Engadget Podcast: The M4 MacBook Air and Mobile World Congress 2025
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
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MacBook Air refresh announced with an M4 chip and a slight price drop – 2:04
What's hot at Mobile World Congress 2025 – 23:10
Lenovo's Solar PC – 35:20
Xiaomi 15 Ultra (with a fancy Leica camera) – 37:53
New releases from Nothing – 39:16
Samsung releases a trio of A series devices – 40:35
NVIDIA vs. AMD part ∞: AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT edge out the GeForce RTX 5070 – 46:20
Pop culture picks – 54:11
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn LowGuest: Nathan IngrahamProducer: Ben EllmanMusic: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
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CNET
2 minutes ago
- CNET
iOS 18 vs. iOS 26: How Much Does Liquid Glass Impact Your iPhone's Look?
The final build of iOS 26 is getting closer as we near the expected iPhone 17 release. Now that the public beta is available to anyone with a compatible iPhone, you can get a taste of the latest iteration of Apple's mobile OS. Apple's new design language, Liquid Glass, is by and far the most standout update in iOS 26, though there's a lot more to get excited about in the release. The updated design adds a touch of translucency to several aspects of the user interface, a polish you'd come to expect from Apple. At first blush, Liquid Glass looks like a dramatic overhaul. And while the aesthetics are decidedly different, it's still the easy-to-use iOS you've always had. But how exactly does iOS 26 compare to the current iOS 18 that's on most iPhones right now? Below, we'll take a deeper look to see what's different between the two. For more, don't miss the leaked iPhone 17 Pro colors that could be coming this year. Home screen Apple kept the new Liquid Glass minimal on the home screen, with only minor changes to the default home screen appearance versus iOS 18's. Apple/Screenshot by Jeff Carlson Looking at the home screens, the primary difference you'll find is that in iOS 26, the dock background and the search option that sits between the dock and the home screen icons are more transparent and have a sheen to the edges, whereas in iOS 18, these are slightly darker. Other smaller changes are that the icons on iOS 26 look slightly larger, and some app icons seem to have been more influenced by the redesign than others, most notably (from the screenshots) Settings, Camera and Mail. For Liquid Glass to really shine on the home screen, you'll want to opt for the "All Clear" mode, which will create the most dramatic change to your icons and widgets. Going this route could potentially introduce some viewability issues, but the "reduce transparency" setting remedies this quite well. Control Center Apple/Screenshot by Jeff Carlson Things here are largely unchanged. Outside of the new glassy look in iOS 26, the 1x2 and 2x1 controls are more rounded than those of iOS 18. Lock screen Apple/Screenshot by Jeff Carlson It's easy to see the differences that Liquid Glass brings to the iPhone lock screen. The digital clock in iOS 26 dynamically resizes depending on the wallpaper and the number of notifications you have at any given moment, which is pretty cool. The clock itself on iOS 18 can be changed, but it won't change in size in response to content displayed on the lock screen. The background on notifications is clearly different between the two OS versions, with iOS 18 providing more opacity and black text versus iOS 26's near-transparent background on white text. The controls at the bottom in iOS 26 also appear more like physical buttons with depth and more of a see-through background. The new unlock effect in iOS 26 is that the motion of unlocking your iPhone will appear as though you're lifting a sheet of glass, highlighted by a shiny edge to give it form when you begin to slide your finger up. Menus and dynamic tab bars iOS 26's new Dynamic Tab gives you a cleaner look and more space to view your content. Apple/Screenshot by Jeff Carlson A new addition in iOS 26 is the introduction of dynamic tab bars in apps that will change depending on whether you're scrolling or trying to perform a specific action. Apple says this will create a more intuitive experience while freeing up space for your content. If you were to replace the glass effect with heavily saturated colors, no one would blame you for mistaking this new tab bar with what Google's doing in Android 16 in some of its apps -- they look a lot alike. But compared to iOS 18, this new dynamic tab bar should not only reduce sifting through multiple menus, but it looks pretty good in the process. iOS 26 will dynamically adapt to light and dark backgrounds In iOS 26, the color of menu icons and icon text will adapt depending on the background. Apple/GIF by CNET While it's harder to compare Liquid Glass to iOS 18 here, an upcoming feature is that buttons and menus will adapt depending on the content's background color. For instance, when you're scrolling through an app with a light background, the floating menu options will appear with black text for easier viewing and will automatically change to white upon scrolling to a dark background. in iOS 18, some apps aspects of the user interface would appear darker depending on the color of the background, but less so than how Liquid Glass handles it now. CNET/ Screenshots by Jeff Carlson iOS has had this type of feature show up in a less dramatic fashion before, as you can tell from the photos app screenshots above. Comparing these to what's on the horizon, it's hard not to get excited about the small tweaks Liquid Glass has in store, too. Those are just a few of our initial findings, and we'll likely add more once we surface them. If you want more about iOS 26, check out three upcoming features that are a bigger deal than Liquid Glass.
CNBC
4 minutes ago
- CNBC
How GE Vernova found itself in the middle of the frantic race to build out AI
The AI boom has presented energy stalwarts like GE Vernova with a monumental task — and opportunity: Make enough gas turbines to support an entire technological revolution. As tech giants invest billions of dollars to build AI data centers, a shortage of power has emerged as a new and unexpected bottleneck. In the initial wake of ChatGPT's launch in late 2022, the main supply crunch was for Nvidia's graphics processing units, which has moderated. Now, the biggest demand is for energy, putting GE Vernova, one of the world's largest producers of gas-fired turbines used to create electricity, at the center of a frantic race to build out generative AI infrastructure. Gas turbine orders from utilities, independent power producers, and industrial players are on a record-breaking pace for 2025, according to a S & P Global Commodity Insights. Think of these turbines as huge modified engines located at power plants that burn natural gas to make a lot of electricity very quickly. Manufacturing them is a complex process, and right now supplies are tight. "You may have trouble getting GPUs," Jim Cramer said. "Try getting power from GE Vernova." The fervent demand for GE Vernova's turbines is leading to a financial windfall, as its recent blowout quarterly earnings release made clear. So strong was the report that, in response, Jim described the industrial stock as "maybe the best story in the entire market." Shares of GE Vernova have doubled year to date and are on pace for a fresh record close Monday around $662 a share. Following earnings, the Club raised its price target by $150 on GE Vernova to $700 a share. Orders for its power segment rose 44% organically last quarter as gas power equipment orders, in particular, increased nearly threefold. Meanwhile, a measure of multiyear demand that includes both gas-turbine orders and "slot reservations," which will be fulfilled further into the future, increased to 55 gigawatts, up from 50 in April. By year-end, GE Vernova expects that to be at least 60 gigawatts — for context, if the Hoover Dam were running at max capacity, it could produce roughly 2 gigawatts of power . This "era of accelerated electrification is driving unprecedented investment," CEO Scott Strazik said on the conference call. GEV YTD mountain GE Vernova's year-to-date stock performance. The unprecedented investment is also testing the limits of the power industry. Demand for GE Vernova's turbines — and those from peers like Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Power — are so large that it's hard for them to keep pace. GE Vernova's gas turbines are "largely sold out" for 2026 and 2027, while the company is "approaching filling out '28 and starting to sign agreements for later years," Strazik said in an earnings call this spring. In other words, customers placing new orders for these heavy-duty gas turbines can face wait times that extend several years. With strong demand and limited supply, turbine prices have jumped in recent years as well. The reason there's so much need for these turbines is simple: the U.S. needs a lot more electricity to keep up with the demand of AI computing. Club holdings Amazon , Microsoft and other hyperscalers seemingly cannot spend enough money to construct more power-hungry data centers. Alongside earnings last week, Microsoft and Meta reported massive capital expenditures on the back of increased AI investments and signaled that more outlays are on the way. "This is the number one driver of new [turbine] demand growth, especially in the near term," said Sam Huntington, director of North American power research at S & P Global Commodity Insights. "For decades, we had this long period of flat [and] minimal load growth, right up to the past couple of years, and now, the situation has changed again," he told CNBC. Bank of America analysts in a July note forecasted that U.S. electricity demand will grow at a 2.5% compound annual growth rate through 2035, up from half a percent between 2014 and 2024. Many energy executives say more natural gas will be necessary to meet the electricity demand, given some current limitations around solar and wind. Even though projections point to more turbine demand, expanding manufacturing capacity isn't an easy fix. These turbines are massive and complex machinery that can take years to get to customers , so management teams want to make sure that this AI data center buildout is durable before they commit to dramatically scaling up their own production. "They have to balance not building enough to meet data center electricity demand in the future versus making irreversible investment decisions today that might end up costing companies a lot of money over the next 30 years if demand doesn't show up," said Ramteen Sioshansi, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads its Electricity Industry Center. The industry doesn't want a repeat of the early 2000s when there was a similar hype cycle around natural gas power plant construction that ended poorly. Lower natural gas prices — coupled with growing environmental concerns that led to more interest in cleaner alternatives to coal — meant a boom in demand for these turbines at the time. But when gas prices rose again and the collapse of Enron made it harder for power producers to finance new plant construction , demand for gas turbines dried up, leaving manufacturers including GE Vernova — then part of the General Electric conglomerate — with canceled orders and excess inventory. "This led to a huge boom and bust market and people lost a lot of money," S & P Global's Huntington added. "So, there's still scars of 20 years ago [that] are relatively fresh." Plus, in the years leading up to the AI boom, major investments into renewable energy sources like wind and solar around the world also disincentivized turbine manufacturers from expanding their production capacity. That context helps explain why companies like GE Vernova may not want to open up the check book and spend wildly to expand output. At the same time, GE Vernova must maintain a healthy production pace while keeping its customers happy. "I think there's a sense at [GE Vernova] that, 'We're winning the deals that we want to win and, and we don't see a need to potentially risk over-capacitizing the market chasing demand,'" RBC Capital Markets analyst Chris Dendrinos told CNBC. Still, Dendrinos said GE Vernova was "an early mover in terms of expanding capacity" in the industry. In January, GE Vernova announced a $600 million investment in U.S. factories over the next two years to address the growing need for electricity. Of that capital, $300 million is specifically going to support the buildout of its gas turbine business by expanding facilities. It is expected to create more than 850 new jobs. Dendrinos, who has covered the energy sector for over a decade, described the $600 million investment as "absolutely material" and "a testament to the demand" for its turbines. GE Vernova's peers are ramping up production, too. On a February earnings call, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruchs said the company is working to grow production capacity by roughly 30%. "However, we take a measured approach and expand our capacities in a responsible way, neither losing sight of cost nor the risk of adding too much capacity," the executive said on the call. Along with the committed capital, GE Vernova has announced deals to expedite production and promoted alternatives to its heavy-duty turbines to maintain its dominance in the industry and please customers. In March, for example, the firm announced an acquisition of Woodward's heavy-duty gas combustion parts business for an undisclosed amount. The move is intended to help the company "meet growing energy demands from load growth," according to a press release. By buying this business, it brings manufacturing of essential combustion parts for these gas turbines in house, which gives GE Vernova more control over its supply chain. Meanwhile, GE Vernova has also touted temporary alternatives to its heavy-duty turbines such as as its "aeroderivative" units. These are mostly preassembled, have faster start times and take up less space than their heavy-duty counterparts. On the other hand, aeroderivatives are less efficient at scale for data centers. GE Vernova announced in March that the company secured an order for three of these units for a municipal utility in Missouri. Overall, GE Vernova is a stellar position to capitalize on the data center buildout. However, Jim said the company could afford to further expand production in order to meet booming demand. "[Their] orders are so strong and ironclad, I wish [they'd] spend some more," he said. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long GEV, NVDA, AMZN, MSFT. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
USA Today
8 minutes ago
- USA Today
Sycamine Capital Management: Gulf Turns to AI Gold Rush
Gulf Nations Accelerate Infrastructure Expansion, Securing Strategic Partnerships, Driving Economic Diversification, and Advancing Computational Technologies and Arabic Language AI Models SINGAPORE, SG / ACCESS Newswire / July 31, 2025 / Gulf nations are intensifying investments in artificial intelligence, marking a significant strategic shift toward technological dominance and economic diversification, according to Sycamine Capital Management. Saudi Arabia alone has dedicated over $40 billion towards AI initiatives under its Vision 2030, positioning itself firmly as a global hub for AI innovation. Analysts widely interpret this development as a clear indication that 'compute is the new oil.' Gulf countries leverage sovereign wealth and advantageous geography to secure central roles in global AI markets. The UAE's ambitious 'Stargate' project, featuring vast data centres hosting international tech giants such as OpenAI, exemplifies this strategic approach. Throughout 2024, AI investments in the region have reached unprecedented levels. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund initiated a $100 billion AI initiative, while the UAE formed a groundbreaking $200 billion tech partnership with the United States. These substantial commitments attracted key global partnerships, including NVIDIA's agreement to supply advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN initiative over five years. Sycamine Capital Management highlights the shift of AI from emerging technology to mainstream commercial use across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and software sectors. Early adopters integrating AI are expected to realise significant returns within the next decade due to improved operational efficiencies and reshaped competitive landscapes. National AI strategies reinforce the Gulf's technological ambitions. Saudi Arabia's National Strategy for Data and AI targets a 12% GDP contribution from AI by 2030. Simultaneously, the UAE aims to revolutionise government operations and boost lucrative sectors, illustrated by Abu Dhabi's $3.5 billion investment to establish the world's first entirely AI-driven government by 2027. Regional sovereign wealth funds actively support these AI advancements through equity investments, infrastructure projects, and international collaborations. Notable partnerships include Saudi Arabia's alliances with Google and Amazon Web Services for AI hubs and large-scale data centres, and Abu Dhabi's G42 collaborations with Microsoft and BlackRock. Furthermore, international technology corporations such as NVIDIA and AMD are deeply embedded in regional AI infrastructure, supplying high-performance hardware. Notably, Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN initiative includes substantial deployments of NVIDIA's GB300 Grace Blackwell AI supercomputers and AMD's $10.3 billion infrastructure project. These developments are complemented by robust Arabic language AI model initiatives, promoting digital sovereignty and addressing linguistic gaps in global AI research. Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN and UAE's Falcon Arabic exemplify such culturally relevant AI systems. Sycamine Capital Management asserts these strategic investments illustrate the Gulf's decisive pivot towards digitally driven economic leadership, significantly influencing global AI landscapes. About Sycamine Capital Management Established in 2008, Sycamine Capital Management Pte. Ltd. provides investors with forward-looking analysis in AI and ESG sectors, identifying opportunities ahead of market trends. For more information, visit Contact: Simon Lau (Media Relations) Email: Website: SOURCE: Sycamine Capital Management View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire
