BMW and Jaguar Land Rover will develop electric vehicles together

A growing trend in the automotive space involves the automakers partnering to co-develop vehicles and technologies. The latest ones to join the fray are BMW and Jaguar Land Rover. The two companies are going to co-develop a new generation of motors for their respective electric vehicles. They will also work to use their combined size to make it cheaper to buy components. But BMW and Jaguar Land Rover will be building their own engines at their own plants in Germany and the UK, respectively.

Research and development will be done in Germany with both companies bringing in their engineers to improve on BMW’s fifth-generation electric engine. The motor, which has both the transmission and power electronics in the same shell, doesn’t use any rare earth materials. This makes it more environmentally-friendly and cheaper to make than other brushless motors of its class. Both companies have earned critical acclaim over their work in the space, so developing engines together has the potential to benefit all of us.

Source: Engadget

watchOS 6 uncouples Apple’s wearable with the iPhone

A common theme that seems to be running at WWDC 2019 is Apple unbundling a lot of its devices’ reliance on each other. With the iPad getting its own operating system of sorts, watchOS 6 is introducing some new features that will make the Apple Watch a bit more independent from the iPhone. The apps on the wearable can now be run locally without having a companion app installed on a paired iPhone. There are new apps being introduced including audiobooks, voice memos, and a calculator. New APIs will let apps stream audio directly to the watch. watchOS 6 will also make it possible to read data for longer periods than before. This new version of watchOS will also bring an actual App Store where you can browse, pay, and download apps right on the watch.

On a cosmetic level, there are new watchfaces to choose from. There are also new health features you might find useful. watchOS 6 can track your hearing health in noisy environments and track a woman’s cycle right from the watch. iPhone users will also get this feature within the Health app (without needing the Apple Watch). This version of watchOS is coming to developers this week with a public launch set this fall. All Apple Watch models will get the new OS update, but not all features will make it to all versions.

Source: The Verge

There's a limited-edition purple Xbox One S 'Fortnite Battle Royale' console

It's been leaked before but now it's official. A special purple variant of the Microsoft Xbox One S is coming out soon (June 7th in the US). It's being bundled with Fortnite and includes the console in the special colour with 1TB of storage, a copy of Fortnite Battle Royale, a purple Xbox Wireless Controller, 2,000 V-Bucks, and special in-game items. The bundle will also come with a month-long trial of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold. In Canada, the bundle will retail for $379.99 CAD. It isn't specified on Microsoft's official page when it'll be released, but we hope to hear more soon.

Apple makes its platforms more accessible with Voice Control

For all the shiny new tech we get to see, sometimes the more interesting announcements are those that are more functional and serves more as equalizers. So, during Apple's keynote at its Worldwide Developer Conference, one of the new features we were excited about was an accessibility feature to help those with motor impairments use different Apple products. The company introduced Voice Control, which lets you control macOS, iOS, and iPadOS using voice commands. It's said to work "with virtually any app" and will let you tap, swipe, and scroll with your voice. At the same time, Apple promises that the feature "ensures personal data is kept private." Voice Control will reportedly come out this fall.

Source: Gizmodo