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Bose has a new soundbar for the fall shopping season, and it includes a few neat tricks for owners of the companys clip-on earbuds. The Bose Smart Soundbar is a small, sleek model with AI Dialogue Mode and a Personal Surround feature for owners of the Ultra Open Earbuds. The Bose Smart Soundbar has five transducers, including two side-firing (racetrack-shaped) ones, a center tweeter and two up-firing transducers. This arrangement helps with Dolby Atmos content, with the side-facing ones focused on horizontally positioned audio and the upward-facing ones bouncing sound off the ceiling for an overhead illusion. The center tweeter handles dialog. If your content doesnt support Dolby Atmos for a spatial surround experience, the soundbars TrueSpace feature can mix them in real time to create a faux surround effect. Bose claims the process produces sound just as effectively as Dolby Atmos with similar spaciousness. Bose Owners of Boses Ultra Open Earbuds the $299 clip-on doodads that leave your ears uncovered the soundbar can deliver a more personalized surround experience for one person. Designed to add dimension to content, the feature uses the earbuds as rear surround speakers. Unlike most earbuds, the Ultra Open model doesnt obstruct your ears, allowing you to still hear the soundbars audio. Bose describes the combined effect as a sonic experience of sound all around you. The Personal Surround Sound feature launches with this model but will arrive on the (more expensive) Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar later this fall. The soundbar also supports the AI Dialogue Mode from the companys Smart Ultra Soundbar. The feature uses AI to automatically adjust the audio mix in real time when it detects speech, making voices easier to hear without losing any impact of immersive sound effects. The Smart Soundbar is 27 inches long, 2.2 inches high and 4.1 inches deep. It has a black matte body with a wraparound metal grille. On the connection front, it supports HDMI eARC (required for Dolby Atmos) and standard optical cables. You can set it up to work with Google Assistant and Alexa, and it works with other Bose smart speakers (including bass modules) for enhanced living room or multi-room setups. The Bose Smart Soundbar is available on Wednesday for $499. You can order it on Boses website. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/boses-latest-soundbar-can-use-the-ultra-open-earbuds-as-rear-speakers-130002782.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The amount of fines Google has to pay in Europe may have become just a bit smaller. It has successfully convinced the European Union's General Court to annul the 1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) penalty levied against it back in 2019 for what the European Commission described as "abusive practices in online advertising." According to the Financial Times, the General Court agreed with the commission's assessment that Google did block rival advertisers from its platform. However, it argued that the commission failed to take into account "all the relevant circumstances" when it assessed how long the company had implemented anti-competitive practices. The commission, under competition chief Margrethe Vestager, found back in 2019 that Google had prohibited publishers from placing search adverts from competitors on its search results pages from 2006 until 2009. It changed its rules slightly in 2009, but it wasn't until 2016 that it removed the clause pertaining to the restriction in its contracts. The fine for this particular case was larger than expected, because the commission said it took into account "the duration and gravity of the infringement." "This case is about a very narrow subset of text-only search ads placed on a limited number of publishers' websites," Google said in a statement to the Financial Times. "We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions, even before the commissions decision. We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine. We will review the full decision closely." Meanwhile, the commission told the publication that it "will carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps." It could still appeal the court's decision. This is just one of the multiple antitrust fines the European Commission has slapped against Google over the past years. Earlier this month, EU's highest court upheld a different $2.7 billion penalty against the company. The commission imposed that fine on Google back in 2017, because it found that the company, as Vestager explained, "abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors." Vestager is stepping down from her role as the European Union's commissioner for competition within the next few weeks. She has been tough on big tech companies throughout her run, and the market abuse cases she has filed over the years led to the creation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulation meant to prevent the largest players in the industry from abusing their market power.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-wins-appeal-against-17-billion-eu-fine-for-abusive-advertising-practices-123006698.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Apple has slowly been making its devices easier to fix, but the iPhone 15 fell short in a couple of key areas, according to the repairability site iFixit. Namely, the battery was hard to remove and the device suffered from a "parts pairing" issue that meant you couldn't easily replace the LiDAR sensor with one from another phone. With those two problems, iFixit gave the iPhone 15 a relatively low 4/10 repairability score. Apple has now released new updates on iPhone 16 repairability and appears to have addressed both those issues and a bunch more. Saying it tries to strike a balance between durability and repairability, it focused particularly on the "repairability" aspect with its latest devices. There's now an entirely new way to remove the battery that's supposed to make it easier. By running a low voltage electrical current through the new ionic liquid battery adhesive (using a 9V cell, for instance), the battery will release itself from the enclosure. This makes removal faster and safer compared to previous stretch release adhesives, according to the company. At the same time, Apple made changes to the Face ID sensor hardware starting with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. Now, the TrueDepth Camera can be swapped from one unit to another without compromising security or privacy. Before, only Apple was able to do that type of repair. Another big change is the new Repair Assistant, designed to address parts pairing issues. That lets customers and repair professionals configure both new and used Apple parts directly on the device, with no need to contact Apple personnel. Repair shops previously needed to order official components directly from Apple and get on the phone with an employee before iOS would accept individual parts replacements. Apple added newly repairable modules too, saying the TrueDepth Camera can now be configured on-device for iPhone 12 and later, eliminating the need for a tethered Mac. In addition, the LiDAR scanner on iPhone Pro models is now serviceable with the rear camera model. Another big change is on-device access to diagnostics. Starting with iOS 18, Apple diagnostics for repair will be available on device, so customers can determine which parts need to be replaced without the need for a second device. Finally, the company announced new support for third-party and used Apple parts. If a third-party part can't be calibrated on Apple's cloud-based servers, the iPhone or other device will try to activate the part and operate it to its full capability, while showing the repair history within settings. Used Apple parts can soon be calibrated and will appear as a "used" part in the device's repair history. Another future update will enable True Tone for third-party displays and battery health for third-party batteries. In addition, the LiDAR Scanner and front camera will still work when the module is replaced and left unconfigured. All told, the iPhone 16 series looks to have one of the biggest jumps in repairability yet, with improvements in physical access, parts compatibility and parts pairing. We'll soon see if that's reflected in iFixit's impending repairability score.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-reveals-how-its-made-the-iphone-16-series-much-easier-to-repair-120055256.html?src=rss
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