Human augmentation. Collaborative robots. Hologram telepresence. These are just a few of the marketing fluff words being shouted across the internet about 6G—the next-gen cellular tech that will succeed 5G in 2030. Recently, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, industry players like Qualcomm and Nokia started hyping it up, but what can you expect? Faster uplink speeds, faster AI data processing, and even “sensing,” where 6G could use high-frequency radio signals to detect the presence of cars or drones in the air. Nothing is quite set in stone yet, but one thing is certain: You’ll need to upgrade your smartphone.
For more current-day gear, Apple announced the second-gen AirPod Max headphones this week. While there are improvements in noise canceling and audio quality, those weren’t the problems that needed to be addressed, especially since it has been more than five years since the original debuted. How about making them lighter and more comfortable to wear? What if you could fold them like most wireless headphones? Or maybe a better carrying case? Ah, well. We’ll have to wait for the AirPods Max 3 in 2032.
The humble chair got an upgrade, too. You know, the chair you have in your bedroom that you never actually sit on, because all the not-quite-clean but not-quite-dirty clothes are piled up on it? YouTuber and inventor Simone Giertz launched the “Laundry Chair” on Kickstarter, a chair with armrests constructed as a rotatable semicircle. Neatly place your lightly worn clothes on this rack and rotate it out of view behind the chair. Now you can sit on it! At least, until the pile gets so crazy that it inevitably spills into the seat. If this pile-up problem is relatable to your life, be prepared to spend more than $1,000 on the Laundry Chair, which is expected to ship in November.
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