Author: Press Room
1996. Ewan McGregor goes swimming in a Scottish toilet, The Spice Girls launch Girl Power and a sheep gets cloned. Oh, and some other things happen too, like the mighty Stuff magazine making its debut. So now the mag’s in the year of its big three-oh, I thought it’d be fun to pick 30 key tech events from the past 30 years, including the launches of revolutionary smartphones, cars, gaming gear and more. And, no, Will Smith dubiously saving the world by uploading a virus from an Apple PowerBook to an alien mothership isn’t one of them. Sorry, Hollywood. DVD spins into view…
Another September softly approaches, another collection of shiny new iPhones, and another nagging suspicion that the perfectly good phone in your pocket has somehow become outdated overnight. Only this year could be different. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max in September, potentially alongside its first foldable iPhone. The regular iPhone 18, however, reportedly won’t arrive until the first half of 2027. That makes skipping this year’s launch more than an act of admirable financial restraint. If you don’t need a Pro phone, waiting might simply be the most sensible option. The regular…
Right now, my dining table looks like a battlefield. Pelennor Fields, to be precise, because I’m somewhere in the middle of building the Lego Minas Tirith set – 8200-odd pieces of a citadel that seems determined to spread across every flat surface in my house. Grey bricks here, white bricks there, a small mountain of 1×1 plates that easily get lost in the rug. It is, genuinely, one of the best builds I’ve ever attempted. But it is also a little chaotic. So when I stumbled across Brickle – a company that makes what can only be described as furniture-grade…
There are 8278 pieces in the Lego Icons The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith set. I know this because I have now touched, sorted, and clicked together a significant proportion of them, and my fingertips have the tiny cuts to prove it. The plan was simple, or at least it sounded simple when I came up with it. Watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Extended Edition, of course) back to back, roughly 11 hours and 23 minutes all in, and build the White City of Gondor alongside it, bag by bag, finishing the final brick as Frodo, Bilbo…
Back in 2021, before I reviewed the Bike+, I was a Peloton sceptic. It all seemed entirely unnecessary, from the huge screen and expensive monthly subscription to the over-the-top instructors and pricey hardware. Why not just buy a cheap exercise bike and use an app on your phone? But then I tried it, and like everyone else, I got hooked. Every week, I chased a higher output score, took part in the leaderboard nonsense, and very quickly learned to appreciate the quality of the instructors (even if some are still a bit much for me). Five years later, my Bike+…
One of this year’s hottest upcoming phone series is set to debut shortly. Yes, it’s time for the iPhone 18 series, but as you’ll hear, the standard iPhone 18 may debut at a different time than the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. And there’s also the foldable iPhone Fold set to appear as well. What’s the difference this year? Multiple reports suggest that Apple will break its regular yearly cycle of iPhone launches as it juggles with multiple different models of iPhone and smartphone development slows down year-to-year. It seems we will get a premium-only lineup this year,…
Two years ago, Lego and F1 shook hands on what looked like a fairly standard licensing deal. It’s since turned into one of the most successful partnerships in motorsport (up there with Rust-eze and Lightning McQueen). It started with some Speed Champions sets and a bit of cross-promotion. Job done, right? Instead it’s turned into something far bigger – drivable life-sized cars, a race-ready F1 Academy livery, and helmets so detailed that drivers turned up to the track with them. I’ve been watching F1 since Jenson Button won the title with Brawn GP, and I’ve been playing with Lego for…
Your iPhone can snap excellent photos with no effort. Point the camera, press the button, and Apple’s image processing handles everything from exposure and colour, to noise reduction. But while this works brilliantly most of the time, it also means that many photographic decisions are made for you. If you own a compatible iPhone Pro and want more control over your pictures, switching to Apple ProRAW gives you much greater control over the final result. It won’t magically improve every picture, of course, and the files are enormous. But if you want to take your smartphone photography game to the…
I’ve had a Roku Streambar since 2020, and for years I just assumed the flat, boxed-in sound was as good as a soundbar this size could get. Then I went looking for a “Virtual Surround” setting everyone online kept mentioning, and what I found instead changed how I watched. My Streambar is the original 2020 model, not the Pro, and Roku only ever added Virtual Surround to the Streambar Pro and the Smart Soundbar. According to Roku’s own sound settings support page, Virtual Surround is only available on those two devices, either on their own or paired with the optional…
Several ChatGPT features that once required a subscription are now available for free users, including image creation. That’s a big change. For a long time, free users mostly had to watch as paid subscribers got the latest features first, then wait and see whether those tools would ever make it to them. Free users still have tighter limits and may wait longer, but at least they get to try the tools now. Here are four formerly paid ChatGPT features you can now use for free. Create free images in ChatGPT The more details you add to the prompt, the better…