Google Meet is getting a smarter, sharper facelift designed to make your next video call feel a lot more personal, and less like a screen full of disjointed tiles.
Google announced a sweeping update to its video calling platform called Dynamic Layouts that attempts to reimagine how caller appear and interact during virtual meetings. It’s all part of a push to make hybrid meetings feel more human, with AI-powered visuals and intelligent room detection leading the charge. And hopefully a little less awkward small talk, too.
The most noticeable change comes in the form of Portrait Tiles, a new layout that uses AI to crop out unnecessary background and focus tightly on participants’ faces. It’s meant to distractions and give each person a clearer presence on-screen. Coupled with a revamped tile placement system, calls will use screen real estate more efficiently to get rid of empty space and highlight who’s talking. If someone’s camera is off, Meet will now apply color-sampled backgrounds to their name tiles.
Other updates include an increase in the maximum number of pinned tiles, from three to six, to allow more control over what stays in focus during a call. Large room tiles will also display more prominently when Dynamic Tiles are off, which means better visibility for those on the call. Self-view options will also persist through multiple calls, and there’s a new option to show full videos to others, an important setting for anyone using sign language or alternate forms of communication.
One of the more advanced features, Dynamic Tiles, gives individual tiles to up to three in-room participants. An AI-powered speaker detection system can change focus automatically to whoever’s talking. Paired with the Face Match feature, which helps to label participants joining via Companion Mode, these quality of life updates should help make it a bit easier to understand who’s participating, who’s actively talking, and who’s hanging out in each of those work calls where an email would have sufficed.
The rollout is available to all Workspace customers and personal accounts now.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.