Vine’s rapturous return has been delayed indefinitely

When Twitter shut down Vine in early 2017, the internet mourned what had become a haven for bizarre and unexpectedly sublime content. But by the end of the year, hope returned when its cofounder Dom Hofmann tweeted a simple but unmistakable Vine 2.0 logo announcing he was creating, on his own, a new version of the platform. And yet, fate is a fickle mistress. The tweet originally announcing the platform’s return is gone, as with all others on Hofmann’s account — save one stating that Vine 2.0 has been postponed indefinitely.

the v2 project is postponed https://t.co/H0e9e0BTdg pic.twitter.com/mN5wIbdQsf

— v2 (@v2app) May 4, 2018

In a message to the platform’s community, Hofmann admitted that despite initially asserting Vine 2.0 would be a self-funded personal project, the overwhelming attention has ratcheted up expectations. With so many people eager to join, estimated costs got too high for Hofmann to afford alone — especially to afford legal fees, he added — that it would require outside funding to launch at such a scale. As someone who already runs a company, Hofmann would have to start a new one, with investors, to handle the task.

So Hofmann is taking a step back and pausing the release indefinitely until more pieces fall into place. “I’m very, very sorry for the disappointment. If it’s any consolation, I think it would have been even more disappointing if this service had been developed and released incorrectly, which is where we were headed. I’d like for us to get it right,” Hofmann wrote in the post.

If you need your Vine fix in the meantime, he recommended jumping on similar apps that have sprung up recently — and urged developers releasing projects in the space to reach out to him.

Source: Vine 2.0 forum

Apple to Shut Down Texture App for Windows Following Acquisition

Following its acquisition by Apple, Texture this week announced plans to shutter its Texture magazine subscription app for Windows users at the end of June.

As noted by The Verge, Texture recently sent out emails to its users letting them know that the Windows service will be discontinued on June 30th, and the company also added a notice to its website.

Texture says the Windows app, which has not been updated in some time, is being shut down to “keep things working smoothly.” The discontinuation of the app may have been on the horizon regardless of the acquisition by Apple based on its infrequent updates and poor reviews.

Texture is an all-access pass to the world’s best magazines. To keep things working smoothly, older versions of the app sometimes need to be retired. After June 30th, 2018, the Texture Windows app will no longer be available. Your Texture subscription will continue to be available on compatible phones or tablets running iOS or Android and on Fire HD tablets along with ongoing access to all the magazines you have selected as your favorites.

Windows users who are losing access to Texture through the Windows platform will be able to continue to access Texture using smartphones and tablets running iOS or Android, but there will no longer be a way to read Texture magazines on a Windows PC.

Apple first announced plans to acquire Texture in mid-March. At the time, Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue said Apple was “committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for users.”

For those unfamiliar with the service, Texture offers subscribers unlimited access to more than 200 digital magazines for $9.99 per month. Available titles include major magazines like Cosmopolitan, People, Better Homes and Gardens, Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Billboard, Town & Country, ELLE, Good Housekeeping, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and more.

Rumors have suggested Apple plans to use its Texture acquisition to launch an upgraded Apple News app with a subscription-based news service that would include Texture’s magazine subscription options.

The news subscription option, which would be similar to Apple Music but for news and magazines, would provide a boost to Apple’s growing services category.

Tags: Apple acquisition, Texture
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‘Arrested Development’ season 5 will include Jeffrey Tambor

After Jeffrey Tambor was accused of sexual harassment and assault by multiple women, he left the hit show Transparent. However, what would become of his other projects was up in the air. Now, Netflix has confirmed to TV Guide that Jeffrey Tambor will appear in the fifth season of Arrested Development, which will premiere on the streaming service soon.

It’s not clear whether Tambor’s storyline in the fifth season will be truncated or changed based on the accusations. However, two of Tambor’s Arrested Development co-stars have publicly supported the actor: Jason Bateman and David Cross. Cross also indicated that more of the Arrested Development cast and crew supports the actor, though none others have come forward to voice that support.

Source: TV Guide

Lenovo Mirage Solo review: A solid VR headset looking for a niche

There’s nothing quite like spring in New York. It’s warm, but not too warm. Protests and open-air markets are spinning up at Union Square. The popsicle vendor next to the office is slinging treats while the heady aroma of kebabs from the food truck around the corner draws a crowd of lunchtime regulars. At long last, people are luxuriating outside and New York feels alive again. Naturally, since the city was brimming with energy, I had no choice but to go outside and goof around with a VR headset.

You see, Lenovo’s Mirage Solo is part of a new breed of self-contained VR headsets. You don’t need to connect it to a powerful PC or stick a phone inside of it. You just turn it on, pick up Google’s classic Daydream controller, and dive right in. While headsets like the Oculus Go are accessible because they’re fairly cheap, Lenovo and Google were a little more ambitious. They needed to take the existing Daydream concept and make it more capable. By cooking up a way to help this all-in-one headset understand your movement in the real world and translate it into virtual ones, I’d argue they succeeded.

It helps that Lenovo didn’t have to design the Mirage to work with different kinds of phones — instead, it packed those smartphones components into the headset itself. Tucked away inside the Mirage’s plasticky white body is a Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a microSD slot and a 5.5-inch LCD screen. Basically it’s a flagship phone from 2017, just designed to be worn on your face. Lenovo did modify or rebuild some of the parts to perform a little better, though.

Take that Snapdragon, for instance: it can run at higher speeds than normal when apps and games require extra power. The difference isn’t massive, but it was sometimes noticeable when I compared the same apps on a phone inside a Daydream View headset. The addition of heatsinks toward the front of the headset meant the Mirage Solo was less prone to overheating under heavy loads, even when I took it outside to play games under that beautiful, spring sun. It’s obviously not as powerful as, say, an HTC Vive Pro tethered to a gaming PC, but those chipset tweaks and some impressive app designs mean the difference isn’t as vast as one might assume.

Lenovo and Google made a somewhat controversial decision in opting for LCD instead of OLED for the screen. OLED is more common in VR headsets because of its faster refresh and deeper blacks. But they do suffer from ghosting when there’s lots of contrast in a scene. Lenovo’s solution was to cook up a specialized LCD running at 2,560×1,440 (also known as QHD) and it worked. There’s essentially no ghosting here. The flip side is that, while the screen is technically capable of refresh rates as high as 90Hz, Lenovo capped it at 75Hz so as not to burn through the battery too quickly. As it stands, one charge is generally been good for between 2.5 and 3 hours of use — I can’t imagine how fast those figures would tank if the screen were updating 90 times a second.

None of this would matter if the headset itself was too unwieldy to use, but thankfully that’s not the case. I’ve found Lenovo’s design extremely comfortable to wear for long periods of time, even when I’m wearing my massive hipster glasses. Rather than offer a tangle of elastic straps and call it a day, the company went with a solid plastic strap that wraps around your head like a crown. To get the headset feeling appropriately snug, you can twist a dial around back to adjust the circumference and press a button on the bottom of the headset to control how far forward you want the forehead plate to sit.

Engadget

Describing how one can adjust the headset just then was more awkward than actually using it. It never took me more than a few moments of fiddling before I found my sweet spot, and the headset never felt overly cumbersome. As with most devices meant to attach to your person, your experience might be different. I didn’t notice any outside light leaking in around the edges, but a few colleagues with more reasonably sized heads struggled with that. Oh, and while the Mirage Solo might be my favorite headset to wear, its solid headstrap means it’s far less portable than a Gear VR or Oculus Go. You could throw this thing in a backpack and whip it out on a plane, but it’ll take up so much space in your bag that it’s almost not worth it.

Of course, this headset is as important (and as expensive) as it is because of its WorldSense tracking technology. Baked into the front of the headset are two cameras that, combined with a set of rotational sensors inside the headset, provide true 6-degrees-of-freedom movement in whatever apps support it. Put another way, you’re not limited to simply looking around the world the way you would with something like an Oculus Go — you can physically bob, weave, step into and slink out of virtual environments. There are no external sensors involved, and no closed off spaces required. For the most part, it just works — albeit with some limitations.

Exactly how much you’ll get to wander is up to Google and Daydream developers, though most apps won’t let you move around for more than a few feet before reminding you to take a step back “into the experience”. And since the pack-in Daydream controller only supports three degrees of freedom compared to the headset’s six, I often experienced a sort of physical disconnect because I could maneuver my “body” inside some virtual environments in ways the controller couldn’t.

You’ll look like a goofball using the Mirage Solo outside, but it performs well under the hot sun.

Engadget

It can feel limited at times, but WorldSense tracking is huge addition to mobile VR, and I hope it doesn’t take too long to become the rule instead of the exception. In the meantime, though, we’re left with a big question: will developers actually bother building new experiences for WorldSense? It’s tough to say, but Google is off to a pretty good start. Of the roughly 250 Daydream apps currently available, I’m told around 40 will be updated with WorldSense support by the time you can buy a Mirage Solo. Google engineers also told me that adapting some existing Daydream apps to work with WorldSense could be as simple as toggling a setting.

It’ll obviously take time for WorldSense to pick up traction (or, you know, fail completely), but some of the initial experiences for it are a blast. The most impressive by far as been Blade Runner: Revelations, a Daydream exclusive that puts you smack in the middle of a futuristic, neo-noir Los Angeles. It starts off by putting you in the seat of a flying car called a spinner, and I spent the first few minutes crouching, stepping side to side and craning my neck to take in every little detail of the spinner’s interior and the aerial views of LA. Then you’re dropped into a tense, vibrant back alley and you’re left to start your investigation.

And then there’s Rez: Infinite, a port of a re-release of one of my favorite games of all time. I’d sound like an idiot trying to explain the story, but it’s an on-rails shooter that blends absurdly trippy visuals and joyous musicality in a way that feels truly, special in VR. I might’ve looked like an idiot playing it outside, sure, but I frankly couldn’t care less. If other developers commit to crafting experiences as fun and as visually arresting as these, then Daydream’s future as a VR platform has a lot of potential.

As much as I’ve enjoyed my time with the Mirage Solo, I’ve had a hard time figuring out exactly who it’s for. The $400 price means it isn’t as attractive to VR newcomers as a phone-based Gear VR or Daydream View. On the other end of the spectrum are the VR die-hards, people who already have pricey gaming PCs and don’t balk at the cost of an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive Pro. In a way, the Mirage Solo exists in a sort of middle ground that few major companies have made much progress in yet — the self-contained Oculus Santa Cruz isn’t on sale yet, and HTC’s Vive Focus is only available in China for now. As a result, the Mirage Solo feels like an option for a very specific kind of VR fan: someone who values flexibility but doesn’t want to compromise on power too much. That’s a weird slice of the VR market to be sure, but for them, there might not be a better choice.

The first standalone Google Daydream VR headset is now available

The Lenovo Mirage Solo is the first standalone VR headset that runs Google’s Daydream. Now, Google has announced that the headset, along with the Mirage camera, are available for purchase today. These devices work both separately and together. The headset is priced at $400, while the camera is $300.

There are over 350 games, apps and experiences in the Daydream VR library that users can take advantage of. Additionally, the Lenovo Mirage Solo is equipped with WorldSense, which allows for high-quality positional tracking on mobile devices. And with the Lenovo Mirage camera (VR180), you can capture VR content with the ease of a point and shoot camera.

Engadget Editor Chris Velazco tried out the Mirage Solo and was impressed with how comfortable it is. It’s a middle ground between headsets aimed at newcomers and VR diehards: “the Mirage Solo feels like an option for a very specific kind of VR fan: someone who values flexibility but doesn’t want to compromise on power too much.” You can see Chris’s full review of the Lenovo Mirage Solo here.

The best EV charging stations

By Eric C. Evarts

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After more than 50 hours researching over 70 charging stations for electric cars and testing five of the most promising models, we’ve concluded that the best for most owners of current electric vehicles (EVs) is the Siemens VersiCharge VC30GRYU, though Tesla owners should just buy Tesla’s own charging station. The Siemens isn’t the most powerful unit and doesn’t have the most features, but it’s the most convenient to use and the least expensive, and it’s powerful enough to quickly charge most EVs, proving that you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a great home-charging station for your electric car.

Why buy a charging station

Photo: Rik Paul

Our research answers the biggest question most EV owners have after they buy their first EV: “What charger should I get?” All electric cars come with a 120-volt (Level 1) charge cord that you can use either at home or when you’re away. For most EV buyers, though, buying a faster 240-volt (Level 2) charging station makes their electric car more convenient and capable, and is a virtual necessity if you want to use your EV for daily commuting or other everyday runs, because it means you’ll always be able to fully charge the vehicle overnight.

How we picked and tested

The charging stations we tested. Photo: Rik Paul

We started by closely examining the specs and costs of every readily available charging station we could find. We focused on 240-volt charging stations rated at 30 amps or higher, which provide notably faster charging than lower-amp-rating charging stations.

A good charging station insulates you from the high power that faster charging requires, seals all electrical connections, and makes sure the system is safe for you to use. We stuck with name-brand charging stations that met all these requirements and adhere to strict safety ratings. We also limited our test group to charging stations that plug into a wall outlet rather than requiring a professional, permanent installation. This makes it easy to pull the charging station off the wall if you move or purchase a new unit. Finally, we set a price limit of $600, high enough to meet our criteria but not overpriced.

We settled on four charging stations to test, using each over the course of a month with a 2017 Nissan Leaf SL. We charged the car only when the low-battery warning came on, and recorded the mileage and length of the charging cycle each time we juiced up. We also ran some tests with a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt Premier, but found significant differences between the Bolt and the Leaf. To read about our testing process in more details, please see our full guide to EV charging stations.

Our pick

The Siemens’s charge plug mounts to the unit when not in use. On the front are handy pause and delay-timer buttons. Photo: Rik Paul

The Siemens VersiCharge VC30GRYU is the most affordable unit that charges most current electric cars at maximum speed, and it’s dead simple to use. We especially like it because you can manually set delayed start times with a simple press of a button; you can stop or pause charging just as easily; and its large size makes wrapping even fairly long cords easy. It’s also among the least expensive fully safety-rated 30-amp units we found, complete with a wall plug. In short, the VersiCharge does everything most EV drivers need, and shows that you don’t have to spend a ton to install a great electric-car charging station in your garage.

The VersiCharge will recharge a car’s battery at a rate of 16-plus miles per hour, giving a Nissan Leaf a full charge in less than six hours. By far our favorite feature of the VersiCharge are its two simple control buttons on the front, a feature that no other charging station we tested has. On the left is a power button that can also pause the charging; on the right is a delay button that lets you delay charging for two, four, six, or eight hours, allowing you to time charging for when electrical rates are lowest.

If you want a faster charging station or one with Wi-Fi–enabled features

Photo: Rik Paul

The eMotorWerks JuiceBox Pro 40 shows that you don’t need to spend more than $650 for a great, high-power, Wi-Fi–enabled unit. It’s 25 percent faster (on paper) than our top pick on paper, though in reality you won’t always be able to take advantage of the extra speed. The JuiceBox Pro 40 also offers a smartphone app so you can start, stop, and monitor the charge remotely.

So why isn’t the JuiceBox Pro 40 our top pick? The short answer is that only a small number of electric-car buyers can use its extra capabilities, and it’s not quite as convenient to use as our top pick yet costs more. It also lacks the simple control buttons on the front panel that the Siemens model has, and the cord isn’t as easy to hang.

A truly portable option

The AeroVironment TurboCord Dual is a 16-amp, 240-volt charger that plugs into a NEMA 6-20 outlet, the kind used for small wood- and metal-shop machines. If you plan to stop at a school or at the house of someone who has a well-equipped shop, or if you want to buy a single, portable charging station for use in two locations (each equipped with the proper outlet), this might be the cord for you.

At 15 amps, the TurboCord can replenish 8 to 10 miles of range per hour of charging. That’s slower charging than our top picks, but what makes the TurboCord Dual compelling is that it also comes with an adapter to plug into a standard 120-volt household outlet. If you want an extra 120-volt charge cord for your car, so you can leave one at home and carry one with you, the TurboCord Dual may be the best solution.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

One man built his own vacation spot in VR

When most people fancy a vacation, they pack up their suitcase and go somewhere warm like Barbados. Not Bastiaan Hooimeijer, who goes by the name “Naam” online. Instead, he built his own holiday spot inside virtual reality. The result — crafted using Google Blocks — isn’t an idyllic beach or a villa hidden in the French Riviera. It’s a small caravan in a poky piece of land surrounded by piles of discarded junk. The world is bright and colorful, but it’s not the sort of place that Lonely Planet would send one of its travel writers.

Still, A Piece of the Universe is impressive. With some virtual reality hardware, including a pair of wand-style controllers, you can pick up everyday objects and quickly teleport over short distances. “I’m not a vacation kind of guy,” Naam explains. “I never go anywhere, but I do have some escapist urges.” There’s plenty to see and do too. You can wander to a small river, for instance, and prod some waterlilies with a stick, or check the post box and sift through mail while cars hurtle past. If you’re feeling cold, you can strike a match and light the caravan’s wood burner, or bash at a typewriter with the grace of The Incredible Hulk.

These activities are all very pedestrian, but that’s the point. It’s supposed to be a place that you can quickly visit and relax in for 10 or 15 minutes. A virtual hideaway for when life gets a little too stressful.

Naam is the co-founder of Happy Ship, a 3D animation studio based in the Netherlands. He loves comics and fell in love with computers, and 3D animation, after leaving the Minerva Art Academy and “stumbling” into a job in desktop publishing. Pixar’s first feature-length film, Toy Story, had just been released and Naam was keen to work on his own movies. He met some like-minded people and formed Happy Ship after Maxon, the creators of 3D modeling software Cinema 4D, asked for a small technical demo.

“Since then we’ve just been saying yes to a lot of stuff,” he said. “Can you do visual effects? ‘Sure, sure we can do it!’ We had no idea, but we managed.” Fifteen years later, Naam and Happy Ship continue to work in film and visual effects. Most of their projects are for the Dutch market, though, which is why you probably haven’t heard of them. They’re a talented bunch, winning a prestigious Golden Calf — the Dutch equivalent of the Oscars — for the 20-minute short Polska Warrior last September.

Naam discovered VR through a colleague who had backed the original Rift on Kickstarter. He tried it on and immediately fell in love. “It’s really a new medium,” he said. “A lot of people approach it like it’s a new way to be entertained, but really, especially for artists, it’s a new medium of expression.” The hardware, of course, was primitive compared to the consumer version that launched in early 2016. Still, it was a captivating piece of hardware, and more than capable of running Naam’s early experiments inside Unity, a popular video game engine.

How ‘A Piece of the Universe’ looked in late 2017

Google released Blocks, a 3D modeling application for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, in July 2017. It’s a free piece of software aimed at developers and artists who want to quickly build custom objects. The app lets you insert, manipulate and color 3D shapes, or “blocks,” to create something entirely new. Grab a cone and a few multicolored spheres, for instance, and you soon have an ice cream that’s ready to be exported into a larger scene.

Naam had been toying with idea of a virtual caravan for a few years. He decided to take a vacation and spent the time off modeling his dream camper in Blocks. The animator liked the tool because its angular, low-poly aesthetic with his own drawing style. “There was some magic click that I had with the app,” he said. Sculpting in VR also made it easier to judge scale. With traditional 3D modeling software, you have to estimate size on-screen and then check if it feels right in VR. In Blocks, and VR painting apps such as Tilt Brush and Quill, the process is simplified because you’re already seeing the object from a first-person perspective.

“There’s something fishy about the place, obviously.”

From the outset Naam was posting development teasers on Twitter. These videos quickly blew up, attracting hundreds — sometimes thousands — of retweets and questions. Naam was floored by the response and decided to release a version that anyone could play on December 23rd, 2017. Again, the reaction was positive and Naam was encouraged to continue the project. Over the next few months, he worked on various bug fixes and a wealth of new objects, including a lighter — which introduced fire to the experience — fireworks and a fridge. His most recent update added a typewriter, mail and plumbing.

A Piece of the Universe is, however, still a passion project. It’s technically free to download — customers set their own price — and listed as a “prototype” on Naam’s Itch.io page. Players know, therefore, that updates will be small and infrequent. “It’s a very nice way of working,” Naam said.

He’s now exploring whether A Piece of the Universe should have its own story. As you walk around the caravan, it’s natural to wonder who might have lived there before and, more importantly, what happened to them. “It’s not developed so far that I can talk about it out loud,” he said, “and I’m still discovering it myself.” There are hints in the world, though. There are some old photographs, for instance, and cars toot loudly when they drive past. “There’s something fishy about the place, obviously,” he said.

The most intriguing part of the experience, though, starts when you don a pair of headphones in the caravan. You’re suddenly transported to a bizarre, dream-like version of reality with a purple sky and a giant “mudskipper” ship that rips through the campsite. Is it a dream, a vision, or something else entirely? Naam is tight-lipped but hinted that he always wanted to have a game with “little outings into different planes of reality.” How that will evolve, though, and fold into the larger story is unclear. Maybe the caravan is on a mystical burial site; perhaps these dimensions are the key to understanding the previous owner’s disappearance.

“Maybe you can dive into the typewriter at certain moments, or into the little ditch behind the fence,” Naam said. “I don’t know! I can’t make any promises. But that’s next on the list. If all the basic details are more or less finished, I want to make little fantasy outings.”

What’s a holiday, after all, without a few memorable excursions?

Source: A Piece of the Universe

Senator wants Facebook to stop tracking users after they log out

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) isn’t pleased with Facebook and he wants the FTC to do as much as it can to ensure the company is protecting its users’ privacy and data. In a letter sent this week to the FTC chairman and commissioners, he requests certain actions be taken against the social media giant and asks for information about the commission’s investigation into the company.

Markey says in his letter that he believes the recent revelations about Facebook and its data privacy practices suggest it violated the FTC’s 2011 consent decree — a settlement Facebook signed onto in which it agreed to get authorization from users before sharing their data with others and to inform users of any unauthorized access to their data. “I am concerned that Facebook failed to comply with this consent decree,” Markey wrote. “I urge the FTC to use all necessary resources to investigate Facebook, demand that Facebook pay all monetary penalties it owes as a result of any transgressions of the 2011 order and instruct Facebook to institute additional safeguards.” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) made similar requests last month.

Among his requests, Markey is asking that Facebook be required to make its future privacy practice audits available to the public and that the FTC ensure that those conducting the audits are independent of Facebook. He also asks that Facebook be required to stop tracking its users across websites once they’ve logged out of their Facebook accounts and that the company stop using its facial recognition tools until the FTC’s investigation is complete. Further, the senator requests that Facebook be prevented from weakening its current policies that prohibit apps from collecting data on users’ friends, as Aleksandr Kogan’s now infamous “thisisyourdigitallife” app did. Markey also calls for Facebook to publicly release complaints and records that note violations of the consent decree and report them to the FTC.

In regards to the FTC’s investigation into Facebook’s data privacy practices, Markey wants to know if Facebook has given the commission all of the audits it was required to make per the 2011 order, who conducted them and who at the FTC is in charge of reviewing them. He also requested information about the ongoing investigation such as when its findings will be available to the public and what steps have been taken so far.

Markey, along with Blumenthal, introduced the CONSENT Act last month, legislation that would place more data security requirements on companies like Facebook and Google.

Source: Senator Markey

eBay Celebrates Star Wars Day With New Site-Wide 15% Off Coupon, Get HomePod for $306

eBay today launched its latest site-wide coupon event, in celebration of Star Wars Day. With the offer, you can get 15 percent off everything across eBay with just a few exclusions: Coins & Paper Money, Gift Cards & Coupons, and Real Estate categories.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with eBay. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The 15 percent off coupon is running for one day only and ends later today, May 4, at 4:00 p.m. PT. To use it, you’ll need to make a purchase on eBay worth $50 or more, pay for the item or items by the coupon’s expiration time today, and enter the promo code PMAY4TH in the redemption code field. The discount caps at a maximum value of $100, and applies only to the purchase price and excludes shipping, handling, and taxes. Users with an address in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean are eligible for the coupon.

There are numerous Apple products that can be purchased at a discount with eBay’s coupon today, including a HomePod sold by alldayzip. Although the store has the speaker priced at $360, $10 above its normal price tag, with 15 percent off you can get a brand new HomePod for $306.00 in Space Gray or White. For more ideas, browse eBay’s Daily Tech Deals page, which currently has new and refurbished items like Apple Pencil, UE Boom 2, iPad Pro, and more.

Just like the last coupon, the new Star Wars Day discount code is available across all of eBay, so even if you can’t find Apple products you’re interested in, there should be plenty of other items on the site that could be made a bit cheaper with the 15 percent off sale. The coupon is a one-time use code, so if you’re planning to purchase multiple items to get a discount, make sure to purchase them all at once.

For more information on the code visit eBay’s landing page, and then head over to our full Deals Roundup for descriptions of other sales.

Related Roundup: Apple DealsTag: eBay
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Apple Acknowledges Microphone Issue With Some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus Models on iOS 11.3 and Later

Apple has acknowledged a microphone issue affecting a limited number of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models running iOS 11.3 or later.

In an internal document distributed to Apple Authorized Service Providers this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said affected customers may experience a grayed-out speaker button during phone calls. The issue may also prevent affected customers from being heard during phone calls or FaceTime video chats.

Apple Authorized Service Providers have been instructed to first ask customers to disconnect or power off any Bluetooth headsets or other audio accessories connected to their iPhone to see if that alleviates the problem.

If the speaker button remains grayed out during a call, the service providers have been instructed to run audio diagnostics. Affected devices will display a “device could not detect dock” or “accessory not supported” alert in the diagnostic pane, in which case the service provider can initiate a repair for the iPhone.

If an affected iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus is no longer covered by warranty, Apple says its service providers can request an exception for this particular issue. Apple’s document does not specify if the repairs will be completed free of charge, but it seems likely given the circumstances.

While this does not appear to be a widespread problem, there are have been some complaints about microphone issues on iOS 11.3 scattered across MacRumors, Reddit, Twitter, and the Apple Support Communities in recent months.

It’s unclear why iOS 11.3 and subsequent software versions are unintentionally disabling microphones on some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus units. Apple mentions that some of the devices may require a repair, suggesting the software update could somehow be causing a hardware defect, but information is lacking.

Affected customers can schedule an appointment with an Apple Authorized Service Provider or with the Genius Bar at an Apple Store via the Contact Apple Support page: iPhone → Repairs & Physical Damage → Unable to Hear Through Receiver or Speakers → Built-in Speaker → Bring In For Repair.

Apple has not confirmed this issue publicly, but MacRumors has verified the document’s authenticity with a reliable source. However, outside of our control, some Apple employees may be unaware of or deny the information. In that event, we recommend escalating your case to a senior AppleCare advisor if possible.

MacRumors has reached out to Apple for clarity on this issue. If and when we hear back, we’ll update this article.

Relevant: Apple’s support document titled Get help with the microphones on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Related Roundup: iOS 11Tag: AASP
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