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In the mad dash many companies have made to incorporate AI features into their phones, Nothing arrived at one of the better ideas with Essential Space on the Nothing Phone 3a in 2025. The AI-powered app turns screenshots and voice recordings into actionable to-do lists and transcriptions, and now Nothing is rolling out an update to make the app easier to search and capable of recognizing new kinds of content.As part of the update, Essential Space now recognizes "Events," displaying them in their own card with fields for the date, time and location. That means, for example, if you add a photo of a flyer for pottery class to the app, Essential Space will be able to pull the details of when and where it's happening, and track it in much the same way it does tasks or to-dos. Nothing foresees events being such a big part of how people will use Essential Space that it's also changing the layout of the app's interface and listing things like Events and Tasks in a new For You page you see when you open the app.To make everything you've stored in Essential Space easier to find, the app now also supports semantic search, surfacing results that don't just match the text you've entered, but try to match the meaning of what you're looking for. Semantic search should be particularly useful when you're looking for an image, because you can enter a description of what you're looking for and Essential Space should still be able to surface it.Sorting and indexing digital ephemera like voice notes and screenshots with AI is a popular use for the technology. Google offers Pixel Screenshots, and even Apple gave iOS and iPadOS the ability to automatically recognize events in images and add them to your calendar. Essential Space might be less unique now, but the fact that Nothing continues to update it bodes well for its future.Nothing's new Essential Space update is available starting today on "all 20252026 Nothing and CMF phones that support Essential Key," the company says. Essential Space should automatically update, but you also manually update the app in the Google Play Store.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/nothing-updates-its-ai-app-with-semantic-search-and-a-new-way-to-track-events-202500495.html?src=rss
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Apple's cheapest laptop is also its most repairable. iFixit gave the new MacBook Neo a 6/10 repairability score. Although that number would only be mediocre for, say, a game review or final exam grade, it's the MacBook line's highest iFixit score in about 14 years.As always, iFixit goes into great detail about the product's repairability, but a few points stand out. First, the MacBook Neo's battery is screwed down rather than glued moving it from "this might burn the house down" to "routine repair" territory. The laptop also has a flat disassembly tree. That means its battery, speakers, ports and trackpad are all immediately accessible after opening the back case.In other areas, a simplified antenna assembly helps the screen come away cleanly. Keyboard repair is still a bit tedious (41 screws and tape), but at least it isn't riveted to the top case like on other models. (The screwed-not-glued battery helps here, too.) Apple's decision to forego a Force Touch trackpad and return to a mechanical style improves repairability as well. And in a nice touch, all the machine's Torx Plus screw sizes are clearly labeled inside the case.AppleSeveral other encouraging signs carry over from recent MacBooks. iFixit found that Apple's Repair Assistant accepted all replacement parts it tried without a fuss. And its USB-C ports and headphone jack are modular, so replacing either doesn't "turn into logic board work."Not everything is peachy. As expected, the Neo still has soldered RAM and storage, so there's no upgrade path there. iFixit describes Apple's pentalobe screws on the bottom case as an "annoying" choice. And while the device's speakers are easy to remove, they, well, just aren't very good. (Had to cut that cost somewhere.)While iFixit describes the Neo's repairability as "a real comeback," it's premature to assume higher-end MacBooks will follow suit. After all, with this $599 device ($499 for schools), Apple is targeting the educational sector, where repairability could mean more bulk orders. Until Apple is convinced that the MacBook Air or Pro would sell better with similar serviceability, this kind of score may be limited to the budget model.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/the-macbook-neo-is-apples-most-repairable-laptop-200923202.html?src=rss
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Meta is killing end-to-end encryption in Instagram DMs. The feature will "no longer be supported after May 8, 2026," the company wrote in an update on its support page. Unlike WhatsApp, Meta never made encryption available to all Instagram users and it was never a default setting. Instead, users in "some areas" had the ability to opt-in to encryption on a per-chat basis.In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the feature was being retired due to low adoption. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," the spokesperson said. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.Interestingly, Meta's statement doesn't mention the status of encryption on Messenger. The company began turning on end-to-end encryption as a default setting in 2023 after years of work on the feature. A support page for Messenger currently states that the company "is in the process of securing personal messages with end-to-end encryption by default."Meta's approach to encrypted messaging has changed several times over the years. It started encrypting WhatsApp chats in 2016. In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg outlined a "privacy-focused" revamp of the company's apps, saying at the time that "implementing end-to-end encryption for all private communications is the right thing to do." In 2021, the company's head of safety said that Meta was delaying its encryption work until 2023 in order to create stronger safety features. Metas use of encryption has been repeatedly criticized by law enforcement and some child safety organizations that say the feature makes it harder to catch predators who target children on social media. Recently, the topic has been raised numerous times during a trial in New Mexico over child safety. Internal documents that have surfaced as part of the trial show Meta executives and researchers debating the trade-offs between safety and privacy as it relates to encryption. In testimony that was broadcast during the trial, Zuckerberg said that safety issues were "a large part of the reason why it took so long" to bring encryption to Messenger. "There's been debate about this, but I think the majority of folks, from people who use our products to people who are involved in security overall, believe that strong encryption is positive," he said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-killing-end-to-end-encryption-in-instagram-dms-195207421.html?src=rss
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Amazon is raising the price of its ad-free Prime Video subscription and locking 4K UHD streaming behind this new tier. Starting April 10 for US customers, a rebranded Prime Video Ultra subscription will cost $5 per month, up from $3 per month. For that extra $2, you get a download capacity increase from 25 to 100, and you can now run five streams concurrently instead of three. Whether those "Ultra" upgrades are worth the $24 annual hike will probably depend on how many boxsets you like to plough through on a long flight, or how many devices are using your Prime Video account. The changes are most galling for Prime members who automatically qualify for Prime Video with ads through their membership, as Amazon has decided to remove 4K streaming from the standard tier. That means that, despite already paying $15 per month or $139 per year for Amazon Prime, youll be stuck with 1080p shows and movies unless you sign up to Prime Video Ultra. Amazon has thrown in Dolby Vision support for the first time, as well as upping the concurrent stream and download count on its free tier as well, but youre losing the privilege of UHD content that has been available to all Prime Video members for years. Dolby Atmos remains exclusive to the $5 tier too. Amazon is the latest streamer to put its prices up, following similar recent hikes to Apple TV, Disney+ and HBO Max. If you dont want to give the company any more of your hard-earned, you have just under a month to binge your way through the second season of Fallout in all of its irradiated UHD glory.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/youll-now-have-to-fork-out-for-an-additional-subscription-if-you-want-to-watch-4k-content-on-prime-video-174028064.html?src=rss
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Parallels, the company best known for making the virtualization software that enables you to run Windows and other operating systems on a Mac, has confirmed that Parallels Desktop is compatible with the MacBook Neo. At launch it was unclear if Apple's new $600 laptop possessed the under-the-hood heft to run Windows apps, but in a recently updated post on its website, Parallels said that initial tests show its software running "stably," although performance is still being assessed. The MacBook Neo uses an A18 Pro chip, which debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro. However, as this chip is based on the same ARM architecture as M-series chips for Mac, its still capable of running Parallels Windows virtual machine. But there is a caveat to all this. Just because you can do something, it doesnt necessarily mean you should. While Parallels Desktop could theoretically be a viable option for Neo owners who are only interested in light Windows use, anything that puts a significant strain on the CPU or GPU is going to present a problem. This is because the MacBook Neo only ships with 8GB of RAM, and as Parallels highlights, Windows 11 requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM to run. That leaves a very small amount of remaining headroom for macOS and your Mac apps to run alongside Windows, which is going to noticeably hurt the laptops performance. Add to that the lack of a cooling fan, meaning the chip will reduce clock speeds when it detects a heavy CPU or GPU load, and this definitely isnt a device for power users. If you really want to dabble with Windows on a Mac, Parallels recommends picking up an Apple laptop with 16GB of unified memory or more, like the new MacBook Air M5 or a MacBook Pro. And for those content with macOS and looking to save some money, we dubbed the MacBook Neo the best $600 laptop weve ever used in our recently published review.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/parallels-desktop-creators-say-macbook-neo-does-indeed-have-enough-muscle-to-run-windows-apps-164525546.html?src=rss
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