John Herrman, Author at Gizmodo

Apple Removes Antivirus Support Note, Reiterates OS X’s Built-In Protection

As we saw yesterday, the accusations from the BBC, Washington Post, and Cnet saying that Apple was trying to “quietly” recommend antivirus software were false: Our quick fact check showed it was all an update to an old tech note. Now, Apple has removed the articles entirely. https://gizmodo.com/false-alarm-apple-mac-os-x-anti-virus-recommendation-i-5100996 In a statement to these media outlets,…

Tech News John Herrman

Logitech Timeline of Mousery is Full of Memories, Logitech Advertising

It’s a piece of promotional material, but it raises memories: your first, imprecise mousings; excitement at the earliest wireless mouse, and subsequent realization that it was uselessly jittery. The timeline, meant to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the mouse, highlights of Logitech’s odd diversions too. The extremely literal Kidz Mouse never really caught on with…

Tech News John Herrman

Optibike OB1 is a Hybrid Electric Mountain Bike You Might Actually Want to Ride

Far from the geriatric, overdesigned and unwieldy electric bikes available to date, the Optibike OB1 is built for proper biking enthusiasts. That is, proper biking enthusiasts with 13,000 spare American dollars. https://gizmodo.com/panasonic-makes-electric-bike-with-regenerative-braking-5022587 The OB1’s allure is twofold; the novel, compact electric drivetrain doesn’t necessarily steal the show from the rest of the finely equipped bike.…

Tech News John Herrman

Emotiv Epoc Mind Reading Controller Delayed For Not Reading Minds Very Well

Emotiv’s “mind-reading” controller is a press darling, mainly because it’s really cool. Apparently, though, Emotiv won’t have the headset ready to go for the planned December release, because it doesn’t, strictly speaking, well, work. https://gizmodo.com/project-epoc-lets-you-control-video-games-with-your-nog-240760 Based on electroencephalography technology (or EEG to us laymen), a properly functioning Epoc isn’t out of the realm of possibility.…

Tech News John Herrman

PS3 2.53 Firmware Shows Up Fashionably Late, With Full Screen Flash

Remember how Sony told us we’d be able to lounge around all Thanksgiving weekend, watching YouTubes on our TVs in full screen? LIES! Turns out today’s the real day for 2.53. [Sony—Thanks, Stephen] https://gizmodo.com/ps3-firmware-2-53-hits-tomorrow-supersizes-flash-5098691

Tech News John Herrman

QIGI i6-Goal Looks to Be the First ‘Next’ Android Phone to Actually Come Out

Compared to the ZzzPhone—a modern marvel of engineering and/or MSPaint—the i6-Goal is sort of boring: it’s got no QWERTY, 3G, two-week battery, male enhancement powers, etc. It does, however, appear to be real. https://gizmodo.com/zzzphone-is-second-google-android-cellphone-ever-5097979 Announced by TechFaith Wireless and QIGI, two Chinese companies that very much seem to exist, the i6-Goal is a reassuringly modest…

Tech News John Herrman

FluidTunes Lets You Frantically Flail Through Your iTunes Library

Mgestyk’s system-wide camera control system looks fun, but FluidTunes, a simple program that lets your toss around your iTunes library via your iSight, has two important things that it doesn’t: free-ness and out-now-ness. Available now as a free universal binary, FluidTunes is a simple creature; despite what looks to be a solid gesture recognition engine,…

Tech News John Herrman

Windows 7 Will Run Fully Accelerated Graphics From Your CPU

Adding to the already impressive pile of Vista-deflating features we’re expecting to see in Windows 7 is WARP, a tech which will allow your PC’s CPU to act as a graphics accelerator, possibly doing away with the need for integrated graphics hardware to render user interfaces and low-end games. Not-so-seductively described as a ‘fully conformant…

Tech News John Herrman

Blockbuster OnDemand Download Service Coming to Blu-ray Players, Soon

Netflix streaming has been making waves with its wide, fast integration into just about anything that’ll have it, and the reception has been generally positive. As has been the pattern for the last decade, Blockbuster is slightly but embarrassingly behind: according to company Chairman Jim Keyes, we’ll be seeing Blockbuster’s download-to-rent service in a Blu-ray…

Tech News John Herrman

InVision Case Makes the iPhone Blind-Friendly, Defiantly Screenless

The screen-based controls and rich visuals that make a device like the iPhone an attractive option for deaf users aren’t of much use to the visually impaired. By employing a combination of an embossed “Moon Type” alphabet casing, a custom home screen and a screenreading app, the InVision solution could (awkardly) provide most of the…

Tech News John Herrman

The Simpsons Gets 20 Years of Apple Jokes Out of the Way at Once

Though The Simpsons has a history of satirizing tech culture, and even Apple specifically, last night’s episode felt like it was making up for a bit of lost time. It’s not just iPods and iMacs getting reprefixed and animated: it’s Apple Stores, the G4 Cube, past and present fanboys, vintage advertising and even Steve Jobs…

Tech News John Herrman

Gesture-Controlled Light Switch is Like a Trackpad For Your House

The hardware in Mac Funamizu’s gesture-controlled light switch would be very, very simple—after all, it’s just a trackpad. But it’s the input methods that make this exciting: just as laptop trackpads can track gestures for scrolling, this light switch would parse them to control up a roomful of lights, either together or in unison. The…

Tech News John Herrman

Golden Shellback’s Waterproofing Voodoo Magic Now Available For Purchase

Golden Shellback started circulating videos of their extraordinary gadget waterproofing treatment in action way back in July, and it took us a while (and a live demo) to really believe that it works. Well, it does, and now you can buy it. That is, if you’re willing to send the company your gadget to be…

Tech News John Herrman

HDCP Restrictions Rolled Back on New MacBooks

One part of the new MacBook experience that didn’t exactly seem like much of an upgrade was the addition of HDCP for the new DisplayPort video connector, which left users unable to watch iTunes DRMed video content—HD or SD—on non-HDCP compliant external displays. This morning Apple released an update to ease the pain: protected SD…

Tech News John Herrman

RED to Make Another, Even Bigger Announcement on December 3rd

RED CEO Jim Jannard, who generally manages to construct all sentences using only intensifiers and superlatives, is getting really excited on the RedUser forums again: New announcement on Dec. 3rd. Everything has changed… just as we promised. 🙂 :-)? :-)? What do your cryptic smilies mean, Jim?He goes on to say that the new announcement…

Tech News John Herrman

Apple Hit With Bizarre, Poorly Scanned iPhone Browsing Patent Suit

Granted, there aren’t that many original ways to sue Apple anymore, but this one is just peculiar. Elliot Gottfurcht, a successful commercial real estate developer, is suing the company because he claims to hold a patent for “the way the iPhone navigates the Internet.” He was indeed granted an internet-ish patent in late October, but…

Tech News John Herrman

Amazon Kindle 2 Might Ruin Christmas By Not Showing Up

TechCrunch reports that the previously spied Kindle 2, or Kindle II, or Second-le, or whatever it’s going to be, isn’t really going to be anything before Q1 of 2009. Apparently, the device was on track for a pre-holiday release until Jeff Bezos himself demanded last-minute software changes. Although it’s impossible to know if TechCrunch’s source…

Commerce John Herrman

Lenovo Lets You Disable Your Stolen Laptop With a Stern Text Message

In the next couple months Lenovo will be rolling out a BIOS update for its Montevina laptop users which enables remote shutdown and subsequent encryption via text message. The tech relies on the laptop having a WWAN connection and activates when a custom string, defined by the user and sent from a single, paired phone,…

Privacy & Security John Herrman

Zoybar Modular Instrument is a Guitar, Bass or Medieval Lute, Depending on Your Mood

Click to view Stringed instruments are diverse in sound and design, but they all share the same basic shape. That similarity hadn’t really bugged anyone too much for the last few hundred years, but where most see variety Zoybar sees redundancy: they’ve proposed a modular, build-it-yourself guitar-ish thing, with interchangeable parts that can convert it…

Tech News John Herrman

Hardware Hoarder Builds Australia’s Largest Computer Museum In His House

Max Burnet worked with computers for his whole life, and he hasn’t strayed far in retirement: he’s collected a massive amount of vintage computer hardware in his house, creating the what is claimed to be the largest collection of its kind in Australia, and one of the most extensive in the world. He’s got everything…

Tech News John Herrman

John Herrman

Apple Removes Antivirus Support Note, Reiterates OS X’s Built-In Protection

Logitech Timeline of Mousery is Full of Memories, Logitech Advertising

Optibike OB1 is a Hybrid Electric Mountain Bike You Might Actually Want to Ride

Emotiv Epoc Mind Reading Controller Delayed For Not Reading Minds Very Well

PS3 2.53 Firmware Shows Up Fashionably Late, With Full Screen Flash

QIGI i6-Goal Looks to Be the First ‘Next’ Android Phone to Actually Come Out

FluidTunes Lets You Frantically Flail Through Your iTunes Library

Windows 7 Will Run Fully Accelerated Graphics From Your CPU

Blockbuster OnDemand Download Service Coming to Blu-ray Players, Soon

InVision Case Makes the iPhone Blind-Friendly, Defiantly Screenless

The Simpsons Gets 20 Years of Apple Jokes Out of the Way at Once

Gesture-Controlled Light Switch is Like a Trackpad For Your House

Golden Shellback’s Waterproofing Voodoo Magic Now Available For Purchase

HDCP Restrictions Rolled Back on New MacBooks

RED to Make Another, Even Bigger Announcement on December 3rd

Apple Hit With Bizarre, Poorly Scanned iPhone Browsing Patent Suit

Amazon Kindle 2 Might Ruin Christmas By Not Showing Up

Lenovo Lets You Disable Your Stolen Laptop With a Stern Text Message

Zoybar Modular Instrument is a Guitar, Bass or Medieval Lute, Depending on Your Mood

Hardware Hoarder Builds Australia’s Largest Computer Museum In His House

NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission Blasts Off

Artemis 2 Live Updates: Humanity’s Epic Return to the Moon

Disney’s Robot Olaf Dying Is the Funniest Thing to Happen in 2026

Kia’s EV3 Is Headed to the US This Year With Up to 320 Miles of Range

This Is the Way to Lego’s April Releases

Group Pushing Age Verification Requirements for AI Turns Out to Be Sneakily Backed by OpenAI

Amazon Facilities in Bahrain Hit Again as Iran Follows Through on Threat, Report Says

Why the PS6 Handheld Will Matter More Than the PS6

DNA Study Casts Even More Doubt on Shroud of Turin’s True Origin

Sam Witwer Is Ready for Maul’s Moment

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?