Breast pump maker Willow now has an Apple Watch app

Willow, a company that makes smart breast pumps, is looking to make it easier for users to monitor and control their pumping sessions. The Willow 3.0, a wearable wireless pump, now has an Apple Watch companion app. As such, you won’t necessarily need your phone to manage pumping sessions (though your iPhone will still need to be within 30 feet of both the pumps and your watch).

The app enables users to start and pause sessions, switch between stimulation and expression pump modes and adjust suction levels, all from their wrist. Your watch will also let you know when your last session ended, display your per-pump milk output in real-time and show the battery level of each pump.

More than half of Willow users “regularly use an Apple Watch and many want to control their pumps with their smartwatches,” the company’s CEO Laura Chambers said in a statement. Chambers added that Willow designed the app to give users more “ease and control” over pumping sessions. You’ll need an Apple Watch Series 3 or above and at least watchOS 8 to use the Willow 3.0 app.

Samsung unveils 200MP camera sensor that’s likely to appear in the Galaxy S23 Ultra

Samsung is continuing its “more pixels is better” mantra with the launch of its latest 200-megapixel (MP) sensor. The ISOCELL HP2 is a relatively large (for a smartphone) Type 1/1.3 sensor (around 12mm diagonally) with a pixel pitch of 0.6 micrometers (μm) — in between the 200-megapixel HP1 and HP3 sensors. It offers more light gathering than past sensors along with new HDR features and will likely be used in Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone. 

The HP2 uses something Samsung calls Dual Vertical Transfer Gate (D-VTG) technology. This essentially doubles the number of electrons available from each photo diode, “boosting the pixel’s full-well capacity by more than 33 percent,” the company wrote. That means a pixel can hold more charge before saturating, reducing overexposure and improving color reproduction in bright light conditions. 

As before, it can transform into either a 1.2μm 50MP or 2.4μm 12.5MP sensor by binding either four or 16 neighboring pixels, allowing for better performance in low light. It can shoot up to 8K 30 fps video in 50MP mode (up from 24 fps on the Galaxy S22) to minimize cropping while still allowing for sharp video. It also uses something called Smart-ISO Pro to capture 12.5MP HDR images and 4K HDR at up to 60 fps. And as before, each pixel acts as a focus agent to allow for quick autofocus, even in low-light situations.

Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra “only” had a 108MP sensor, with the 200MP HP1 chip used in other devices like the Motorola 30 Edge Ultra and Xiaomi 12T Pro. However, rumor has it that the S23 Ultra will have a 200MP sensor, and the HP2 fits the bill as it’s already in mass production, Samsung said. The Galaxy S23 is set to be revealed in just two weeks on February 1st, 2023. 

Microsoft will add ChatGPT to its cloud-based Azure OpenAI service ‘soon’

Microsoft is giving more people — or at least more customers — access to OpenAI’s technologies, including ChatGPT. The tech giant has announced that it’s now making the Azure OpenAI Service generally available after giving a limited number of enterpris…

Apple may unveil new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros tomorrow

Apple might not wait long to unveil its first products of 2023. Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, 9to5Mac, MacRumors and Front Page Tech (aka Jon Prosser) all claim Apple will have a product announcement tomorrow. While most aren’t clear on details, Gurman hints these may be the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro M2 models he discussed last fall.

At the time, Gurman said these systems would share the same design as the M1 variants released in late 2021. They would center around new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips that would feature up to 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores in the Max. There wouldn’t be a touchscreen or other major revisions, in other words. You’d mainly buy one to get the best performance possible from a Mac laptop.

However, they might be the first Macs to include WiFi 6E. Twitter user Wade Penner spotted an unreleased MacBook Pro in a Canadian wireless database with support for the newer WiFi standard’s 6GHz band. So long as you have a supporting router, you should see higher maximum speeds, lower latency and less congestion on a busy local network. Apple’s iPad Pro M2 is already compatible with WiFi 6E.

There haven’t been mentions of other products debuting in the same time frame, so you might not want to count on a Mac mini M2 or other revisions. If the rumors are accurate, though, this could be good news for anyone who’s been holding off on a MacBook Pro to ensure they get the absolute latest hardware.

The tech industry still has a long way to go when it comes to accessibility

As many in the accessibility community will tell you, inclusive design isn’t an endeavor that’s “one and done.” It’s a continuous, ongoing effort to ensure that as new products and services are made, people with different needs or disabilities aren’t l…