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Apple Now Lets You Easily Find Third-Party Devices From Your iPhone

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Apple Now Lets You Easily Find Third-Party Devices From Your iPhone
Apple has announced the launch of its ‘Find My network’ accessory programme to allow third-party Bluetooth devices to be tracked via iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices using the preloaded Find My app. The Cupertino giant has also brought an updated Find My app that features a dedicated Items tab to let its customers easily locate and keep track of all the compatible third-party devices. Apple has initially partnered with Belkin, Chipolo, and VanMoof that will bring their new devices eligible for the Find My network programme starting next week.Belkin’s Soundform Freedom True Wireless Earbuds, Chipolo One Spot item finder, and VanMoof S3 and X3 e-bikes will be the first third-party products to have compatibility with Apple’s Find My network. However, Apple has opened up the ground for other manufacturers and products as well.

Apple’s Find My app now lets you locate and track third-party devices
Photo Credit: Apple

Apple said that any accessory developers looking to connect an existing or new product to the Find My network can join the Find My network accessory programme, which is a part of its Made for iPhone (MFi) programme. Third-party devices are required to adhere to all the privacy protections of the Find My network, the company said.

Customers will be able to add the approved devices from the Find My network accessory programme to the Items tab of the Find My app. Those devices will also be able to feature a “Works with Apple Find My” badge.

Apple has also introduced a draft specification for chipset manufacturers that will allow third-party device manufacturers to leverage the Ultra Wideband technology offered in the U1-equipped Apple devices, including the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 series, to offer more precise, directionally aware device location tracking when nearby. The draft specification will be released later this spring.

By launching the Find My accessory network programme and updating the Find My app with the Items tab, Apple has allowed its customers to get the same experience of locating their missing third-party accessories that they earlier had for finding missing Apple devices. The Find My app lets iPhone, iPad, and Mac users locate their lost items on a map, play a sound to pinpoint its location, and put it in Lost Mode to lock it immediately. The app also allows displaying of a message with contact number of the owner and even remotely erase the data from the lost device in case it has fallen into the wrong hands.

In addition to the Find My app that enables location tracking of devices connected to the Internet, Apple has the Find My network that allows users to locate their missing devices even if they aren’t connected or couldn’t connect to the Internet. It works as a crowdsourced network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices that use Bluetooth wireless technology to detect missing devices or items nearby, and report their approximate location back to the owner.

Apple claims that the entire process of locating and tracking devices through the Find My network is end-to-end encrypted and anonymous, so no one else, not even the company itself or the third-party manufacturer, can view a device’s location or information.

As a result of the latest update, third-party devices can be added to the Find My app on the iPhone running on iOS 14.3 and later, iPad on iPadOS 14.3 and later, or a Mac device based on macOS Big Sur 11.1 and later.

Apple brought the last major update to the Find My app in 2019, when it combined the Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps together as a unified app. That update was provided through iOS 13 and was also available on Mac devices through macOS 10.15.

The ability to track lost items through the Find My app offers a distinctive edge to Apple against Android devices that so far don’t have a similar native solution. Samsung is, though, trying to take on Apple’s Find My with its SmartThings Find that it expanded with the release of the Galaxy SmartTag in January.

However, the distinct experience through the Find My app brought Apple into trouble last year — when Bluetooth-tracking device maker Tile and other companies accused the iPhone maker of abusing its market power to disadvantage their competitive solutions.

Apple is also in the rumours for developing its own Bluetooth tracker called the AirTag that could take on similar offerings by Tile and other companies. However, with the introduction of the Find My network accessory programme, it becomes interesting to see what Apple would bring to its native offering in terms of providing a different experience over similar third-party Bluetooth tags.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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