MacRumors

Apple today updated its COVID-19 screening app, created to help people stay informed and take the proper steps to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

applecovid19app
Today's update includes updated recommendations for healthcare workers to align with CDC guidelines, plus best practices for quarantining if you've been exposed to COVID-19.

The app update also adds new information for pregnancy and newborns. Apple has also updated its accompanying COVID-19 website to provide the same new information for those who prefer to use the website.

Apple created the COVID-19 app and website in partnership with the CDC, White House Coronavirus Task Force, and FEMA. Along with the features introduced today, the tools provided by Apple let users answer a series of questions on risk factors, recent exposure, and symptoms to receive CDC recommendations on the next steps that they need to take.

The screening tool is available to anyone who is 18 years or older in the United States. Data provided in the COVID-19 app and on the website is not shared with Apple, the CDC, or other government agencies.

safaripreviewiconApple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced four years ago in March 2016. Apple designed the ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.

‌Safari Technology Preview‌ release 106 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for Web Inspector, Async Scrolling, Web Animations, CSS, JavaScript, WebRTC, Web API, Media, and Rendering.

The new ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ update is available for both macOS Mojave and macOS Catalina, the newest version of the Mac operating system that was released in October 2019.

The ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ update is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store to anyone who has downloaded the browser. Full release notes for the update are available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

Apple's aim with ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on some kind of augmented reality headset, and in a new note to investors, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that he expects the Apple Glasses to launch in 2022 at the earliest.

glasses augmented
Taiwanese site DigiTimes also recently said that Apple's AR glasses could launch by 2022 as suppliers work to ramp up development, and The Information has also suggested a 2022 launch date. Rumors have indicated that Apple's first AR headset will look similar to Facebook's Oculus Quest, but with a sleeker design that uses fabrics and lightweight materials to make it comfortable to wear for long periods of time.

Apple Glasses could feature a high-resolution display and are likely to be reliant on the iPhone for processing power to keep them slim and lightweight. The glasses are expected to run a new operating system, rOS (or reality OS), and Apple is exploring touch panels, voice activation, and head gestures as a means of control.

Kuo in the same note said that Apple is working on two new iPad models, which include a 10.8-inch ‌iPad‌ and an 8.5 to 9-inch iPad mini. These new iPads are expected to launch in the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, respectively.

We predict that Apple will launch the new 10.8 inch iPad and 8.5–9 inch iPad mini models in 2H20 and 1H21, respectively. GIS will be the main touch panel supplier. The two new iPad models will follow iPhone SE’s product strategy, and selling points will be the affordable price tag and the adoption of fast chips. We believe that GIS will be the primary touch panel supplier for these two new affordable iPad models because the company is the largest medium-size touch supplier, thanks to the cost advantages of Megasite. We think that two new affordable iPad models will significantly contribute to GIS’s revenue because affordable models account for 60–70% of total iPad shipments.

Kuo said that he believes the two new ‌iPad‌ models will follow the ‌iPhone‌ SE's product strategy, which means affordable price points. At 10.8 and 8.5 to 9 inches, both iPads would be larger than the current models.

The existing low-cost ‌iPad‌ is 10.2 inches, while the current ‌iPad mini‌ is 7.9 inches. It's not clear if Apple plans to introduce larger-sized tablets or increase the available display size through bezel reduction.

Kuo previously said that Apple was working on an ‌iPad mini‌ with a mini-LED display that could be released as soon as late 2020, but it's not clear if the larger ‌iPad mini‌ mentioned in today's note is the same ‌iPad mini‌ that will get a mini-LED display.

Related Roundups: Apple Vision Pro, iPad, iPad mini
Related Forums: Apple Vision Pro, iPad

Mophie today announced the launch of its latest power bank option, the 10,000mAh Powerstation Wireless XL Universal Battery. The Powerstation Wireless XL comes equipped support for Qi-based wireless charging and it includes a USB-C port for fast charging devices.

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The Powerstation Wireless XL, which has a glass top design, can charge an iPhone wirelessly, plus it can be charged wirelessly with a Qi-based wireless charger, so you can wirelessly charge the power bank while you also wirelessly charge your phone.

If faster charging for an ‌iPhone‌ or iPad is needed, the USB-C port can be used, and since it's an input/output USB-C port, if you want to charge up the power bank quickly, you can do so over USB-C or the included Lightning port.

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For iPhones with fast charging capabilities, the Powerstation Wireless XL can charge them to approximately 50 percent in 30 minutes as the USB-C port delivers 18W of power.

According to Mophie, the Powerstation Wireless XL adds up to 55 hours of additional battery life to an ‌iPhone‌. Priority+ charging ensures power gets sent to your ‌iPhone‌ first and then the Powerstation when recharging, and an LED power indicator lets you know how much time is left.

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The Powerstation Wireless XL can be purchased from the Mophie website or from the online Apple Store for $99.95.

Tag: Mophie

Zerodium this week announced that it will not be purchasing any iOS exploits for the next two to three months due to a high number of submissions. In other words, the company has so many security vulnerabilities at its disposal that it does not need any more.

ios 13 iphone ipad duo
Zerodium is an exploit acquisition platform that pays researchers for zero-day security vulnerabilities and then sells them to institutional customers like government organizations and law enforcement agencies. The company focuses on high-risk vulnerabilities, normally offering between $100,000 and $2 million per fully functional iOS exploit.


In an explicit tweet, Zerodium CEO Chaouki Bekrar said iOS security is in bad shape, noting that there are at least a few persistent zero-day security vulnerabilities affecting all iPhones and iPads. "Let's hope iOS 14 will be better," added Bekrar.

Apple has its own bug bounty program that offers between $5,000 and $1 million for security vulnerabilities in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, or watchOS.

adobe acrobat iconTencent security researcher Yuebin Sun today disclosed three security vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac that could allow an attacker to gain root privileges and access sensitive user data.

Adobe patched the vulnerabilities in an update to Acrobat this week, so make sure you are running version 2020.009.20063 or later by opening the app and navigating to Help > Check for Updates.

Adobe has shared a security bulletin with more details.

Tag: Adobe

There are a few new discounts across Apple's MacBook Pro family today, including deals on the 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2019 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Many of these sales represent lowest-ever prices, including a return to the notable low price of $2,099.00 for the 512GB 16-inch MacBook Pro.

1316inchmacbookproNote: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

13-inch MacBook Pro

A trio of retailers have discounted Apple's previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro this week. Sale prices start at $1,199.00 for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 256GB SSD (1.4GHz, 8GB RAM), which represents $300 in savings. You can find this sale at Amazon, Adorama, and B&H Photo.

Similarly, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 256GB SSD and 2.4GHz processor is $1,499.00, down from $1,799.00 this week. The sale is available at Amazon, Adorama, and B&H Photo, but for both discounts you'll find the most color options at Amazon and B&H Photo.

The sale on the 1.4GHz model with a 256GB SSD comes in $100 below the same model for the new 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro. Although that notebook is still quite new, Expercom does have some discounts across the lineup.

16-inch MacBook Pro

There are also two solid deals on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, starting at TigerDirect with the 512GB SSD model (2.6 GHz 6-Core, 16 GB RAM) for $2,099.00, down from $2,399.00. This $300 off sale remains the lowest price we've ever tracked for the 512GB 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it's a deal we don't see very often.

Comparatively, a more common deal is still going on this week, with the 1TB SSD 16-inch MacBook Pro going for $2,499.00 at Adorama, down from $2,799.00. This is still a solid discount on the higher-end notebook, and a match of the lowest price we've ever seen on this model of the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

We've begun tracking the best monthly deals on all new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks in our new "Best Deals" guide. Be sure to visit the guide and bookmark it if you're on the hunt for a new Apple notebook; we'll be updating it weekly as we discover new MacBook offers across the web.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals

Apple today indicated that its retail store at the Nave de Vero shopping mall in the Venice area will reopen on Tuesday, May 19, with reduced operating hours of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time and other health and safety measures in place.

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Italian website iSpazio today reported that Apple plans to reopen 10 of its 17 stores in Italy on May 19, excluding locations in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions.

After closing all of its retail stores outside of the Greater China region in mid-March due to the global health crisis, Apple is in the process of reopening locations in some countries, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, and the United States. However, the majority of its stores around the world remain closed.

MacRumors shared a list of guidelines that Apple Stores are following upon reopening, such as social distancing and checking the temperatures of customers.

iCloud AltApple has been served a warrant by the FBI to obtain information on the iCloud account of U.S. Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is being investigated for controversial stock trades linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, FBI agents served Apple the warrant "in recent days" to gain access to the ‌iCloud‌ data. The information gathered from the warrant's execution was then used as evidence to serve another warrant to obtain the Republican senator's iPhone from his home.

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department's investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

According to the report, the Senator is being investigated for selling a significant percentage of his stock portfolio in 33 different transactions on February 13, just as his committee was receiving daily COVID-19 briefings and a week before the stock market sharply declined.

The value of the trades is believed to be between $628,000 and $1.72 million. Much of that was said to have been invested in businesses that in subsequent weeks were hit hard by the plunging market, the implication being that the trades were made on the basis of information Burr received about the pandemic in the daily briefings.

Apple can decrypt an ‌iCloud‌ backup and provide the information to authorities when ordered to do so via a warrant, because the company views privacy and security issues differently between physical devices that can be lost and ‌iCloud‌. With ‌iCloud‌, it needs to be accessible by Apple so that it can restore the data for the user.

‌iCloud‌ backups contain iMessages and texts, content purchase history, photos and videos, device settings, app data, voicemail password, and health data. Backups don't include information that's easily downloadable, such as emails from servers or apps, and while ‌iCloud‌ backup does encompass ‌iCloud‌ keychain, Wi-Fi passwords, and passwords for third-party services, that information is encrypted in a way that makes it inaccessible to Apple.

More than two years ago, Apple reportedly informed the FBI that it planned to roll out end-to-end encryption for ‌iCloud‌ backups, but ultimately dropped the plan at some point after the FBI objected, although it remains unclear if the federal agency was a factor in the decision.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: FBI, iCloud

Global shipments of fingerprint-on-display (FoD) sensors grew nearly eightfold in 2019, according to tech market research firm Omdia (via DigiTimes).

iPhone 12 TouchID Feature Img 1

A total of 228.3 million FoD sensors were shipped in 2019, up 674% from 29.5 million in 2018, said Omdia. With FoD sensors having reached the sweet spot for market pricing, FoD shipments are expected to continue rising at a tremendous rate in 2020, expanding to more than 400 million units, Omdia indicated.

Apple stopped using its capacitive Touch ID sensor in its flagship iPhones when it introduced Face ID in 2017's iPhone X, which ditched the Home button in favor of an extended screen.

Apple has since pushed ahead with ‌Face ID‌, adding it to every flagship ‌iPhone‌ since, and even including it in the iPad Pro. Meanwhile, most other smartphone brands have adopted fingerprint-on-display scanners as an advanced biometric identification technology to replace capacitive fingerprint chips. More than 70 smartphone models integrated FoD in 2019, according to Omdia.

Despite Apple's decision to move away from the technology in favor of face recognition, rumors persist about the company's interest in using under-screen fingerprint scanners in its mobile devices. Just last month we heard a report that Apple could feature the technology in an ‌iPhone‌ by 2021, while an anonymous leaker with a fairly accurate track record claimed Apple is developing a new iPad Air with under-the-screen ‌Touch ID‌.

Those rumors also lined up with reports last year from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Barclays analysts, Bloomberg, and others who said they expect Apple to release an ‌‌iPhone‌‌ with both ‌Face ID‌ and under-display fingerprint authentication in 2020 or 2021.

Apple has explored various in-display fingerprint scanner solutions in the past, including fingerprint sensing MicroLED displays, but has not developed in-screen fingerprint technology for a consumer device. Meanwhile, ‌‌Touch ID‌‌ has found a new lease of life on Apple's MacBook keyboards and the latest-generation ‌iPhone‌ SE.

With rumors suggesting Apple is working to gradually reduce the size of the notch housing the TrueDepth sensor, which powers ‌Face ID‌, the most likely scenario is a biometric authentication system that combines both facial and finger sensing tech, enabling a future all-screen device featuring unparalleled mobile security.

Google has announced a new tab grouping feature coming to Chrome browser that lets users better organize their tabs, however many they have open at the same time.

google chrome tab groups
The new Tab groups option will appear in a tab's right-click menu and lets you group your tabs together and label them with a custom name and color. Once the tabs are grouped together, you can move and reorder them on the tab strip in one go.

Google suggests a few use cases in its Keyword blog:

Through our own usage and early user research, we've found that some people like to group their Chrome tabs by topic. For instance, it helps if you're working on several projects, or looking through multiple shopping and review sites. 

Others have been grouping their tabs by how urgent they are - "ASAP," "this week" and “later.” Similarly, tab groups can help keep track of your progress on certain tasks: "haven't started," "in progress," "need to follow up" and "completed."

Google says that that tab groups are fully customizable and are saved when you close and reopen Chrome, just like regular tabs.

The tab grouping feature is set to roll out gradually from next week, but anyone eager to try it out now can download the latest version of Google Chrome Beta for Mac.

Tags: Chrome, Google

Apple Cynthia HoganApple's vice president for public policy and government affairs, Cynthia Hogan, has resigned from the company, reports Axios. Hogan will be leaving Apple next month after recently being selected as one of the members of Joe Biden's vice presidential selection committee.

Hogan joined Apple back in April 2016 to head its Washington D.C. office under Apple's environmental, policy, and social initiatives chief Lisa Jackson.

Prior to joining Apple, Hogan was a top lobbyist for the National Football League, and before that, she served as Joe Biden's counsel when he was Vice President of the United States under President Barack Obama.

Hogan was seen as a key hire for Apple in its ongoing debate with the U.S. government over encryption and national security.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Utah in April released "Healthy Together," a contact tracing app aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus by letting people know if they've come in contact with someone who is later diagnosed with the virus.


Utah's Healthy Together app does not use Apple and Google's Exposure Notification API, instead opting for a less private GPS and Bluetooth-based solution that's currently available in a beta capacity. Healthy Together was created by social media startup Twenty, and it does not take advantage of the decentralized, anonymized approach that Apple and Google are implementing, according to a report from CNBC.

The aim of the Healthy Together app is to help the 1,200 Utah Department of Health workers who are doing in-person contact tracing through phone calls. Utah's health department has access to the name, telephone number, and location data of people who test positive for COVID-19 and opt to share their data.

The app uses Bluetooth and GPS to determine when smartphone users come into contact with one another, and if someone tests positive, they can share their location history and contact history over the past 14 days with a contact tracer. Twenty believes that this can cut hour-long phone calls used for contact tracing down to 16 minutes. From Twenty chief strategy officer Jared Allgood:

"Jeff and Sarah are two individuals in this example who don't know each other but they both have the app on their phones. And so the both phones are emitting Bluetooth and GPS signals. Through that data we can identify whether or not two people have spent some time together."

"If Public Health is calling somebody who has the application on their phone, and they've granted permission to see this minimum set of data to do the contact tracing effort, now, instead of spending an hour, you know, interviewing Jeff and trying to fill in the gaps in his memory, they together can step through his list of location history."

Apple and Google's privacy-focused solution does not allow personal information to be provided to public health departments, and it does not involve location-based data collection, unlike Utah's Healthy Together app. Twenty's founders claim that the Healthy Together app is opt-in and users can choose to limit permissions like GPS or Bluetooth if they don't want their location tracked, but it's not clear how this impacts the effectiveness of the contact tracing design as implemented in Utah.

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According to the Utah state website, Utah opted out of Google and Apple's solution because Bluetooth alone "gives a less accurate picture" than Bluetooth and GPS location data.

The goal of Healthy Together is to allow public health officials to understand how the disease spreads through the vector of people and places, and both location and bluetooth data are needed to accomplish that.

Bluetooth helps us understand person-to-person transmission, while location/GPS data helps us understand transmission zones -- having both of these important data points provides a more effective picture of how COVID-19 spreads. This data helps policy makers make the best possible decisions about how and where we begin to relax and modify restrictions as our community and economy begin to reactivate.

One of the benefits of the Apple/Google API is background Bluetooth tracking that does not require an app to implement battery draining features or require users to keep it open for smartphone to smartphone communication to be effective. Utah will not have the benefit of the API by opting for an outside solution, which could also impact the effectiveness of the app.

45,000 people have signed up for Utah's contact tracing app, which is about two percent of the state's population. Some estimates have indicated that to be effective, contact tracing apps need to be downloaded by 60 percent of a population.

Apple and Google have said that they're aiming to release the ‌Exposure Notification‌ API in mid-May, so we could see it as early as this week after the release of iOS 13.5. Following the release of the update, the first apps that use the API will be able to be released.

Update: The state of Utah says it has not completely rejected the Apple/Google API, and the following statement was provided to MacRumors:

While Healthy Together does not currently include the Apple/Google API (as it has not been officially launched), neither the state of Utah nor Twenty has completely rejected their solution. As it stands, Apple/Google’s plans are to disallow the use of the API with apps that identify the user or utilize GPS, but there’s still a lot to be learned out about what they ultimately roll out, and Healthy Together is still open to conversations and digging further into the API.

The Healthy Together app was created to meet specifications from Utah’s public health team, and is intended to support and augment the work of their contact tracers, not automate or replace them. Our approach is tech agnostic and built to balance the need for public health effectiveness alongside the need to protect user privacy. Twenty invested heavily in building up a privacy framework that they believe not only meets but exceeds this balance wherever possible (see more here), and remains open to learning and/or adjusting along the way.

Epic Games today unveiled Unreal Engine 5, the newest iteration of its game engine that's used by game developers for many high-profile games. A demo video running on a developer version of the PS5 hardware shows what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of.


Unreal Engine 5 focuses on photorealism that's on par with movie CG and real life, and it will be released in 2021. Unreal Engine 5 will support current-generation consoles, next-generation consoles, PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android.

‌Epic Games‌ detailed two new core technologies that will be coming in Unreal Engine 5, including Nanite virtualized geometry for importing film-quality source art directly into Unreal Engine as virtualized textures and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination system designed to react to scene and light changes, which will allow for more realistic shadows and rendering of moving light sources.


Unreal Engine 5 has been designed to make it easy for development teams of all sizes to take advantage of content libraries and tools to create games with unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity.

In addition to Unreal Engine 5, Epic today announced a change to how its royalties work. Developers are now able to keep all royalties for the first $1 million in sales generated, and then it will take five percent of sales after that. Previously, Epic collected royalties on all games after the first $3000 in sales.

Epic is also launching Epic Online Services, an online multi-platform game management system that was originally created for Fortnite. Epic Online Services provides developers with tools for cross-platform matchmaking and account management.

Apple is planning to introduce new Powerbeats Pro models in an array of bright, spring-themed colors that include cloud pink, glacier blue, spring yellow, and lava red, according to a rumor sourced from a Weibo account (via iMore).

Powerbeats Pro Solid
The rumor comes from WaveTech, a source without a known track record for sharing accurate info about Apple's plans, but the wide attention the rumor has garnered leads us to believe the information could potentially be correct.

First introduced in April 2019, the ‌Powerbeats Pro‌ are currently only available in black, ivory, moss, and navy, all of which are plainer, more subdued colors, so the brighter color options will be a welcome update.

Apple often adds new Beats headphones options in updated colorways, offering a range of seasonal color options for products like the Beats Solo and Studio headphones, so it's no surprise to see new ‌Powerbeats Pro‌ color options being made available.

There were rumors earlier this year that suggested Apple would debut ‌Powerbeats Pro‌ 2 earbuds, but regulatory documents suggest that the "‌Powerbeats Pro‌ 2" are just a minor refresh with an internal tweak that changes the model number.

It's likely that the new model numbers will be associated with the ‌Powerbeats Pro‌ that are being released in the new spring colors, though there may also be minor internal tweaks to the updated ‌Powerbeats Pro‌.

Apple has inked a first-look deal with Ridley Scott and his Scott Free Productions company, reports Variety. Under the terms of the deal, Scott Free will create TV shows for Apple TV+.

The Scott Free production company has produced successful films and TV series that include "Top Gun," "Alien," "Black Hawk Down," "The Martian," "The Good Wife," "Man in the High Castle," and "The Terror." Scott also directed Apple's famous "1984" ad.

Apple has signed similar ‌Apple TV‌+ deals with A24, Sesame Workshops, and Peanuts, and has established multi-year production contracts with high-profile content creators that include Alfonso Cuaron, Jason Katims, Lee Eisenberg, Oprah Winfrey, Justin Lin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more.

‌Apple TV‌+ offers up original movies and TV shows for $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year, plus there's a free year of service for those who have recently purchased an Apple device. For those who don't qualify for the free year, Apple offers a one-week free trial.

Check out our step-by-step instructions for getting up and running from various devices.

Eero's lineup of mesh WiFi products are now available for purchase, eero announced in a blog post this morning. Eero devices can be bought from Apple in the United States, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

eeroapple
Apple is selling multiple eero Pro Mesh WiFi setups with one or two beacons and pricing starting at $300, along with the eero Pro Mesh WiFi Router and a Pro Router three pack. The standard Eero Mesh WiFi Router is available alongside the eero Mesh WiFi System and the eero Beacon Mesh WiFi Range Extender. Eero's products are compatible with HomeKit.

This is an exciting step towards delivering our vision to bring eero to more customers and homes around the world, providing them with a safe and reliable network for their smart home. Today's announcement follows eero's support for Apple HomeKit, a key addition to our growing line-up of smart home integrations.

With our TrueMesh technology, your eero network learns and optimizes for your space, devices, and usage. Get fast, reliable wifi to all of the connected devices in your home as you work, game, and stream video in every corner of the house (backyard included).

Apple first began offering router and WiFi options on its website after discontinuing its AirPort products. Apple also sells routers and mesh WiFi systems from Linksys and Netgear, offering both the Velop and the Orbi.

A little over one year after first launching "The Pod," Eight Sleep today announced the next iteration of its smart mattress, "The Pod Pro." The updated sleep device retains many features of the original, like temperature control via iPhone, and adds a number of improvements.

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Similar to the original model, the Pod Pro has an Active Grid that provides dynamic heating and cooling between 55 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit on each side of the bed. The Pod Pro works by connecting to "The Hub," a small tower that houses hydro-engines and uses water to regulate temperature.

Temperature is controlled directly with the connected Eight Sleep app for iOS and Android. The app breaks down your sleep habits with stats like average time asleep, time it takes you to fall asleep, the time at night you tend to get into bed, and more. These metrics all feed into a "sleep coaching" feature that attempts to give you pointers on how to optimize your nighttime routine.

For couples, the Active Grid can essentially be divided down the middle, and each side's temperature can be controlled individually. Eight Sleep also upgraded the Active Grid to incorporate a new Comfort Blend foam topper for enhanced contouring and pressure point relief.

shop page 8
Other new features include new ambient sensors that can measure the temperature and humidity of a bedroom to adjust bed temperature. The Pod Pro takes these measurements into account, as well as local weather, to keep your bed cool or heat it up based on the environment.

The company also updated the Gentle Rise wake up feature, now including a gentle vibration at chest level to wake up each morning without any sound. This feature also gradually cools or warms the bed minutes before the set wake-up time, and it can be set to go off for the entire mattress, or for individual left/right zones.

Thanks to the sensor improvements, the Pod Pro also includes a new Heart Rate Variability metric that lets users track the impact of sleep on their heart health. With this metric, it's possible for owners to track and understand why they may feel more fatigued throughout the day. The Pod Pro also tracks Resting Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate, Sleep Stages, and Sleep Time.

All of these metrics are catalogued in the Eight Sleep app for iOS and Android devices. The company adds all of them up into a Daily Health Check and Daily Sleep Fitness reports, allowing owners of the Pod Pro to keep an eye on how their sleep is positively or negatively affecting their daily lives.

Eight Sleep is currently taking $200 off the Pod Pro for a Memorial Day Sale, starting at $2,595 for a Full size mattress.