ICYMI: the week’s 7 biggest tech stories, from Apple’s Journal app to Galaxy Book 4
We get it, you've been busy: frantically searching for some last-minute headphone gifts or rewatching Netflix Rebel Moon trailer ahead of your holiday TV marathon. There are lots of good reasons why you missed all this week's tech news, but luckily we're here to hand you a glass of mulled wine and get you up to speed.
Surprisingly, given that 2023 is about to end, this week gave us another generous Christmas supply of news, from the arrival of iOS 17.2 – which finally gave iPhone owners the Apple Journal app, at least in the US – up to two new retro versions. Lego cameras.
Elsewhere, the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 series revealed their specs ahead of a global launch next year, and Google revealed all the key things we've been looking for in 2023 (with the spice category being particularly hard-fought). So before you head to Amazon to pick up that bargain waffle maker for Santa, here are all the top tech stories from one of the last weeks of 2023…
iOS 17.2 rolled out this week, with a brand new iPhone app, Journal, the biggest of the new features. Journal lets you record your daily thoughts as text, photos, videos, or even audio in a dedicated space and uses on-device machine learning (yes, more AI) to help you come up with ideas. Specifically for iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users, iOS 17.2 also adds a new action button feature, Translate, as well as the ability to record spatial 3D videos in preparation for Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset.
We also heard this week about an exciting beta feature of iOS 17.3: Stolen Device Protection. Essentially, this new security feature acts as a last line of defense against thieves who have gained access to your iPhone's passcode by requiring biometric authentication for certain key actions, such as viewing passwords, disabling Lost Mode, and deleting content. We hope it becomes a permanent part of Apple's next iterative iOS update.
We're big fans of both cameras and Lego, which means this was our lucky week. Not one, but two camera-themed Lego sets have been announced for early 2024, and we're having a hard time deciding which one is our favorite. Most likely we'll have to have both.
The Retro Camera 3-in-1 creator set is an affordable SLR camera ($20/£17.99 on the Lego website) with charming decorations such as a working movie wind lever and a movie door on the back, hitting shelves on New Year's Day. On the same day, the Polaroid SX-70 One Step Lego set arrives to get us through the month. That's our January sorted, thanks, Lego.
Are you still frustrated by slow Wi-Fi speeds? The good news is that we learned this week that (yet another) update to the Wi-Fi standard will be completed in early 2024.
Yes, Wi-Fi 7 will be available soon to offer a speed boost over Wi-Fi 6E – even if your existing kit probably won't be able to take advantage of it. Currently, only a handful of phones and laptops support Wi-Fi 7, but this news means those numbers will start to grow quickly next year – finally delivering the stable, fast Wi-Fi network you've been craving.
Well, Microsoft has changed its stance on Windows 10. After initially suggesting that the operating system wouldn't get any major new features from here, it has now started rolling out Copilot AI (previously exclusive to Windows 11), to a lucky minority of users.
If you don't see the Copilot icon on your desktop yet, Microsoft noted this week that it will be rolled out more widely in the coming months. Since Copilot AI is currently a glorified version of the Bing chatbot, it's not a huge upgrade to Windows 10, but these features will likely improve during the great AI arms race of 2024.
Android has enjoyed a cat-and-mouse game with Apple over iMessage this month, with its latest bold competitor – Beeper Mini – announcing it had brought full iMessage functionality to the platform. Well, that didn't last long, as this week Apple blocked the app, citing “significant risks to user security and privacy.”
Beeper declared that it would “make it work”, but that doesn't seem to be going well at the moment, as it is now claims that Apple is deliberately blocking iMessages for some of its users. Based on this week's evidence, it seems like Beeper Mini and its ilk are doomed to deliver at least a broken iMessage experience on Android – which is probably exactly how Apple wants it, despite recently extending the olive branch from RCS support will be expanded next year.
Intel just launched its new Intel Core Ultra series of premium chipsets, starting with the 14th generation Meteor Lake processors – and that means manufacturers are rushing to release brand new Windows laptops and desktops to take advantage . One of the first to hit the market this week was Samsung, with its Galaxy Book 4 ultrabook range.
The first three models it announced are the high-end Ultra, the versatile Pro (in both 14-inch and 16-inch configurations) and the Pro 360 with a display that folds all the way back. We know that Intel's new chips have special AI capabilities, which means faster responses for everything AI-related – whether that's speech recognition or image editing. Apple, it's up to you.
Okay, it wasn't most of it important story of the week, but Google revealing the biggest internet searches of 2023 was probably the most fascinating. Naturally, Google kept the results to fairly safe topics like TV shows and music, but it also revealed the top song results via its 'hum to search' feature.
You can check out Google's Year in search 2023 roundup for the full results, but there are no prizes for guessing that Barbie simply extinct Oppenheimer in the film category. We also spent an unhealthy amount of time this week delving into it Google's Trends time capsulewhich shows how our searches have changed over the last 25 years, including in crucial areas such as sauces (congratulations to the béchamel sauce for rising to third place this year).