ICYMI: the week’s 7 biggest tech stories from Samsung’s XR headset reveal to Apple’s 17 favorite App Store apps
Welcome, folks, to a week that has included some of the biggest announcements we might see before CES 2025, in what was an uncharacteristically busy few days so close to the holidays.
Samsung dropped a buzzer-beating announcement to keep its promise we’d find out about its XR tech “this year,” Apple Intelligence finally dropped its most-hyped features, and the Nintendo Switch 2 possibly broke cover. Phew!
To help you get all caught up, scroll down for our picks of the seven biggest tech news stories of the week. Once you’ve recapped the news, why not check out our picks for the seven new movies and TV shows to watch this weekend (December 13).
7. Sony’s PlayStation Wrap-Up broke day one
It’s the end of the year and that means Spotify Wrapped clones for everything – not just your music. PlayStation got in on the action with its own gaming Wrap-Up, but either because it was too popular or due to some glitch it was down for a while after launch.
Thankfully it’s back up now, so you can finally head to the official PlayStation Wrap-Up 2024 page to see your stats – I apparently played nearly 200 hours of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in my hunt for the Platinum Trophy, and over 50 hours just of Balatro, TechRadar’s Game of the Year.
6. We celebrated the lighter side of (wild) life
From more than 9,000 images 45 finalists were shortlisted for this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2024, with Italian photographer Milko Marchetti scooping the top award for a hilarious image of a squirrel looking like it’s stuck head-first in a tree.
Every image is an inspiring look at what artists can achieve with the best cameras on the market, and some creativity.
A free exhibition is happening from 11-15 December in the Gallery@Oxo in London, but if you can’t make it, all of 2024’s finalists can be seen on the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards website.
5. We saw the Switch 2, maybe
The Nintendo Switch 2 is one of tech most poorly kept secrets. The follow up to the hugely popular Nintendo console has been the subject of multiple leaks over the past few months, and we might now have our first glimpse of it thanks to a now-deleted trailer from third-party accessory manufacturer Satisfye.
The video was for the Zengrip 2 specifically, and the trailer for the add-on seemingly showed us a blurry Nintendo Switch 2 model which highlighted a similar overall design to the original but with the rumored extra button which has been teased.
There are questions around whether this leak is legitimate or merely a way to stoke up hype for a Nintendo Switch grip, but with a release date announcement for the Switch 2 possible before the end of 2024, even, we might not have long to wait before we see the console for real.
4. Apple crowned the 17 best App Store apps
Following Google’s recent announcement of the best Android apps of 2024, Apple has revealed the 17 apps it thinks are the best its App Store had to offer us this year.
iPhone App of the Year Kino will help you capture better videos, Mac App of the Year Adobe Lightroom will help you edit those videos and other snaps, while Apple Arcade Game of the Year Balatro+ will help you lose a lot of hours from the working day (I’m definitely not speaking from experience on that one. Not at all).
There are a lot of good picks among them, so you’ll want to see what the winners have to offer users across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.
3. Sora video generation looks scarily good
OpenAI has been busy of late, giving us a slew of big new reveals as part of its 12 Days of OpenAI event.
This week, it finally gave us access to Sora, its new AI video-generation platform that lets you generate shockingly realistic-looking videos. We’ve been giving it a test and even in our brief hands-on it’s clear that the tech will bring about a video creation revolution – though maybe not in a great way.
You can give it a try at Sora.com once you log into your ChatGPT Plus account; you need at least that level of access to start creating up to 50 generations a month, while Pro gets you unlimited. However, while it is kinda fun to play around with the software to create fun clips, their realistic look can’t help but set off fears that this technology could be abused.
The tech isn’t perfect right now, with our own tests generating dogs with tails that grow and disappear at random, for example – but it is something to be wary of as you browse the web. It’s all very impressive, sure, but it’s about to become a lot harder to tell what is and isn’t real online.
2. iOS 18.2 took Apple Intelligence up a notch
Apple Intelligence has, to put it mildly, been feeling a little lacking. That was until this week, when iOS 18.2 rolled out with some much-needed updates to Apple’s AI.
These include Genmoji and Image Playground for generating custom emoji and images using text prompts, ChatGPT integration into Siri for more in-depth answers, and the rollout of Apple Intelligence to non-US English – meaning you can access it in the UK and Australia without changing your phone’s language settings.
It wasn’t just for iPhones either; Apple Intelligence updates came to Apple’s full suite of products via iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 updates.
1. Samsung’s Project Moohan broke cover
The worst-kept secret in tech – even more so than the Switch 2 – finally got unveiled this week, with Samsung and Google showcasing Project Moohan, the pair’s mixed-reality headset. And yes, it does look a lot like an Apple Vision Pro.
Powered by the Android XR platform, Moohan will launch sometime in 2025, with the developer kit rolling our right now to app creators so they can make software ahead of the headset’s release.
Details are light on the ground with regards to cost, a precise release date, and even battery life and weight – but we do know that Samsung has a pair of AR glasses up its sleeve, too. Once again, though, we’ll have to wait a while before we hear more about them, and even longer until we can try the specs out for ourselves.
Welcome, folks, to a week that has included some of the biggest announcements we might see before CES 2025, in what was an uncharacteristically busy few days so close to the holidays. Samsung dropped a buzzer-beating announcement to keep its promise we’d find out about its XR tech “this year,”…
