PicoBrew tries to make countertop beer brewing affordable

Brewing your own beer is surprisingly easy and cheap. But, it can seem intimidating. Plus, some of the equipment takes up a lot of space if you really start to embrace the hobby. Companies like Picobrew have been trying to simplify the process to make it more appealing to newcomers and those with limited space. The Pico Model C is the latest in a line of “countertop” brewing machines. It looks more like a coffee machine than anything else. In fact, it looks a lot like the company’s previous machine — the Pico — except the stainless-steel body has been replaced with a black powder-coated finish.

That change in materials, though, is a pretty big deal. By ditching the expensive stainless steel, large OLED and traditional ball-lock keg, Picobrew has gotten the price down to $549 from $800. Hell, if you grab one of the early bird Kickstarter specials, the Model C will only cost you $279. It’s still not exactly an impulse purchase (and a far cry from the $50-$100 a stovetop starter brewing kit will set you back), but it’s definitely a huge improvement for those who are still unsure about how much they want to invest in a new hobby.

In place of a more traditional keg, Picobrew is including a custom-made fermentation vessel it calls the Pico C Keg. It’s basically just a stainless-steel pot with a lid that latches on like a pressure cooker. Instead of using common ball-lock connectors, simple color-coded hoses run from the machine to the keg. While connecting ball locks isn’t exactly rocket science, the Pico C Keg is much easier to hook up and clean than the common Cornelius keg. You can even stick it in the dishwasher if you want.

More interesting, though, is the new app called BrewPulse. It’s still clearly in the very early stages of development, but the app should help brewing newbies. BrewPulse doesn’t control your Pico, to be clear. Instead, it’s focused on tracking and instruction. It walks you through every step, starting with ordering PicoPaks — prepackaged pods of grain and hops that you simply insert into the machine. The reader inside scans an RFID tag on the pack and downloads the recipe to the machine.

From here the app tracks the whole process, monitoring fermentation temperatures and which beers are where in the pipeline — which are waiting to be made, which are brewing, which are fermenting, carbonating or being served. Basically, it’s a homebrew inventory system.

It’s kind of the perfect partner for the company’s new BrewUnlimited subscription service that’s also launching. Think of it like Netflix for PicoPaks — $59 a month gets you as many kits as you can brew in a month, though you’re limited to two unbrewed packs at a time.

The Model C, of course, has its limitations. Basically the same as the Pico before it, it makes only 5 liters (slightly less than 1.5 gallons) of beer at a time, which is fine for poker night or a small dinner party, but it’s not gonna be enough for a big barbecue. The other is flexibility. The focus on simplifying the process means limiting the number of variables, especially on the machine itself. You can create customized recipes using the FreeStyle PicoPak tool on the company’s website. But, once the pack is in the machine you can only adjust the ABV and bitterness.

At $279, the Pico Model C doesn’t seem to be a bad introduction to the world of homebrew if your primary concerns are convenience and space. At $549, the value proposition becomes less clear, especially considering some of its limitations. But we’ll reserve judgment until we have a chance to spend more time with a production model, which should be shipping some time this fall.

HTC launches a monthly subscription for Vive VR apps

Virtual reality is still in its infancy, so it’s no surprise that most apps for the HTC Vive are smaller, experimental and ultimately expendable experiences. If you’re a new headset owner, it can be hard to know which games are worth buying, or to get a good sense of what the medium has to offer without spending hundreds of dollars. To help, HTC is launching the Viveport Subscription, a scheme that offers five VR apps for $6.99 per month. You choose from a pool of 50 and can rotate your selection every four weeks, keeping your library and knowledge of the platform fresh.

The subscription service launches on April 5th, and everyone will receive a one-month free trial. Compatible apps include the physics puzzler Fantastic Contraption, Everest VR, Richie’s Plank Experience and ocean exploration TheBlu. The hope, of course, is that you’ll maintain a subscription and buy the experiences that leave an impression each month. That way, you can keep trying new software while holding on to the apps you think are interesting and warrant periodical play sessions.

HTC is launching Viveport Subscription as a way to mark the Vive’s first anniversary. As an extra gift, it’s giving away Arcade Saga, a three-game package that normally costs $19.99 on Steam. If you haven’t bought a Vive yet, the company is also knocking $100 off the standard retail price. That should make it a tad more competitive with the Oculus Rift, which received a similar price-cut last month, and Sony’s PlayStation VR, a cheaper but slightly less powerful alternative. The current wave of VR has had a slow, but steady start — while its smartphone division suffers, HTC needs to ensure the Vive remains competitive and, therefore, attractive to consumers and developers. Its future as a company depends on it.

Brain zapping helps US Navy Seals learn faster

The Navy wants soldiers who can concentrate better and learn faster, and it’s looking at a controversial piece of tech to do that: transcranial electrical stimulation. It has been testing a passive brain-stimulating device from Halo Neuroscience with “a small group of volunteers” from Seal Team Six, the group that killed Osama Bin Laden, and other units, according to Military.com. “Early results show promising signs,” said spokesman Capt. Jason Salata in a statement.

The $749 Halo Neuroscience headset (below) looks a lot like regular headphones, and does actually play music. However, it also has silicon spikes on the band called “neuroprimers” that contact a wearer’s head. Those emit electrical impulses that supposedly stimulate the motor cortex, a part of the brain that’s key for athletes, soldiers and others who perform physically demanding tasks.

The soldier or athlete simply sprays the spikes with saline solution to ensure good electrical contact, then wears the headset during warmups. The tingling they feel on their scalp supposedly increases the “neuroplasticity” of the brain, making it more receptive than usual to training. The company insists that they’re ideal for elite athletes or soldiers, where a small improvement in performance can make the winning (or living) difference.

The idea is to make training shorter and more efficient for Navy Seals, who are already running on the ragged edge. “They’re training at this amazingly high level, and the amount they can train is actually limited by things like physical recovery,” Halo Co-founder Bret Wingeier told Military.com. “They want to build and maintain these amazing physical skills, but do so just as efficiently as possible.”

The effort is part of Navy Special Operations Commander Tim Zymanski’s industry challenge to develop “cognitive enhancement” technology for soldiers. While that could include pharmaceutical aids and other things, the military is particularly interested in neuro-stimulation tech as a way to enhance both performance and learning.

Halo claims that the devices have improved the performance of Olympic and professional athletes (like the San Francisco Giants, above), but they can’t necessarily prove that those gains are the direct results of the headset and not, say, a placebo effect or that “Workout Twerkout” Spotify playlist. For now, however, the military is convinced, and thinks its a better option than “smart drugs” like Modafinil or amphetamines.

“In experiments, people who were watching these screens … their ability to concentrate would fall off in about 20 minutes,” said Szymanski. “But they did studies whereby a little bit of electrical stimulation was applied, and they were able to maintain the same peak performance for 20 hours.”

Source: Military.com

ReSound LiNX 3D Hearing Aid and iOS App Connect Users to Their Audiologists for Remote Fine-Tuning

Danish hearing aid company GN Hearing today announced the newest iteration of its IoT hearing aid solution, called the ReSound LiNX 3D, as well as new apps for the iPhone and Apple Watch.

The major update to GN’s new hearing care solution is a way for users to get their hearing aids remotely fine-tuned by their audiologist after an initial fitting at their local clinic, through a cloud-based infrastructure called ReSound Smart Fit. The original ReSound LiNX allowed users to adjust their own settings on the fly, but now they can request assistance wherever they are directly from the mobile app, and their doctor can make all the adjustments necessary “to provide a better hearing experience for the user.”

ReSound LiNX 3D is the only device with complete remote fine-tuning capabilities that allows users to stay in touch with their hearing care professional wherever they are, receiving hearing care and getting new settings via the cloud without having to schedule and travel for a clinic appointment. The unique cloud integration enables hearing care professionals to stay connected with users no matter where they are.

Users will be able to share feedback about any hearing difficulty as the situation occurs, rather than trying to remember how to describe it during an adjustment visit to the clinic. Hearing care professionals will have the freedom to offer follow-up services remotely – saving time for both hearing care professionals and users, and creating opportunities for even higher user satisfaction.

The ReSound LiNX 3D includes GN Hearing’s 5th generation 2.4 GHz wireless technology and 3rd generation binaural directionality, providing users with “clear, natural sound, exceptional speech understanding and the best sense of where sounds are coming from.” The company said that the hearing aid’s advantages lie in both quiet and speech-only situations, as well as times when surrounding sounds are loud and the aid optimizes audibility of speaking voices.

The original ReSound LiNX launched with a unique 2.4 GHz protocol as well, developed in careful conjunction with Apple as a way to create a specific link between the hearing aid and iPhone devices. This technology enabled the first LiNX — and now the new LiNX 3D — to support a smarter system that could turn off and on quickly to save battery life, as well as geofencing abilities to intelligently detect where a user is and adapt to the corresponding new environment change with no intervention from the user.

When connected to the new apps on iPhone and Apple Watch, users will be able to access custom control features for the hearing aid, built-in guidance steps to understand the hardware and software, and coaching assistance to get the most out of the system. When compared to competitors, the company said that the ReSound LiNX 3D and companion app are up to 50 percent better at identifying speech across various environments, enable users to hear up to 80 percent more of the sounds around them, and enable users to understand up to 40 percent more speech in noise.

GN Hearing will launch the ReSound LiNX 3D, as well as a hearing aid with similar features under its sister brand Beltone, around the world later in 2017. No more information was given in today’s announcement, but the company encouraged anyone interested to keep track of announcements surrounding the ReSound LiNX 3D by visiting its website.

Tag: accessibility
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Make your ink and paper last longer with these 8 simple tips

Why it matters to you

We all hate buying printer ink, so here are some best practices to make sure your printer is running as lean as possible.

There are few things as frustrating as running out of printer ink in the middle of a job. Buying new ink is about the last thing anyone wants to spend money on, but it’s also one of life’s apparent inevitabilities. Fortunately, there are things you can do to squeeze out as many prints as possible from each milliliter of ink, as HP’s Chief Inkologist (yes, it’s his real job title), Thom Brown, recently shared with Digital Trends in the following tips – applicable for any printer, not just those from HP. Some of these may be old news to you, but many are likely novel and may save you time and money.

1. Try changing the font or reducing the font size of your document. This makes sense once you think about it, but most people probably have never considered that some fonts use more ink than others. Brown recommends using Century Gothic, Ecofont, or Times New Roman to keep your ink cartridges fuller, longer. Arial is a particularly bad one, apparently.

2. Change your settings to reduce paper and ink usage. When possible, print double-sided documents and widen your margins to squeeze more text onto the page. This may not directly save ink, but saving paper is also important – especially for documents that may not be needed long-term, like memos and notes.

3. Use print preview. Have you ever printed a web page only to find you’ve wasted ink by printing the ads at the bottom of the page? Always open your document in print preview to ensure no pages are wasted.

4. Print only portions of a web page. If print preview does show lots of adds or other unwanted content, the free HP Smart Print app can help. It reduces paper and ink usage by removing headers, footers, and ads from web pages, leaving you with just the content you want to print. The app isn’t exclusive to HP printers.

5. Print in black and white. Wasting color ink on documents that don’t need it will only lead to headaches down the road. Ensure you only print in color when necessary by changing your default setting to print in black and white only. This will extend the life of your color ink cartridges.

6. For times when the best quality is not needed, print in draft mode. Not only does this use less ink than the “normal” setting, it also prints faster. The results won’t be as high quality, with slightly lighter text, but there are many applications where this is a good tradeoff.

7. Replace ink cartridges only when they are empty. Your printer will alert you when ink is running low, but Brown cautions that this is just a warning; there’s no need to panic (yet). Your printer may continue working normally for some time to come, so keep using those cartridges until they are completely empty.

8. Use “N-up” printing in the printer driver. If you don’t need to print every page on individual pieces of paper, and if you don’t mind potentially squinting at small text, this option will allow you to print multiple pages on a single sheet of paper, saving both ink and paper.

HP is in the business of selling printers and ink — lots and lots of ink. So it may come as a bit of surprise that the company wants to make sure customers are getting the most mileage out of their cartridges, but we certainly appreciate it. Printer companies have been increasingly moving toward more consumer-friendly ink policies in recent years, including the production of tank-based (rather than cartridge-based) printers, but knowing how to push your current printer to its limits is important no matter what type of printer you have.

There’s a storm brewing over the graphics chip inside the iPhone

Why it matters to you

A future iPhone may have a custom Apple designed graphics chip inside, but a patent battle may precede it

There’s a storm brewing over the graphics processor (GPU) used in the Apple iPhone, the iPad, and various other Apple mobile devices. At the moment, Apple uses a PowerVR chip from Imagination Technologies, usually alongside its own custom A10 processor; but this is likely to change in the next two years, and it’s believed Apple may be designing its own GPU for use in future devices.

It’s speculation for now, but it comes from Imagination Technologies itself. In a press release, it’s stated, “Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology.”  Apple will stop using Imagination Technologies chips in 15 months to two years time, it says.

More: Drool over these pictures of the new iPhone 7 (RED)

Where’s the problem? If it happens, the existing license agreement between the two will end, and when the time comes, Apple will stop paying royalties to Imagination Technologies. It’s bad news as Imagination takes around half of its revenue from Apple, which has an eight percent stake in the company.

However, Imagination believes Apple is mistaken if it thinks by developing its own chip, it can do so without using its patents, intellectual property, or information previously shared. It has asked Apple to provide evidence proving it doesn’t need Imagination’s technology to build its own chips, but apparently none has been provided yet.

This means Imagination Technologies and Apple may be on the brink of a patent war, if Apple can’t defend its own chip design, or a new agreement between the two cannot be reached. Imagination makes it clear that, “alternative commercial arrangements” are being discussed with Apple, ensuring licenses and royalties continue in the event the pair split up. Imagination says more announcements on the matter will be made in the future.

It’s a drastic reversal of the events of last year, when Apple confirmed it had discussed an acquisition deal with Imagination. No offer was made, but it’s evidence Apple has been considering the idea of designing, or at least controlling, its own GPU for some time.

The Galaxy S8 has face recognition and iris scanning, and you have to choose one

There are two ways to unlock the Galaxy S8 with your face. Here are the differences.

The Galaxy S8 contains more ways than ever to keep your content safely locked behind a password: in addition to the traditional PIN, pattern or password option (cumulatively the most secure), there’s fingerprint recognition, iris scanning (which debuted on the Galaxy Note 7) and, oldie-but-goodie, face recognition.

In the beginning…

Back in 2011, Google debuted support for face recognition as an unlock option on select devices. It was available on phones like the Galaxy Nexus, HTC EVO 4G LTE and HTC One X, but eventually manufacturers stopped supporting it because it didn’t work very well.

The idea of face recognition is a good one: all phones have a front-facing camera, and all (most) people have unique faces, and phones are computers that can figure out that the person stored in the phone is the same one holding his or her phone in front of the camera. But two things stopped it from gaining popularity: for a long time, front-facing cameras had small, low-quality sensors, making them slow and generally terrible in poor lighting. You need your unlock method to work all the time, not just in particular lighting. The second reason is less obvious: the proliferation of fingerprint sensors made alternative forms of fast-but-relatively-safe unlock methods less necessary.

Then came Smart Lock

When Lollipop debuted in 2015, Google created something called Smart Lock, a service across its major platforms (Android, Chromebooks, and Chrome OS) to make it easier for people to unlock their devices without passwords. On Android, that early and little-used face recognition feature that debuted in 2011 eventually became just another part of Google Play Services alongside on-body detection, trusted voice, trusted places, and trusted devices. But still, even today, very few people use it.

Fingerprint sensors made face unlock less necessary — and way less popular. Until now.

To be fair, Google’s implementation hasn’t always been very good — in fact, it’s still pretty unreliable on most phones — but most people don’t even know it’s there, buried as it is within Google’s Play Services. It’s also not included on every device, which makes advertising the feature a hit-and-miss affair. Trusted places — your house, or workplace — uses location, which is more easily detectable, and trusted devices allows a smartwatch or other Bluetooth device to act as a nearby authenticator. Again, super simple. With fingerprint sensors being integrated on most devices, facial recognition just isn’t that necessary.

What’s old is new(s) again

When the Galaxy Note 7 was released last year, it arrived with a fair amount of buzz surrounding its iris scanner. But because the scanner actually matched the details from the inside of your eye against a stored copy — which is nearly impossible to duplicate or imitate — it worked slowly, and often failed. So Samsung decided to bring back the face scanner in the Galaxy S8, and improve upon Google’s implementation in a number of ways.

The Galaxy Note 7’s iris scanner failed a lot. But it was still a great idea worth pursuing.

Face scanning works by taking a photo of your whole face, and using the front-facing camera to match specific details to the live photo in front of it. On the Galaxy S8, this works incredibly quickly — far quicker than any other face unlock method, and often more quickly than the fingerprint sensor — for a couple of reasons. First, the Galaxy S8 is just plain fast — its Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895 chips have incredibly advanced image signal processors that perform the work in a fraction of the time it took just a few years ago. And the 8MP front-facing camera inside the Galaxy S8, which has autofocus and is therefore much more likely to find a subject lock.

But as you may have seen plastered around the internet, face recognition is not foolproof. Indeed, it’s fairly easy to spoof if you have a high-resolution photo of the subject, and some persistence. This isn’t to say that opening Facebook and showing a photo of your friend to his phone while he’s in the bathroom will unlock it (let’s be honest, too, he’s bringing that phone with him to the bathroom) but Samsung doesn’t recommend you use face unlock if you have sensitive material on the phone.

That said, it’s so fast, and much more likely to find a match in low-light situations, a common scenario that Note 7 owners found themselves frustrated by with the iris scanner last year.

Focusing on the iris

Iris scanning is a more secure form of biometric authentication, and is likely more secure than a fingerprint since it is basically impossible to recreate, even using the most advanced methods.

The iris scanner has made a return to the Galaxy S8 after it ignominiously disappeared in the Note 7 last fall. It’s also much, much faster than before — which is good, because the damn thing needed it.

Iris scanning on the Galaxy S8 is at least twice as fast as the Note 7, and fails less in low light. In other words, you’ll want to use it.

On the Galaxy S8, I’ve found iris scanning to be very reliable and quite fast most of the time, though not as instantaneous as a fingerprint sensor or face unlock. That said, I’ve been impressed with its ability to unlock in low light — the iris scanner likely uses a combination of the dedicated infrared sensor and front-facing camera to get a match — which had led to considerably fewer moments of frustration.

I’ve also noticed that the iris scanner, while it still needs to have your eyes in its sights, doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned the way the Note 7’s did; I can have my hands close to my chest and tilt the phone up towards me, and as long as my eyes are in the viewfinder it unlocks most of the time. It’s still not perfect, and I occasionally find myself having to find the fingerprint sensor to finish the job, but it’s rare.

You can only choose one

For safety reasons, you can only choose one method of facial unlocking on the Galaxy S8: face recognition or iris scanning.

• If you’re concerned with security above all else, use the iris scanner.
• if you’re concerned with speed above all else, use the face recognition.

Of course, either of these methods can be combined with the existing fingerprint unlock, which despite being on the back is fairly easy to reach and may end up being faster than either. The main upside to the visage-based methods is that you don’t have to poke around on the back of the phone for the fingerprint sensor; you can merely turn on your phone, look at the camera, and go.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

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• Everything you need to know about the Galaxy S8’s cameras
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Apple ends partnership with Imagination Technologies, will design and produce its own graphics chip within two years

British-based technology Imagination Technologies has announced that Apple has ended its long-running partnership and will instead design and produce its own graphics chip for use in the iPhone and iPad.

The company confirmed the news in a statement, saying: “Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology,” 

Imagination’s PowerVR graphics technology has been used by Apple in the GPU of its mobile iOS devices for years, so the news that the partnership is ending is certainly surprising. Although it may not come as much of a shock to industry insiders, as Apple has been quietly hiring staff from Imagination for some time. 

Shares in Imagination Technologies plunged 60 per cent following the announcement, as Apple is the Imagination’s largest customer, and the Californian tech giant even holds an 8 per cent stake.

Apple is expected to introduce its own chips and graphics technology within the next 15 months to two years, and is expected to show up in the iPhone released in September 2018, whatever it may be called. 

Imagination Technologies isn’t convinced that Apple will be able to make its own chips without infringing on its patents, and has asked the tech giant for proof that this won’t happen, but Apple has yet to respond. 

“Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions.”

The British company has added that it will attempt to strike up a new commercial deal with Apple.

The Morning After: Monday, April 3rd 2017

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to the work week. April 1st is finally done, and in these days of fake news, we’re all increasingly numb to the corporate non-ideas that barraged our inboxes and social networks over the weekend. Meanwhile, Apple is apparently sketching out TV service plans aimed at convenience, and Archer, the mobile game, requires you to fire up your old printer.

HBO, Showtime and Starz for one price?
Apple hopes to sell premium TV channels in a bundle

Apple’s attempts to offer its own TV service haven’t panned out. However, it appears to have a Plan B: offer a bundle that includes just a handful of channels you can already watch on its devices. Recode sources understand that Apple is pitching a deal that would offer HBO, Showtime and Starz for one price. It’s not certain whether or not you’d get a discount over the $35 per month it costs to subscribe to each network individually, but the focus would be on convenience. There’s even talk of Apple potentially selling the bundle as a stand-alone product — presumably, as more than just a collection of existing apps.

The worst.This April 1st, you’re not fooling anyone

Featuring energy drinks, garden gnomes, onesies, and other things you don’t normally buy anyway.

‘PES 2017’ allegedly uses his likeness without permission.
Soccer icon Maradona threatens to sue Konami for using his face

You may have been excited to see sports legend Diego Maradona in Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, but the superstar himself is… less than thrilled. Maradona has threatened to sue Konami for allegedly using his likeness in the game without permission.

The victim has also been subject to online bullying.
Police make first arrest in Facebook Live sexual assault case

Law enforcement is taking sweeping action following a horrific sexual assault streamed on Facebook’s live broadcast feature. Chicago police report that they’ve made the first arrest in the case, bringing a 14-year-old boy into custody. There will be more arrests soon, according to the CPD, including a 15-year-old who’s next in line. Details of the case are mostly under wraps beyond a connection between the victim and one of her attackers (their age prevents disclosing some of the facts). However, it’s already clear that the livestream wasn’t the end to the internet-based trauma.

Augmented reality meets old-school ink.The ‘Archer’ mobile game asks you to break out your printer

By their very nature, most augmented reality games are at least a little bit futuristic. The creators of Archer, however, are embracing the past. The Archer, P.I. mobile game will have you pointing your Android or iOS device at your TV, Facebook and even billboards to scan for clues to a hidden story inside Archer: Dreamland, the film noir-inspired eighth season of the animated series. If you want to claim your rewards and unlock every mystery, though, you’ll also have to print and assemble physical objects based on what you see in the show.

But wait, there’s more…

• Roland founder and music legend Ikutaro Kakehashi dies
• Recommended Reading: Beats 1 is a powerful music marketing tool
• Tesla’s SUV demand is catching up to its sedan
• Expect to see BlackBerry’s name (and tech) on more devices

Apple is building its own GPU for the iPhone and iPad

Imagination Technologies is famous for one thing: it’s the company that provides the graphics for the iPhone. But today, Imagination announced that its longstanding relationship with Apple is coming to an abrupt end. In a statement, the outfit has conceded that Apple will replace the PowerVR GPU at the heart of its iOS devices with a graphics chip of its own design.

When Apple started making the iPhone, it used a generic, Samsung-made ARM system that was paired with a PowerVR GPU. Over time, Apple began crafting more and more of its own silicon, thanks to its purchase of various chip design firms. These days, the PowerVR chip on the A10 Fusion is one of very few components that Apple didn’t have entire control over.

The decision to dump Imagination was probably inevitable given the company’s trend towards control, but there may be another story here. Third-party analysts The Linley Group spotted that the iPhone 7 used the same PowerVR GT7600 GPU that was used for the iPhone 6S. That piece of silicon, while powerful, couldn’t sustain its performance for very long and so throttles the component to avoid overheating.

Apple’s unsentimentally when it comes to ditching chip makers when they can’t meet performance targets is well-known. After all, the company ditched PowerPC CPUs because — so the legend goes — Intel’s X86 silicon was getting faster while IBM and Motorola dragged their feet.

It’s clearly a massive blow for Imagination, which has already said that it’s planning to take the matter to the courts. After all, building a graphics platform from scratch is likely to involve using technology that other companies like Imagination has already patented. The famously-secretive Apple is also not going to look favorably upon one of its suppliers going public with this licensing dispute.

Imagination shares down 67% after end of agreement with Apple pic.twitter.com/jBazTt6IjT

— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) April 3, 2017

As TechCrunch explains, the split could spell doom for Imagination, since it relies upon Apple for the bulk of its cash. Even worse, is that the news has already caused Imagination’s stock to freefall, dropping between 60 and 70 percent in the last few hours.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Imagination Technologies