera Control also seemed like a ‘pro’ iPhone feature, so it’s surprising to see it across the entire device lineup, barring the more recent iPhone 16e.

Another change worth noting is that the iPhone 16 Pro got camera parity with the larger Pro Max this year, with a 5x optical zoom I use most of the time. Of course, this isn't a remarkable feature if you were already using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. But if you prefer the smaller of the two Pro options, aside from battery life, there’s no reason to stop you getting the cheaper iPhone 16 Pro.

Repairability and longevity

I haven’t had to repair my iPhone 16 Pro so far, and there are no pronounced scratches on the 6.3-inch screen or body. While I am also a case dweeb, I don’t use screen protectors — I haven’t needed to. The latest iPhones do come with even more repair-friendly hardware and policies if the worst were to happen. Anecdotally, according to my experience the titanium body and Apple's Ceramic Shield treatment on the display do seem to make this generation of 'pro' iPhones tougher than its predecessors

Apple’s new Repair Assistant, designed to address parts pairing issues, lets both you and repair professionals configure new and used Apple parts directly on the device, with no need to contact Apple personnel on the phone to ensure iOS plays with new parts.

Another improvement, while not part of the 16 Pro, is battery removal. On both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, the battery can be released from its enclosure by running a low-voltage current through the iPhone’s battery adhesive. However, the iPhone 16 Pro’s battery is now encased in aluminum, making repairs less fraught, and protecting the battery more when exposed to repair tools. I haven’t had to put it to use yet, but the company’s increased willingness to embrace right-to-repair is headed in the right direction, especially after its sluggish response in the past.

Six months on, the 16 Pro’s slightly bigger battery is holding up, with the one I have still showing it’s at full health. I am a heavy phone user, and 256 charge cycles later, iOS says it’s still at 100 percent capacity, which I found impressive. If I need to replace the battery, I’m heartened that it’s easier than ever on an iPhone.

Wrap-up Mat Smith for Engadget

The iPhone 16 Pro is one of the best smartphones available. But if there’s a particular area where Apple’s phones are lacking compared to the flagship competition, it might be the messaging and the marketing. It took too long for Apple Intelligence to land on devices. If Apple Intelligence hadn’t been so key to Apple’s presentation both at WWDC and the iPhone 16 launch event, the delay wouldn’t look so bad.

Intriguingly, we’re at a time when the likes of the Galaxy and Pixel series have never felt more like iPhones. Or do iPhones feel like Android phones? I’m not sure anymore. Either way, we haven’t seen rival devices mimic the Camera Control button.

I appreciate that a lot of the new features and additions don’t seem to clog up the iPhone experience. Don’t care for camera filters? You’ll rarely see them. Want to swap the Camera Control button for another function? Go ahead. Want to prioritize Messages notifications, but not WhatsApp messages? Go wild.

With a light, strong titanium build, there’s still a tangible premium feel to the iPhone 16 Pro, compared to the aluminum iPhone 16. The same can be said about the cameras, with a 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor and 5x optical zoom, which the base iPhone cannot match. Functionality-twise, the base iPhone 16 now delivers the Dynamic Island and Camera Control, which makes a ‘pro’ iPhone a little harder to define. For the iPhone 16 series, it boils down to more premium materials and a powerful zoom camera.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/iphone-16-pro-longterm-review-apple-intelligence-134517480.html?src=rss