Category: 4. Technology

Starting today, Google is implementing a change that will enable its Gemini AI engine to interact with third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, even when users previously configured their devices to block such interactions. Users who don’t want their previous settings to be overridden may have to take action.

An email Google sent recently informing users of the change linked to a notification page that said that “human reviewers (including service providers) read, annotate, and process” the data Gemini accesses. The email provides no useful guidance for preventing the changes from taking effect. The email said users can block the apps that Gemini interacts with, but even in those cases, data is stored for 72 hours.

An email Google recently sent to Android users.

No, Google, it’s not good news

The email never explains how users can fully extricate Gemini from their Android devices and seems to contradict itself on how or whether this is even possible. At one point, it says the changes “will automatically start rolling out” today and will give Gemini access to apps such as WhatsApp, Messages, and Phone “whether your Gemini apps activity is on or off.” A few sentences later, the email says, “If you have already turned these features off, they will remain off.” Nowhere in the email or the support pages it links to are Android users informed how to remove Gemini integrations completely.

Compounding the confusion, one of the linked support pages requires users to open a separate support page to learn how to control their Gemini app settings. Following the directions from a computer browser, I accessed the settings of my account’s Gemini app. I was reassured to see the text indicating no activity has been stored because I have Gemini turned off. Then again, the page also said that Gemini was “not saving activity beyond 72 hours.”

Apple doesn’t typically offer discounts across its tech line-up, which means that you’ll need to head to third-party sites like Amazon to find them. With thousands of products now discounted across the site for Prime Day, it’s one of the best opportunities of the year to land savings on the tech giant’s offerings, and there’s already plenty of Prime Day Apple deals to bank across AirPods, Apple Watches, Beats headphones and more.

Shop Apple Prime Day Deals Amazon

If you’re thinking about upgrading your smartwatch or fitness tracker, there’s discounts on all three of the latest Apple Watch models. The flagship Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a hefty £140 off, down from to £799 to £659, the everyday powerhouse Apple Watch Series 10 has dipped under £300 – now just £295, down from £399. The latest entry-level Apple Watch SE is also discounted, with £34 slashed off its ordinary price this Prime Day.

There’s also plenty of opportunities for an audio upgrade. You can now grab the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 for less, reduced by £45 and £30 respectively. Because Beats is owned by Apple, we’ve also included deals on the new workout-leaning Powerbeats Pro 2 – down from £249.99 to £195 – and the older, but still excellent, Beats Fit Pro, which are over £100 off at £114. Here’s a round-up of the all these, plus more of the best Apple Prime deals we’ve found so far, including more offers on iPads, iMacs and iPhones.

Prime Day Apple Deals

Apple Watch Ultra 2

Now 18% Off

Was £799, now £659

SAVE £140

Apple Watch Series 10

Now 26% Off

Was £399, now £295

SAVE £104

Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen)

Now 14% Off

Was £249, now £215

SAVE £34

Apple AirPods Pro 2

Now 20% Off

Was £229, now £184

SAVE £45

Apple AirPods 4

Now 17% Off

Was £179, now £149

SAVE £30

Beats Powerbeats Pro 2

Now 22% Off

Was £249.99, now £195

SAVE £54.99

Was £219.99, now £114

SAVE £105.99

Was £189, now £139

SAVE £50

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When Does Prime Day End?

If you’ve been holding out for a bargain before picking up a new Apple smartwatch, tablet, smartphone or earbuds, the clock is now ticking. You have 96 hours from the start of the sale to make the most of these deals before it ends at midnight on Friday 11 July.

Do You Need a Prime Membership to Take Part?

Yes. To make use of these Apple Prime Day deals, plus all the other offers included in the event this week, you’ll need to either already be a Prime member or you can join for free by signing up to a 30-day free trial, which you can cancel for no fee once the sale ends after midnight on Friday.

More Fitness Tech Deals and Reviews

Prime Day Deals 2025 | Prime Day Headphone Deals | Prime Day Garmin Deals | Best Apple Watches | Apple Watch Ultra 2 Review | Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 Review | Beats Fit Pro Review | Best Beats Headphones | Best Gym Headphones

Luke Chamberlain is the ecommerce editor for Men’s Health UK where he compiles expert-led buying guides and in-depth product reviews across gym wear, fitness tech, supplements, and grooming. Responsible for testing everything from the latest gym headphones to the best manscaping tools, Luke also enlists the help of leading health and wellness experts to help readers make informed choices when shopping online – whether it’s to debunk the latest viral hair growth trend or to get the lowdown on a new type of recovery tech. He also covers major sales events for Men’s Health, such as Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day, scouting and verifying hundreds of discounts in order to recommend only the most genuine deals on offer. A magazine journalism graduate from the University of Sheffield in 2018, Luke has also worked as assistant editor for Outdoor Swimmer magazine and as an ecommerce writer for The Recommended. When he’s not testing the latest health and fitness products, he’s busy plotting routes for his next trail run or gravel ride out of London. Follow Luke on Instagram at @lukeochamb

Garmin doesn’t actually have a direct competitor out there with a wide range of models that cater to professionals and amateurs.

For Prime Day Amazon is offering a whopping 43% discount on the Forerunner 255, bringing its price down to just $199 from its regular price of $349. This is the company’s best-selling product, and it has a 4.7 out of 5 rating and it can be purchased as a limited time offer that does not require a Prime membership.

See at Amazon

Quality and Tracking

Its slender profile and always-visible, full-color face make it comfortable to wear all day and the screen remains easy to view in bright sunlight. Coming in two sizes (46 mm and 41 mm), the watch is sure to fit most wrists and fashion styles. Battery life is great at up to 14 days of smartwatch mode and up to 30 hours of GPS mode, so you can track your fitness and workouts without having to constantly reach for a charger.

This watch has an entire suite of features far beyond simple step tracking: Morning Report feature gives you a snapshot of your sleep, HRV, recovery, and workout suggestions as soon as you wake up so you can start each morning knowing exactly what you need to do. Forerunner 255 also has more in-depth information about your training and recovery including monitoring heart rate variability, recovery time, and daily workouts that are suggested based on your performance and rest. If you are preparing to run a race, the adaptive training plans and estimated race finish times keep you motivated and on target, taking into account course data, weather, and your current performance.

The watch assesses your current training level in order to inform you whether you’re undertraining or working too hard, and the integrated sports apps accommodate a broad spectrum of activities, from running and cycling to triathlon and multisport profiles. With running dynamics and power in the wrist, you can monitor your stride, ground contact time and effort in real-time.

Forerunner 255 also features advanced safety and navigation capabilities: GPS tracking is fast and accurate, no matter what city street or new trail you’re on. The watch pairs with Bluetooth and USB and effortlessly transfers your data to the Garmin Connect app for deeper analysis and sharing with others or coaches. 4 GB of storage gives you room to store your training plans and workout history.

If you’re looking for a feature-rich GPS running smartwatch, the Garmin Forerunner 255 at $199 is an unbeatable deal.

See at Amazon

It was a mistake that was ahead of its time.

Between 2002 and 2005, engineers with the Techint Group were trying to dial in a new electric arc furnace for a steelmaker when they noticed something odd. The carbon electrodes, rather than breaking down, were growing larger. 

The team had inadvertently created what’s known as a pyrolysis reaction, which is basically burning something in the absence of oxygen. In this case, the furnace was splitting methane into pure hydrogen and pure carbon. The team reported their discovery internally and then, basically, forgot about it.

“Back then, nobody cared because nobody cared about methane pyrolysis, about hydrogen,” Massimiliano Pieri, CEO of Tulum Energy, told TechCrunch. The experiment was largely forgotten for the next 20 years.

But a couple of years ago, investors for the Techint Group’s corporate VC arm, TechEnergy Ventures, were scouring the landscape for new ways to produce hydrogen from methane without the usual pollution.

Techint’s investors didn’t have to look far. “Someone in the company realized, ‘But we already have that. We have this discovery,’” Pieri said.

So the conglomerate dusted off the idea and spun out Tulum to turn the accidental discovery into a viable business. Recently, Tulum closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed round led by TDK Ventures and CDP Venture Capital, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and TechEnergy Ventures participated.

Tulum isn’t the only startup pursuing methane pyrolysis as a way to produce hydrogen. Modern Hydrogen, Molten Industries, and Monolith are among Tulum’s competitors. The reaction has attracted attention for its ability to produce hydrogen from cheap, widely available natural gas without any carbon dioxide emissions. In pyrolysis, methane is broken down in the absence of oxygen, the only products are hydrogen gas and a dust of solid carbon, both of which can be sold.

But Tulum differs in a few ways. For one, it doesn’t need to use expensive catalysts to encourage the pyrolysis reaction, which some of its competitors require. In its use of the electric arc furnace, Tulum is also using a widely used — if modified — technology.

“This gives you a big head start,” Pieri said.

Tulum will use the seed funding to build a pilot plant in Mexico alongside an existing Techint Group steel plant. If all goes well, the steel plant could buy hydrogen and carbon directly from Tulum for use in its operations.

Pieri said that at full-scale production, a commercial plant would generate two tons of hydrogen and 600 tons of carbon per day.

Tulum is hoping its commercial scale plant will produce one kilogram of hydrogen for about $1.50 in the U.S., where electricity and natural gas are both cheap. At that price, it’s just 50 cents more than most hydrogen made from natural gas today, and it significantly undercuts some of the leading green hydrogen methods. That’s before the company sells any carbon that its process generates.

Not bad for an almost forgotten mistake.

The CEO of Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI-powered coding environment Cursor, apologized Friday for a poorly communicated pricing change to its $20-per-month Pro plan. The changes resulted in some users complaining that they unexpectedly faced additional costs.

“We recognize that we didn’t handle this pricing rollout well and we’re sorry,” said Anysphere CEO Michael Truell in a blog post. “Our communication was not clear enough and came as a surprise to many of you.”

Truell is referring to a June 16 update to Cursor’s Pro plan. Instead of Pro users getting 500 fast responses on advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and then unlimited responses at a slower rate, the company announced subscribers would now get $20 worth of usage per month, billed at API rates. The new plan allows users to run coding tasks in Cursor with their AI model of choice until they hit the $20 limit, and then users have to purchase additional credits to continue using it.

However, Pro users took to social media to file their complaints in the weeks following the announcement.

Many users said they ran out of requests in Cursor rather quickly under the new plan, in some cases after just a few prompts when using Anthropic’s new Claude models, which are particularly popular for coding. Other users claimed they were unexpectedly charged additional costs, not fully understanding they’d be charged extra if they ran over the $20 usage limit and had not set a spend limit. In the new plan, only Cursor’s “auto mode,” which routes to AI models based on capacity, offers unlimited usage for Pro users.

Anysphere says it plans to refund users that were unexpectedly charged, and aims to be more clear about pricing changes moving forward. The company declined TechCrunch’s request for comment beyond the blog post.

Truell notes in the blog that Anysphere changed Cursor’s pricing because “new models can spend more tokens per request on longer-horizon tasks” — meaning that some of the latest AI models have become more expensive, spending a lot of time and computational resources to complete complicated, multi-step tasks. Cursor was eating those costs under its old Pro plan, but now, it’s passing them along to users.

While many AI models have lowered in price, the cutting edge of performance continues to be expensive — in some cases, more pricey than ever. Anthropic’s recently launched Claude Opus 4 model is $15 per million input tokens (roughly 750,000 words, longer than the entire “Lord of The Rings” series) and $75 per million output tokens. That’s even more costly than Google’s launch of Gemini 2.5 Pro in April, which was its most expensive AI model ever.

In recent months, OpenAI and Anthropic have also started charging enterprise customers for “priority” access to AI models — an additional premium on top of what AI models already cost that guarantees reliable, high speed performance.

These expenses may be filtering their way down to AI coding tools, which seem to be getting more expensive across the industry. Users of another popular AI tool, Replit, were also caught off guard in recent weeks by pricing changes that made completing large tasks with AI more expensive.

Cursor has become one of the most successful AI products on the market, reaching more than $500 million in ARR largely through subscriptions to its Pro plan. However, Cursor now faces intense competition from the AI providers it relies on, while simultaneously figuring out how to affordably serve their more expensive AI models.

Anthropic’s recently launched AI coding tool Claude Code has been a hit with enterprises, reportedly boosting the company’s ARR to $4 billion, and likely taking some users from Cursor in the process. Last week, Cursor returned the favor by recruiting two Anthropic employees that led product development of Claude Code.

But if Cursor intends to keep its market-leading position, it can’t stop working with the state-of-the-art model providers — at least, not until its own home-grown models are more reasonably competitive.

So Anysphere recently struck multi-year deals with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to offer a $200-a-month Cursor Ultra plan with very high rate limits. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan also told TechCrunch in June he plans to work with Cursor for a long time.

However, it certainly feels as if the pressure between Cursor and AI model developers is building.

Electronic Arts and BioWare will sunset their online multiplayer game Anthem on January 12, effectively making it obsolete. “Anthem was designed to be an online-only title so once the servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable,” BioWare wrote in the announcement. On August 15, the game will disappear from EA Play’s playlist.

Right now, players can’t buy in-game currency, but they will be able to spend what they have until servers are offline. Developers at BioWare who have been working on Anthem will not be laid off as a result of the game’s end. News of the game’s shutdown comes as the industry, already going through an upheaval, faces increased pressure from players to create “end of life” plans for service games.

Anthem’s development lasted almost seven years, during which the game struggled through major redirections. Its 2019 launch was widely panned by critics, who described it as uneven in its execution, riddled with bugs, and tedious. While BioWare and EA had initially planned to overhaul the game after launch—an undertaking known as Anthem Next—BioWare canceled the project in 2021, citing Covid-19, to shift focus to other games. Its live service continued to run.

Online, fans on places like EA’s official forums are asking for an “offline mode” that would allow them to play Anthem even without the servers. “To shut down and completely remove a game people have put money into (especially without refunds) is a worrying and dangerous precedent,” one player wrote. “If you bought a game you should be able to play it.” Another player wrote that “letting games like Anthem disappear completely also sends a dangerous message: that live-service games are disposable, no matter how much time or money players invested.”

Video games disappear for many reasons, whether it’s licensing issues, code being lost, or physical media becoming unplayable. The developer’s decision to end Anthem’s server support speaks to a problem specifically being combated by Stop Killing Games, a consumer movement out of the European Union that argues this practice is destroying some titles unnecessarily. “An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods—with no stated expiration date—but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends,” the campaign’s website reads. This practice, the movement’s organizers claim, “is not only detrimental to customers but makes preservation effectively impossible.”

Stop Killing Games won’t be able to do anything to stop the demise of Anthem. The organization relies on petitions and tries to seek government intervention—actions that couldn’t achieve outcomes before January. Still, says founder Ross Scott, the sunsetting is “exactly the sort we’re trying to prevent.” The goal is to “break the cycle so this doesn’t keep happening for future games.”

For Scott and the other adherents of Stop Killing Games, destroying a video game—much like destroying every copy of a book, album, or film—is tantamount to “a cultural loss for society,” according to the group’s website. “While a less recognized medium, video games still deserve to have basic protections against the complete and willful destruction of many of its works.” What they want is for companies to have backup plans that allow games to live on in a playable format even if they have to be taken offline.

While everyone was focused on the big improvements to iPad OS’s multitasking at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple snuck some of the most significant improvements into VisionOS. Not only that, but it also revealed that the new Liquid Glass design principle that will span all of its operating systems is inspired by VisionOS. I say this is probably the biggest announcement because I believe it will enable Apple and developers to build apps that are inherently more portable to spatial computing.

I would also argue that many of the announcements Apple made at WWDC outside of VisionOS found it catching up with the competition rather than breaking new ground. That’s why its spatial computing announcements for VisionOS are so important; they potentially set Apple up as a leader in the space going forward.

Spatial Widgets Fundamentally Improve The User Experience

Spatial widgets don’t seem like a big deal until you realize how they change the ground rules of Apple’s spatial computing UI. These are persistent widgets that stay anchored where you leave them, which enables you to create a truly spatial computing environment that persists until you say otherwise. Besides immediately improving usability, this means that users can customize their spatial computing experiences in any way they like — while also enabling developers to build toward very specific user experiences. I think that Apple making spatial widgets its own kind of applet will also encourage experimentation and likely create a new class of persistent spatial computing applications.

Personas Get A Significant Upgrade

Personas are Apple’s way of creating virtual avatars for users while they are wearing their headsets; they enable users to be virtually present with a high-quality scan of their faces. Apple’s initial launch of this feature was a bit rough around the edges and had some quality issues, but I would say that its second go with VisionOS 2 was a huge improvement. This next-generation upgrade to Personas has made them nearly photorealistic, and I would say this function has gone beyond the uncanny valley that has plagued most of these digital avatars.

While I haven’t had a chance to redo my Persona and experience this change myself, many of my friends have, and I must say that I’m truly impressed by how accurately their Personas depict them. Some people have also commented that this is the first time we’ve seen Apple executives like marketing chief Greg Joswiak post their own Personas online, indicating a level of confidence that had not yet been seen.

Catering To Gamers With New Support For Handheld Controllers

While Sony’s PlayStation VR2 could be considered a failure for many reasons, it does seem that Apple has decided to potentially breathe some life into that ecosystem. Apple’s new support for PlayStation VR2 controllers enables developers to finally bring games requiring controllers to VisionOS and the Apple Vision Pro headset. Currently, the Vision Pro and VisionOS work only via hand tracking, which is great for lots of things — but not necessarily gaming.

While porting a PSVR2 game to Vision Pro may not be the most straightforward thing, there may be opportunities for other games to come to VisionOS thanks to these controllers. And if you’re anything like me and feel guilty for your underutilized PSVR2 purchase, this might be a great way to make more use of the controllers. This is also the first time that Sony ever offered the controllers separately from the headset, so you don’t need to buy a whole PSVR2 kit to use the controllers with the Vision Pro. In addition to the PSVR2 controllers, Apple also announced support for the new Logitech Muse for spatial content creation. The Muse is Logitech’s stylus for spatial computing, specifically designed for VisionOS and the Vision Pro.

Spatial Scenes Enable Better Spatial Content

One of my favorite features in VisionOS 2 was the 2-D to 3-D conversion tool for literally any image. It is still one of my most-used features, and I still regard it as borderline magical for how it works. In the new VisionOS 26 — note the shift to Apple’s new year-by-year naming schema — Apple is adding “spatial scenes,” which take this conversion to an entirely new level. This feature uses Gaussian splats that create immersive 3-D scenes that incorporate more than one 3-D perspective. I believe that Apple is leaning even harder into the success of the 2-D/3-D feature, and that spatial scenes will enable VisionOS to become an even more content-rich platform. I believe this is so important because every spatial platform has suffered from a lack of content since the beginning of time.

Speaking of content, VisionOS 26 will also add support for wider-FoV content including 180-degree and 360-degree images from GoPro, Insta360 and Canon. This should make it even easier to bring existing content to VisionOS and encourage more content creators to consider these platforms as the defaults for Apple. That said, these three camera companies have been the defaults for the industry for quite some time, so it’s great to see Apple recognizing this and supporting them. I’m excited to see how some of my Insta360 footage shot in 360-degree format over the last few years looks on the Vision Pro. I know that it’s not quite the 8K content that the Insta360 One X5 can shoot, but it’s still pretty good-looking nonetheless, and the images are still very high-resolution (72MP).

Enterprise Features To Address Privacy And Spatial Sharing

While Apple did announce a slew of enterprise APIs such as the Protected Content API, there is also an “eyes only” mode that brings even more privacy protections. While the added security and privacy features are welcome, the enterprise space is also highly collaborative, which is why it’s great to see Apple finally addressing sharing in the context of spatial computing.

This means that users can finally share spatial content and experiences, whether we’re talking about professional applications or 3-D movies and games. What I like to see is that people can also collaborate on projects while adding remote participants via FaceTime. I expect that enterprise users will also appreciate the new ability to pair all these capabilities with additional enterprise license management features such as Vision Entitlement Services to streamline license status checks and app approvals.

VisionOS 26 And MacOS Introduce Better External Device Support

Last but certainly not least, Apple has brought the Mac and iPhone closer to the Vision Pro with VisionOS 26. For one thing, a user can finally unlock their iPhone while wearing the Vision Pro, even inside fully immersive experiences. This was one of my biggest pet peeves while using the Vision Pro, which has the most accurate eye-tracking available and uses iris scans for authentication — so it shouldn’t introduce any friction unlocking my iPhone while I have my headset on. Thanks to VisionOS 26, that is now true.

The VisionOS update also supports allowing phone calls to come into the headset through the iPhone so a user no longer needs to take off the headset to answer a call. There also appears to be enhanced support for streaming applications from MacOS with spatial rendering. I believe that this reflects Apple’s approach to wireless VR connectivity with MacOS, using the Mac for compute and the Vision Pro as the display. With MacOS now supporting Steam natively on Apple Silicon, we could potentially see all kinds of VR applications becoming available on MacOS/Vision Pro. This is especially important considering that Apple is going to sunset support for Intel-based Macs and will cease Rosetta 2 support after macOS 27.

The Importance Of VisionOS For Apple, And The Importance Of AI For VisionOS

While lots of people have criticized many of Apple’s moves with iOS 26 and the Liquid Glass design (which Apple has already dialed back in the latest iOS 26 Beta), I think a lot of people outside of the spatial computing world missed how seriously Apple is taking VisionOS. If anything should be learned from VisionOS 26, it is that Apple has shown its unwavering commitment to the platform — and its investment in the platform isn’t going away anytime soon. Sure, plenty of people have critiques of the Vision Pro, which in my opinion tend to be slightly premature. The reality is that Apple is showing that the Vision Pro is very much a development platform for the improvements it wants to make with VisionOS.

Rumor has it that Apple’s next headset will be lighter, faster and cheaper than the Vision Pro. If that headset is coming to market anytime soon, it will benefit greatly from the last year and a half of improvements to VisionOS. Mind you, Apple still has plenty of room for further improvement in terms of how AI is integrated into VisionOS, but that is unfortunately a broader problem for Apple’s AI strategy connected to its troubles with Siri’s generative AI relaunch.

I believe that Apple will eventually work out these challenges, but I also feel sure that having a subpar AI experience in an XR platform can only hurt that platform’s growth potential. There is no doubt in my mind that AI and XR are highly complementary technologies and potentially even act as catalysts for each other’s growth. While I welcome many of Apple’s VisionOS 26 improvements with open arms and commend Apple’s commitment to XR, I still think Apple needs to get competitive on AI, whether that’s from an acquisition or by accelerating current development. This will be especially important if the company wants to ship AI smart glasses — which are heavily dependent on quality AI performance and accuracy — to compete with the likes of Meta and Google.

Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has (or has had) a paid business relationship with Google, Intel, Meta and Sony.

Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language just got a little more… frosted. In the third iOS 26 developer beta, Apple dialed back the transparency of navigation bars, buttons, and tabs that once allowed you to clearly see the content beneath them.

Apple already toned down the glassiness of Liquid Glass after many users complained that it was too transparent and made it more difficult to see certain options, like the icons inside the Control Center. This most recent beta makes Liquid Glass elements even more solid, likely as a way to improve readability. Still, some users see the change as a reversal of the flashy, glass-like design that Apple showcased at WWDC.

This is still just a developer beta, so it’s likely that Apple will continue to make tweaks before it releases iOS 26 to the public in September.