Macworld After a decade of development, the Apple Watch is basically the same as it was when it launched in 2015. Yes, the technology inside has gone through significant improvements its early days a dacade ago. Bigger, brighter displays. More powerful processors. An ever-growing suite of sensors to detect everything from your heart rate to incredibly fine movements. But outside, the Apple Watch still looks like the Apple Watch—more so than any other Apple product. From 10 feet away, you wouldn’t be able to tell if someone has a new Series 10 or an old Series 4. Perhaps that is by design, but with major new health technologies like blood glucose monitoring still years away and even the blood oxygen sensor “on pause” for over a year and counting, it’s hard to find something to look forward to in a new Apple Watch. Apple doesn’t need a new health sensor to make Apple Watch exciting again. It needs to take some risks. Shake up the shape The shape of the Apple Watch hasn’t changed in a decade. There have been slight variations in thickness, size, or curvature, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference without holding one next to another. Imagine if the first decade of the iPhone was like that! By the time iPhone X celebrated the tenth anniversary of Apple’s smartphone, the device was already drastically different from its first few years. So play with the shape, Apple. Give us a watch with flat sides—I loved the mockups people made of such a watch back when it was rumored that the Series 7 would sport such a look. It’s a shame this rumor was dead wrong, I love this design.Jon Prosser Or offer two kinds of Apple Watch, one rectangular and one—gasp—round! Android watches have been circular for years now without major compromises to features or battery life, surely Apple could make it happen with a few tweaks to the OS. And what happened to colors? Of course, silver and black are the most popular watch colors, but these days, rose gold is the only other option. Where did the colorful green, blue, and red offerings of the Series 7 go? Or the pink Series 9? Like the iMac, the fashion-forward Apple Watch is an opportunity for Apple to have some fun. Do something with bands There are a million Apple Watch bands out there, but they’re kind of…well…the same. The materials and colors might be different, but none of them add anything to the watch other than a little style. How about a new clasping mechanism that allows for a tiny amount of power and data transfer, just enough to power some tiny microelectronics and send a few kilobytes of data every now and then. Add a few developer frameworks, and both Apple and third-party developers could make smart bands. There have been various rumors over the years about a new mechanism, and one could imagine smart bands adding custom sensors for specific kinds of activities, or even a small, thin secondary screen that shows a “complication” of sorts. An Apple Watch that supports new “smart bands” would be a major reason to upgrade—more than yet another health sensor, really. Heck, I would buy a smart band that just had a button on the wrist side that I could set to one of a dozen different functions just like the Action Button on the iPhone and Apple Watch Ultra. Software, software, software Obviously there’s a lot Apple can and should be doing with software on the Apple Watch, starting with making Siri great. Even before Apple Intelligence, the experience on the Apple Watch wasn’t as good as the one on our iPhone. Since none of the current Apple Watch models support Apple Intelligence, it’s only going to get worse. Apple needs to find a way to bring the new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri models are too big to run entirely on the watch, the watch could simply work as a “speakerphone” for Siri on your iPhone most of the time. When I watch people use their Apple Watch, I’m struck by how much of the core interface goes completely unused. Control Center is just as bad on Apple Watch as it is on iPhone—so many people don’t know what it is or where it is, don’t know what it can do, and when you tell them, they struggle to actually access it. It’s taking a bunch of core iPhone (or Apple Watch) functions and deliberately stuffing them in a hidden and confusing menu, and as far as the average user is concerned, it might as well not be there. Then there’s the weird honeycomb app grid that’s like an annoying little game to find what you’re looking for (List View should really be the only option), the limited watch faces… with basic customization that still seems beyond the average user. Most people I see just stick with the defaults, maybe change the color, but have no idea what complications are or how they work at all. But all of these things—software that simultaneously does way too much and not enough, and whose best features are opaque to the average user—should be fixed on all existing Apple Watches. Maybe the shift to the new design with iOS 19 will spur Apple to rethink watchOS 12 as a turning point for a rethink of the Apple Watch interface. But new software only goes so far. It’s a new direction for hardware that’s needed to really make Apple Watch exciting again. Apple seems so laser-focused on the next big heath and fitness sensor that it seems to be ignoring all the other ways it could change up the Apple Watch line—a little fun and some outside-the-box thinking.

As AI integration accelerates, businesses are facing widening skills gaps that traditional employment models struggle to address, and so more companies are choosing to hire freelancers to fill the void, according to a new report. The report, from freelance work platform Upwork, claims there’s a major workforce shift as well, with 28% of skilled knowledge workers now freelancing for greater “autonomy and purpose.” An additional 36% of full-time employees are considering switching to freelance, while only 10% of freelancers want to return to traditional jobs, according to the report, which is based on a recent survey of 3,000 skilled, US-based knowledge workers. Gen Z is leading the shift, as 53% of skilled Gen Z professionals already freelance, and they’re expected to make up 30% of the freelance US workforce by 2030. “The traditional 9-to-5 model is rapidly losing its grip as skilled talent chooses flexibility, financial control, and meaningful work over outdated corporate structures,” Kelly Monahan, managing director of the Upwork Research Institute, said in a statement. “Companies that cling to old hiring and workforce models risk falling behind.” US businesses have ramped up their freelance hiring by 260% between 2022 and 2024, according to a report from Mellow.io, an HR platform that manages and pays freelance contractors. Increasingly, US businesses have turned to freelancers overseas — most frequently Eastern Europe — to fill their tech talent void, particularly for web developers, programmers, data analysts, and web designers, according to Mellow.io. “This trend shows no signs of slowing,” Mellow.io’s report stated. “The region offers an unparalleled balance of cost efficiency and highly skilled talent.” The US is a freelancer haven Gig workers, earning through short-term, flexible jobs via apps or platforms, are also thriving, according to career site JobLeads. JobLeads analyzed data from the Online Labour Observatory and the World Bank Group to reveal the countries dominating online gig work. The United States is leading in the number of online freelancers with 28% of the global online freelance market. Software and tech roles dominate in the US, representing 36.4% of freelancers, followed by creative/multimedia (21.1%) and clerical/data entry jobs (18.2%). Globally, Spain and Mexico rank second and third in freelancer share, with 7.0% and 4.6%, respectively. Among full-time online gig workers, 52% have a high school diploma, while 20% hold a bachelor’s degree, according to JobLeads. “The gig economy is booming worldwide, with the number of gig workers expected to rise by over 30 million in the next year alone,” said Martin Schmidt, JobLead’s managing director. “This rapid growth reflects a fundamental shift in how people approach work — flexibility and autonomy are no longer just perks but non-negotiables for today’s workforce.” Gen Z and younger professionals are embracing gig work for its flexibility and control, while businesses gain access to a global pool of skilled freelancers, Schmidt said. “As the sector continues to evolve, both workers and employers need to adapt to a new reality where traditional employment models may no longer meet the needs and expectations of the modern workforce,” he said. Confidence in freelancing is high, with 84% of freelancers and 77% of full-time workers viewing its future as bright, according to Upwork’s report. Freelancers are also seeing more opportunities, with 82% reporting more work than last year, compared to 63% of full-time employees, the report said. Freelance workers generated $1.5 trillion in earnings in 2024 alone, Upwork said. The trend is gaining momentum, particularly among Gen Z, with many full-time employees eyeing independent work, according to Upwork. Freelancers are leading in AI, software, and sustainability jobs, demonstrating higher adaptability and continuous learning, according to the report, which focused exclusively on skilled knowledge workers, not gig workers. It also included “moonlighters,” or workers who have full-time employment but freelance on the side. More than half (54%) of freelancers report advanced AI proficiency compared to 38% of full-time employees, and 29% have extensive experience building, training, and fine-tuning machine learning models (vs. 18% of full-time employees), the report stated. Those who earn exclusively through freelance work report a median income of $85,000, surpassing their full-time employee counterparts at $80,000, the report stated. Upwork’s Future Workforce Index is the company’s first such report, and so it said it is unable to provide freelance employment numbers from previous years that would indicate a rising or falling trend. “However, what we can confidently say, based on multiple studies conducted by the Upwork Research Institute over the past several years, is that freelancing isn’t a passing trend,” an Upwork spokesperson said. “It continues to hold steady and accelerate, emerging as a vital and intentional component of the skilled workforce.” A silver tsunami Emily Rose McRae, a Gartner Resarch senior director analyst, said she’s seeing growing interest in freelancing from professionals who desire more flexible work, oftentimes as a safety net for people who lost their job during economic turmoil “and also as a way to build up a network of clients when starting a new business or looking to expand your small business.” Organizations are also facing an impending “silver tsunami” of older workers retiring and leaving a talent gap in their wake. “Many clients I speak with on this topic are trying to identify the best strategy for addressing this expertise gap, whether it is upskilling more junior employees, bringing retired experts back to serve as freelance mentors or coaches, contracting out critical projects to experts on a freelance market, or even redesigning roles and workflows to reduce the amount of expertise needed,” she said. “Being able to bring past employees back as freelancers can be critical for knowledge management and training,” McRae said. “This is especially critical when increasingly AI tools are being deployed on the basic and repetitive tasks that were previously the training ground used for employees to create a pipeline of future experts within the employee base,” McRae said. Despite the occurrence of layoffs — and sometimes because of them — organizations often face skills gaps exacerbated by the rise of AI, according to Forrester Research. Skills intelligence tools, often powered by AI, can help organizations identify and manage the skills and gaps in their workforce and predict future skill needs, including recommending needed recruiting, upskilling and reskilling, and talent mobility. Companies must also be able to scale up or down rapidly in on-demand talent markets, which include contractors, freelancers, gig workers, and service providers. On-demand talent increases the adaptability of your workforce but works best for non-core functions and for specialized skills that are needed for a limited period. Companies, however, can’t simply replace employees with freelancers without facing significant risks, McRae noted. Freelancers are best used for defined projects with clear deliverables. Using them to do the same work as former employees, without changing the role or workflow, can lead to legal and operational issues, she said. As reliance on non-employees grows, so do risks like worker misclassification, dual employment, compliance problems, and costly mistakes such as rehiring underperforming contractors or overpaying for services. “I’ll see this at organizations that instituted hiring freezes, so business leaders turned to contractors to continue to be able to meet their goals,” she said. “It can also create financial risks — when there isn’t much transparency or data collection going on, organizations may find that they are paying the same contractor service provider or freelancer different rates in different departments, for the same set of tasks.” There’s also a risk that third-party contractors are not vetting temp workers, who may not meet the necessary certifications and trainings to comply with local or national regulations, McRae added. “Or that contractors and freelancers have not been fully offboarded after completing their assignments and still retain access to the organization’s systems and data,” she said.

Apple is rumored to be shaking up its 2025 iPhone lineup, with a new ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air. Here's what the rumor mill thinks is coming.Apple is expected to debut an ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air or iPhone 17 Slim in 2025.The long-rumored iPhone 17 Air, or iPhone 17 Slim as it's sometimes called, is set to launch alongside the standard iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. It will, however, replace the Plus variant of the iPhone, which hasn't seen significant popularity with end consumers.Just as the iPhone 14 Plus replaced the iPhone 13 mini in 2022, the iPhone 17 Air will appear in place of the Plus model for 2025. Rather than simply being a larger version of the standard iPhone, Apple's new iPhone Air model will focus on thinness above all else. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

The selection of three prize winners of the third annual Home of Shadows international architecture ideas competition has been made by the six-member panel assembled by Buildner. For the competition, light was elevated to a primary design ‘language.’ Contestants were challenged to design a home for a hypothetical couple with artificial lighting allowed inside. Organizers say it “underscores the critical role natural light plays in home design, where it not only enhances comfort and practicality but also creates a welcoming atmosphere.” The proposals you’ll see prefer multiple devices and strategies to incorporate natural light into their architectural designs. You can compare them with the winners from 2024’s Home of Shadows #2 competition here.1st Prize + Buildner Student Award

Sucker Punch Productions took many by surprise when it dropped a new trailer for Ghost of Yōtei and announced a release date. As Atsu, players embark on a revenge tour to slay the Yōtei Six, who slaughtered her family and left her for dead. Interestingly, the overall structure differs from its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima. Atsu will pursue leads in Ezo and choose which member to slay first, with the region promising more complex locales. Speaking to Variety, creative directors Jason Connell and Nate Fox discussed how the Edo period influenced world design. “This is the most open game we’ve ever made,” said Fox. “One of the greatest joys is just getting lost. You let your curiosity guide you through the landscape. We view that as this holy moment that we want to uplift players so they can feel very present inside Hokkaido or Ezo, as it was called back when our game takes place. Ezo is a character in and of itself, filled with hidden secrets and an anthology of stories.” Connell added, “It’s just so wild and nature-filled. There’s an opportunity to tell a slightly more wild and rural version of this story than if it was in a major city. There are so many biomes to bring to life and so many majestic and beautiful locations to take inspiration from. There’s no way we could take it all, so we get to cherry-pick some of the most beautiful locations and bring them alive to our players.” That “wild” approach is also evident in the gameplay, as players seemingly have a wolf companion to fight alongside them. Though there’s still a lot to unravel, Atsu can also unwind with some non-combat activities returning from Tsushima. Ghost of Yōtei launches on October 2nd for PS5 and supports PS5 Pro on day one. Pre-orders start on May 2nd. Head here for details on the Digital Deluxe Edition.

Google Is Training a New A.I. Model to Decode Dolphin Chatter—and Potentially Talk Back The company says its new model, called DolphinGemma, will be made open source this summer. Researchers are also trying to train dolphins to mimic made-up names for certain objects A newly developed A.I. model is based on 40 years of vocalizations from a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins. Google Dolphins are clever communicators. The animals use complex clicks, squawks and whistles to call out to each other, fight and attract a mate. Now, Google says it is developing a large language model (LLM) that can make better sense of those vocalizations—and, maybe, allow humans to talk back. Over the last 40 years, researchers at the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) have collected audio and video of a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in the Bahamas. The new artificial intelligence model, called DolphinGemma, is trained on that database. It listens to the dolphins’ vocalizations, identifies patterns and predicts what comes next, just as LLMs do with human language. Using A.I. “could give us the opportunity to see patterns that, from a human perspective, we may not look at,” says Thea Taylor, who manages the Sussex Dolphin Project in England and is not involved with Google’s work, to Melissa Hobson at Scientific American. Relying on the LLM can also speed up the data analysis process, which would take a human more than 100 years by hand. DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication Watch on Researchers with Google, the WDP and Georgia Tech are also working on a device called CHAT, or Cetacean Hearing Augmentation Telemetry. The wearable technology will allow researchers to generate dolphin-like sounds made up by A.I. to refer to specific items that dolphins enjoy, like seagrass or sargassum. A pair of divers wearing the CHAT device will swim alongside a dolphin, “asking for” an object with the made-up sound and passing it back and forth. Then, if a dolphin mimics the sound that corresponds to seagrass, for example, a researcher will reward them by handing it over. “By demonstrating the system between humans, researchers hope the naturally curious dolphins will learn to mimic the whistles to request these items,” notes a statement from Google. “Eventually, as more of the dolphins’ natural sounds are understood, they can also be added to the system.” Taylor tells Scientific American that the researchers will need to make sure they aren’t unintentionally training the dolphins. Even if the animals repeat the sound, she says, “we have to think whether that’s actually an understanding of language—or whether it’s the same as teaching a dog to sit because they get a reward.” Exploring Wild Dolphin Communication with C.H.A.T. (Cetacean Hearing Augmented Telemetry) Watch on In separate efforts, A.I. is also being used to decode other animals’ vocalizations. Scientists with Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), for instance, are using artificial intelligence to understand sperm whales. The Earth Species Project aims to use its model, NatureLM, to process sounds from animals across various species. DeepSqueak, meanwhile, is a software that analyzes rodent squeaks to determine when the creatures are stressed. Still, whether animal communication amounts to true language remains a matter of debate. Another team of scientists concluded this month that bonobo calls share a key trait with human speech. But Simon Townsend, senior author of that study, said “language is specific to humans,” to NBC News’ Evan Bush. In 2023, Simon Kirby, a cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, told the New York Times’ Sonia Shah “Language is infinitely complex,” says Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Girton College in England who is not involved in Google’s project, to Scientific American. “If you have a separate word for every object in your environment, that’s not a language.” Dolphins have variations in their vocalizations, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to a difference in meaning. “It’s not immediately clear that dolphins have words,” adds Kershenbaum. Google says it will release DolphinGemma as an open source model this summer, which will allow researchers to use it with other dolphin species. “We hope to give researchers worldwide the tools to mine their own acoustic datasets, accelerate the search for patterns and collectively deepen our understanding of these intelligent marine mammals,” writes the company in the statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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Meta lays off unknown number of staff in Reality Labs division Teams within Oculus Labs affected, including fitness VR game Supernatural Image credit: Meta News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on April 25, 2025 Meta has cut an unspecified number of jobs in its Reality Labs division, affecting teams at Oculus Studios. As reported by The Verge, Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said the decision was made to "help Oculus Studios work more efficiently". Sources told Bloomberg that more than 100 people may have been affected by the layoffs. "Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size," said Clayton. "These changes are meant to help Oculus Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, will still delivering great content for people today. "We remain committed to investing in mixed reality experiences, including fitness and games, and our drive to deliver the best experiences possible for the Quest and Supernatural communities remains unchanged." Sources told The Verge that staff working in hardware were affected, while Bloomberg reported that roles in "operations" were also cut. Meta declined to comment on these reports. Titles impacted by the layoffs include VR fitness game Supernatural. In a post on Facebook, the team said the changes "are meant to help [it] work more efficiently." "We've had the privilege of being a tight-knit team for a long time, and it's difficult to lose such a wonderful group of people who have helped build Supernatural and our community." As spotted by UploadVR, a round of layoffs also took place at Sanzaru Games in February 2025. The Asgard's Wrath developer was acquired by Meta as part of Oculus Studios in 2020. Posting to LinkedIn, former employee Carlos Guiterrez said "a number of" employees had been laid off. At the start of 2025, Meta announced it would lay off 5% of its staff as part of "performance-based cuts" with an estimated 3,600 jobs at risk. Those affected by these cuts in the US were notified on February 10, with workers situated elsewhere notified at a later date. In March 2023, Meta cut 10,000 jobs and retired 5,000 open roles in an effort to improve its financial health.

I may be slightly obsessed with Blue Prince, developer Dogubomb's recently released adventure/puzzle/mystery game that sees players drafting rooms in a massive, surreal manor, teasing out clues with each action and each day. It offers a potent blend of escape room-style puzzles (with math, logic, spatial reasoning, and other flavors), strategic room-drafting action straight out of the tabletop sensation Betrayal at House on the Hill, and a personal favorite game paradigm: the player and player character attain knowledge and ply it at close to a 1:1 ratio. It's ostensibly a single player game, but I think it has even longer legs as an unofficial "co-op" experience.Like Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, or Asemblance: Oversight, more emphasis is placed on the knowledge you gain by playing and exploring (access to secrets, methods, and rules about the way the world works) more so than an in-fiction leveling system (like XP in an RPG) or similar. While there are more standard elements (a general roguelike run-based structure, some permanent upgrades to your kit and abilities, rng), what feels most important is what you, the player are absorbing, experimenting with, and putting to the test in your actions.What's even more important? When two people—or even more—absorb that information.Related:Putting together a good run sometimes feels like science: you start formulating theories as you observe, and test them out as best you can. Even when those theories are disproven (or you were looking at the wrong variables), you learned something that day, and you take that lesson with you. Seeing those theories proven and disproven may explain why the game is doing so well.Co-op play in Blue PrinceI'm enjoying the game a great deal on my own, but here's a second (and perhaps just as powerful) factor at work here: like a great escape room, it's even more fun with another person. The way my partner and I are tearing through, you wouldn't know it was a single player game: we'll pass the controller back and forth (sometimes for puzzles one of us is naturally better at, sometimes because it's simply dinner time), the non-player grasping my graphing notebook (yes, graphing paper, we are that serious), taking down notes, drawing charts, and offering suggestions and solutions as we draft and puzzle through. The first notes were kind of a mess, but we have that aspect down to a science now, about 30 hours into the mystery.It doesn't hurt that we happen to have complementary puzzle preferences—she's easily ten times better and faster at the parlor rooms, while I've been playing 3D games longer and have spatial reasoning tasks more front of mind—so we very rarely get stuck and generally have a good flow going. We're certainly not the only ones playing this way, of the approximately 12k players on Steam right now (plus players on the Xbox consoles and PS5). A cursory glance at Twitch reveals plenty of streamers playing with their communities (some without explicit "backseating," albeit with various degrees of clue acceptance from chat.)Related:We've had several "holy crap!" moments in our time with the game so far—when a wanton observation about room decorations was "confirmed" in a more definitive clue (and led us to break out the graph paper). Once we figured out the sequence required to take full advantage of the garage, we just about leapt off the couch in excitement. And lets not forget this little nugget: I've been so obsessed with solving one series of puzzles (in the gallery room, IYKYK) that last night, from a bus, I started texting my partner possible solutions (and full justifications for them) to try while I was out of the house.Dogubomb may not have explicitly designed the game for this kind of social play, but it suits Blue Prince's style like a perfect little key to a mysterious lock.Related:Designers wanting to play with this magic, take heed: some element of this comes with the territory whenever you construct so many different types of puzzles. Without giving too much away here, Blue Prince offers many flavors of puzzle and strategy that it naturally lends itself to the escape room logic of "many brains make light work:" just like my partner and I, certain types of players are attracted to (or repelled by) certain kinds of problem solving. It's wildly satisfying (for us and players like us) to collaborate and play this as a team sport and essentially share in the glory.You can support this as a developer by offering that variety, at a high standard of quality. Serve up a tasty buffet of puzzle types, and players like us will team up and happily scour every imaginable inch of the game.