ICYMI: The Week’s 7 Biggest Tech Stories About Samsung’s XR Headset Reveal Apple’s 17 Favorite App Store Apps
Welcome, folks, to a week of some of the biggest announcements we could see before CES 2025, in an unusually busy few days so close to the holidays.
Samsung dropped a banging announcement to make good on its promise that we’d learn more about its XR technology “this year,” Apple Intelligence finally dropped its most hyped features, and the Nintendo Switch 2 may have broken cover. Phew!
To help you stay fully informed, scroll down for our picks of the seven biggest tech news stories of the week. Once you’ve recapped the news, check out our picks for the seven new movies and TV shows to watch this weekend (December 13).
7. Sony’s PlayStation Wrap-Up broke on day one
It’s the end of the year and that means Spotify Wrapped clones for everything – not just your music. PlayStation got in on the action with its own gaming Wrap-Up, but either because it was too popular or due to a glitch it was offline for a while after launch.
Fortunately, it’s now available again, so you can finally go to the official PlayStation Wrap-Up 2024 page to see your stats – apparently I’ve played almost 200 hours Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in my pursuit of the Platinum Trophy, and over 50 hours alone BalatroTechRadar’s game of the year.
6. We celebrated the lighter side of (wild) life
From more than 9,000 photos, 45 finalists were shortlisted for this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2024, with Italian photographer Milko Marchetti taking the top prize for a hilarious image of a squirrel looking like it has its head in there is a tree.
Each image is an inspiring look at what artists can achieve with the best cameras on the market, and a little creativity.
There’s a free exhibition at London’s Gallery@Oxo from December 11 to 15, but if you can’t make it, all the 2024 finalists can be seen at the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards website.
5. We may have seen the Switch 2
The Nintendo Switch 2 is one of the most technically poorly kept secrets. The successor to Nintendo’s hugely popular console has been the subject of multiple leaks in recent months, and we now get our first glimpse of it thanks to a now-deleted trailer from third-party accessory manufacturer Satisfye.
The video was specific to the Zengrip 2, and the trailer for the add-on seemingly showed us a blurry Nintendo Switch 2 model that highlighted a similar overall design to the original, but with the rumored extra button teased.
There are questions about whether this leak is legitimate or just a way to fuel the hype for a Nintendo Switch grip, but with a release date announcement for the Switch 2 possibly before the end of 2024, we may not have long to wait wait before we see the console in real life.
4. Apple crowned the 17 best App Store apps
Following Google’s recent announcement of the best Android apps of 2024, Apple has revealed the 17 apps it believes are the best the App Store had to offer us this year.
iPhone App of the Year Kino helps you make better videos, Mac App of the Year Adobe Lightroom helps you edit those videos and other snaps, while Apple Arcade Game of the Year Balatro+ will help you lose many hours of the working day (I am absolutely not speaking from experience about this. Not at all).
There are a lot of good choices among them, so you’ll want to see what the winners have to offer users of iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.
3. Sora’s video generation looks eerily good
OpenAI has been busy lately, bringing us a slew of big new reveals as part of the 12 Days of OpenAI event.
This week it finally gave us access to Sora, the new AI video generation platform that lets you generate shockingly realistic-looking videos. We tested it and even in our brief hands-on experience it’s clear that the technology will revolutionize video making – albeit perhaps not in a great way.
You can give it a try at Sora.com once you log into your ChatGPT Plus account; you need at least that level of access to be able to create up to 50 generations per month, while Pro gives you unlimited. While it’s quite fun to play with the software to create fun clips, their realistic appearance can’t help but raise fears that this technology could be misused.
The technology is not perfect at the moment; For example, our own tests generate dogs with tails that grow and disappear randomly – but it’s something you should be aware of when browsing the web. It’s all very impressive, of course, but it becomes a lot more difficult to determine what is and is not really online.
2. iOS 18.2 has taken Apple Intelligence a step further
Apple Intelligence feels a little lacking, to say the least. That was until this week, when iOS 18.2 rolled out with some much-needed updates to Apple’s AI.
These include Genmoji and Image Playground for generating custom emojis and images using text prompts, ChatGPT integration into Siri for more in-depth answers, and the rollout of Apple Intelligence to non-US English – meaning you can access it in UK and Australia without changing your phone’s language settings.
It wasn’t just for iPhones either; Apple Intelligence updates came to Apple’s entire product suite via updates to iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2.
1. Samsung’s Project Moohan broke cover
The worst-kept secret in technology – even more so than the Switch 2 – was finally revealed this week, when Samsung and Google presented Project Moohan, the pair’s mixed-reality headset. And yes, it looks a lot like an Apple Vision Pro.
Moohan is powered by the Android
Details are light on cost, a precise release date, and even battery life and weight – but we do know that Samsung also has AR glasses in store. But again, we’ll have to wait a while before we hear more about it, and even longer before we can try out the specs for ourselves.
