Tag Archives: Personal Finance – Career & Education

The best Christmas gifts in 2024 that everyone on your holiday list will love

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This time of year has a lot of merry and bright things to be excited about, but it can be stressful if you’re stumped on what to get your mom, dad, best friend, coworker or kids’ teacher as a holiday gift. Whether you enjoy or dread buying gifts for people, it’s safe to say we all want to give our loved ones things they will enjoy and appreciate. But there’s a lot of noise, junk and bad deals disguised as good deals to sift through as we get closer and closer to the holidays.

Allow us at Engadget to help you through it. Here, you’ll find all of our holiday gift guides collected in one place, so you can more easily find the best Christmas gifts you need this year. Are you looking for white elephant gift ideas? Are you struggling to come up with a good gift for the father figure in your life? Are you just looking for a good board game to pick up for your own family? We’ve got you covered with gift ideas for all of those scenarios and more. We'll update this post as more of our gift guides hit the internet, so check back for even more gift ideas throughout the season.

According to legend, the King of Siam would give a white elephant to courtiers who had upset them. The recipient had no choice but to simply thank the king for such an opulent gift, knowing that they likely could not afford the upkeep for such an animal. It would inevitably lead them to financial ruin. This story is almost certainly untrue, but it has led to a modern holiday staple: the white elephant gift exchange. These gift ideas will not only get you a few chuckles, but will also make your recipient feel (slightly) burdened.

Read more: The best white elephant gift ideas

We could all use more time away from screens of all types and sizes, and board games are a fun way to do that and bond with friends and family. You can find plenty of unique sets out there now, from word puzzles to whodunnits to calming playthroughs that showcase the beauty of the little things in life. From games with giant monsters to those with haunted mansions, we’re sure at least one of our suggestions will be a hit with you and your loved ones.

Read more: The best board games to gift this season

We wouldn’t blame you if you try to do all of your tech shopping around the holidays. That’s when you can typically get the best sales, both on relatively affordable gear and (more importantly) on big-ticket items. But it would be wrong to think that only the most expensive tech is worth gifting. Since we at Engadget test a plethora of gadgets every year, we know that there are some hidden (and not so hidden) tech gems at lower price ranges — you just have to know where to find them.

Read more: The best gifts under $50 that make great stocking stuffers

We at Engadget spend a lot of time thinking about the best tech gifts for anyone and everyone in your life. But during that process, we often can’t help but think about the things we’d like to receive as gifts. Here, we’ve compiled a list of gadgets on our staffers’ wishlists with the hope that it may inspire you to splurge a bit on yourself this year.

Read more: The best tech gifts on our editors' wishlists for the holiday season

This year may not go down as one of the best years in gaming like 2023 did, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of great new releases. Between titles like Astro Bot and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, there were plenty of games to keep even the most dedicated of gamers busy in 2024. And if you’re shopping for one, especially as a non-gamer, it can be tricky to navigate what’s worth buying. We've got you covered with these recommendations.

Read more: The best gifts for gamers

A million new video games seem to come out every week, but for some of us, nothing beats the classics. If you know someone who is way into retro gaming but don’t feel like hunting through eBay and local shops for gear to add to their collection, we’re here to help. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite gift ideas for the nostalgic gamer in your life, from video upscalers for old consoles to retro-themed books and artwork.

Read more: The best retro gaming gifts for the holidays

When it comes to making a great cup at home, coffee nerds are constantly learning and love to try new things. Whether the person you’re shopping for is a newly indoctrinated pour over lover or obsessive over every brewing parameter, we’ve compiled a list of the best gear for coffee geeks that you can get this holiday season.

Read more: The best gifts for coffee lovers

Forget coffee — for billions of people around the world, a freshly steeped cup of tea is the best part of waking up. But with so many varieties and methods of preparation out there, it can be difficult to find the right gift for the tea lover in your life. So to help you out, we’ve put together a list of our favorite products, from kettles to samplers.

Read more: The best gifts to buy tea lovers

There are few things more rewarding than making good food for your friends and family. But after a while, it’s easy to get bored with the same tried and true recipes. And what better way to inject some fun into your favorite home chef’s routine than with a brand-new kitchen gadget? To help you find the right gift for the cook in your life, we’ve put together a list of our favorite kitchen gadgets across a wide range of prices and categories.

Read more: The best cooking gifts

We’re all having a bit of a budget crunch this year, but the good news is that when it’s time to bestow presents on the young ones (or young at heart), you don’t have to break the bank. Our list of our favorite tech, science and design toys is stacked with items under $100, with plenty of reuse packed in so the fun can extend far beyond the holiday season.

Read more: The best tech toys for kids

In Engadget’s Slack rooms, our pets are high on the list of stuff we chat about — just behind work-adjacent tech stuff, insane current events, video games and food. We’ve bought plenty of high- and low-tech stuff to keep our furry friends fed, occupied, safe and happy and we’ve put together the best of what we tried here. Perhaps you’re shopping for your own very good boy or girl, or maybe you have a dutiful pet parent on your list — either way, the gadgets gathered here will make great gifts, according to the enthusiastic tail wags (or aloof meows) of our own fur babies.

Read more: The best gadgets for your pets

Since the dawn of humanity, we have traveled. We’ve come a long way from on-foot journeys laden with animal hide satchels. But the goal of good travel gear is the same: Get you and your necessities to a destination in the highest level of comfort available. If you know someone who is always catching a flight, rides the train to work or is bravely embarking on a cruise, some new tech may just help them out.

Read more: The best travel gifts

There's a pretty good chance you know at least one person who works remotely in some fashion. While the WFH life has its perks — nobody likes a long commute — it comes with its own set of challenges, from lacking pro-level equipment to dealing with household disturbances. If you’re looking to give a gift to someone who spends much of their time in their home office, we’ve rounded up a few techy gift ideas that should make their days a little more delightful, or at least easier to manage.

Read more: The 19 best gift ideas for the remote worker in your life

There are few things better in life than getting lost in a good book — as any book lover will tell you. We have a few heavy readers on staff at Engadget and we all have opinions on the gadgets and subscriptions we think make the experience of reading even better. We've got gift ideas for those who prefer e-reading, as well as for the print-faithful — and of course, some book recommendations, too.

Read more: The best gifts for book lovers

Other than a bike, helmet and a few emergency maintenance essentials, there aren’t many things a person needs to enjoy a bike ride outside. But having the right accessories can go a long way towards making the experience more fun, more safe and, ultimately, more rewarding. Our list of recommendations cover the gamut of things you can give to the cyclist in your life, from must-have safety accessories like bike lights, to more techie gadgets like bike computers.

Read more: The best gifts for cyclists

We don’t speak for all moms, but a brief and unscientific survey has confirmed one gift most moms will love across the board: Time. Unspoken for, unstructured, zero-obligation time. While we couldn’t find extra hours on sale anywhere online, we did find some gadgets and gizmos that help save time and others that make precious down time more enjoyable.

Read more: The 13 best gifts for moms

Many Dads aren’t known for being forthright about what exactly they want for the holidays. (No, “peace and quiet” is not an acceptable answer in this case.) If you’re shopping for a father who likes gadgets but you aren’t sure what to get, let us help jog your brain with these gift ideas.

Read more: The 15 best gifts for dads

Check out the rest of our gift ideas here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-christmas-gifts-in-2024-that-everyone-on-your-holiday-list-will-love-170018888.html?src=rss

The best Christmas gifts for everyone on your 2024 holiday list

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This time of year has a lot of merry and bright things to be excited about, but it can be stressful if you’re stumped on what to get your mom, dad, best friend, coworker or kids’ teacher as a holiday gift. Whether you enjoy or dread buying gifts for people, it’s safe to say we all want to give our loved ones things they will enjoy and appreciate. But there’s a lot of noise, junk and bad deals disguised as good deals to sift through as we get closer and closer to the holidays.

Allow us at Engadget to help you through it. Here, you’ll find all of our holiday gift guides collected in one place, so you can more easily find the best Christmas gifts you need this year. Are you looking for white elephant gift ideas? Are you struggling to come up with a good gift for the father figure in your life? Are you just looking for a good board game to pick up for your own family? We’ve got you covered with gift ideas for all of those scenarios and more. We'll update this post as more of our gift guides hit the internet, so check back for even more gift ideas throughout the season.

According to legend, the King of Siam would give a white elephant to courtiers who had upset them. The recipient had no choice but to simply thank the king for such an opulent gift, knowing that they likely could not afford the upkeep for such an animal. It would inevitably lead them to financial ruin. This story is almost certainly untrue, but it has led to a modern holiday staple: the white elephant gift exchange. These gift ideas will not only get you a few chuckles, but will also make your recipient feel (slightly) burdened.

Read more: The best white elephant gift ideas

We could all use more time away from screens of all types and sizes, and board games are a fun way to do that and bond with friends and family. You can find plenty of unique sets out there now, from word puzzles to whodunnits to calming playthroughs that showcase the beauty of the little things in life. From games with giant monsters to those with haunted mansions, we’re sure at least one of our suggestions will be a hit with you and your loved ones.

Read more: The best board games to gift this season

A million new video games seem to come out every week, but for some of us, nothing beats the classics. If you know someone who is way into retro gaming but don’t feel like hunting through eBay and local shops for gear to add to their collection, we’re here to help. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite gift ideas for the nostalgic gamer in your life, from video upscalers for old consoles to retro-themed books and artwork.

Read more: The best retro gaming gifts for the holidays

When it comes to making a great cup at home, coffee nerds are constantly learning and love to try new things. Whether the person you’re shopping for is a newly indoctrinated pour over lover or obsessive over every brewing parameter, we’ve compiled a list of the best gear for coffee geeks that you can get this holiday season.

Read more: The best gifts for coffee lovers

There are few things more rewarding than making good food for your friends and family. But after a while, it’s easy to get bored with the same tried and true recipes. And what better way to inject some fun into your favorite home chef’s routine than with a brand-new kitchen gadget? To help you find the right gift for the cook in your life, we’ve put together a list of our favorite kitchen gadgets across a wide range of prices and categories.

Read more: The best cooking gifts

We’re all having a bit of a budget crunch this year, but the good news is that when it’s time to bestow presents on the young ones (or young at heart), you don’t have to break the bank. Our list of our favorite tech, science and design toys is stacked with items under $100, with plenty of reuse packed in so the fun can extend far beyond the holiday season.

Read more: The best tech toys for kids

In Engadget’s Slack rooms, our pets are high on the list of stuff we chat about — just behind work-adjacent tech stuff, insane current events, video games and food. We’ve bought plenty of high- and low-tech stuff to keep our furry friends fed, occupied, safe and happy and we’ve put together the best of what we tried here. Perhaps you’re shopping for your own very good boy or girl, or maybe you have a dutiful pet parent on your list — either way, the gadgets gathered here will make great gifts, according to the enthusiastic tail wags (or aloof meows) of our own fur babies.

Read more: The best gadgets for your pets

Check out the rest of our gift ideas here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-christmas-gifts-for-everyone-on-your-holiday-list-170018565.html?src=rss

Catch the Perseid meteor shower at its peak late tonight into tomorrow

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The Perseid meteor shower is one we can count on every summer for a great show, weather permitting, and this year’s event reaches its peak tonight. Late Sunday night into the pre-dawn hours of Monday will be the best time to see the Perseids, according to NASA. You’ll want to find a viewing spot with clear, dark skies, but you won’t need any special equipment to get the most out of the experience — the meteors should be plentiful, and visible to the naked eye.

The Perseids come around annually in late July and last several weeks. These meteors (or shooting stars) occur as debris from comet Swift-Tuttle interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, creating colorful streaks of light as the pieces burn up. At its peak, the phenomenon can bring as many as 100 meteors per hour. And, the Perseids have been known to give off an extra spectacular light show. “Perseids are also known for their fireballs,” according to NASA. “Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material.”

So find a good spot — ideally after the moon sets — look up, and wait. You may be able to see some natural fireworks.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/catch-the-perseid-meteor-shower-at-its-peak-late-tonight-into-tomorrow-153441606.html?src=rss

US college students can take half off a Max subscription

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US college students can shave half off a Max subscription. As long as you can confirm your active student status, you’ll get a 50 percent discount on the Max With Ads monthly plan. Usually $10, you’ll only pay $5 each month to stream classic and current HBO series (and more).

The promotion is through a partnership with UNiDAYS, a (strangely capitalized) service that verifies college and university student status. The company has also partnered with Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Uber Eats, Nike and more.

After successfully verifying your status, the promotion will last for 12 months. But you’ll have the chance to re-verify your student status every year as long as you’re eligible to keep the discount. Once you’re in your last year with no plans to head to another school, you’ll graduate to the hard-knock life of $10 ad-supported streaming plans.

Max lets you stream classic HBO series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and The City, Game Of Thrones, Six Feet Under and more. You also get current-run content from HBO, Warner Bros., DC, HGTV and Food Network. These include series and films like The Last of Us, Dune: Part Two, House of the Dragon, Barbie and Euphoria. You’ll also be able to stream the upcoming The Batman spinoff The Penguin, costarring Colin Farrell with his fat suit and a bunch of prosthetics.

Once you’re verified through UNiDAYS, you’ll receive a promotional code. Just follow the instructions you get with the code to begin your subscription.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-college-students-can-take-half-off-a-max-subscription-163906242.html?src=rss

11 must-have gadgets for college students in 2024

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As a college student today, you'll need certain tech to get your work done — key among the bunch being a solid laptop for college. But there are other gadgets that can make your academic life easier, and in some cases, more fun. If you're looking to stay organized, produce better work and enjoy your down time on and off campus, picking up a few important devices before you start the next semester can make all the difference. We've collected some of the must-have gadgets for college that we've tested here, and we wouldn't be surprised if all of them stuck with you long after your four-year university run is over.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/11-must-have-gadgets-for-college-students-in-2024-120044203.html?src=rss

Metaphor: ReFantazio feels like a JRPG free from restraint and sanity

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Metaphor: ReFantazio has been a long time in the making. It was announced in 2017 as Project re Fantasy through a weird long video that said very little. Since then, Atlus has swapped the Project for Metaphor and scoured Google Translate to find a cool way to say ‘fantasy.’ It’s also made a giant fantasy JRPG — and after rolling through a demo at Summer Game Fest last weekend, I’m dying to play it.

ReFantazio is the first original title by Studio Zero, a relatively new Atlus division headed up by Katsura Hashino. As the director of the third, fourth and fifth Persona game, Hashino is responsible for the Persona series’ pivot towards social simulation elements. After finishing up Persona 5, Hashino left P-Studio to work on all-new titles unrelated to Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series.

Atlus and Hashino are both known more for (semi-) grounded urban fantasy than wizards and elves, and ReFantazio in that sense represents a big departure. This is an epic, sprawling story covering a whole nation, the United Kingdom of Euchronia. The Euchronian king has been assassinated, and the people of the land must elect (!?) a new one. 

Euchronia is home to eight “tribes” (fantasy races) and our hero is trying to reunite them. There’s also a cursed prince who everyone thinks is dead, a royal tournament for the throne in six months and monsters everywhere. To make matters worse, Euchronia is being invaded by hideous, Hieronymus Bosch-inspired creatures called humans, which function as the game’s bosses. Humans, huh? Wonder if it’s a… metaphor?

Given Atlus’ storytelling history, the broad strokes of ReFantazio will probably make more sense than the moment-to-moment beats. Best to just let it wash over you.

The game takes place over the course of six months, and you’ll be traveling across Euchronia in a Gauntlet Runner (a cool ship designed by the Evangelion mech guy) trying to rally support for your entry into the royal tournament. Each town in the game has a tavern where you can grab a bite and gather information, a recruitment center where you can accept quests, various shops and an inn where you can rest. Completing quests and making friends along the way will gain you supporters among the various tribes, which is key to both the overarching story and the combat.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

Atlus’ Summer Game Fest demo was segmented into three 15-minute chunks. The first was a training sequence of sorts, story-heavy and light on combat. This felt mostly like a showcase for ReFantazio’s cinematics, which were gorgeous, despite the TVs in the demo area being set to interpolate frames. Atlus has a tradition of showcasing top-quality anime in its games, and the demo clips were among the best I’ve seen. What I appreciated more than the quality of the animation was how closely the character designs and vibe of the game matched the cinematics.

Also memorable is the voice acting. For the English-speaking cast, Atlus is taking the “United Kingdom” of Euchronia very seriously, as everyone I ran into had a totally over-the-top British accent. As the owner of an English accent, I found the characters beyond theatrical but nonetheless enjoyable. At one point in the demo I met a hyper-cockney cat girl that could've been auditioning for Oliver.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

In another segment, I fought alongside an adorable floppy-eared fellow from fantasy Liverpool who sounded like he was analyzing a soccer game. If none of this excites you, the Japanese voice cast seems to be shooting for a typical fantasy vibe. Personally, I can’t imagine playing this game in anything other than English at this point.

Not everything is voiced — as in a lot of JRPGs, key lines and conversations play out in full, but many interactions will be confined to text, with the voice actors emoting a little along the way for flavor. As a speed reader, this is absolutely fine by me.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

Segment two was all about dungeon-crawling combat — time for the Persona comparisons! The setup here will be familiar to fans of Atlus games: It’s a turn-based JRPG, with various types of physical and magical attacks, status effects and ailments. ReFantazio’s version of the classic JRPG class system is Archetypes — there are 14 lineages containing over 40 unique Archetypes, including some familiar roles like Mage, Thief, Knight and Healer. 

There’s also a tactical element to party composition, with a front and back row playing a part in combat, and Synthesis moves that allow you to combine your party’s Archetypes for stronger attacks. Everything has a little Persona and SMT to it — you manage Archetypes in an Akademeia (similar to a Velvet Room), they can evolve through experience, and their proficiency in battle is linked to your bond with your supporters.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

A twist on the classic turn-based formula — and one I’m very pleased about — is the Fast battle system. When you come across an enemy, you’ll be able to gauge their strength before initiating combat. The Fast system lets you target a particular enemy and strike them; this can insta-kill underpowered foes, which allows you to avoid turn-based battling entirely when grinding low-level enemies. For stronger foes, you can use Fast to butter them up and start a squad battle with advantage, but if you mess up this engagement you could start the turn-based combat on your ass. Other Atlus games have a similar risk-reward system to allow players to gain an advantage, but this is more nuanced and satisfying.

The interface for all of this is a typically gorgeous menu system and UI that feels more refined than ever. Simple actions are assigned a face button on the controller, which means less time spent in menus. It’s all pretty intuitive, and towards the end of my short demo I was already speeding through the turn-based combat without wondering what button did what. Taken as a whole, the combat system feels like a natural evolution to the classic formula Atlus is known for.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

The final demo section starts inside the Gauntlet Runner. It’s a claustrophobic space, more submarine than super yacht, but filled with things to do. There are people to talk to, activities to partake in, and routes to choose. Similar to Persona, the game occuring over a fixed period means you likely won’t be able to do everything you want to, and instead need to decide how best to spend your time each day. You might try to level up one of the main character’s five traits — courage, wisdom, tolerance, eloquence and imagination — or perhaps focus on fighting monsters or earning cash. I played to type and read a book, which was sadly not enough to raise my courage from “craven.”

My cozy book session led immediately into the main show: a face-off against a giant human. This began with an anime sequence, which gave way to classic four-on-one combat. The human designs in this game are buckwild. This one was called, “Sea Horror Homo Sabara” and here are the Cliff’s Notes:

  • Long violet beard and eyebrows.

  • One yellow eye, one white eye, both glowing.

  • 12 ears arranged in two rows? Edgy piercings.

  • Crown of thorns. Actually, make that two crowns of thorns.

  • Top half of head has been scalped. There seems to be a human heart sticking out.

  • Also, eight giant bejeweled tentacles as weapons.

It’s not like I haven’t seen crazy bosses in a JRPG before, but this octodad was a lot of fun to fight. There was no major challenge: Take out the tentacles, wail on the body, tentacles regenerate, repeat. But he hit hard, and the demo clearly set me up for success. It’s easy to see this guy wiping your team if you don’t come properly prepared.

Of all the things Atlus squeezed into the short Summer Game Fest, the human battle was the most memorable. From the lore being drip-fed to fans, it seems like the humans are actually from our world, and are being Isekai’d into Euchronia as these messed-up monsters. Here’s hoping a lot of them made it over.

Metaphor: ReFantazio
Atlus

At first blush ReFantazio feels like a real auteur moment for Hashino — as if, after the worldwide success of Persona 5, he’s basically been given a blank check. Hashino’s Persona titles bend over backwards to show you how cool and edgy they are, but the only concern for ReFantazio is how loud, confident and unique it can be.

Yes, there are elements borrowed from almost every Atlus RPG you can think of, but it's all been remixed and refined. I left my brief time with ReFantazio filled with this wonderful milieu of nostalgia and surprise, a warm familiarity from something unlike anything I’d played before.

Metaphor: ReFantazio comes to PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series consoles on October 11.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metaphor-refantazio-feels-like-a-jrpg-free-from-restraint-and-sanity-185129361.html?src=rss

My one wish for WWDC 2024 is better notifications on iPhone and Mac

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Qualcomm’s new commercial that revives Justin Long as a frustrated Mac user who decides to spend hundreds of dollars on a new computer rather than manage his notifications is objectively terrible. (The mocking has been so brutal that Qualcomm deleted the commercial from its YouTube channel!) But, it does raise one fair point: notifications, regardless of what OS or device you’re using, are a complete mess. The tools you’ll find on your computer or phone for managing them are overly complicated and hard to explain to someone who isn’t intimately familiar with the settings menu. I’ve been covering and using iOS for years, so for some stupid reason I do understand how Apple’s various notification options work, but wish me luck if I have to explain it to someone else.

That’s why the number one thing on my list for Apple to fix in iOS 18 (and really all its platforms) when its announced at WWDC next week is notifications. Rumors haven’t pointed to any big change this year, but a boy can dream. But the big problem with notifications isn’t really with Apple, or Microsoft, or Google — it’s with app developers.

Poshmark, a platform for buying and selling fashion items, is a perfect example. My spouse gets constant notifications from the app, making me wonder why she hasn’t just turned them off. Turns out that when you’re selling something, you want to know if someone messages you or buys something — but sorting those notifications from the myriad of other promotional junk the app shoves at you is near impossible.

To test things, I just went through the onboarding process for Poshmark myself. After creating an account and signing in, the app asked if I wanted to turn on notifications. Every app on iOS is required to ask you if you want them — but if you say yes, you’re opting in to anything the app wants to send you. Buried in the Poshmark app itself are more granular controls that let you turn various types of notifications on or off, including things like “party invites,” “just picked for you” items, “daily deals,” “live events” and more. In fact, there are nearly two dozen different notification types in this app alone! That is too many. I also got something like four notifications in the first hour, after barely using the app. Too. Many.

Apple has done what it can to help users find these settings. If you go to the global iOS notifications settings, you can manage preferences for every app on your phone. There’s now an option at the bottom of that list to take you directly into the app to let you do things like turn off most of Poshmark’s 23 different notification types. There’s also an option to allow “time sensitive” notifications (things like direct messages or calendar reminders) to alert you immediately while shuttling other notifications into a summary.

The problem is that most people don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to do this for every app they install, which leads to situations like the one that Qualcomm so cleverly skewered in its awful ad. I’ve accepted the fact that when I get up in the morning, I’m going to find a ton of notifications cropped up on my phone that aren’t meaningful, even though I’ve done my best to aggressively prune them where possible. At this point, it’s a crapshoot whether I’ll find anything useful when I swipe into my Notification Center, which means that I am surely missing important reminders about things I need to deal with.

It's also worth noting that Apple has tried to fix notifications over the years with tools like Do Not Disturb, grouping notifications, sending them to a summary and of course letting you decide how intrusive they are to begin with. You can easily turn off red bubbles if they give you agita, or make it so your phone doesn't light up with every message you get. But again, the onus is on the user to be aware enough of the many ways they can customize notification settings, and a lot of people don't do that until their phone is completely overwhelming them with pings.

Of course, I don’t have anything useful like a “solution” to offer here, but I think the best way forward is for Apple to figure out how to disincentivize developers to flood users with notifications. Perhaps in addition to the existing opt-in dialog for notifications when you first launch an app, Apple can force developers to show you the notifications preferences so you know exactly what an app wants to send you. And instead of turning on all notifications, an app could start with everything off by default and you only check the things you actually want to see.

But I’m also skeptical that more settings to wade through are going to fix anything. People are still going to want to install an app and get started using it without spending five minutes going through an increasingly granular notification settings process. The end result would be the same, too many apps taking up valuable real estate on your phone and in your brain. But they pay Craig Federighi and company the big bucks to figure this stuff out, not me — here’s hoping he has some good news on Monday.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/my-one-wish-for-wwdc-2024-is-better-notifications-on-iphone-and-mac-172004630.html?src=rss

The best work-from-home and office essentials for graduates

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Remote and hybrid work is a real possibility for many recent graduates, as is schlepping it to an office every weekday. Some grads may be off to a career in welding and will be free of offices altogether. While we don't have the proper expertise to make recommendations for that latter category, the Engadget staff has decades of collective experience working from home and commuting to offices. These gadgets have helped us get through our workdays more efficiently and comfortably — and make good gifts for any budding professional.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-work-from-home-office-gifts-for-graduates-123015003.html?src=rss

The best high school graduation gifts in 2024

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Surviving high school is a major milestone, but the transition to young adulthood that comes after is often as overwhelming as it is exciting. If you have a recent high school grad in your life, a pragmatic gift to celebrate the occasion could make their next chapter just a bit easier to manage. Below we’ve put together a list of tested and approved gadgets, gear and services that should delight, regardless of if your giftee is heading to a new campus or starting a new job.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-high-school-graduation-gifts-130013153.html?src=rss

Yale unveils its first retrofit smartlock and keypad

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Yale is making it easier to go key-free with a smart lock system that can be retrofitted onto most existing deadbolts. You won't need to replace existing hardware with the Yale Approach Lock with Wi-Fi. It's an interior-only smart lock that Yale says takes just 10 minutes or so to install and you'll only need a screwdriver to help you get the job done. It also has a fairly slim profile as it will sit just 1.6 inches off the door.

Once the smart lock is installed, you'll be able to use features like Auto-Lock and Auto-Unlock. If you're away from home and want to let in a friend to water the plants or check on your pets, you can unlock the door remotely via the Yale Access app. What's more, the Yale Approach is renter-friendly. It sits on the back of most standard deadbolts and you (and your landlord) can keep using the same keys. In addition, Yale Approach works with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings. Matter support will be added later.

Also new is the Yale Keypad, which is compatible with the Yale Approach, several of the company's other products and many August smart locks. Using the one-touch locking feature, you can lock the door and unlock it with a personalized code. You can provide guests with unique access codes. The backlit keypad is also IPX5-rated for weather resistance and you can place it anywhere within the lock's Bluetooth range. Yale plans to release a version later this year that will let you unlock the door with your fingerprint.

Both items are available now in the US from Yale's and August's websites. The Yale Approach, which is available in black suede or silver, costs $130, while the Yale Keypad is $70. A bundle is available for $180. The devices will hit Amazon and other retailers soon. They'll also be available in Canada through Amazon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/yale-unveils-its-first-retrofit-smartlock-and-keypad-165842682.html?src=rss