The mark of a champion is always seen in the way players and teams in general approach tough games. For South African international Bambanani Mbane, taking on Ghana in the TotalEnergies Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) 2024 Group C opener on Monday, was an opportunity to help her team amass maximum points.
This is the third consecutive time that South Africa are registering victory in their first game of the continental showpiece that it has become a normal thing now to them. It is that swagger of a team that has mastered the art of winning. From afar, it looks easy but to a player like Mbane, this is a result of hard work, discipline in the little and big things but also attention to detail.
Deserved and hungry for more
It is no wonder that she was named the Woman of the Match following their 2-0 win over the Black Queens of Ghana – a well deserved award that will not only look good in her trophy cabinet but will remind her of July 7, 2025 as a reward for her excellence.
“I am so glad that we managed to get the three points. It was never going to be an easy game but I am happy with the three points. Going forward, this is going to boost our confidence. We are the defending champions and we knew that it was not going to be easy but I am happy the way we started. Getting these three points was very important to us,” Mbane said after the game with a glow on her face.
Teamwork makes the dream work
There is always a sisterhood that comes to life whenever the Banyana Banyana take to the field. It is always experienced when they come off the bus. They take to singing in sync – songs that celebrate who they are and what they want to achieve. These songs guide them to the dressing room and it is there that they enter game mode – more like the feeling one embraces when going to war – except this war is on the field of play.
For Mbane who features for two-time African champions Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies, her camaraderie with her clubmates in regular season can be seen at the WAFCON in every touch of the ball and in more ways than one, it helps the success of the Banyana Banyana.
A typical work day came to life in the second half when a ball was whipped into the box and to save the situation, Mbane headed it softly towards goalkeeper Andile Dlamini. The Goalkeeper of the WAFCON 2022 who was having a field day saving her team from all manner of attack thanks to a spirited Ghana side, picked up the headed pass and went on with her business like it was something they had talked about.
“Those two know each other from club level. Their communication skills are on another level. It is almost like they can premeditate what the other is going to do. I am never worried about them. I saw that moment and it speaks to their maturity and understanding of each other,” Desiree Ellis, the South Africa head coach said after the game.
Mbane, Dlamini, Lebohang Ramalepe, Fikile Magama, Karabo Dhlamini, Noxolo Cesane and Tiisetso Makhubela complete the six-woman Mamelodi Sundowns Ladies squad inside the starting Banyana Banyana lineup against Ghana.
Ellis also had high praise for Dlamini’s standout performance against Ghana and emphasized that keeping a clean sheet was important to Banyana Banyana on the day.
Apple is touting the new multi-user and enterprise capabilities for VisionOS 26.
Apple
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.
Apple’s VisionOS 26 summary bento box of the latest updates
Apple
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.
“Superman” star David Corenswet recently told GQ magazine that he is well aware James Gunn’s new movie is causing a stir among fans loyal to Zack Snyder and the previous DC Universe, where Henry Cavill starred as the Man of Steel in three movies. A legion of Snyder fans have started an online movement to negatively impact the success of Gunn’s “Superman.” Their goal is to try and get the film to flop at the box office in order to tank the start of the new DC Universe that is replacing Snyder’s.
Corenswet unwittingly found himself the target of Snyder fans when he was cast as Gunn’s Superman in the summer of 2023. Comments the actor made to Entertainment Weekly in 2019 resurfaced online at the time as Corenswet spoke about how the role of Superman was his dream gig, although not the dark and gritty version that Snyder and Cavill brought to the big screen.
“My pie-in-the-sky ambition is definitely to play Superman,” Corenswet said in 2019. “I would love to see somebody do an upbeat, throwback [take on Superman]. I love the Henry Cavill dark and gritty take, but I would love to see the next one be very bright and optimistic.”
Some fans of Snyder’s DC Universe thought Corenswet was shading Cavill’s Superman, although that could not be further from the truth. As Corenswet now told GQ magazine: “I think that’s the least interesting thing I could have said. Simply because with a great character like Superman, you want great artists and writers and actors to explore all of the possibilities of them.”
“The one way [superheroes] become boring is if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again,” Corenswet continued. “And so, just like Chris Nolan took Batman and did something darker and more grounded with the character, Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill explored a side of Superman that hadn’t been explored on the big screen. So, all I was saying was they’re doing it so well. Whenever they’re finished, I’d love to see the next one go the other way, and let’s see the other side. In the same way, after Chris Nolan’s Batman films and after Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson, there are a lot of people who are like, ‘Where’s our funny, campy, fantastical Batman?’”
Gunn and Corenswet have now taken Superman in the opposite direction of Snyder and Cavill. The new Man of Steel is colorful and more light on his feet than he is dark and brooding. Corenswet previously told Heart that he reached out to Cavill for tips after landing the role, but Cavill had no wisdom to share.
As for “Superman” and Snyder fans, Gunn responded on Threads last month and said he’s not too worried about the movement that’s trying to tank his movie. One post from a Snyder fan read: “Stand up and fight for SnyderVerse on July 11. Fight for our SnyderVerse on the imposter ‘Superman’ release day. Here’s what we can do to make a difference: 1) Post spoilers everywhere. 2) Leave bad rating on review sites. 3) Reserve tickets online but don’t complete the purchase. By selecting and reserving tickets, it gets taken out of the pool for a period of time which means this has a chance of stopping gunn-bots from buying tickets.”
“I don’t mind it. I think it’s good,” Gunn then told Rolling Stone about Snyder fans. “I think you don’t wanna have everybody root for you, and I have an actor who reads everything online. I won’t say who it is, but he’ll read this article, and he’ll know who it is. It’s one of the top five in Superman. And this actor gets so upset over things that people say. I said, ‘First of all, you realize that the trailer came out and [reaction] was 97, 98% positive. These people help us, because you don’t want everything to seem 100% positive.’”
“It’s all right to have an opposing force every once in a while,” Gunn continued. “Some of the things get ridiculous — I just know that every time something comes out, it doesn’t matter how positively received, there’s gonna be something that is of great controversy. It was great controversy that the sun caused Superman pain.”
Gunn revealed on X shortly after taking over DC Studios that he had touched base with Snyder and there were no hard feelings between them. In an interview with Fandango last month, Gunn even revealed that he consulted with Snyder when it came to designing the new Superman suit and whether or not to add the red trunks.
“Superman” opens in theaters July 11 from Warner Bros.
Samsung Electronics is expected to report a 39% drop in second-quarter operating profit on Tuesday, as delays in supplying high-bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia (NVDA, Financials) drag down the company’s artificial intelligence business.
The South Korean tech giant is forecast to post operating profit of 6.3 trillion won ($4.62 billion) for the AprilJune quarter. That would mark Samsung’s lowest quarterly profit in six periods and a sharp decline from 10.4 trillion won a year earlier.
The setback comes as competitors SK Hynix and Micron Technology (MU, Financials) benefit from a surge in demand for HBM chips used in AI data centers. Unlike its rivals, Samsung’s gains have been limited due to U.S. restrictions on chip sales to China and delays in getting Nvidia certification for its HBM3E 12-high chips.
HBM revenue likely remained flat in the second quarter, as China sales restrictions persist and Samsung has yet to begin supplying its HBM3E 12-high chips to Nvidia, said Ryu Young-ho, senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities.
Samsung had said in March that meaningful progress could come by June, but it has declined to confirm whether the chips have passed Nvidia’s qualification process. However, U.S.-based Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Financials) said last month that Samsung has started supplying the chip to it.
While chip earnings are under pressure, Samsung’s smartphone sales are expected to remain firm, with some buyers stockpiling ahead of potential U.S. tariffs. President Donald Trump has proposed a 25% duty on smartphones not made in the United States, with a July 9 deadline for reciprocal trade tariffs across multiple countries.
Adding to the uncertainty, the U.S. is also considering revoking authorizations that currently allow Samsung and other chipmakers to receive U.S. technology for their factories in China.
Samsung shares have risen about 19% this year but remain the weakest performer among major memory chipmakers, trailing the broader KOSPI index’s 27.3% gain. As of 0447 GMT on Monday, Samsung shares were down 1.9% compared with a 0.3% rise in the KOSPI.
Samsung will announce official second-quarter results on Tuesday.
A study has demonstrated for the first time a positive association between dietary choline with bone mineral density (BMD) in postmenopausal women.
The finding is from an analysis of dietary intake and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scans from 4,160 postmenopausal women and supports the potential of choline-targeted nutrition strategies for osteoporosis prevention, noted lead author Jincheng Bai, MD, of the Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University in Taiyuan, China, and colleagues.
“Choline, a vital nutrient involved in lipid homeostasis and inflammatory pathways, has been associated with skeletal health. Yet its role in preserving bone density among postmenopausal populations, a group at high risk of osteoporosis, requires further investigation,” the group wrote. The study was published July 2 in Scientific Reports.
To that end, the group culled data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007-2018. The NHANES program, jointly administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics, employs a demographically stratified sampling framework to evaluate health and nutritional metrics among community-dwelling U.S. residents.
For the analysis, they used a weighted linear regression model to characterize the dose-response relationship between total dietary choline intake and lumbar spine BMD.
According to the results, in fully adjusted models, each 1 g/day increment in choline intake corresponded to a 0.082 g/cm² increase in lumbar spine BMD. Participants in the highest choline intake quartile exhibited a 0.025 g/cm² higher BMD compared with the lowest quartile.
In addition, a stratified analysis showed significant effect modifications by obesity (p interaction = 0.015), income (p interaction = 0.003), and race (p interaction = 0.039), with amplified protective effects observed in obese individuals, high-income subgroups, and non-Hispanic whites, the researchers reported.
“This study demonstrates for the first time the positive association of dietary choline with BMD in postmenopausal women,” the group wrote.
Ultimately, the risk of osteoporotic fractures escalates when BMD falls below a certain threshold (T-score ≤ -2.5) and osteoporosis-related fractures diminish quality of life, increase fracture-associated mortality, and are responsible for substantial healthcare costs, the researchers wrote.
However, early-stage bone loss often remains clinically silent until osteoporotic fractures occur, they noted.
“Identifying modifiable factors influencing BMD in postmenopausal women is critical for refining osteoporosis risk assessment and advancing targeted prevention strategies,” they concluded.
Last week’s gut-wrenching flurry of game cancellations and layoffs due to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios cuts didn’t just affect the company’s owned, first-party studios. Third-party developers, like Romero Games, were impacted too. The studio formed by Doom co-creator John Romero announced that funding for its upcoming, triple-A FPS game had been pulled, and dozens of devs announced they were being let go, with some claiming the whole studio was shutting down. However, there’s a glimmer of hope for Romero Games and its new project, as the studio has just released a new statement clarifying that the studio hasn’t fully closed and that other publishers have reached out that are “interested in helping us bring the game across the finish line.”
The Xbox cuts have been truly savage. Hundreds of developers are going to lose their jobs, and some long-awaited projects like the Perfect Dark reboot, Rare’s Everwild, and an ambitious sci-fi game from Zenimax Online Studios were all shelved. While Romero Games hasn’t explicitly confirmed that Xbox Game Studios was backing its new project, the coincidentally timed cancelation of its next game and claims from employees strongly suggested that it was affected too. While very little was known about it other than it was a first-person shooter, Romero’s reputation for helping shape games like Doom and Quake was enough to make it one of the most exciting upcoming PC games.
Despite some claims from employees (and then subsequent reports by the media) that the studio was letting all of its workforce go and would close, Romer Games has just released a statement clarifying that it has not been shuttered and that it’s currently in talks to save its project.
“Romero Games is not closed, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not come to that,” the statement says. “Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect. Indeed, we were in the studio today to discuss next steps with the team.
“We’ve been contacted by several publishers interested in helping us bring the game across the finish line, and we’re currently evaluating those opportunities.”
This new FPS game has been in the works since 2022, and while it’s not got to the stage where Romero Games has fully revealed it or shown off gameplay, you’d expect a decent amount of progress to have been made in that time. Romero’s reputation for creating amazing shooters, the triple-A scope, and the fact that Xbox was compelled enough to back it originally no doubt makes it an interesting prospect for these new publishers. Hopefully the right deal is struck, because it’s one that could potentially save some or all of the jobs that are set to be lost at Romero Games.
