HTC Link promises a high-end VR experience with a smartphone

Consumers with an interest in VR currently have two options: The high-end systems, such as the Oculus Rift, have their own displays and are powered by a computer. The more portable systems, like the Samsung Gear VR, are powered by your smartphone and use it as a display. There hasn’t been much to bridge this gap in VR systems until now.

Enter the HTC Link, which stands in between the two types of VR that are currently available. It connects with a smartphone — the company’s flagship U11 — but has its own display. It also offers a full range of motion, promising six degrees of freedom (6DOF) in a two-meter by two-meter square space, which hasn’t been available in smartphone-powered VR devices.

The device promises to be “cableless,” though it will still connect to your phone and an external camera. Unlike the Vive’s system, the Link’s headset and controllers have PlayStation VR-style lights that will likely be tracked via an external sensor. For the screen, the HTC Link boasts two 3.6-inch AMOLED panels with 1080 x 1200 resolution and a 90-Hz refresh rate, which is the same as the Oculus Rift and the Vive.

The catch? As of right now, it’s only available in Japan.

Additionally, the specs and features of the HTC Link could be a challenge for developers, and it will be interesting to see the differences between this and the standalone HTC Vive Daydream VR headsets. The real question is what the debut of the HTC Link might mean for VR. Could this device be the answer to the tension between a high-end VR experience and the desire for affordability? We don’t have pricing details on the HTC Link yet, but it’s possible.

Source: HTC, Upload VR

Texas legislature overrules Austin, allows Uber and Lyft to return

When Austin citizens voted in May 2016 to require fingerprint-based background checks from ride-sharing drivers and ban passenger pickup in traffic lanes, Uber and Lyft promptly pulled out of the city. But both are scheduled to restart operations in the city next Monday thanks to legislation passed by the Texas Legislature this month. The bill overrides local ordinances like Austin’s that regulate ride-hailing services and only needs Governor Greg Abbott’s signature to become law.

Buckle up. Coming soon. https://t.co/AF34IVISL2

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 17, 2017

While Lyft and Uber are celebrating, the city isn’t. The bill, HB 100, would override the state’s 20-plus local ordinances and require ride-sharing companies to conduct criminal background and sex offender checks for drivers — but allow them to use ones they prefer. Uber’s internal checks have failed to discover criminal records before, and when Massachusetts enacted tougher background research rules last month, over 8,000 current drivers were rejected for violent/sexual crimes or drunk or reckless driving. Doubtless these enhanced checks aim to weed out predatory chauffeurs — like Uber drivers who have sexually assault passengers, which the company has tried wiggling out of legal responsibility for.

Once Lyft and Uber activate their drivers, both ride-sharing titans will have to compete with local operators that sprung up in the interim. Companies like Fare and Fasten along with the nonprofit ride-hailing service RideAustin complied with Austin’s rules, which were passed by the city to raise the standards of ride-sharing drivers to match taxi drivers (who are required to submit fingerprints and pass background checks). Whether the homegrown services retain their lead once the industry-dominating Lyft and Uber return depends on the passengers — and how they’ll vote with their wallet.

Source: Austin American-Statesman

Your mall will basically have to be psychic to survive

Repeat after me: Shopping is therapy. Whether you believe it or not, the rush some of us get from buying a new dress or gadget can be cathartic. And in the not-too-distant future, real-world shopping will get so seamless that it could feel like the store is actually psychic. But it’s not just about flashy displays of bleeding-edge tech. Instead, expect a subtler approach that focuses on understanding your tastes to find you your next outfit while you’re in the fitting room, all in the right size. Stores will learn to recognize you as you browse and change dynamically to show things that matter more to you so you won’t have to be disappointed by missing sizes or sift through stuff you wouldn’t have bought anyway.

For instance, shelves of shoes will also show if each design is available in your size or if you have to go online to find it. In future fitting rooms, the mirror might welcome you back when you walk in, and it’ll already know your preferred fit, cuts, brands and sizes so it can predict what you might like to try on. If you’ve bought a particular shade of foundation, a screen on the shelf can show you looks that are mapped to that hue. When you drive up to a gas pump, it will already know which credit card you’ll be using because it detected and authenticated your license plate and identity.

These scenarios are just examples that form part of Healey Cypher’s vision of the retail store of the future. He’s the CEO of San Francisco-based startup Oak Labs, which calls itself a “retail innovation company” and has been working with brands like Ralph Lauren and Rebecca Minkoff to embed tech in their stores for unique shopping experiences.

“It’s not a lot of screens or holograms or robots taking your hands guiding you along,” Cypher told Engadget. He believes it will be tech that you can’t see but that works behind the scenes to show you information that you need.

That seamlessness extends to the payment process as well. With all the infrastructure that will have been embedded into various surfaces throughout the store, checkout counters could eventually disappear altogether.

“From the window of the storefront all the way to the fitting room environment… any surface could be a purchase interaction or counter,” said Stephane Wyper, senior vice president of new commerce and partnerships at Mastercard. You could pay for your goods no matter where you are in (or even outside) the store and that could eliminate the lines that have long been one of the worst parts of brick-and-mortar shopping.

To enable a smooth experience, companies are going to need data, such as your shopping history, your size and even medical details like your allergies or dietary restrictions. And if you want payments to be seamless, you’ll also have to provide your credit card information.

But are shoppers going to want to give stores access to personal information? Cypher and Wyper agree that they might — with the right benefits, anyway.

Wyper says consumers will share a certain amount of information if the convenience outweighs a loss in privacy. “Retailers have to figure out how to use [the data] and also ensure the consumer has control over the types of experiences and benefits they want in return for sharing their information,” he said.

To Cypher, the advantage is clear. “Time is increasingly the currency we value,” he said. “The extent to which you can save me time on the repetitive stuff is going to be a hugely important benefit.”

Cypher can think of two examples where consumers are happy to share personal information with companies in exchange for convenience and time saved. “We’re not far off from when someone comes in and they’re going to want the experience to be like Uber, where the payment is totally invisible.”

Amazon has also made it so convenient for users to stay logged in that people don’t think about signing out anymore. “Look at Amazon Go,” Cypher said. “It’s annoying to check in at first, but once you do that you’ll find that there’s the benefit in reduction of cognitive load too.” This sales model already works on the company’s “One Click Buy” service. “You know all the basics on Amazon,” he added. “It knows your credit card and shipping address. You know how fast it’s going to ship.” That convenience, Cypher says, makes people flock to Amazon even if it doesn’t have the cheapest prices.

In fact, that convenience has lured so many to shop online that it may seem like physical stores are on their way to extinction. Just look at Macy’s, JC Penney, Sears and KMart — all have announced closures of hundreds of outlets this year. But experts agree that brick-and-mortar stores are here to stay. As Brian Kavanagh, senior director of retail insights at The Hershey Company, puts it in an interview, “While technology will enable less friction, there are still core human truths that remain relevant: People place a high value on experiences, they seek social connection and want to avoid the routine and mundane.”

Wyper agrees. “Physical stores are still an important ingredient of the retailer playbook,” he said. They’re just due for a reinvention.

We don’t know yet know exactly how retailers will customize their experiences for shoppers and what they’ll do with customers’ data. But in many ways, the future of shopping is already here. We already willingly hand over personal information to the likes of Uber, Amazon, Seamless and iTunes, all for the sake of convenience. Targeted advertising already exists online and arrives in our mail, too. Putting all the pieces together thoughtfully isn’t an easy feat, though, and the road to a coherent, secure and useful experience is long, and fraught with both legal and technological challenges. Still, when that happens, real-life shopping is going to feel a lot more like it does online.

Welcome to Tomorrow, Engadget’s new home for stuff that hasn’t happened yet. You can read more about the future of, well, everything, at Tomorrow’s permanent home and check out all of our launch week stories here.

Images: Oak Labs (Onscreen selection); Gabe Souza/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images (Checkout line)

Instagram Direct doesn’t care about your photo orientation

Instagram Direct debuted in 2013 as a way to send photos and videos, well, directly to your friends on the photo sharing service. The Facebook-owned company has added more features to the system over the intervening years, like threaded messaging, disappearing messages and live video. Instagram Direct’s latest update adds two more features aimed at creating a more robust messaging service: non-square images and links.

When you send a permanent, non-disappearing photo to a buddy with Instagram Direct, you don’t have find the perfect square crop anymore. Simply grab a portrait or landscape oriented photo from your camera roll and let fly. Sounds a lot easier than uploading non-square photos in the regular Instagram feed. Also, when you send a link, phone number or address in Direct, your friend can tap through to launch the appropriate app to handle it, like Safari, the phone app or your contacts.

Instagram added more Snapchat-like features — disappearing photos and live video — to its Direct service in November 2016. It also bundled permanent and disappearing photos together this past April. These new additions might further encourage users to stay within the walled Instagram garden when chatting, instead of hopping over to apps like Snapchat. Landscape and portrait uploads are available on iOS now with Android to come later. Links, however, are available with the update on both platforms.

Source: Instagram

Robot uses machine-learning to grab objects on the first try

Training robots how to grasp various objects without dropping them usually requires a lot of practice. But a new robot, designed by researchers at UC Berkeley and Siemens and described in an upcoming paper, can learn how to grip new objects just by studying a database of 3D shapes.

The robot is connected to a 3D sensor and a deep-learning neural network to which researchers fed images of objects. They included information about the objects’ shapes, visual appearances and the physics of how to go about grabbing them. So, when a new object is placed in front of the robot, it just has to match it to a similar object in the database.

In practice, when the robot was more than 50 percent confident that it could grab a new object, the robot was able to grip and not drop it 98 percent of the time. If it was less than 50 percent confident, the robot would give the object a poke and then decide on a gripping strategy. In those cases, the robot was successful 99 percent of the time. A quick little inspection is all it needs to overcome a lack of confidence.

This method of robot training can shave a lot of time off from machine-learning processes and can produce robots with greater dexterity. “We can generate sufficient training data for deep neural networks in a day or so instead of running months of physical trials on a real robot,” Jeff Mahler, a postdoctoral researcher working on the project, told MIT Technology Review. The robots currently used in factories are very precise and accurate with known objects but can’t adjust well when faced with new ones. The efficiency of this training strategy and the reliability of the robot’s grip sets this method up nicely for commercial use in the future.

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Arxiv

Baidu’s text-to-speech system mimics a variety of accents ‘perfectly’

Chinese tech giant Baidu’s text-to-speech system, Deep Voice, is making a lot of progress toward sounding more human. The latest news about the tech are audio samples showcasing its ability to accurately portray differences in regional accents. The company says that the new version, aptly named Deep Voice 2, has been able to “learn from hundreds of unique voices from less than a half an hour of data per speaker, while achieving high audio quality.” That’s compared to the 20 hours hours of training it took to get similar results from the previous iteration, for a single voice, further pushing its efficiency past Google’s WaveNet in a few months time.

Baidu says that unlike previous text-to-speech systems, Deep Voice 2 finds shared qualities between the training voices entirely on its own, and without any previous guidance. “Deep voice 2 can learn from hundreds of voices and imitate them perfectly,” a blog post says.

In a research paper (PDF), Baidu concludes that its neural network can create voice pretty effectively even from small voice samples from hundreds of different speakers. All of which to say, it might not be long before we start hearing digital assistants that are more representative of the voices users encounter in their day-to-day lives.

To hear how far the tech has come and for more information of how the team got to this point, hit the source links below.

Via: The Verge

Source: Baidu (1), (2) (PDF)

Android co-founder teases smartphone reveal date on Twitter

Android co-founder Andy Rubin teased us with a photo of his new smartphone this past March. The glimpse was small, showing only a corner of the new phone made by Rubin’s company, Essential Products, Inc. The company jumped on Twitter today to announce that “something big” was coming May 30. Assuming the hype machine is in full force, this likely means that we will get a glimpse of the Essential smart phone in five days.

Hi, welcome to our Twitter page. We’re here to let you know something big is coming May 30th! Stay tuned…

— Essential (@essential) May 25, 2017

Essential will focus on a line up of connected tablets, smartphones and mobile software, according to early reports. The smartphone prototypes are reportedly larger than Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus and feature bezel-free sreens and ceramic backings. The reports also say that the Essential team is working on a feature similar to Apple’s 3D Touch and magnetic charging capabilities, which seems to position Rubin’s new company as iPhone competition rather than other Android-powered hardware. We hope to find out more next week.

Via: The Verge

Source: Essential/Twitter

‘Titanfall 2’ gets its first new mech

Titanfall 2 was one of last year’s most hotly-anticipated –and well-received — titles and the team behind it has kept its multiplayer scene alive with several free DLC releases. While the playerbase has dwindled, the next gratis content addition, Monarch Reigns, might lure enough back to revive the game when it drops on May 30th. At long last players will get a seventh titan, the first new battle mech added to the game since its launch.

The Monarch is a rework of the Vanguard titan — aka, the original model that housed your robot bestie from the campaign mode, BT — but tweaked for PVP. As the video’s description states, the new robosuit “features a unique Upgrade Core, which allows her to improve her combat abilities during a battle based on options set by her Pilot. Monarch also has an impressive ability to draw power from enemy Titans to recharge her own shields, or the shields of her friendly Titans.”

The Monarch Reigns DLC will also add a new map, Relic, which returns from the first Titanfall. Expect many vertical faces to wallrun and big open space to snipe. Players can also buy a pair of prime skins for the Tone and Ronin titans, plus other in-game items, to support the team. Y’know, since they keep giving content away for free.

Source: YouTube

Apple Confirms June 5 WWDC Keynote Will Be Live Streamed

Apple today added a new events page to its main website, confirming that its June 5 Worldwide Developers Conference will be live streamed and available to watch on the Apple website and through the Apple TV.

Apple previously said it would provide a live stream of the Worldwide Developers Conference through its Apple Developer website and through the WWDC app, but the new event page makes it clear the keynote event will be available for all to watch even without a developer account.

WWDC 2017 is looking like it will be one of the most exciting conferences we’ve had in years. Along with introducing new versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, there are rumors suggesting Apple will introduce new hardware.

New MacBooks and MacBook Pro models are expected, and there’s a chance Apple will also introduce a refreshed MacBook Air. Rumors suggest the notebooks will feature more powerful processors and perhaps some other internal upgrades, but no design changes will be included.

Along with new MacBooks, Apple may also introduce two much-rumored products, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and the Siri speaker. The 10.5-inch iPad Pro is said to feature a bigger display in a body that’s similar in size to the current 9.7-inch iPad Pro, made possible through much smaller bezels.

Apple’s Siri speaker is the company’s answer to the popular Amazon Echo, and it is expected to feature Siri integration, superior sound quality, and perhaps a touch display.

For the June 5 keynote event, MacRumors will provide a live blog both here on MacRumors.com and on our MacRumorsLive Twitter account, along with detailed coverage of everything Apple announces during the week.

Related Roundup: WWDC 2017
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iOS 11 Wishlist: Features MacRumors Readers Are Hoping to See in the Next Version of iOS

Apple will introduce the next-generation version of iOS, iOS 11, on June 5 at its Worldwide Developers Conference. While WWDC is less than two weeks away, we’ve haven’t heard many details on what we can expect.

There’s talk about an overhauled design and an updated user interface along with rumors of new functionality for the iPad, but beyond that, we don’t know what’s coming, and we don’t know what that new user interface will look like. In the absence of rumors, we’ve taken a look at some of the most-desired features MacRumors readers are hoping for in iOS 11, culled from our forums.

Unsurprisingly, many readers are looking forward to a new design and an overhauled interface. Here are some of the things readers want in a design refresh:

– Animated icons – Allowing developers to add small animations to app icons is something that iOS users have been wanting for several years. With access to subtle animations, apps like Fantastical could feature an icon with the current date, or third-party weather apps could display the current temperature.

– iPhone complications – The Apple Watch interface features multiple complications or small icons that let Apple Watch users glean information at a glance. On the iPhone, complications could be added to the lock screen or the Home screen to serve the same function, letting users see information like weather or activity level without needing to open an app.

– Customizable Control Center – iOS 10 made a mess of the Control Center, splitting it into three screens. MacRumors readers are hoping for a more unified design with the ability to choose what icons and functions are displayed. Expanded 3D Touch for more granular control over Control Center options would also improve the Control Center.

– Call interface – When an incoming phone or FaceTime call is received on an iPhone, it takes over the entire display with a call interface, something people would like to see changed in iOS 11. A call interface that pops up over what a user is doing instead of domineering the entire iPhone is a feature several readers mentioned wanting.

– Volume interface – On a similar note, there’s a lot of hate towards the current volume display that pops up when the volume is adjusted on the iPhone because it’s a giant icon in the middle of the screen. Something subtler and less intrusive is at the top of several wish lists.

– Widgets – Android-style Home screen live tiles or widgets are another feature that some iOS users have long desired. Apple added widgets to the Notification Center on the iPhone, but some readers want a more integrated, customizable solution directly on the Home screen.

– Keyboard – Users who prefer a swipe-based keyboard (where typing is done by swiping across the screen) would like to see that added as an option. A top number row across the default keyboard is also highly desired.

– Dark mode – Dark mode was a feature rumored for iOS 10 that never materialized, and MacRumors readers are hoping to see it in iOS 11. A system-wide dark mode that comes on at sunset is something a lot of people want, and with an overhauled interface rumored for iOS 11, it could happen.

A dark mode concept from iHelpBR
– iPhone 7 Plus multitasking features – Some users would like to see the iPad’s multitasking features expanded to the iPhone 7 Plus, including Split View, which allows two apps to be used at once, and picture-in-picture, which allows a video to be watched in the corner of the display while other apps are in use. With a larger 5.8-inch display rumored for the OLED iPhone, it doesn’t seem out of the question.

Split-View multitasking on iPad
Along with the above listed design changes, there are also wish lists for individual apps, Siri, and other internal features, ranging from notifications to Continuity.

Photos App

Many MacRumors readers want to see some significant improvements to the Photos app, which got a major overhaul in iOS 10. Facial recognition was added, allowing iOS devices to automatically recognize the people in photos and group them accordingly, but the feature is on-device only and does not sync for privacy reasons.

Some users want the People option to sync across devices for convenience purposes, while others want to be able to choose specific albums to sync to iCloud Photo Library. Other desired features include options to fully hide photos from albums and options for manually adding things like keywords and location.

Camera App

Several camera settings for adjusting video and other options are tucked away in the Settings app, and several readers would like to see those options added to the Camera app instead, where accessing them would be much easier.

An option for manual controls in the Camera app is also a requested feature, as it would allow users to have more control over photos without needing to download a third-party app.

Maps

iOS users would like to see an option for offline Maps and multi-destination routes in iOS 11, two features that are available in Google Maps.

Siri

Along with an overhauled interface, a better version of Siri seems to be one of the features people are most hoping for in iOS 11. The good news is that Apple’s rumored to be working on some major Siri improvements, and it’s likely we’ll see something Siri-related in iOS 11.

– Text-based Siri – A Siri assistant would allow people who don’t want to talk to their phones to interact with Siri via text, sort of like a chatbot. Google just introduced chatbot abilities for Google Assistant, and introduced a Google Assistant iOS app, which could inspire Apple to release a similar feature.

– Unified Search – A merged Siri and Spotlight Search feature goes hand-in-hand with a text-based Siri assistant. The search function could be updated to support Siri-style commands that could be typed into the current search interface.

– Offline Siri – Some users would like to be able to use Siri when the iPhone is offline for tasks that are able to be accomplished without an Internet connection.

– Extended SiriKit – Opening up SiriKit to more kinds of apps would expand Siri’s capabilities.

Other Features

File management – Several MacRumors readers mentioned a desire for a better file management system that would make it easier to transfer content between apps. MacStories’ Federico Vittici made a mockup featuring a drag and drop interface and a file storage shelf on the iPad that would be an ideal way for Apple to implement simpler file sharing options.

Federico Vittici’s iOS 11 file sharing concept
– Notification grouping – A lot of people hate the way notifications are handled on iOS. Options for grouping notifications by app would go a long way towards cleaning up the Notification Center.

– Default apps – While it probably won’t happen, MacRumors readers would like to see an option to set non-Apple default apps, like choosing Chrome for the default browser or Google Maps for the default mapping app.

– Improved Continuity – For those of us with multiple devices, Apple’s Continuity features that let tasks be transferred from one device to another are super useful. Improvements to make existing Continuity features more reliable would be nice, as would support for ongoing media — the ability to transfer a call in progress, or a movie that’s playing.

Another thoughtful Continuity suggestion involves the Mac and native support for using the iPad as a secondary Mac display, functionality that’s currently enabled through third-party apps like Duet Display. Apple could also potentially add support for connecting an iPad to a Mac to enable drawing features, allowing it to serve as a substitute for a Wacom tablet. That’s another third-party feature that’s already available through apps like Astropad.

– Multi-user support – Support for multiple users on the iPad has been a long-desired feature, but Apple has thus far declined to implement it outside of a classroom setting.

– Touch ID for locking apps – Third-party developers can use Touch ID as a second layer of security for locking iOS apps, but some users would like to see this feature expanded to encompass all apps. The option to lock apps like Photos with Touch ID would prevent them from being accessed without a fingerprint or a password even if someone bypassed an iPhone passcode.

What features are you hoping to see in iOS 11? Join in on the discussion about the update on the MacRumors forums.

Apple will unveil iOS 11 on June 5, the day of its WWDC keynote event. The update will be provided to developers immediately, while Public Beta testers can expect access later this summer. iOS 11 will be officially released this fall alongside new iPhones.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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