To billionaire Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team at the Department of Government Efficiency, Karen Ortiz may just be one of many faceless bureaucrats. But to some of her colleagues, she is giving a voice to those who feel they cant speak out.Ortiz is an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the federal agency in charge of enforcing U.S. workplace anti-discrimination laws that has undergone tumultuous change since President Donald Trump took office. Like millions of other federal employees, Ortiz opened an ominous email on Jan. 28 titled Fork in the Road giving them the option to resign from their positions as part of the governments cost-cutting measures directed by Trump and carried out by DOGE under Musk, an unelected official.Her alarm grew when her supervisor directed administrative judges in her New York district office to pause all their current LGBTQ+ cases and send them to Washington for further review in order to comply with Trumps executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two immutable sexes male and female.Ortiz decried managements lack of action in response to the directive, which she said was antithetical to the EEOCs mission, and called upon some 185 colleagues in an email to resist complying with illegal mandates. But that email was mysteriously deleted, she said.The next day, after yet another frustrating Fork in the Road update, Ortiz decided to go big, emailing the EEOCs acting chair Andrea Lucas directly and copying more than 1,000 colleagues with the subject line, A Spoon is Better than a Fork. In it, Ortiz questioned Lucass fitness to serve as acting chair, much less hold a license to practice law.I know I take a great personal risk in sending out this message. But, at the end of the day, my actions align with what the EEOC was charged with doing under the law, Ortiz wrote. I will not compromise my ethics and my duty to uphold the law. I will not cower to bullying and intimidation.Ortiz is just one person, but her email represents a larger pushback against the Trump administrations sweeping changes to federal agencies amid an environment of confusion, anger and chaos. It is also Ortizs way of taking a stand against the leadership of a civil rights agency that last month moved to dismiss seven of its own cases representing transgender workers, marking a major departure from its prior interpretation of the law.Right after sending her mass email, Ortiz said she received a few supportive responses from colleagues and one calling her unprofessional. Within an hour, though, the message disappeared and she lost her ability to send any further emails.But it still made it onto the internet. The email was recirculated on Bluesky and it received more than 10,000 upvotes on Reddit after someone posted it with the comment, Wow I wish I had that courage.AN AMERICAN HERO, one Reddit user deemed Ortiz, a sentiment that was seconded by more than 2,000 upvoters. Who is this freedom fighter bringing on the fire? wrote another.The EEOC did not feel the same way. The agency revoked her email privileges for about a week and issued her a written reprimand for discourteous conduct.Contacted by The AP, a spokesperson for the EEOC said: We will refrain from commenting on internal communications and personnel matters. However, we would note that the agency has a long-standing policy prohibiting unauthorized all-employee emails, and all employees were reminded of that policy recently.A month later, Ortiz has no regrets.It was not really planned out, it was just from the heart, the 53-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview, adding that partisan politics have nothing to do with her objections and that the public deserves the EEOCs protection, including transgender workers. This is how I feel and Im not pulling any punches. And I will stand by what I wrote every day of the week, all day on Sunday.Ortiz said she never intended for her email to go beyond the EEOC, describing it as a love letter to her colleagues. But, she added, I hope that it lights a fire under people.Ortiz said she has received a ton of support privately in the month since sending her email, including a thank-you letter from a California retiree telling her to keep the faith. Open support among her EEOC colleagues beyond Reddit and Bluesky, however, has proven more elusive.I think people are just really scared, she said.William Resh, a University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy professor who studies how administrative structure and political environments affect civil servants, weighed in on why federal workers may choose to say nothing even if they feel their mission is being undermined.We can talk pie in the sky, mission orientation and all these other things. But at the end of the day, people have a paycheck to bring home, and food to put on a table and a rent to pay, Resh said.The more immediate danger, he said, is the threat to ones livelihood, or inviting a managers ire.And so then thats where you get this kind of muted response on behalf of federal employees, that you dont see a lot of people speaking out within these positions because they dont want to lose their job, Resh said. Who would?Richard LeClear, a U.S. Air Force veteran and EEOC staffer who is retiring early at 64 to avoid serving under the Trump administration, said Ortizs email was spot on, but added that other colleagues who agreed with her may fear speaking out themselves.Retaliation is a very real thing, LeClear said.Ortiz, who has been a federal employee for 14 years and at the EEOC for six, said she isnt naive about the potential fallout. She has hired attorneys, and maintains that her actions are protected whistleblower activity. As of Friday, she still had a job but she is not a lifetime appointee and is aware that her health care, pension and source of income could all be at risk.Ortiz is nonetheless steadfast: If they fire me, Ill find another avenue to do this kind of work, and Ill be okay. They will have to physically march me out of the office.Many of Ortizs colleagues have children to support and protect, which puts them in a more difficult position than her to speak out, Ortiz acknowledged. She said her legal education and American citizenship also put her in a position to be able to make change.Her parents, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1950s with limited English skills, ingrained in her the value of standing up for others. Their firsthand experience with the Civil Rights Movement, and her own experience growing up in mostly white spaces in Garden City on Long Island, primed Ortiz to defend herself and others.Its in my DNA, she said. I will use every shred of privilege that I have to lean into this.Ortiz received her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, and her law degree at Fordham University. She knew she wanted to become a judge ever since her high school mock trial as a Supreme Court justice.Civil rights has been a throughline in her career, and Ortiz said she was super excited when she landed her job at the EEOC.This is how I wanted to finish up my career, she said. Well see if that happens.The Associated Press women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Claire Savage, Associated Press

We were working on one of life's most vexing problems: where to put your shoes. You can line them up like a baseboard of shoes, but good luck keeping that looking nice. You can have a shelf or hang them from the door, but that's a bit too prominent in any room. And where do you sit while you lace up? We started with a simple goal to design an efficient, modular shoe storage solution that includes a place to sit. Quadrant takes the efficiency of the wedge shape and rolls your shoes up under a gravity-defying bench. You can extend the bench by placing multiple Quadrants next to each other so everyone can have their own cubby. View the full project here

Today most of us use keyboards, whether physical or touchscreen, to conduct our business and personal lives. We all know the keyboard emerged from the typewriter, a machine that revolutionized business in the 19th and 20th centuries, and you could be forgiven for assuming that the typewriter was invented by a mechanical engineer working for a business organization.Instead, the typewriter was first developed by a pastor at the Royal Institute for the Deaf-Mute in Copenhagen, around 1865. Rasmus Malling-Hansen, the Institute's principal, observed that his students could communicate in sign language more quickly than they could write. He set out to invent a machine that would allow students to "speak with their fingers," quickly getting words down on paper.With no incumbent form factor to mimic, Malling-Hansen had to pioneer his own user interface. According to the Malling-Hansen Society:"Its distinctive feature was an arrangement of 52 keys on a large brass hemisphere, causing the machine to resemble a giant pin cushion. Malling-Hansen made experiments with a model of his writing ball made out of porcelain. He tried out different placements of the letters on the keys, to work out the placement that lead to the fastest writing speed. He ended up placing the most frequently used letters to be touched by the fastest writing fingers, and also placed most of the vocals to the left and the consonants to the right. This together with the short pistons which went directly through the ball, made the writing speed of the writing ball very fast." Malling-Hansen managed to get his machine, the Malling Hansen Writing Ball, into production by 1870. However, two years earlier in 1868, American printer Christopher Latham Sholes and inventor/lawyer Carlos S. Glidden had invented their own typewriter design. They licensed their Sholes & Glidden model, which featured the QWERTY keyboard layout we all know, to firearms manufacturer E. Remington and Sons. Their machines went into production in 1874.E. Remington and Sons had vast capital resources that Malling-Hansen did not. In the end, less than 200 Writing Balls were made, whereas E. Remington and Sons pumped out 5,000 Sholes and Glidden machines in their first four years of production.Today, less than 40 Malling Hansen Writing Balls still exist, the bulk of them in museums. One of them is being auctioned off by Auction Team Breker, a German auction house. The last time they sold a Writing Ball, in 2019, it fetched $140,643.

Time flows around us like an invisible river, yet most of us experience it through rigid digital displays that reduce this natural phenomenon to sterile numbers. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans understood something weve forgotten: Time is a sensory experience and they felt it rather than merely tracking it. This sensory relationship with time has largely disappeared in our modern world, replaced by the constant pressure of digital timekeeping that fragments our days into precise but meaningless units, to the point that weve grown increasingly obsessed with monitoring its passage down to the millisecond.The Horizon clock concept draws inspiration from this ancient wisdom while reimagining it for contemporary spaces. Unlike conventional timepieces that impose rigid structure on our days, Horizon creates a fluid, intuitive experience of times passage. Its design features an inclined disc with a vertical stick positioned off-center near the bottom, reminiscent of traditional sundials but with a crucial difference. Instead of relying on the sun, a curved arm with a light element revolves around the disc, casting shadows that mark the hours.Designer: Dayoung YoonAs the light source moves around the central gnomon, shadows stretch and contract across the discs surface, creating a visual rhythm that mimics the suns daily journey. This interplay between light and shadow taps into our innate ability to perceive time through sensory changes rather than abstract numbers. The shadows length and position provide temporal information without the jarring precision of digital displays, allowing us to experience time more naturally and intuitively.The brilliance of Horizons design lies in its ability to shift between visibility and concealment. With an integrated on/off switch, users can reveal or hide the time display as needed, creating moments of freedom from times constant pressure. This feature transforms Horizon from a mere timekeeper into a mindfulness tool that helps users develop a healthier relationship with time. When illuminated, it provides temporal guidance; when darkened, it becomes a sculptural element that enhances a rooms ambiance.The physical design of Horizon embodies both aesthetic beauty and philosophical purpose. Its minimalist form features clean lines and natural materials that complement contemporary interiors while evoking ancient timekeeping traditions. The warm glow of its light element creates a comforting presence, transforming the potentially stressful act of checking time into a moment of visual pleasure. This sensory richness stands in stark contrast to the cold utility of conventional clocks.Our modern fixation with precise timekeeping has transformed us from times masters into its servants. We created the concept of measured time, yet we now find ourselves constantly checking watches and phones, feeling anxious about minutes and seconds. This relationship has become increasingly unbalanced, with time ruling our lives rather than serving as a useful tool. This design concept challenges this dynamic by returning agency to the user, allowing them to engage with time on their own terms.The Horizon clock offers a refreshing alternative that honors our ancestral connection to natural timekeeping. It acknowledges that humans naturally perceive time through environmental cues changing light, temperature fluctuations, and rhythmic patterns. By blending ancient wisdom with contemporary design, Horizon represents a thoughtful response to our complicated relationship with time not merely tracking hours and minutes, but transforming how we experience the fundamental rhythm of existence.The post Modern sundial clock concept redefines our relationship with time first appeared on Yanko Design.

It's driving the internet wild.

3D art of the week: Ama Ro

Apple's midrange tablet is now an option for creatives and gamers alike, but it lacks exciting upgrades all around.

MacworldAt a glanceExpert's RatingProsExceptional speedSuperbly future-proofedGood battery lifeConsOutdated camera setupNo MagSafeApple Intelligence is half-bakedOur Verdict In many ways the iPhone 16e is astonishingly good, delivering superb speed, good battery life, the latest Apple Intelligence features, and an attractive design at an affordable price. And then you bump into the lack of MagSafe and the single rear camera lens. The only word for it is lopsided, and Im struggling to see who the iPhone 16e is for.Price When ReviewedThis value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefinedBest Pricing TodayBest Prices Today: Apple iPhone 16eRetailerPrice699View Deal699View Deal678.3View Deal668,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal699,00 View Deal702,99 View DealPrice comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwideView more pricesProductPricePrice comparison from BackmarketThe iPhone SE is gone and its replacement is here. Or is it? Apples newest cheapest smartphone isnt actually all that cheap and differs from the SE in some major ways. More of a replacement for the iPhone 14, then? Maybe. Kind of. Its complicated.I spent a week with the iPhone 16e, putting the device through our exhaustive testing process and weighing its place in the Apple range and your life. Is this the budget (ish) smartphone for you? Lets find out.Design and build quality: A smart balanceThis is a slim, lightweight, good-looking phone with a classic design that has stood the test of time. It feels great in the hand, and the camera module on the rear is far less obtrusive than those on costlier iPhones, so it doesnt wobble so much when placed on a flat surface.If youre coming from the 3rd-gen iPhone SE the design will feel like a massive step forward: gone is the SEs Home button, cramped screen, and rounded sides, replaced by a handsome all-screen design with squared-off edges. For those more accustomed to the current iPhone range, however, it will feel like the opposite. The 16e may have been branded to tie in with the late-2024 iPhones but it follows the design cues of two generations earlier.David Price / FoundryThere are a few differences, but in most respects, youre looking at the externals of an iPhone 14. It has the same aluminum frame and glass back (without the color infusion added to the iPhone 15), the same 6.1-inch 25321170 screen with the same notch, and the same physical dimensions although it weighs fractionally less than the 14, presumably because of having one camera fewer. (Thats difference number one, which Ill come back to.)Another important difference between the 16e and the iPhone 14 and 3rd-gen SE is the inclusion of an Action button in place of the mute switch on the lefthand edge. This can still be used as a mute switchin fact, thats what I use it for on my 16 Plusbut you can instead reprogram it to open the Camera app, turn on a Focus mode or the Flashlight, or various other handy options.That list of actions, by the way, now includes one new option: Visual Intelligence, which on the late-2024 iPhones is triggered using the Camera Control. This is because the iPhone 16e does not feature the Camera Control. Im not a huge fan of the Camera Control on my 16 Plus, which feels unnecessary (since you can easily swipe to the camera from the lock screen) and which I sometimes press by accident with the fourth finger of my left hand when holding the device in portrait mode. So as far as Im concerned this is a minor loss. The only downside was that, while I was testing Visual Intelligence, I wanted that tied to the Action button, which meant in turn that silent mode had to move from the Action button to the Control Center. This kind of button juggling can mess with your muscle memory so its best to find a system you like and stick with it.A final cosmetic difference from the iPhone 14 is the range of colors. The iPhone 14 came in six widely varied colors: mild greyish blue, light purple, yellow, black, white, and (Product) Reds glorious unabashed scarlet. The iPhone 16 has black, white, ultramarine, teal, and an excellent pink. Even the SE had midnight, starlight, and red. But the 16e comes in just white or black. Its not a lot of choice or visual interest and feels like a deliberate strategy to encourage upselling.David Price / FoundryMind you, the black model I tested is sharp. The rear is super-matt, to the extent that its difficult to photograph (my colleague on Macwelt makes the same complaint about the white finish), and I love the contrast between this and the shiny Apple logo in the center. Besides, if monotone finishes strike you as boring, you can always buy a brightly colored case to jazz the phone up a little. I got Apples Winter Blue silicone case and like it a lot. See if theres a case you like in our round up of the best cases for iPhone 16-series.Features: Surprising inclusions, strange omissionsWhereas the physical design is a set of sensible compromises, walking a steady middle path between the outdated look of the iPhone 14 and the unattainable upgrades of the iPhones 15 and 16, the 16es features list is more of a rollercoaster ride. It verges wildly from one extreme to another. The device misses out on some truly basic features that budget smartphone buyers have every right to expect, yet manages to squeeze in others that Id categorise as luxuries.The first incongruously generous inclusion (and really the defining element of the entire product) is Apple Intelligence, the companys AI platform and vision of the future. Apple Intelligence is a demanding thing to run, requiring as a minimum an A18 processor and 8GB of RAM, and it would be unrealistic at this stage to fit those things into a budget iPhone. Instead of conceding defeat and leaving the feature out of the 16e (as it did with the 11th-gen iPad), Apple decided not to have a true budget iPhone anymore. Thats why Im reviewing a $599 phone instead of a $429 one.Was this drastic step worth it? Yes and no. Apple Intelligence is still at an early stage in its development, with features gradually rolling out as theyre finished or in some cases, before theyre finished. It doesnt feel very polished right now, but this probably wont be representative of your experience across the life of the phone; Apple is very committed to AI right now and we can expect future iOS updates to feature a lot of improvements in this area. Its a good thing that 16e owners will get to be a part of that.There are far too many components of Apple Intelligence to cover them all here, but here are a few thoughts from my time with the iPhone 16e:Visual Intelligence: For certain things, this is fun and usefulit can identify cars, dogs, and plants quickly and accurately. But can be flaky, misunderstanding street signs and failing to recognize what was obviously a London phone number on a storefront with only the initial zero cropped out.Genmoji: Hit and miss. Lots of duff results, like a request for a cat on a bus showing the cat superimposed over the bus rather than riding the bus; my tiger eating grapes had a bunch of normal grapes in one hand and random objects (a strawberry; an iced gem) in the other. You have to filter out the dross. And any time you mention a person (I thought Edgar Allen Poe eating ice cream would be funny) it insists you instead choose someone from your Photos folders. I couldnt see an obvious way around this.Web page summaries: Mostly excellent on factual/informative pages, although it struggled badly with opinion pieces that follow an argument. To its credit, the feature admitted this weakness when I selected an article of that type.Clean Up: Inconsistent. I had trouble removing a car from a scene, which left behind a distorted shadow.Writing Tools: Good for correcting typos and grammar errors but the stylistic amendments can be painful. When told to rewrite something like a professional document it simply replaced every normal word with a longer synonym, like someone whos just taken a vocabulary course.Notification summaries: Unreliable, as we all know.Apple Intelligence is technologically quite impressive but nevertheless goes wrong fairly often and isnt the most intuitive to use: more of a curiosity or proof of concept than a serious set of tools, really. It will get better, but right now its of limited value. And thats leaving aside the ethical issues (using up water, taking peoples jobs) that AI poses more generally.Yeah, Id call that unexpected results.David Price / FoundryStill, the inclusion of Apple Intelligence led to the second act of generosity: an exceptionally (some would say unnecessarily) impressive set of tech specs. Having that chip and RAM combo will be useful for things other than AI; theyll ensure the 16e is future-proofed to run demanding apps for a long time to come, for one thing. And it also means it has some serious processing power, which Ill explore in a later section.Weve covered the positives, but now we need to mention the negatives, and there are two almost criminal gaps on the feature list. First, the iPhone 16e doesnt support MagSafe, even though the iPhone 14 did (as did the 12 and 13 before it). This, as Ive discussed elsewhere, is a huge disappointment.Before the launch of the iPhone 12, wireless charging felt like the poor cousin of its wired equivalent: slower, less power-efficient, and just as much of a hassle because you had to make sure the phone was in the sweet spot on the charging puck, and a single accidental nudge could result in an uncharged device. MagSafe, which pulls the phone into the sweet spot and holds it there securely, changed all that. The only time I use wired charging with my iPhone 16 Plus is when I desperately need to top up the battery as quickly as possible before going out.The iPhone 16e, by contrast, feels like a step back to 2020, and wireless charging is once again a tiresome worry. At least you get an onscreen graphic and haptic vibration to tell you charging has begunbut it isnt as easy, and doesnt offer the same speeds, as charging with all the other MagSafe-compatible iPhones. Which is to say, every single other model.The second disappointing negative is the fact that the 16e also has only one rear camera lens. This carries implications for Portrait Mode, zoom, and more, which Ill discuss in the next section.Whereas the iPhone 16 Plus (pink) has a distinct module and then the lenses extend above that, the 16e (black) just has the lens sticking up.David Price / FoundryCamera performance: Mostly good, but with disappointing limitationsWhereas the iPhone 16 Pro has three cameras on the rear and the iPhone 16 has two, the 16e has just one. If that makes it sound like it will be a third as good at photography as the Pro model, dont worry; the good news is that not all lenses are created equal, and the additional lenses on the other models are somewhat less important than the one on the 16e. Nevertheless, this is a serious disadvantage for the new phone.The 16 Pros third lens is the telephoto. The fact that the 16e doesnt get it means (like the 16) it doesnt have optical zoom in the strict technical sense, although Apple claims a 2x zoom by cropping into the center of high-resolution shots taken using the main lens. Given that the 16e has the same whopping 48MP wide-angle camera as the other iPhone 16 phones, 2x shots have plenty of detailit is just as good as a non-zoomed shot taken using the iPhone 14s perfectly decent 12MP cameraso thats fair enough. But zoom in any more (up to 5x, for example, which the Pro can achieve with no issues) and images will start to lose detail and show pixellation.A bigger loss for me is the ultra-wide secondary lens. As the name suggests, this means you miss out on the handy 0.5x anti-zoom option for wider-angle shots, an important tool when photographing landscapes. But the fact that the 16e doesnt have two lenses means you also cant take macro shots or true Portrait photos, and my suspicion is that the average iPhone owner takes more photos of people than landscapes.There is still a Portrait option in the 16es Camera app, of course, but this is all done via software trickery rather than by comparing depth data from two lenses. This trickery relies on iOS knowing what its looking at, so it only works on people. I tried taking Portrait shots of mailboxes, dogs, and cats, and in every case, it said No person detected and refused to play ball.Even if you do snap a human model, the bokeh effect wont be as good as the other iPhone 16 phones. I noticed some softness around the edges, with parts of my models clothing and hair blending erroneously in with the background. Its not terrible by any means but it is noticeably worse than the real thing.The 16e (left) has trouble with soft edges that the 16 Plus (right) handled with ease.In other respects, however, the 16s camera performance is excellent, and thats what I mean by the relative importance of the lenses. My guess is that for 90 percent of iPhone photography, the limitations listed above wont be a factor. For those 90 percent of shots, detail was excellent, color reproduction was vibrant and faithful, and the results were great.The 16e even did well in difficult lighting thanks to the inclusion of Smart HDR 5, the latest iteration of a feature that takes multiple exposures and blends elements of each into the finished shot so that bright light in one part of the frame doesnt result in loss of detail in another darker part. This wasnt perfect, but I found that I could shoot a shadowed building with a bright sun directly behind, genuinely making the worst compositional decisions on purpose, and still clearly discern the brickwork. No small feat.Sure, the building is a little dark. But these were the most challenging lighting conditions I could find and its really not bad. (Incidentally, the 16 Plus performed no better in this test.)David Price / FoundryPerformance: Is there such a thing as too fast?That last section was critical, but were back on solid ground here. With an A18 processor and 8GB of RAM, the iPhone 16e is an insanely overpowered phone for the money, and this was reflected in speed testing.In terms of general processing, this is essentially the same as the iPhone 16, and its about as powerful as iPhones get right now. Across the CPU tests in Geekbench 5 and 6, and the various Neural Engine tests in Geekbench AI, there was nothing to choose between the 16e and even the 16 Pro, despite the latter featuring an A18 Pro. This is an absolute powerhouse.Graphically its a different story because the 16e has just a four-core GPU, compared to the 16s five cores and the 16 Pros six. In Geekbench 6s GPU test, the 16e was around 27 percent behind the 16 Pro, and we saw consistently lower frame rates across all the graphics tests in 3DMark. In these areas, the 16e performed closer to the iPhone 15 Pro.In real-world use, however, the 16e was fast and slick, performing at the highest level across every app I used. But in truth, Id expect an iPhone with a considerably weaker set of specs to perform the same way. Its tempting to say that this is overkill, although as mentioned earlier, the 16es chip and RAM make it superbly future-proofed.C1 modem: A questionable upgradeThis is the final surprising inclusion Im going to talk about in this article. The 16e features Apples new in-house C1 cellular modem, which promises improvements to battery performance, and it gets this at least six and likely 18 months before any flagship iPhone model.On the surface thats a remarkably generous decision, and wed never expect a new processor, say, to first appear this low down in the range. But after testing we would argue that Apple isnt being generous at all and that the 16e is instead being used as a testbed for a risky new component with cons as well as pros.Regardless of its effect on battery life, which Ill discuss in the next section, the C1s main job is to deliver cellular connectivity, and it simply doesnt do this as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon X71M modem in the iPhone 16. My colleague Jason Cross ran speed tests across multiple locations and concluded that the C1 delivers roughly the same upload speed as the X71M but about half the download speed. Early tests do suggest that the C1 does draw less power, perhaps 25 percent less. But this is unlikely to have a huge effect on battery life.David Price / FoundryBattery performance: Good, but not that goodBoasting a larger-capacity battery than either the iPhone 16 or 16 Pro, plus the power-conserving capabilities of the C1 modem, the iPhone 16e has all the makings of a battery star. Sure enough, Apple estimates up to 26 hours of video playback, well ahead of the 16s 22 hours and only slightly behind the 16 Pros 27.In practice, this aspect of the 16es performance was mildly disappointing. In the battery component of Geekbench 4 (thanks again to Jason Cross for running these tests) the 16e managed 13 hours and 38 minutes, lower than any other 16-series iPhone. Thats also lower than some other reviewers have reported, so Jason checked everything and repeated the test, with no improvement.This isnt bad, to be clear. Its better than any pre-16 iPhone, including the much larger 15 Pro Max, and you can expect far longer life in normal use; the battery test is deliberately very demanding to highlight differences in performance. While I was testing the 16e it would generally end the day with 30 to 50 percent of battery power remaining, the only exception being a day of ludicrously intense benchmarking which it still survived with 11 percent left. Battery life is very good just not quite as good as we expected.Price: A nasty shockThe iPhone 16e starts at $599, in yet another surprise. We were expecting this phone to replace the iPhone SE, which started at $429, but Apple went in a different direction and no longer offers a budget smartphone.To be fair, there was no way a phone with these specs was going to be feasible at $429 (or $479 for the SE with the same 128GB of storage), and it isnt the 16es fault that Apple has given up on what I think is an important market. The question is not whether the 16e should cost $479, because it clearly shouldnt, but whether its worth $599. Heres how much the three configurations will cost:iPhone 16e (128GB): $599/599iPhone 16e (256GB): $699/699iPhone 16e (512GB): $899/899David Price / FoundryShould you buy an iPhone 16e?The iPhone 16e is such a strange phone. In many ways its astonishingly good, delivering superb speed, good battery life, the latest Apple Intelligence features, and an attractive design at an affordable price. And then you bump into the lack of MagSafe and the single rear camera lens. The only word for it is lopsided, and Im struggling to see who the iPhone 16e is for.Youre forced to pay for a state-of-the-art processor which is overkill for most people and is only there for Apple Intelligencean AI system that is flawed and very much a work in progress. Do most phone buyers even care about AI? Im not sure, although its importance will increase so perhaps its good to be prepared.Im quite shocked that Apple thinks it can get away with a single-lens camera setup in the year 2025, given that its been selling dual-lens iPhones since 2016 and triple-lensers since 2019. Perhaps its lucky for the 16e that weve reached a point in smartphone camera development where even the worst cameras are still good enough for most peoples needs most of the time. Still, its worth saying that you could easily get a much better camera on a cheaper and older refurbished iPhone. You wouldnt get Apple Intelligence, but at least youll get MagSafe.Is the iPhone 16e worth $599? Yes, it probably is. If you weigh up the things that Apple included against the things it didnt, I guess it adds up to something around that price. Its just that the various elements dont mesh together in a way that makes sense. It would be like going to the supermarket and buying the cheapest wine and the most expensive steak. Youd end up paying a fair price, but you probably wouldnt enjoy the pairing.So who is this phone for? Who are these people who need Apple Intelligence but are happy to accept a single-lens camera? I dont know, but I cant imagine there are many of them. In fact the iPhone 16e doesnt feel like it was designed with anyone in mindjust the strategic imperatives of an AI-obsessed corporation. This is a product that was designed with the wrong motives and, to be honest, it shows.

MacworldIn an ideal world, at least as far as Apple is concerned, wed all be using Apple Intelligence all the time. Cupertino came late to the AI party and urgently needs to catch up on both training data and mindshare. AI is in that mad reckless gold-rush phase right now and the big tech companies are all desperate to stake their claims before its too late and ChatGPT becomes a verb synonymous with AI searching.AI is such a priority for Apple that its affecting everything else it does. When it launched the iPhone 16e last month, the waiting world was shocked by the price tag: a resolutely mid-market $599, while the iPhone SE it replaced cost $429. (You can argue that it actually replaced the iPhone 14, but either way, the SE is gone and the range now starts at that higher point.) The 16e costs as much as it does because of the high-end processor Apple was determined to include so it can run Apple Intelligence. In other words, Apple abandoned the massive budget phone market for at least a year purely so it could get more people on its AI platform.Last week it was the cheapest iPads turn to be phased out, and I was worried that it would get the same AI-first treatment as the iPhone 16e. After all, Apple cant have people using iPads that arent powerful enough to run Apple Intelligence, can it? Better shove in a ludicrously overpowered A18 chip and crank up the price. (Yes, I will admit that I was getting mad in advance about something that hadnt even happened yet.)In the end, that didnt happen. Rather than making the ruinously expensive leap from the A14 to an A18, the new iPad hopped more cautiously from an A14 to the A16 from 2022. Surprisinglyno, shockinglythe 11th-gen iPad does not support Apple Intelligence, and equally surprisingly it still costs a very reasonable $349.This might not be what we expected, but I think its absolutely the right decision. Tablets arent like smartphones. Theyre bought for different purposes, with far less emphasis on specs and features and far more on looks, physical dimensions, battery life, and above all, price. in fact, when this iPad launched in 2022, it was poorly received due to its $449 price tag. After a $100 price cut last year, it became the consensus pick for basically anyone needing a new tablet.Beyond the small niche market for the high-end iPad Pro, the vast majority of iPads are going to be used for convenient, portable, instant-booting access to light computing tasks like email and surfing the web. If Apple pushed up the iPad range by $100 again and started marketing it on the basis of high processing speeds and AI, it might as well wave a white flag and hand the biggest market to er Samsung? I guess?Im sure its a source of frustration for Apple that a bunch of customers are going to buy A16 iPads and miss out on Apple Intelligence (though presumably quite a lot of them can use it on their iPhones or Macs). As iPad buyers tend to upgrade quite rarely, it might be four or five years before this generation of iPads gets replaced. But its worth bearing in mind that Apple Intelligence isnt actually that great just yet and might not be for a while.Ive been using it a lot while reviewing the iPhone 16e and at this stage, its more of a proof of concept than a useful set of tools. Every single feature I tested did at least one cool thing (such as identifying a Bichon) and at least one stupid thing (such as removing a car from a photo and leaving behind its shadow), and the interfaces are some of the least intuitive Ive ever used from Apple. If its not obvious that Apple Intelligence was rushed out the door before being properly polished, consider the news that dropped on Friday: Apple has officially delayed the anticipated next-gen Siri that was already delayed to iOS 18.5. Now it looks like it will launch with iOS 19, possibly even in 2026. So, its probably not the end of the world that this years budget iPad buyers dont get a flawed AI system shoved in their faces. And its certainly preferable to a price hike.Apple is trying, understandably and sensibly, to think about the future: skating to where the puck is going to be and all that. People wont buy iPhones forever, so a big priority is working out what comes next and making sure Apple is part of whatever that is. But you have to strike a balance between the future and the present, and its better to sell tablets that dont run Apple Intelligence than a tablet no one wants to buy.FoundryWelcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but its cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.Have your sayWe got too many emails to print following last weeks discussion of the iPhone 16e not supporting MagSafe. So Ill confine myself to summarizing a useful point made by multiple readers: that MagSafe may be a source of concern for those with a pacemaker or related medical device.Back in 2021 the American Heart Association said the technology posed a clinically identifiable risk to cardiac devices, and Apple itself was moved to issue a warning. The degree of risk is disputed, and Apple now says most consumer electronics, from laptops to wearables, contain components which could interfere with medical devices. But with the stakes so high, its probably best to play it safe.Thanks to those who raised this important point.Theres something in the airLike the week of Mac announcements at the end of October 2024, last week was dedicated to air-themed reveals. No actual event, just a series of press releases and new products appearing quietly on the website.In fact the air theme ended up looking a little tenuous. We got a new MacBook Air in a charming new color, and a rather less impressive new iPad Air. But the powerful new Mac Studio and the odd A16 iPad (which doesnt support Apple Intelligence, curiously) conspicuously do not have the word air in their names. Very poor, Apple. Very poor.Trending: Top storiesGo home, Apple, youre drunk: 5 recent decisions that make no sense.Apples new entry-level devices are the best possible trap, says Dan Moren.Why do analysts even bother to predict iPhone sales, the Macalope wonders.Forget the M4 Air, I want Apple to bring back the plain ol MacBook, says Roman Loyola.Apple begins legal battle to resist egregious iCloud backdoor demand.How Oscar-winning Anora director got his start shooting on an iPhone 5s.The iPhone 16e DOES work with MagSafe chargers kind of.Podcast of the weekApple released new versions of the MacBook Air, iPad Air, Mac Studio and iPad this week, and on the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, we talk about whats new, whats not new, and whats totally confusing!You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast onSpotify,Soundcloud, thePodcasts app, orour own site.Reviews cornerSync review: No-nonsense file sync across your devices.Alogic Ark Pro 27600mAh Power Bank review: Cable-carrying convenience.EcoFlow Rapid Magnetic Power Bank review: Rapid by name, rapid by nature.The rumor millReport: Folding iPhone will be ultra-thin, crease-free, and cost over $2,000.Apples next-gen Siri might be delayed until 2027.The M4 MacBook Air and Severance finale top Apples list of March releases.Software updates, bugs, and problemsiPhone 16e criticized for terrible design of USB-C port.Forget Siri, iOS 18.4 brings the iPhone emoji update everyone wants.iOS 18.4 beta 2 is out, supporting iPhone 16e and adding Visual Intelligence options.And with that, were done for this weeks Apple Breakfast. If youd like to get regular roundups, sign up forour newsletters, including our new email from The Macalopean irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow usonFacebook,Threads,Bluesky, orXfor discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

This is todays edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of whats going on in the world of technology.The cheapest way to supercharge Americas power gridBrian Deese is an innovation fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021 to 2023. Rob Gramlich is founder and president of Grid Strategies and was economic advisor to the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the George W. Bush administration.US electricity consumption is rising faster than it has in decades. Accommodating that growth will require building wind turbines, solar farms, and other power plants faster than we ever have beforeand expanding the network of wires needed to connect those facilities to the grid.But one major problem is that its expensive and slow to secure permits for new transmission lines and build them across the country. Fortunately, there are some shortcuts that could expand the capacity of the existing system without requiring completely new infrastructure: a suite of hardware and software tools known as advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), which can increase both the capacity and the efficiency of the power sector.ATTs have the potential to radically reduce timelines for grid upgrades, avoid tricky permitting issues, and yield billions in annual savings for US consumers. So why are we not seeing an explosion in ATT investment and deployment in the US? Read the full story.Interested in learning more about this topic? Read more of our stories:+ Whats driving electricity demand? It isnt just AI and data centers.+ That said, AIs search for energy is growing more urgent.+ Why this developer wont quit fighting to connect the USs grids.+ Here are four ways AI is making the power grid faster and more resilient.The must-readsIve combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.1 China claims to have created the worlds first fully autonomous AI agentThe agent, called Manus, can allegedly operate fully free of human intervention. (Forbes)+ But its not clear if the hype can be justified at this stage. (TechCrunch)+ Two former DeepMind researchers are chasing superintelligence. (Bloomberg $)+ Four Chinese AI startups to watch beyond DeepSeek. (MIT Technology Review)2 Meta went to extreme lengths to win Chinas approvalIncluding developing a censorship system to comply with the CCP. (WP $)+ However, its attempts to curry favor with the party did not bear fruit. (Gizmodo)3 Anonymous Chinese investors are quietly funding Elon Musks venturesTheyre happy to invest tens of millionsso long as their identities remain under wraps. (FT $)+ Despite the influx of cash, SpaceX isnt having a great year. (NYT $)+ Starlink is reaping the benefits of its founders proximity to the White House. (NBC News)4 Ukraine doesnt have minable rare earthsAnd even if it did, it would take at least 15 years to reach them. (IEEE Spectrum)+ The country is preparing to hold negotiations with the US this week. (Economist $)5 Farewell, the Athena lunar landerIt landed sideways in a crater and has been officially written off. (The Register)+ Intuitive Machines, the company behind it, is contracted for another two landings. (AP News)+ Firefly Aerospace, another private firm, had better luck. (Economist $)6 The American public really doesnt like DOGEAnd Donald Trump is starting to pay attention. (The Atlantic $)+ Musk represents the problem he is claiming he wants to solve. (Wired $)+ The Trump administration is threatening scientific progress. (New Yorker $)+ Anti-Musk protestors are targeting Tesla stores and infrastructure. (WP $)7 Wikipedia is struggling to document the war in the Middle EastCertain editors have been forbidden from working on related pages. (Bloomberg $)8 How to store the worlds dataHard discs seem the obvious choicefor now. (WSJ $)+ Music labels are going after the Internet Archive for copyright infringement. (Ars Technica)+ The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age. (MIT Technology Review)9 YouTube bros are peddling Taliban tourismInside the depressing rise of videos purporting to show another side to Afghanistan. (Insider $)10 Amazon and Googles AI calls Mein Kampf a true work of artThats what happens when you search for positive reviews of the Nazi manifesto. (404 Media)+ Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it. (MIT Technology Review)Quote of the dayThe US won the internet and the US should win crypto.Tyler Winklevoss, who runs crypto exchange Gemini with his twin brother Cameron, could not be happier with the outcome of Donald Trumps crypto summit, according to a post on X.The big storyHow this Turing Awardwinning researcher became a legendary academic advisorOctober 2023Every academic field has its superstars. But a rare few achieve superstardom not just by demonstrating individual excellence but also by consistently producing future superstars.Computer science has its own such figure: Manuel Blum, who won the 1995 Turing Awardthe Nobel Prize of computer science. He is the inventor of the captchaa test designed to distinguish humans from bots online.Three of Blums students have also won Turing Awards, and many have received other high honors in theoretical computer science. More than 20 hold professorships at top computer science departments. So whats the formula to his success? Read the full story.Sheon HanWe can still have nice thingsA place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet em at me.)+ Looking for some books to make you laugh out loud? Look no further.+ What cant White Lotus star Walton Goggins live without? An orange pen and 22-year old sand, apparently.+ When its time to take a break, heres how to recharge properly.+ $40 for magic yogurt? What the hell, sure.