Missed the week’s big tech news? Here’s your firmware update
The tech launches show no sign of slowing down as we head into October, with this week serving up another generous round of tech treats to help us wash down last week’s helpings of Microsoft Copilot, Amazon’s Alexa AI and iOS 17.
This time, it was Meta’s turn to take to the stage at Meta Connect, where it made the unsurprising full announcement of the Meta Quest 3, alongside some big AI news. You can read about both of those below, alongside our verdict on DJI’s new Mini 4 Pro drone (spoiler: it’s great).
In between all of that, we were sorely tempted to pre-order a new Raspberry Pi 5 so that it can sit on our shelf collecting dust again, and we also found time to celebrate Google’s 25th birthday. So if you were too busy this week living in actual reality rather than virtual reality, let us fill you in on all the tech news you missed…7. Google turned 25 – and we celebrated in style
Okay, most birthday celebrations include party hats, candles and awkwardly fighting co-workers for a slice of cake. But for Google’s 25th birthday this week, we decided to honor it in the only way we know how – by writing a series of features delving into the big G’s biggest successes, mistakes and exciting future projects.
We looked back on how on earth we survived before Google (if you remember Altavista, Hotmail and Netscape, make sure to give that a read), praised our favorite unsung Google apps and services, and lamented the Google graveyard projects that we wish still existed.
Naturally, we also ranked the best Google Doodles of all time and also the best Google Easter egg surprises hidden in its various apps and services (including, most recently, Android 14). And as a nightcap, we looked ahead to the next 25 years of Google and its most promising future projects.6. The Raspberry Pi 5 arrived to power your DIY projects
Partial to a DIY coding project? The Raspberry Pi has always been a great board for the hobbyist tinkerer – and now a powerful fifth version has just been launched with a new CPU and more.
Okay, there may be some issues with availability despite pre-orders kicking off ahead of an October launch, but it looks like the Pi 5 will be worth waiting for. The main boost is a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU running at 2.4GHz, and a major upgrade from the Pi 4’s 1.8GHz chip.
But you also get a new VideoCore VII GPU for a boost in graphical performance, Bluetooth 5.0 and two HDMI outputs (alongside a pair of USB 3.0 ports) that let you hook up it up to two 4K displays (at 60Hz, with HDR support).
