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Tech News
A new analysis argues that Google's Pixel phones have plateaued, with yearly hardware and software updates offering little meaningful improvement over previous generations. The piece contends that fragmented AI features, scattered branding, and incremental design changes are making Pixels feel unexciting compared to rivals.
Cold wallets are cryptocurrency storage methods that never connect to the internet, protecting the private keys needed to prove ownership of blockchain assets. These range from simple paper wallets listing 12 or 24 recovery words to dedicated hardware devices that sign transactions internally before connecting briefly via USB, Bluetooth or NFC to authorize transfers.
Snap is releasing its Specs smart glasses at a $2,195 price point, positioning the device as a major new consumer hardware product. CEO Evan Spiegel is pushing this bet even as Snap continues to face pressure over its lack of consistent profitability.
OpenAI filed a legal response to Apple's lawsuit accusing former employees Chang Liu and Tang Tan of stealing trade secrets to build an AI hardware device. OpenAI argues that Apple's sloppy internal procedures—like allowing personal iCloud use and giving little time to offboard—are responsible for any data access issues, not wrongdoing by the engineers. This comes a day after Apple presented forensic evidence from Liu's MacBook that it called 'shocking.'
Google has hiked the U.S. price of its TV Streamer 4K from $99.99 to $149.99, citing rising component costs, with the change already reflected on the Google Store and Best Buy. Certain Nest Cam and doorbell models are also getting price increases effective August 31, though the new Google Home Speaker is unaffected for now. Amazon and Walmart are still selling remaining stock at the older $99.99 price, but supplies are limited.
Andreessen Horowitz has boosted its fifth growth-stage fund by $1.75 billion, bringing its total to $8.5 billion after launching in January at $6.75 billion. The expansion comes just days after the firm closed a separate $1.1 billion 'Machine Age Fund' targeting AI hardware startups working on chips, memory, networking, and storage.
President Trump posted on Truth Social criticizing the growing local opposition to AI data center construction across the U.S., arguing that communities rejecting these projects are choosing poverty and stagnation over prosperity. He also claimed that China benefits from the anti-data-center sentiment spreading through American towns and cities.
Tim Cook is completing his final day as Apple's chief executive after 15 years in the role, with John Ternus set to officially become CEO the next day. Cook will transition to executive chairman of Apple's board, continuing to manage the company's relationships with President Trump and the Chinese government while supporting Ternus in other areas as needed.
Apple's earlier-than-usual update to the Mac mini and Mac Studio was driven by unexpected demand from businesses using the machines to run AI models, according to The Information. The company touted the ability to cluster multiple Mac Studios for larger AI workloads, but reportedly lacks a dedicated enterprise engineering team or developer relations staff, and has declined requests from businesses to access its Private Cloud Compute infrastructure directly.
Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has been highlighting renewed investor enthusiasm for hardware startups after a period dominated by software and AI-model bets. This comes as Casado also helped lead the firm's recent investments in OpenRouter and Cursor, underscoring his active month across multiple deal categories.
The GrapheneOS project has said that Google's upcoming Pixel 11 will no longer support hardware Memory Tagging Extension (MTE), a security feature present in recent Pixel devices. The announcement came via a social media post rather than a detailed report, so specifics on why the feature was removed remain unclear.
Following its latest earnings report, Nvidia is showing investors that its competitive moat isn't limited to GPU chips, where rivals like Amazon and Google are building in-house alternatives. The company's Vera Rubin architecture bundles GPUs with CPUs, inference accelerators, storage and networking racks, positioning Nvidia as the orchestrator of entire gigawatt-scale AI data centers rather than just a chip supplier.