The MCU's foray into streaming television has produced mixed results, but one of my favorites was the weirdly inventive, oh-so-meta WandaVision. I'm happy to report that the spinoff sequel, Agatha All Along, taps into that same offbeat creativity, giving us a welcome reminder of just how good the MCU can be when it's firing on all storytelling cylinders.
(Spoilers below, including for WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness. We'll give you another heads up when major spoilers for Agatha All Along are imminent.)
The true identity of nosy next-door neighbor Agnes—played to perfection by Kathryn Hahn—was the big reveal of 2021's WandaVision, even inspiring a jingle that went viral. Agnes turned out to be a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, who had studied magic for centuries and was just dying to learn the source of Wanda's incredible power. Wanda's natural abilities were magnified by the Mind Stone, but Agatha realized that Wanda was a wielder of "chaos magic." She was, in fact, the Scarlet Witch. In the finale, Wanda trapped Agatha in her nosy neighbor persona while releasing the rest of the town of Westview from her grief-driven Hex.
Ask a few random people about Apple Intelligence and you’ll probably get quite different responses.
One might be excited about the new features. Another could opine that no one asked for this and the company is throwing away its reputation with creatives and artists to chase a fad. Another still might tell you that regardless of the potential value, Apple is simply too late to the game to make a mark.
The release of Apple’s first Apple Intelligence-branded AI tools in iOS 18.1 last week makes all those perspectives understandable.
Publishing platform Substack is now pushing users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. While Substack itself is available across platforms, including the web, those who want to take advantage of the free subscription offer can only do so after downloading the mobile app to their device. The free subscription offer is being […]
It’s Election Day in the U.S., which means you’re likely glued to the latest news about which presidential candidate is currently in the lead. To help with this, Apple has released a Live Activities widget within its Apple News app that will offer real-time election updates directly on your iPhone or iPad’s Home Screen and […]
After much hype, Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of AI features, finally shipped to users this week with the iOS 18.1 update. I used these features for months through beta software and realized that the feature set rolling out this week is more about creating convenience for users than letting users plan or brainstorm ideas […]
Today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.2 for supported devices. This beta release marks the first time several key AI features that Apple teased at its developer conference this June are available.
Apple is marketing a wide range of generative AI features under the banner "Apple Intelligence." Initially, Apple Intelligence was planned to release as part of iOS 18, but some features slipped to iOS 18.1, others to iOS 18.2, and a few still to future undisclosed software updates.
iOS 18.1 has been in beta for a while and includes improvements to Siri, generative writing tools that help with rewriting or proofreading, smart replies for Messages, and notification summaries. That update is expected to reach the public next week.
Imagine if your boss called a meeting in May to announce that he’s committing 10 percent of the company’s revenue to the development of a brand-new mass-market consumer product, made with a not-yet-ready-for-mass-production component. Oh, and he wants it on store shelves in less than six months, in time for the holiday shopping season. Ambitious, yes. Kind of nuts, also yes.
But that’s pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The result was the
Regency TR-1, the world’s first commercial transistor radio, which debuted 70 years ago this month. The engineers delivered on Haggerty’s audacious goal, and I certainly hope they received a substantial year-end bonus.
Why did Texas Instruments make the Regency TR-1 transistor radio?
But how did Texas Instruments come to make a transistor radio in the first place? TI traces its roots to a company called Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI), which made seismic instrumentation for the oil industry as well as electronics for the military. In 1945, GSI hired
Patrick E. Haggerty as the general manager of its laboratory and manufacturing division and its electronics work. By 1951, Haggerty’s division was significantly outpacing GSI’s geophysical division, and so the Dallas-based company reorganized as Texas Instruments to focus on electronics.
Meanwhile, on 30 June 1948, Bell Labs announced John Bardeen and Walter Brattain’s
game-changing invention of the transistor. No longer would electronics be dependent on large, hot vacuum tubes. The U.S. government chose not to classify the technology because of its potentially broad applications. In 1951, Bell Labs began licensing the transistor for US $25,000 through the Western Electric Co.; Haggerty bought a license for TI the following year.
The engineers delivered on Haggerty’s audacious goal, and I certainly hope they received a substantial year-end bonus.
TI was still a small company, with not much in the way of R&D capacity. But Haggerty and the other founders wanted it to become a big and profitable company. And so they established research labs to focus on semiconductor materials and a project-engineering group to develop marketable products.
The TR-1 was the first transistor radio, and it ignited a desire for portable gadgets that continues to this day.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Haggerty made a good investment when he hired
Gordon Teal, a 22-year veteran of Bell Labs. Although Teal wasn’t part of the team that invented the germanium transistor, he recognized that it could be improved by using a single grown crystal, such as silicon. Haggerty was familiar with Teal’s work from a 1951 Bell Labs symposium on transistor technology. Teal happened to be homesick for his native Texas, so when TI advertised for a research director in the New York Times, he applied, and Haggerty offered him the job of assistant vice president instead. Teal started at TI on 1 January 1953.
Fifteen months later, Teal gave Haggerty a demonstration of the first silicon transistor, and he presented his findings three and a half weeks later at the Institute of Radio Engineers’ National Conference on Airborne Electronics, in Dayton, Ohio. His innocuously titled paper, “Some Recent Developments in Silicon and Germanium Materials and Devices,” completely understated the magnitude of the announcement. The audience was astounded to hear that TI had not just one but three types of silicon transistors already in production, as Michael Riordan recounts in his excellent article “The Lost History of the Transistor” (IEEE Spectrum, October 2004).
And fun fact: The TR-1 shown at top once belonged to Willis Adcock, a physical chemist hired by Teal to perfect TI’s silicon transistors as well as transistors for the TR-1. (The radio is now in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)
The TR-1 became a product in less than six months
This advancement in silicon put TI on the map as a major player in the transistor industry, but Haggerty was impatient. He wanted a transistorized commercial product
now, even if that meant using germanium transistors. On 21 May 1954, Haggerty challenged a research group at TI to have a working prototype of a transistor radio by the following week; four days later, the team came through, with a breadboard containing eight transistors. Haggerty decided that was good enough to commit $2 million—just under 10 percent of TI’s revenue—to commercializing the radio.
Of course, a working prototype is not the same as a mass-production product, and Haggerty knew TI needed a partner to help manufacture the radio. That partner turned out to be Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA), a small company out of Indianapolis that specialized in antenna boosters and other electronic goods. They signed an agreement in June 1954 with the goal of announcing the new radio in October. TI would provide the components, and IDEA would manufacture the radio under its Regency brand.
Germanium transistors at the time cost $10 to $15 apiece. With eight transistors, the radio was too expensive to be marketed at the desired price point of $50 (more than $580 today, which is coincidentally about what it’ll cost you to buy one in good condition on eBay). Vacuum-tube radios were selling for less, but TI and IDEA figured early adopters would pay that much to try out a new technology. Part of Haggerty’s strategy was to increase the volume of transistor production to eventually lower the per-transistor cost, which he managed to push down to about $2.50.
By the time TI met with IDEA, the breadboard was down to six transistors. It was IDEA’s challenge to figure out how to make the transistorized radio at a profit. According to an
oral history with Richard Koch, IDEA’s chief engineer on the project, TI’s real goal was to make transistors, and the radio was simply the gimmick to get there. In fact, part of the TI–IDEA agreement was that any patents that came out of the project would be in the public domain so that TI was free to sell more transistors to other buyers.
At the initial meeting, Koch, who had never seen a transistor before in real life, suggested substituting a germanium diode for the detector (which extracted the audio signal from the desired radio frequency), bringing the transistor count down to five. After thinking about the configuration a bit more, Koch eliminated another transistor by using a single transistor for the oscillator/mixer circuit.
TI’s original prototype used eight germanium transistors, which engineers reduced to six and, ultimately, four for the production model.Division of Work and Industry/National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution
The final design was four transistors set in a
superheterodyne design, a type of receiver that combines two frequencies to produce an intermediate frequency that can be easily amplified, thereby boosting a weak signal and decreasing the required antenna size. The TR-1 had two transistors as intermediate-frequency amplifiers and one as an audio amplifier, plus the oscillator/mixer. Koch applied for a patent for the circuitry the following year.
The radio ran on a 22.5-volt battery, which offered a playing life of 20 to 30 hours and cost about $1.25. (Such batteries were also used in the external power and electronics pack for hearing aids, the only other consumer product to use transistors up until this point.)
While IDEA’s team was working on the circuitry, they outsourced the
design of the TR-1’s packaging to the Chicago firm of Painter, Teague, and Petertil. Their first design didn’t work because the components didn’t fit. Would their second design be better? As Koch later recalled, IDEA’s purchasing agent, Floyd Hayhurst, picked up the molding dies for the radio cases in Chicago and rushed them back to Indianapolis. He arrived at 2:00 in the morning, and the team got to work. Fortunately, everything fit this time. The plastic case was a little warped, but that was simple to fix: They slapped a wooden piece on each case as it came off the line so it wouldn’t twist as it cooled.
This video shows how each radio was assembled by hand:
On 18 October 1954, Texas Instruments announced the first commercial transistorized radio. It would be available in select outlets in New York and Los Angeles beginning 1 November, with wider distribution once production ramped up. The Regency TR-1 Transistor Pocket Radio initially came in black, gray, red, and ivory. They later added green and mahogany, as well as a run of pearlescents and translucents: lavender, pearl white, meridian blue, powder pink, and lime.
The TR-1 got so-so reviews, faced competition
Consumer Reports was not enthusiastic about the Regency TR-1. In its April 1955 review, it found that transmission of speech was “adequate” under good conditions, but music transmission was unsatisfactory under any conditions, especially on a noisy street or crowded beach. The magazine used adjectives such as whistle, squeal, thin, tinny, and high-pitched to describe various sounds—not exactly high praise for a radio. It also found fault with the on/off switch. Their recommendation: Wait for further refinement before buying one.
More than 100,000 TR-1s were sold in its first year, but the radio was never very profitable.Archive PL/Alamy
The engineers at TI and IDEA didn’t necessarily disagree. They knew they were making a sound-quality trade-off by going with just four transistors. They also had quality-control problems with the transistors and other components, with initial failure rates up to 50 percent. Eventually, IDEA got the failure rate down to 12 to 15 percent.
Unbeknownst to TI or IDEA, Raytheon was also working on a transistorized radio—a tabletop model rather than a pocket-size one. That gave them the space to use six transistors, which significantly upped the sound quality. Raytheon’s radio came out in February 1955. Priced at $79.95, it weighed 2 kilograms and ran on four D-cell batteries. That August, a small Japanese company called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp. released its first transistor radio, the TR-55. A few years later, the company changed its name to Sony and went on to dominate the world’s consumer radio market.
The legacy of the Regency TR-1
The Regency TR-1 was a success by many measures: It sold 100,000 in its first year, and it helped jump-start the transistor market. But the radio was never very profitable. Within a few years, both Texas Instruments and IDEA left the commercial AM radio business, TI to focus on semiconductors, and IDEA to concentrate on citizens band radios. Yet Pat Haggerty estimated that this little pocket radio pushed the market in transistorized consumer goods ahead by two years. It was a leap of faith that worked out, thanks to some hardworking engineers with a vision.
Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the October 2024 print issue as “The First Transistor Radio.”
References
In 1984, Michael Wolff conducted oral histories with IDEA’s lead engineer Richard Koch and purchasing agent Floyd Hayhurst. Wolff subsequently used them the following year in his IEEE Spectrum article “The Secret Six-Month Project,” which includes some great references at the end.
Robert J. Simcoe wrote “The Revolution in Your Pocket” for the fall 2004 issue of Invention and Technology to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Regency TR-1.
As with many collectibles, the Regency TR-1 has its champions who have gathered together many primary sources. For example, Steve Reyer, a professor of electrical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering before he passed away in 2018, organized his efforts in a webpage that’s now hosted by https://www.collectornet.net.
Thrill of the Fight 2, the upcoming sequel to Quest’s most popular VR boxing sim, seems to be gearing up for release, as studios Sealost Interactive and Halfbrick Studios tossed out its first teaser trailer.
Update (September 16th, 2024): Announced early last year, we’re still waiting on gameplay, although the studios are chumming the waters now with a new live-action teaser, stating to “Prepare Yourself.”
The game is coming to Quest first, however original creator Ian Fitz says the team plans to bring it to other platforms eventually, which he notes isn’t due to “any contractual exclusivity or anything like that.”
Additionally, Fitz notes the Sealost Interactive team officially started work on Thrill of the Fight 2 in July 2020, but scaling the studio was an issue. “I abandoned that [internal scaling] plan and started working with Halfbrick, and we restarted the project together in January 2023,” Fitz says in a Discord post.
There’s no release date yet, however Fitz says we’ll find out “soon! ! and I mean soon!” The original article detailing the initial reveal and Halfbrick’s involvement follows below:
Original Article (January 23rd: 2023): Created by Ian Fitz and his studio Sealost Interactive in 2016, Thrill of the Fight focuses on realistic boxing mechanics, eschewing arcadey things like stamina bars and unrealistic knockout blows.
Thrill of the Fight 2, which is now in co-development by Halfbrick Studios, is bringing the much-requested feature of multiplayer mode. In a development update video (below), Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo reveals a few more features coming to the sequel: improved audio and visual feedback, changes to how combinations are scored, more gameplay variety to keep players coming back for more.
Halfbrick is known for developing both the flatscreen versions of Fruit Ninja and Fruit Ninja 2 and also their respective VR adaptations. The studio’s bread and butter however has been its slew of mobile games, including Jetpack Joyride, Battle Racing Stars, Dan the Man, and Shadows Remain.
In an update posted to Reddit by Sealost Interactive, series developer Ian Fitz discusses Halfbrick’s involvement.
“The reason I’m partnering up with Halfbrick on this is because I was comfortable it would help make the game I wanted to make. They want to make (and play) the same game I do,” Fitz says.
Fitz also broke down the division of labor, and how the sequel is being made in cooperation with Halfbrick.
“I made the blueprint. Sealost prototyped and proved out many of the mechanics and tech challenges. Halfbrick is putting together a release-worthy product and supporting it into the future. I’m in meetings with them every workday building the product right alongside them and making sure we don’t deviate from the original plan (which hasn’t been a problem because, again, they want to make the same game I do).”
Fitz notes the partnership with Halfbrick “doesn’t have anything to do with funding. This is just about having a solid production team and a plan in place to support the game post-launch.”
The studios say they’re aiming for release “later this year,” although that’s admittedly “just an estimate based on current progress,” Fitz says.
It’s still unclear which platforms are initial targets, however if the original is any indications, we’re liable to see it on Quest 2/Pro, Steam VR, and possibly also PSVR 2.
UbiSim is the first immersive virtual reality (VR) training platform built specifically for nurses. It is a complete simulation lab that provides nursing trainees with virtual access to a variety of clinical situations and diverse patients in a broad continuum of realistic care settings, helping institutions to overcome limited access to hospitals and other clinical sites for nursing students.
This cool tool allows institutions to create repeatable, real-life scenarios that provide engaging, standardized multi-learner experiences using VR headsets. It combines intuitive interactions, flexible modules, and immediate feedback. These contribute to developing clinical judgment, critical thinking, team interaction, clear communication, and patient engagement skills that enhance safe clinical practice and are essential to improving Next Generation NCLEX test scores.
UbiSim reduces the burden of purchasing and maintaining expensive simulation lab equipment, allowing nursing programs to scale and standardize their simulation activities. Faculty choose from 50-plus existing training scenarios created in collaboration with nursing educators and simulation experts. Educators may also customize content or create original scenarios to fit learning objectives.
Founded in 2016, UbiSim has been a Labster company since 2021. The UbiSim customer roster has grown by 117% since Fall 2022, extending its footprint at universities, community colleges, technical colleges, and medical centers within 9 countries, including 21 American states. UbiSim now partners with 100-plus nursing institutions in North America and Europe to advance the shared mission of addressing the nursing shortage by reducing the cost, time, and logistical challenges of traditional simulation methods and scaling high-quality nursing education. For these reasons and more, UbiSim, a Labster company, is a Cool Tool Award Winner for “Best Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality (AR/VR) Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.
Avatar: The Last Airbender had tijdens zijn looptijd enorm succes. En ook nu is de serie nog altijd enorm populair. Je begrijpt dus ons enthousiasme toen duidelijk werd dat er meerdere nieuwe projecten in relatie tot de animatieserie in de maak zijn. Niet alleen een Netflix-serie, maar bijvoorbeeld ook films. Hoe staat het nu met die projecten?
Voor wie het gemist heeft: Avatar: The Last Airbender was een animatieserie die tussen 2005 en 2008 op Nickelodeon werd uitgezonden. De serie gaat over een wereld waarin benders wonen: mensen die een element kunnen aansturen. Lange tijd leefden de vier verschillende naties – Water, Vuur, Aarde en Lucht – in vrede samen, totdat de Vuurnatie aanviel en de wereld in een lange oorlog verzandde. De enige die de balans kan herstellen is de Avatar, die als enige alle vier de elementen kan aansturen. Maar die Avatar, een elfjarige jongen genaamd Aang, is al honderd jaar verdwenen. Tenminste, totdat Katara en Sokka van de Waterstam hem vinden. Nu hij terug is, moet Aang de wereld redden.
De serie was zoals gezegd een enorm succes en in 2012 verscheen een vervolg: The Legend of Korra, over de Avatar na Aang. Die serie kwam twee jaar later tot een einde en daarna bleef het lange tijd stil (op een slecht ontvangen film uit 2010 na, maar daar hebben we het niet over). Gelukkig kwam daar enkele jaren terug verandering in. Er werd een live-action Netfix-serie aangekondigd – waarvan het eerste seizoen inmiddels is verschenen – en diverse andere projecten.
Laten we even beginnen met die Netflix-serie. Afgelopen februari kregen we daar het eerste seizoen van, dat in grote lijnen het verhaal van het eerste seizoen van de animatie volgde. We zagen hoe Katara en Sokka Aang vinden, naar de Zuidpool reizen en onderweg van alles meemaken. Grootste verschil zat hem misschien wel in het aantal afleveringen – de Netflix-serie had er acht in het eerste seizoen, terwijl de animatieserie er twintig had. Hoewel de serie verdeeld werd ontvangen – op Rotten Tomatoes krijgt het van recensies een score van 59% – lijken veel mensen positief: de audience score is 73%.
Al snel werd duidelijk dat de serie ook een tweede en derde seizoen krijgt. Inmiddels zijn daar ook wat eerste details over naar buiten gekomen. Zo weet Comicbook dat het verhaal van het tweede seizoen ook weer korter wordt dan in de originele serie, net zoals in het eerste seizoen het geval was. Daarnaast weten we dat het tweede seizoen net als in de animatieserie over het element aarde gaat, wat Aang in dit seizoen leert beheersen. Dat betekent ook dat we Toph gaan leren kennen, al is nog niet bekend wie haar gaat spelen. Het laatste wat we hoorden is namelijk dat de casting nog in gang is.
Helaas is ook nog veel onduidelijk. Zo weten we niet hoeveel afleveringen er komen of wanneer het tweede seizoen verschijnt. Dat is dus nog even afwachten.
Ja, dit lees je goed. Na een niet zo positief ontvangen film in 2010 komt er nu toch weer een film aan van The Last Airbender. Maar in tegenstelling tot die uit 2010 en de Netflix-serie wordt ook dit een animatiefilm. Of beter gezegd: animatiefilms. Het wordt namelijk een trilogie, die gaat over het originele team Avatar.
De nieuwe films gaan dus over Aang, Sokka, Katara, Toph en de rest van de groep, maar dan als volwassenen. De films volgen dus op de originele animatieserie. De eerste film wordt geregisseerd door Lauren Montgomery, die ook meewerkte aan onder meer Voltron: Legandary Defender en Young Justice. De film wordt verder geproduceerd door Bryan Konietzko en Michael DiMartino, die de originele serie hebben gemaakt.
Verder is nog weinig bekend over de eerste film. We weten dat zanger Eric Nam Aang speelt en Dave Bautista, bekend van Guardians of the Galaxy, een vijand speelt. Maar over het verhaal is nog niets gezegd. Gelukkig hebben we al wel een premièredatum: 30 januari 2026.
Serie over nieuwe Avatar
Ook is inmiddels aangekondigd dat er een nieuwe Avatar-serie komt, over de volgende Avatar in lijn. Na Aang (Lucht) en Korra (Water) is dat volgens de cyclus iemand uit het Aarderijk, wat suggereert dat we ook meer over dat deel van de wereld gaan leren. Avatar News wist eerder al te melden dat de serie in 2025 moet verschijnen en zo’n 100 jaar na Korra afspeelt. Veel meer is helaas nog niet over de serie bekend.
Film over Zuko
Avatar: The Last Airbender had veel geliefde karakters, maar het komt niet vaak voor dat de schurk één van hen is. Of beter gezegd: voormalig schurk. Zuko blijkt uiteindelijk natuurlijk een heldhaftige prins met een goed hart, die Aang helpt om de oorlog te winnen.
Dit populaire karakter krijgt dus ook zijn eigen film, al weten we niet of deze gaat over zijn verleden of over zijn leven na de originele serie. Avatar News weet echter wel één belangrijk detail te melden: de originele stemacteur Dante Basco doet de stem ook in deze film. Verder zou de film volgens de nieuwssite op 9 oktober 2026 verschijnen.
De wereld kent een rijke historie aan games en ook de oudere games zijn met regelmaat nog de moeite waard. Gelukkig zijn er nog altijd mensen met de oude consoles, waar je ze op kunt spelen. En er zijn natuurlijk emulators, waarin je dergelijke spellen ook kunt draaien. Op Android is dat al sinds jaar en dag mogelijk. Nu kan dat ook op iOS.
Een emulator is in feite gewoon een stuk software waarmee je programma’s kunt gebruiken die voor een andere computer ontwikkeld zijn (al zijn er ook hardware-matige varianten). Daardoor kun je op je computer of op je telefoon spelletjes spelen die bijvoorbeeld bedoeld zijn voor de NES of oude Gameboys. Voor Android zijn die al jaren beschikbaar, maar op iOS was dat niet het geval. Apple liet deze emulators namelijk niet toe in de App Store, wat betekent dat je andere methodes moest vinden om ze te gebruiken. Bijvoorbeeld via jailbreaking.
Maar daar is verandering in gekomen, meldt The Verge. Apple laat sinds 6 april wel emulators toe in de App Store, waardoor we ze nu eindelijk ook op legitieme wijze op iOS kunnen gebruiken.
Waarom nu wel?
Je kunt je natuurlijk afvragen waarom Apple plots emulators toestaat. Daar zijn twee antwoorden op te geven. Allereerst lijkt Apple te reageren op een antitrust-rechtszaak die in de VS is aangespannen. In die rechtszaak wordt Apple beschuldigd van pogingen om streamingapps voor cloudgames en super-apps te bannen. Sinds kort zijn cloudstreamingdiensten, zoals Xbox Cloud Gaming en GeForce Now, weer toegelaten in de App store.
Daarnaast speelt druk van de Europese Commissie mogelijk mee. Nieuwe wetten stellen strengere eisen aan grote techbedrijven en techplatformen, waaronder dus Apple en iOS. Zo is Apple tegenwoordig ook verplicht om appstores van derde partijen toe te laten op iOS. Verder mogen streamingapps nu linkjes toevoegen naar aankopen buiten iOS om. De emulators-regel die aangepast wordt, is dus vooral de meest recente in een reeks.
Overigens heeft Apple ook zijn regels rondom super-apps als WeChat aangepast. Mini-games en mini-apps binnen deze apps moeten HTML5 gebruiken van Apple. Het mogen dus geen native apps en games zijn.
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The TR-1 was the first transistor radio, and it ignited a desire for portable gadgets that continues to this day.
Bettmann/Getty Images
TI’s original prototype used eight germanium transistors, which engineers reduced to six and, ultimately, four for the production model.Division of Work and Industry/National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution
More than 100,000 TR-1s were sold in its first year, but the radio was never very profitable.Archive PL/Alamy
