Apple offers to replace out-of-warranty batteries for a small fee, media player app Kodi heads for the Xbox One, Porsche takes aim at Tesla.
Maybe $29 is $29 too much?
Apple has finally bowed to the pressure and is offering owners of older iPhones a $29 dollar option to get their batteries replaced – and get their phones’ performance back up to “like new” speeds. But wait, that’s not all: Apple posted a mea culpa on their site that explained a bit more of their explanation over why phones slowed down (short version: batteries age), and also added a resource page about battery tech.
They also said that in a future iOS update, there will be more “visibility” into the health of an iPhone’s battery and the phone’s performance levels. Apple says the discounted “out of warranty” battery replacement program will start in late January and will run through essentially all of 2018, so don’t run down to the Apple Store just yet for your replacement.
Aye, bring Kodi up on deck…
The Xbox One and Xbox One S are already a top-tier gaming consoles, so what could make them even better? If they were top-tier media-playing boxes as well. And while the Xbox can do a fair amount of things including play bluray movies and such, it’s capabilities have been greatly expanded with the release of the Kodi app for the Xbox One. Kodi is a third- party app that lets the Xbox basically play all kinds of media, and it lets you add apps that Microsoft might frown on.
Kodi can work as a cable box and decode cable channels, it can turn your Xbox into a DVR, and it can play a long list of media types from those external drives you have with all your ripped DVDs and that stuff you got from… somewhere. Pretty versatile, but it does have its limitations. Check out the Kodi app page and their explainer, so if you want to trick out that new Xbox you just got, you know what to do next.
Sleek, fast, and maybe too late?
Tesla continues to rule the electric car market, and with the upcoming Roadster hot rod and Semi truck models, it seems like the completion is going to need a pretty fast set of wheels to start catching up. Who’s up to the challenge? Looks like Porsche may be a worthy contender in the near future, with their Mission E sports car. And now, Automobile is claiming the E will be packing about 670 horsepower along with an impressive driving range of 300 miles or better.
That lines up with specs on Porsches site, which adds that the E will hit 60 miles an hour in 3.5 seconds and 124 miles an hour is 12 seconds. And like the upcoming Roadster, which spec-wise blows the Mission E off the road, it’s going to seat four people through some nifty suicide doors. Autombile says the Mission E is due to arrive in 2019 or maybe 2020 at the latest, but so far, no price has been announced. The future is coming up fast.
DT Daily will return on January 3rd, 2018. Happy New Year!
We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.
