GoKawiil
Tech News
Meritage Hospitality Group, one of Wendy's largest franchisees, closed another round of restaurants on Friday, marking the second consecutive weekend of permanent shutdowns. The closures follow the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as it works to restructure its operations.
On the launch day of its Googlebook laptops, Google told Android Authority that while all Play Store apps are available on every device, a small number of complex apps or games may not perform smoothly on Intel-based models. The company said this is because many Android apps were built for Arm chips, and it is working with developers, Intel and Qualcomm to improve compatibility. Three of the five launch Googlebooks—from Acer, Asus and Lenovo—use Intel chips, while Dell and HP models use Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon processors.
WIRED's Reviews team has published a gift guide featuring products priced at $25 or less, including a MoMA Design Store acrylic pen and pencil holder ($15) and Field Notes' National Parks Series notebooks ($15 for a three-pack). The outlet says every item was tested by at least one staff member before inclusion on the list.
HEVCut is an indie iOS app that compresses photos and videos on-device, claiming 50-80% file size savings with minimal quality loss, aiming to free up local or iCloud storage without requiring users to delete anything. The app also offers duplicate detection, a swipe-based deletion interface, and a video trimming tool. A limited free version is available on the App Store, with HEVCut Pro costing $24.99/year or $39.99 for lifetime access, plus a $0.49 one-week trial.
Bitchat, Jack Dorsey's Bluetooth-based offline messaging app, has been removed from Apple's and Google's app stores in India after the government invoked Section 69A of the IT Act. Apple's takedown notice, shared by Dorsey, said the app remains available outside India but that access via TestFlight is also blocked there, and Bitchat's website appears inaccessible across Indian ISPs. The move follows an earlier July order directing GitHub to remove Bitchat's code repositories.
Google has quietly increased the Pixel 10a's US price from $499 to $599, with the change also reflected on Amazon and Best Buy listings. Archived listings show similar jumps in Canada (from roughly $529 CAD to $849 CAD) and the UK (from £429 to £599), suggesting the hike spans multiple markets. Google has not publicly commented on the price change.
Apple Arcade added five games to its subscription library, which now exceeds 200 titles. The lineup includes Pusheen's Place, a new exclusive life-sim game, alongside ad-free, purchase-free Arcade versions of Terraria+, Touchgrind BMX 2+, and River City Survivors, plus one additional title.
Google has published a Viewer app on the Play Store built for its upcoming Googlebook laptops, offering combined viewing and editing of images, videos, audio and PDFs. Android Authority tested the app on an Android tablet, finding tools such as annotate, text, resize, crop and rotate for images, plus text, annotation and signature features for PDFs. The Googlebooks themselves went up for pre-order last month and are set to begin shipping soon.
Google has relaunched its Pixel Referral Program for the US Google Store, giving buyers a 10% discount when they check out with a referral code. Referrers earn $50 in store credit per successful referral, capped at $500 for 10 referrals, with codes valid until November 4. Participation as a referrer requires an invitation from Google and prior opt-in to Pixel marketing emails.
Google has listed its new Antigravity development platform on the Play Store, but the app is built exclusively for Googlebook OS devices rather than Android phones. Android Authority sideloaded the APK onto a Pixel phone and found the interface poorly scaled, with setup failing at a Terminal VM configuration step due to a permission error.
Apple TV has been inaccessible since September 30 at 4:43PM, according to Apple's System Status page. The same page had also shown outages for the iOS and Mac App Stores, Fitness+, Music, and subscription and AppleCare+ purchases, but those services were restored within a few hours while Apple TV remained down.
Apple's System Status page listed eight active issues Tuesday evening, including Apple TV, App Store, Fitness+, Apple Music, Mac App Store and Subscription Purchase. Apple attributed most disruptions beginning around 4:22 p.m. ET to routine maintenance, though Apple TV's outage at 4:43 p.m. ET was described as scheduled maintenance that could leave the service unavailable. Some apps also briefly showed internal localization text instead of normal interface labels shortly before the outages began.