Author: Brett Venter

That was quick. Chinese tech maker Xiaomi intends to start shipping its new SU7 EV to market in China this month. It’s quite a speedy turnaround from the first serious discussions about the brand making its own electric vehicles in 2021, though it’s likely that plans were in the pipeline for longer than that. Reuters reports that the announcement came via Weibo, the Chinese social media service. The company said that nearly 60 stores across 29 cities in China will take orders for the vehicle. A launch event is planned for 28 March, though the Speed Ultra 7 (SU7) has…

It might be time to consider LinkedIn Premium as part of your job search plans. Not because Microsoft has released yet more paid-for AI features, though that’s certainly the plan in 2024. No, it’s because Microsoft is making a fair chunk of money from the service now. The reason you should consider paying for a subscription is that all these other folks are. Microsoft revealed its revenue from LinkedIn Premium for the first time, scooping R32 billion ($1.7 billion) for the company in 2023. If that many of your employment competitors are getting a leg up, it’s probably time to…

Apple quietly announced the M3 upgrade to its MacBook Air lineup earlier this week and South Africa has just as quietly gotten pre-order details. More or less. Whether you’re after an upgraded 13in or 15in Air, you can register your interest today. The hardware is expected to launch in the country on 15 March, which is in keeping with the trend of having this stuff turn up on a Friday. After all, pre-orders opened today. Availability a week later is typically Apple. Drive a new M3 If you’re after the smaller of the two MacBook Air models, expect to pay…

Shure is a relatively new brand on Stuff South Africa’s radar but we had great fun with the company’s Aonic 40 last year. The Shure Aonic 50 Gen 2 turned up recently for another go at impressing the audio nerds at Stuff HQ and we have to say that it gave a good accounting of itself. The Aonic 50 Gen 2 isn’t perfect. You can look toward more notable brands if your conditions include a slice of perfection in your headphones. But it’s got loads to offer for folks looking for an alternative to the same old faces scrabbling for…

Netflix confirmed last year that a new crop of mobile games would launch for subscribers in 2024. Key among these is Hades, a previous winner of Stuff’s Game of the Year. The Netflix launch marks the first time the absolutely epic roguelike is available in mobile format so of course the streaming service has made it exclusive. Unfortunately, you’ll only reap the benefit of the 19 March release of the title if you’re an Apple customer. The game will be available on iPhone and iPad and only to Netflix subscribers. Even though it’ll be free, Netflix has opened pre-orders (more…

Sometimes you don’t need an hour-long presentation to tell your customers about an upgrade. Apple quietly announced that the MacBook Air range will receive an upgrade to the company’s latest M3 chipset. The move is utterly unsurprising, of course, but it’s also now official. The announcement happened via a release rather than a presentation, which is how you can tell that there’s not too much else going on with the Air range in this upgrade. There’s a new chipset and… that’s about it. That hasn’t stopped Apple from going on about its portable computer lineup’s Wonderful Features™, of course. Reupping…

Chinese tech brand Oppo has launched its new headline wearable device, the Oppo Watch X, in South Africa. It has done so just in time. With the departure of Fitbit from South African shores, the wearable technology landscape was beginning to look a little bare. Oppo is obviously hoping that its new smartwatch will fill at least a few gaps in the market, having taken a few pages from Samsung’s book and partnering up with Google to include Wear OS on the device. Since Wear OS combines Samsung, Fitbit, and Google’s software, we suspect the experience will be good. It…

Meta and LG have teamed up to accelerate the former’s extended reality (XR) aims, according to an announcement last week. Exactly what this will involve hasn’t been made clear but the smart money is on LG providing advanced display tech for future Meta devices. This makes a sort of sense. Since LG left the smartphone game, it’s continued to churn out components that would also suit virtual reality tech. But that doesn’t quite fit the stated aim of the partnership, which is to “…combine the strengths of both companies across products, content, services and platforms to drive innovation in customer…

Meta’s services have almost exclusively been about finding new ways to gather user data. This is especially true of the company’s hardware. If it’s able to provide an additional service at the same time, as was the case with the now-defunct Portal surveillance gear smart speakers, all the better. It should come as no surprise that the company’s VR kit will be the next Meta-owned hardware to start reporting back to the mothership. Well, reporting back… more. The Meta Quest and its successors have always shared some information with Meta but it has been confined to info required to keep…

Apple’s Project Titan, a long-rumoured and speculated-upon attempt by the company to design and launch its own electric vehicle, has concluded. That’s according to a Bloomberg report which claims that the EV project has been shuttered and staff involved have been moved to other tasks. According to the report, some of the engineers involved have been retasked to work on generative AI for the company. It’s almost a pity, knowing that we’re unlikely to see a self-driving EV from Apple (with a R2 million starting price tag), but given the number of delays to the decade-long speculative project, perhaps it’s…