iOS 10.3 Beta Includes New ‘Find My AirPods’ Mode for Locating Lost AirPods

Apple’s AirPods are wire-free, which makes them convenient to use, but it’s also caused some concern from users who are afraid to lose their $159 earphones. In its latest beta, Apple has introduced a new feature to assuage customer fears – Find My AirPods.

Available in iOS 10.3, Find My AirPods adds your AirPods to the “Find My iPhone” app, listing them alongside all other Apple products. In the app, you can tap on the AirPods to cause them to play a little chirping sound that gradually gets louder for location purposes.

After activating the sound, you can choose to have it play solely through the left AirPod or through the right AirPod so you don’t need to listen to chirping if only one of the AirPods is missing.

The location of the AirPods is displayed on the iPhone’s screen. The AirPods rely on the iPhone’s GPS to display a location (or another iOS device) and will offer up the last known place where the AirPods were connected should the AirPods be misplaced.

Find My AirPods isn’t a perfect solution because the AirPods have no built in cellular connectivity of their own, but with the ability to see the last known location, AirPods owners can at least go to that spot to attempt to reconnect, and the included sound capabilities help narrow down a location.

Find My AirPods is activated automatically when iOS 10.3 is installed. AirPods show up in the menu as soon as they’re connected to an iOS device. iOS 10.3 is currently limited to developers, but a public beta should be available in the near future.

Related Roundup: iOS 10
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Fujifilm X-T20 preview: The retro touch

When we reviewed the Fujifilm X-T10 compact system camera, we felt that its retro style was just right. Now Fuji has introduced the X-T20 which maintains that touch of retro appeal – and you can take that “touch” aspect literally, thanks to the addition of touchscreen controls this time around. 

The X-T20’s arrival was no surprise, fresh off the heels of the higher-end X-T2 launch in the middle of 2016. And with that camera setting a new benchmark for mirrorless cameras, just how well does the X-T20 handle?

We got to try out a final production X-T20 ahead of launch day at a Fuji launch event to see whether this is the affordable system camera to go for.

Fujifilm X-T20 preview: What’s new vs X-T10?

• Adds touchscreen control to tilt-angle LCD
• New 325-point autofocus system (49 phase-detection points)
• Higher-resolution 24.3MP X-Trans CMOS III sensor

The X-T20 isn’t drastically different looking to the X-T10. The movie button has moved from the dedicated button up top to the drive dial, while the easy-to-knock function button on the rear takes over that former movie button up top. That’s about it.

Pocket-lint

The most critical change to the X-T20 are the addition of touchscreen controls on the tilt-angle LCD screen on the rear. The latest camera doesn’t embody the tri-angle hinge of the X-T2 so the screen can move in any direction, but its vertical motion is plenty good for us.

Under the hood there’s a new 24.3-megapixel sensor, of the X-Trans CMOS III variety – a push on from the second-generation 16.2MP sensor in the earlier X-T10 model. That 50 per cent bump in resolution puts the X-T10 in line with both the X-Pro2 and X-T2 cameras also in the range; Fuji doesn’t differentiate by sensor across its range, rather by other defining features.

The new sensor means a more powerful processor, too, which also unlocks the door for 4K movie capture.

Pocket-lint

Just like with the also-announced X100F the X-T20 comes with Fuji’s latest autofocus setup. That means 325 focus points, available in full or 91-point arrangements; 49 of which are phase-detection points arranged to the centre 40 per cent of the focus area. That’s a big jump compared to the X-T10’s 15 phase-detection points.

Fujifilm X-T20 preview: How does it perform?

• Built-in 0.39in 2.36m-dot OLED electronic viewfinder
• 3-inch LCD tilt-angle screen resolution now 1.04m-dot

It was only at the end of our Fuji shooting day we got to handle the X-T20 – we’d invested a heap of time into using the X100F compact and GFX 50S medium format system – to get a feel for the camera. In the fading light, however, it was tricky to capture a great deal – so good job we had the 50mm f/2.0 prime lens attached to the front.

Pocket-lint

The new autofocus system is an impressive arrangement though. Of its 325-points, there’s a 91-point option, while the centre-most 49-points are phase-detection based for optimum performance. The more sensitive points are outlined as distinct, larger squares so you know what’s what, while that touchscreen control makes it ultra-easy to nab the focus position as you please.

That’s what really makes this Fuji standout from its peers. Even the higher-end X-T2 lacks the touchscreen provision, so it’s obviously viewed as a more “entry” feature by the Japanese company. Or perhaps not, as it’s also featured in its £6,500 medium format camera. Either way, we’re glad it’s here and think it should be in all of Fuji’s cameras.

Pocket-lint

The key thing the X-T20 lacks that the X-T2 and X100F feature is a focus lever to the rear, thus touchscreen is made all the more important here. It’s a shame both features aren’t available, as this little thumbable stick is really handy for delicately sifting between focus points.

First Impressions

In our brief time with the X-T20 we think it’s a very sensible evolution of the series. The addition of touchscreen is most welcome, while the 50 per cent boost in resolution over the X-T10 model brings this system camera in line with its latest competitors.

What’s perhaps most striking of all, though, is something we can’t test, per se: the price. At £799 Fuji has kep the X-T20 hugely competitive at a time when manufacturers such are typically pushing into the higher value area of the market.

If you want a touch of retro with a touch of touchscreen then the X-T20 looks to be an impressive mirrorless system camera. It’s not missing much aside from weather-proofing compared to its X-T2 bigger brother either. And that, we think, makes it a bargain.

Fujifilm X-T20 preview: The alternatives to consider

Panasonic Lumix G80

Pocket-lint

• £699 (body-only)

If you’re after a DSLR-style mirrorless camera than, pound for pound, Panasonic offers the most viable option on the market in the G80. It’s feature packed, just like the Fuji, which makes the choice between the pair all the trickier.

Razer makes its Blackwidow keyboard quieter, more comfortable

Fans of mechanical keyboards love them for their tactile, springy and accurate keys — but not everybody loves how loud they can be. If you’re looking for a clicky feeling without an audible click, Razer wants your attention. Today the company announced a new, quieter Razer Blackwidow mechanical keyboard. At a glance, it’s basically the same layout as the company’s previous Blackwidow gaming keyboard, but with two key differences: a detachable magnetic wrist rest, and a new ‘silent’ mechanical key switch.

Razer says the new keyswitches were built specifically with FPS and MOBA players in mind, featuring silent actuation and a shorter travel distance, allowing players to input more keystrokes per minute without adding a background noise of key-clacking to their game. The keyboard’s palm rest doesn’t look too special as far as typing cushions go, but its magnetic attachments should make it easy to secure and remove at a moment’s notice. The new $170 Blackwidow supports the Chroma lighting system, too — just in case you wanted to backlight each individual key in a different color.

Amazon offers to change ebook contracts to appease EU

Amazon stands accused of abusing its position as the largest and most influential ebook provider in Europe. Back in June 2015, the European Commission launched an investigation into the company and contract clauses which force publishers to disclose when they have received more favorable terms from rival ebook providers. That, critics argue, is anticompetitive. The intricacies of the case are unclear, but Amazon is now willing to drop the clauses from its ebook deals in Europe. Specifically, it’s offered not to enforce “any clause requiring publishers to offer Amazon similar terms and conditions as those offered to Amazon’s competitors.”

The commitment, according to the Commission, would cover release dates, promotions and wholesale prices. Amazon would also contact publishers and tell them it won’t be upholding the relevant clause in their contracts any longer. Such promises will be seen as a victory by Europe’s political elite, book publishers and startups. Before it accepts the new proposals, however, the European Commission is asking for feedback. It’s mostly a formality, but as Reuters reports, it’s an important tipping point as the Commission decides whether to settle or increase its demands. If Europe accepts, Amazon would avoid any potential fine for its divisive deals.

Source: European Commission, Reuters

Vertu’s latest luxury Android phone is built for jetsetters

Luxury smartphone maker Vertu may have undergone some operational changes over the past couple of years, but that doesn’t mean it has broken the tradition of selling people expensive Android smartphones. With its latest update to the premium Constellation handset, the company is targeting the “global traveller” with support for dual SIMs (for the first time) and access to iPass, the world’s largest WiFi network.

As for fit and finish, everything is as you’d expect. The Constellation, like Vertu’s other handsets, will be hand-built in England and is crafted from anodized aluminium and finished with leather sourced “from a specialist, family-run tannery in Italy.” An inset ruby located on the side of the phone doubles as a button that offers access to Vertu’s 24-hour Concierge service, for when you need help with a very important booking.

The Constellation’s performance shouldn’t be ignored, either. It features a 5.5-inch (2,560 x 1,440) WQHD AMOLED display that, with over 3.6 million pixels, clocks in at an impressive 538 PPI. Vertu is sticking with premium elements, including sapphire, which adds extra protection with its 140 carat scratchproof finish. Under the hood lies a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, a healthy 128GB of storage (including microSD support), a 3220mAh battery and support for USB-C and wireless charging.

Vertu has also crammed in Dolby Digital Plus virtual surround sound and front-facing stereo speakers, which are located at the at the top and bottom of the device “to achieve the best possible stereo separation.” The 12-megapixel sensor in the Constellation’s rear-facing camera is capable of giving Google’s Pixel phones some competition, housing “large” 1.55µm (micro) pixels, which will give it an edge on most smartphone cameras in low-light conditions.

The phone itself runs a customized version of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and Vertu hasn’t given me any indication that the handset will receive an upgrade to Nougat. In the past, it was suggested that the company’s new owner, Hong Kong’s Godin Holdings, may look to integrate its own suite of security software, but the Constellation will fully encrypt calls using tech from Silent Circle, at least for now.

Vertu says the Constellation will go on sale in boutiques from mid-February, but it has yet to decide on a price. Bear in mind, all Vertu phones run into the thousands, and this will likely be no different.

Source: Vertu (PRNewsWire)

Don’t bank on Kinect games in 2017

“The problem is not that nobody has Kinect, but it’s that nobody is talking about it anymore.”

That’s Mattia Traverso, the creator of Kinect-exclusive game Fru. Traverso has a unique perspective on the Kinect marketplace because he’s one of the last video-game developers to build an experience specifically for Microsoft’s motion-sensing peripheral.

Not that the Kinect is officially dead. However, Kinect is clearly not a priority for Microsoft. In 2016, the Xbox One’s Kinect 2 received just two games from third-party studios, Fru and Just Dance 2017. Microsoft hasn’t released a motion-sensing game itself since 2014, the same year the company announced it would start selling the Xbox One without the Kinect bundled in the box. Support for the peripheral has disappeared over the past three years, and with it, so has public attention.

Once upon a time, Kinect was the hot new accessory in the console-gaming space, a fact that naturally drove people to read about and buy Kinect games. A similar trend is happening now with virtual reality, Traverso says — but Kinect games just don’t generate the same amount of buzz anymore.

“Very few people are really talking much about Kinect games nowadays,” he says. “Microsoft isn’t pushing the peripheral, and the general press has moved on. … Even though every major site reviewed or talked about Fru, the articles weren’t shared much or talked about on social networks because Kinect is not relevant.”

Traverso isn’t surprised by this reality. He made a hard decision the day Microsoft unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One in June 2014: He and his team at Through Games had been working on Fru for months and they weren’t ready to give up on it yet. Microsoft had sold between 4 million and 5 million Kinect-ed Xbox One bundles before deciding to ditch the peripheral and lower the price, Traverso says.

Even imagining a “disastrous” return rate of 50 percent, that still left Through Games with 2 million potential customers. The team decided to take a chance, and they kept working on Fru.

Fru is a wildly imaginative and innovative game that takes full advantage of the Kinect interface. It’s a platformer where players use their bodies to uncover hidden platforms and passageways, bending and contorting their limbs so the protagonist, a young girl in a fox mask, can move within their on-screen silhouettes. Fru is responsive, polished, fun and clever — it’s exactly the kind of game Microsoft might have hoped for when it opened up the Kinect to developers.

Players and critics generally agree with this assessment, leaving Fru with a score of 84 on Metacritic. That doesn’t mean the game was popular, however.

“All considering, sales have been all right,” Traverso says. “We definitely sold more than the average indie game without a marketing budget, but certainly not enough to fund another game, which is unfortunate. Not that we were expecting to become Scrooge McDuck given the stagnant Kinect market, but we were hoping for a bit more than that.”

Traverso doesn’t blame Microsoft for ditching the Kinect. He knows it was a savvy business decision — Microsoft needed to make the Xbox One more competitive with the PlayStation 4, and removing the Kinect allowed the company to knock $100 off of the console’s price.

Besides, Microsoft supported Through Games’ decision to build a Kinect experience, even after the big unbundling. Chris Charla, the head of Microsoft’s indie-outreach program, ID@Xbox, was a big fan of Fru, and he personally helped Traverso and his team finish the game.

“We first saw Fru when it was getting buzz as a game-jam game, and we were immediately excited about the idea,” Charla says. “We’ve always focused on ensuring developers have the freedom to choose any Xbox technology they want to use to implement in their games in ways that best enhance the gameplay experience they’re trying to achieve. Fru is a perfect example of that.”

Still, behind-the-scenes support didn’t translate into explosive — or even sustainable — sales for Fru. And today, the ecosystem for Kinect games is nearly nonexistent. Traverso says he knows of just two other studios focusing on Kinect, Brazil’s HTW Games and Finland’s Virtual Air Guitar.

“I don’t think it’s possible to be successful when the company owning your market is trying to close it down,” Traverso says. “To be clear, I don’t think Microsoft is to be criticized for this decision: Removing the Kinect was a wise business move to get Xbox One to grow, and even though it could have been communicated better, it was a great choice in the long run.”

Traverso takes full responsibility for deciding to work on a Kinect game after Microsoft announced the unbundling. The writing was on the wall for the Kinect, but Through Games was married to the idea of Fru and wanted to see it to the end.

“We felt we had a great game in our hands, and it’d have been a shame not to release it,” Traverso says. “It’s actually not uncommon for other devs to tell us that we should have just cut some features and released the game while Kinect was still relevant, but we were — are? — young and passionate students, and a perhaps a tad naive, so we chose to just make the best game we could.”

This is the same advice Traverso gives any burgeoning developer interested in Kinect today, though he offers a caveat: If you’re building a Kinect game for fun, as a hobby, go for it. However, don’t bank on a Kinect game to kickstart a stable career as a game developer.

Traverso is satisfied with the lessons he learned while building Fru. Working with Kinect provided priceless insight into the game-design process; he ended up asking himself questions that he might not have considered with a traditional title. Questions like, “How long does it take for the player to get tired?” or “What’s the role of the player’s fingers while they’re playing the game?”

“Some of these questions might seem Kinect-specific, but I assure you that the lesson you learn from them can be applied to any kind of game,” Traverso says. “So, I say, experiment all you want, but make sure you can stay afloat.”

Scientists recreated Jupiter’s chaotic atmosphere in the lab

Many scientists figure that Jupiter has a limited amount of ammonia that is mostly concentrated in the upper atmosphere. However, the Juno probe recently spotted plumes of the gas extending up to 65 miles deep, well below the outer clouds. A team from UCLA and France have created a physical lab simulation they believe helps explain why. By spinning water around in a tank and injecting turbulence, jets formed deep below the surface, much like the plumes Juno detected. The work could lead to computer simulations that help scientists better understand Jupiter data from upcoming Juno orbits.

To recreate Jupiter’s swirling, turbulent atmosphere, the team filled a large tank with around 900 pounds of water. Spinning it at around 75 rpm pushed the water against the edges into a strongly curve shape approximating the surface of Jupiter. Turbulence was then injected into a “false bottom” and channeled through a series of inlet and outlet holes to simulate Jupiter’s swirling winds. The water flow quickly turned into six concentric circles mimicking the strong “jet” winds on Jupiter (below).

“This is the first time that anyone has demonstrated that strong jets that look like those on Jupiter can develop in a real fluid,” said lead author Jonathan Aurnou. The team thinks that “deep planetary jets” form on Jupiter and other gas giants in a similar fashion. (To see what that might look edge on, Aurnou showed a smaller simulation on the overly-dramatic TV show Deadliest Space Weather, shown in the video below.)

Next, the team will use supercomputers to simulate Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere dynamics, aided in part by lessons from the lab simulation. They’ll also try to make the spinning table simulation more realistic, which they hope will let them recreate Jupiter’s massive “Great Red Spot,” essentially a hurricane that has raged on the planet for over 300 years.

Source: UCLA

VR out-of-body experience could help assuage the fear of death

A virtual reality experience developed by researchers from the University of Barcelona could help people with a crippling fear of death. Research professor Mel Slater and his colleagues made 32 subjects wear Oculus headsets and black suits. They also attached a bunch of movement trackers and vibrators to their ankles and wrists. With those components in place, the subjects’ virtual bodies could match their real movements in the experience. Every time a VR ball hits their wrist or ankle, the vibrators would go off, as well. Both elements helped fool the volunteers’ brain into thinking that the virtual body was their own, similar to the rubber hand illusion.

Once the subjects’ brains were already fooled, the experience would change their PoVs, making it appear as if they were looking down at their own bodies from above. The researchers would then drop balls on the virtual representations of the volunteers while they were looking down from above, activating the vibrators on only half of them.

Based on the subjects’ answers to a post-experiment questionnaire, those who received vibrations still felt connected to their bodies. However, those who didn’t felt disconnected and said the experience reduced their fear of dying. The scientists still have to conduct further experiments to see if it truly can help those with severe thanatophobia. For now, you can find the whole paper on PLOS One, part of which reads:

“Our idea was that if we could put people in a situation illustrating the possibility of their consciousness being outside of their body, then this would provide implicit evidence (but not necessarily explicit belief) that survival beyond the body is possible, and hence produce a reduction in fear of death.”

A virtual #VR out-of-body experience #OBE may reduce #death #anxiety https://t.co/TPxF1sRWV2 @PLOSONE Video: https://t.co/Rw71STJJji @_PBo_

— Mel Slater (@melslater) January 9, 2017

Via: New Scientist

Source: PLOS One

The Nintendo 3DS is here to stay (for now)

With the Switch fast approaching, you might think Nintendo is ready to give up on the 3DS. Not so. The company has a small, but significant stack of games planned for the handheld in 2017, and it wants you to know about them. In a press release today, the company highlighted Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World, which comes out on February 3rd, Mario Sports Superstars — which now has a release date, March 24th — and Pikmin, a side-scroller spin-off featuring Captain Olimar and his color-coded friends. A (rather fantastic) Pikachu-themed new 3DS XL is also coming to America for $199.99 on February 24th, following its release in Japan late last year.

Missing from that roster is Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, an upcoming remake of the Famicom classic Fire Emblem Gaiden. The game is notable because the original was never released outside of Japan. Like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Mother 3, it’s often referred to as a “lost” game in the West. Not for much longer. It’ll be joined by Fire Emblem Warriors, a button mashy hack-and-slash game by Koei Tecmo in the fall.

The Wii U, meanwhile, is close to retirement. Nintendo has confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be the last game that it releases for the system. Existing titles will still be sold, and the company will maintain the Wii U’s online services, but that’s about it. The different approaches reflect the install base and interest in both platforms. While the Wii U has struggled to break 15 million sales, the 3DS sits above 60 million — a paltry sum in comparison to the DS, but impressive nonetheless.

Games like Pokemon Sun and Moon have shown there’s still life in the old system. The 3DS is pretty cheap, and the 2DS is even cheaper, making the platform an ideal choice for young children. The future of Nintendo’s business rests with the Switch, but for now it makes some sense to support the ageing 3DS too. Yes, it’s possible the two will cannibalise each other’s sales. But they offer vastly different experiences — the Switch is a far more powerful console, and doubles as a capable home system. It’s clearly aimed at an older demographic (most Switch trailers have focused on twenty and thirty-something hipsters), one with a little more disposable income.

That’s not to say Nintendo doesn’t want kids buying the Switch. Just that for now, the company thinks there’s a market for both. As Reggie Fils-Aime told CNET: “In the end, we want people of all ages engaging with Mario and Zelda and the content that’s available across both platforms.”

Source: Nintendo (Press Release)

How an animated-GIF camera morphed into a nascent chip empire

Not many computers can thank GIFs for their existence. In 2013, Dave Rauchwerk worked on a San Francisco art installation that allowed people to record and project a GIF of themselves onto a building. It was popular and led to Rauchwerk joining with two friends to start a hardware company called Next Thing Co. Their aim? To create a camera that can capture GIFs for $100.

After a long stay in China with the HAX Accelerator, Next Thing Co. launched OTTO, a $250 “hackable GIF camera” in 2014. It was the first product to integrate Raspberry Pi’s Compute Module, and generated a lot of interest. Keen mathematicians may have noted the discrepancy in the intended and actual price — $250 is many more dollars than $100 — and the public did, too.

“We had as many articles written about it as we did products sold,” said Rauchwerk. “That turns out to be a really impressive number of articles and a really unimpressive number of units. About 400.” People wanted it, it seemed, but not for $250. “We always had this dream that distributors and retailers would call us and want it in stores,” he continued. They did call, but when it became clear that OTTO was being sold for cost, interest quickly dried up.

Next Thing Co. had a problem, and it wasn’t unique. Any hardware startup will face the same struggle: How do you build a computer with storage, battery power, charging, WiFi, an operating system and web services without spending a fortune? In 2014, there was no clear answer. “It was sort of akin to building a web service in 1996,” Rauchwerk said. “You had to build the web server and the infrastructure before you could even think about building your product.” Modern-day developers have access to a vast library of tools that make building out a web service far easier.

The cost of building a product should be around a third of its retail price. That meant, in order to build the OTTO at $100, the bill of parts and assembly should have been around $33. That left, by Rauchwerk’s estimate, $10 for the computer inside. The Raspberry Pi Compute Stick was, and even in its latest iteration remains, a $30 computer. With no clear option available, Next Thing Co., in startup parlance, “pivoted,” resolving to find a solution to building cheaper computers. “We’d seen those $50 Android tablets that were around a few years ago,” Rauchwerk said, “and we wondered why we couldn’t we take those parts, throw away the bits we don’t need and build a $10 computer?”

The company making those parts was AllWinner Technology, and the relationship between Next Thing Co. and the chip company led to C.H.I.P., a $9 computer that raised $2 million on Kickstarter. C.H.I.P. essentially took an old processor, worked out how to make it support mainline Linux (i.e., the latest version) and added it to a PCB with some extras.

Including the Kickstarter orders, Next Thing Co. has sold over 100,000 C.H.I.P. computers. But despite this success, the company still hadn’t reached its goal. People were building prototypes, sure, but when it came to actually turning those early designs into products, there was no path forward. “People started saying, ‘Well, I have a couple of these, but I want 10,000 of them, or even more, I want 50,000 or 100,000 of them and I want to put them in my product,’” Rauchwerk said.

The original C.H.I.P. may have been perfect for tinkering, but it wasn’t ideal for consumer products. And so Next Thing Co. built C.H.I.P. Pro, which solves pretty much all of the issues the original has. It’s 72 percent smaller, it’s optimized for mass production, even supporting robot placement on assembly lines, it’s reliability tested and it’s FCC-certified. C.H.I.P. Pro costs $16 and can be built at that price in quantities from one to a million. Rauchwerk claims there’s no upper limit on the number Next Thing Co. can produce, adding that you can go from prototype to product in 60 days.

Next Thing Co.’s computer offers a mediocre level of power compared to the chips inside a smartphone or tablet, but that’s not really a problem. The chip powering it is called the GR8, a custom system-in-package (SIP) containing a 1GHz Cortex-A8 processor with ARM’s NEON architecture extension, 256MB or 512MB of high-speed RAM and a Mali-400 GPU. According to Rauchwerk, it’s “quite a bit faster, in application, on a single-core basis than a Raspberry Pi.” It’s also, depending on the software, able to sip power frugally. Rauchwerk said that people have used C.H.I.P. Pro to build devices that only need charging once a year.

In addition to selling the complete package in the form of C.H.I.P. Pro, Next Thing Co. is also offering the GR8 separately. It can be integrated into products that don’t need the extras on the Pro’s circuit board. All you really need to turn the GR8 into a functional computer is storage and power, so if a product calls for a different WiFi module, power supply or more storage than the Pro offers, you can design your own circuit board and add the GR8 chip to it for just $6 per unit. “The really fun thing,” Rauchwerk said, “is that you can start your product on C.H.I.P. Pro and switch to GR8 and not really have to change the software. They run the same chip and they’re software-compatible.”

Both C.H.I.P. Pro and GR8 can be flashed with a user or company’s software inside the factory. “This sounds like a little detail, but in practice, this is one of the most time-consuming parts of building a device,” Rauchwerk said. “If you order 10,000 modules then you’d have to spend 20 minutes putting the software on each one.” This service is available for orders of more than 1,000, putting it within the reach of those considering smaller hardware projects.

Support for mainline Linux was useful for C.H.I.P., but it’s way more important for Pro and GR8. You probably heard about Mirai — a botnet made of over 100,000 Internet of Things (IoT) devices that briefly brought the internet to its knees last year. Mirai, and botnets like it, exist because millions of devices are connected to the internet using software with huge flaws. Running mainline Linux doesn’t magically make a device secure, of course, but there are internet-connected cameras, DVRs and other IoT devices that are running versions of Linux that are several years old. This makes them much more vulnerable than an up-to-date device.

Next Thing Co. also has cloud-based tools for security and device management that are in the hands of early partners but aren’t yet publicly available. This suite of software is intended to take make pushing security and feature updates to devices simple for companies. “We want people to focus on building their products, not working on how to keep them secure,” Rauchwerk said. “Leave that up to the experts.”

One thing that sets C.H.I.P. Pro and GR8 apart from other chips on the market is the lack of a nondisclosure agreement. While the Raspberry Pi Foundation is an extremely open organization, the company that supplies its SoCs, Broadcom, is not. There are NDAs in place to prevent Pi from making Broadcom’s system architecture public, making it harder to develop for. In contrast, the GR8 is open-source hardware — you can even look through Next Thing Co.’s GR8 architecture document on Github.

With C.H.I.P. Pro and GR8, companies and individuals can take a prototype based on C.H.I.P., Raspberry Pi or any microcomputer, and quickly turn out a product that can be sold at scale. Rauchwerk said “thousands of companies” are doing just that, but he can talk about only a couple of products: TRNTBL and Outernet. TRNTBL is a smart turntable that can identify songs and stream vinyl to wireless speakers, using C.H.I.P. Pro as its foundation. Outernet is a kind of wireless library. It downloads data from Khan Academy, Wikipedia and others via satellite link, and creates a WiFi hotspot so people without an internet connection can still access some of the knowledge on the web.

In addition to enabling companies to build products, Next Thing Co. is also building its own. Its first since announcing the C.H.I.P. Pro is a $49 voice assistant for use in a car, called “Dashbot,” which is powered by the GR8. The developer kit for C.H.I.P. Pro comes with a pair of MicroElectrical-Mechanical System (MEMS) microphones on the board to help people prototype voice-based interactions. “We’re seeing people use it with [Amazon] Alexa voice service and different APIs to build AI-connected devices at a price that’s never been seen.” You can think of Dashbot as almost a call-to-arms for companies looking to build low-cost voice assistants.

Next Thing Co. is working with everyone from tinkerers building projects in their garages all the way up to “brands with products you can find at Best Buy,” and hardware will start hitting shelves this year. Becoming a chip giant is a far cry from Next Thing Co.’s original mission to build an animated GIF camera. Rauchwerk said that, if he wanted to, he could now sell the OTTO camera for substantially less than $99.

As if to prove a point, at CES earlier this month the company brought along a functional prototype OTTO with a C.H.I.P. Pro debug board inside. There doesn’t seem to be much of an interest in moving forward with that product anytime soon, but who knows? Maybe the dream of an animated GIF camera isn’t dead yet.

Image credits: Next Thing Co (OTTO camera); Richard Reininger (C.H.I.P. Pro images); VNYL (TRNTBL).