This week, we celebrated Earth Day with our annual Sustainability Week protection. We lined sustainable cellphone battery designs, thrilling EV developments, and lots extra.
We additionally noticed the largest Apple information in years: Tim Prepare dinner is stepping down as CEO.
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7. We constructed a PC utilizing AI
I let ChatGPT instruct my first ever PC construct – will it run? – YouTube
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Constructing a PC is usually a daunting job. It’s a must to discover components that may obtain your gaming wants, put all of them collectively, and in some way follow a funds in the midst of a RAM and element price disaster.
So this week, we constructed a PC deliberate by AI to see if it may assist some full PC-building newbies put collectively an ideal rig — with ChatGPT and Gemini providing part-buying recommendation in addition to constructing directions to assemble our dream PC.
Spoiler alert: our computing editor Matt Hanson needed to help with some actual experience.
6. We hosted Sustainability week 2026
(Picture credit score: Shutterstock)
It is a arduous ask to make the tech trade extra sustainable; from {hardware} manufacturing to vitality utilization and e-waste, there is a mountain of challenges to beat. That is why, simply in time for Earth Day 2026, it is TechRadar Sustainability Week as soon as once more!
This 12 months, we have lined every thing from thrilling new EV know-how to the circularity-focused Framework’s new Linux laptop computer to an unique take a look at Fairphone’s newest Influence report. It is not all about {hardware}; software program like Bottle It Again helps to profile AI water waste, and Steam is operating its Earth Appreciation Competition to mark the event.
5. The EU needs replaceable batteries
(Picture credit score: Future / Shutterstock / Primakov)
Telephone repairability has been a significant focus of the European Union over the previous few years, and new guidelines are set to land in 2027, which embody requiring cellphone batteries to be simple to take away and exchange — which means you will have to have the ability to take them out with out specialised instruments, until they’re included within the field.
Whereas these guidelines technically have an effect on solely the EU, the manufacturing adjustments they’d doubtless necessitate may power these repairability guidelines on different areas for a lot of merchandise. Kinda like how the EU’s USB-C necessities noticed many international manufacturers undertake the charging customary everywhere in the world.
What to learn subsequent
This isn’t simply smartphones both. Tablets, consoles just like the Swap 2, and sensible glasses can be impacted. The one gadgets not affected are these with batteries that may keep an 80% capability stage after 1,000 cycles — which, curiously, contains iPhones from the iPhone 15 and later, so Apple followers could discover their tech doesn’t look any completely different subsequent 12 months when the foundations come into play.
4. ChatGPT’s new picture generator went viral
(Picture credit score: OpenAI)
It was one other huge week for ChatGPT upgrades, with OpenAI asserting its new GPT-5.5 mannequin simply days after its Photographs 2.0 improve flooded social media with AI-generated posters and comics.
It was the latter that actually caught the creativeness, primarily due to its means to precisely generate photos containing textual content — historically a giant AI weak spot. As a substitute, Photographs 2.0 has reasoning powers that make it a a lot better private artwork editor, even when it nonetheless isn’t clear what you possibly can truly do with the outcomes.
3. A robotic broke the human half-marathon document
(Picture credit score: NBC / YouTube)
Humanoid robots hit one other worrying milestone this week — on the Beijing half marathon, the aptly-named Honor Lightning flew previous the human world document for the gap, clocking 50 minutes and 26 seconds for the 13.1-mile / 21.1km course.
That’s virtually seven minutes faster than the document set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo final month. To be truthful, the Lightning robotic does have a customized liquid-cooling system and lengthy 0.95m legs to assist it eat up the tarmac. And profitable medals isn’t its final purpose, with the intention being to coach humanoids for locations like catastrophe zones the place their sprinting velocity will probably be a way more welcome sight.
2. Spotify turned 20 — and gave us the gossip on its early days
(Picture credit score: Spotify)
Sure, Spotify is now 20 years previous, launching in the identical 12 months as Taylor Swift’s debut album. That’s so way back, it’s simple to neglect what the music world was truly like again then — so we sat down with Sten Garmark, Spotify’s World Head of Shopper Expertise, to get the within monitor on the streaming big’s early days.
“The music trade was in free-fall, and it was sort of a dire time,” Sten advised us, earlier than explaining how the shareable playlist turned the addictive hook that ultimately drew tens of millions to Spotify. If you wish to open the streaming service’s hood and take a peek underneath its algorithms, our unique chat is effectively price a learn.
1. Tim Prepare dinner stepped down as Apple’s CEO
(Picture credit score: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
In what was simply Apple’s largest non-product information in additional than a decade, Apple introduced a significant management transition: Tim Prepare dinner is stepping down as CEO in September, and Apple {Hardware} lead John Ternus will take over.
The selection is no surprise (there have been whispers that Ternus was the man for some time), however the timing is. This comes simply weeks after Apple celebrated its fiftieth birthday and Prepare dinner advised anybody who would hear that he was sticking round for a very long time. Maybe staying on as Govt Chairman lets Prepare dinner inform the reality on each counts: he’s leaving one job to tackle a brand new Apple function. How concerned he’ll be stays to be seen.
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