Gooood morning, afternoon, or evening. In today’s digest, we’re taking a look at the latest Airpods competitor’s from Nothing. But first…
The headlines:
👓 Meta has started licensing the Quest OS to other companies starting with Lenovo.
🤖 Microsoft has launched a mini AI model that can run on smartphones.
🖼️ Adobe launched a new image-generating model that is its biggest yet.
You could probably argue (and I would) that tech, especially hardware, has gone through an aesthetic lull in recent years. Yes, the advancement on the internals has been stellar, just take a look at the iPhone’s camera. But visually, from phones to laptops to headphones, there seems to be a sense of uniformity.
That is until you come across Nothing. No, not “the absence of something,” I mean the tech company. Founded by One+ founder Carl Pei, Nothing’s mission is to “Make tech fun again,” and since the debut of the Nothing phone, it’s been doing just that.
The company just launched Nothing Ear and the Nothing Ear a, its latest offering in the earbud world, and they’re priced at $149 and $99, respectively. These are Nothing’s fourth and fifth entries into the music world, the first being the Nothing Ear 1, which turned heads with its return to a transparent casing.
When it comes to the internals, the more expensive Ear comes with a 25% boost to audio quality over the previous generation, new sound profile personalization options, a 42-hour battery, active noise cancellation up to 45db, and a new bass enhance option for when you really want to get down with the load end.
The Nothing Ear a comes with the same noise-canceling capabilities. Both are IP54 dust and water-resistant with wireless charging. Where the Ear a stands out is in the visuals. For the first time, you can add a splash of color to a Nothing device with a bright yellow outer layer, similar to the Playdate handheld. Don’t worry — you can still gaze at the internals.
Additionally, if you have a Nothing phone, you’ll soon be able to use ChatGPT directly in your ear as the company plans to roll out a specific integration for both the phone and the buds.
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Maker’s Corner
Subframe saves you time on your CSS by letting you visually build components.
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Beyond the Fold
Erda lets you gift or own plots of land and plant two trees for just $2.
Expo is an open source platform that’s designed to make building universal apps for iOS, Android, and the Web a whole lot easier and faster. It just landed in the top 20 most shouted out products on Product Hunt. Here’s what makers love about it:
“We use expo to be able to build the app for both iOS and Android in record-time!”
🌍 LangAI, a messaging-styled language-learning app.
“Expo was crucial in developing Linky Notes. Hot reloading streamlined testing, while EAS Build and Submit simplified the release”
✍️ Linky Notes, an app for creating rich, interconnected notes with blocks.
Coffee lovers: If you love a good pour over coffee but you struggle with the good part of the sentence, Fellow, the undisputed aesthetic king of coffee appliances launched a new tool to make it easier.
The Aiden Precision Coffee Maker is a sleek, minimalist coffee machine that combines precision, control, and speed to help you make the best tasting pour ever you possibly can with the click of a button.