Expected updates as part of iOS 18 include a hearing aid mode feature destined for the AirPods Pro, while AirPods may gain a hearing test function.

My hearing isn't great but not so bad that I need the cost and hassles of a standard hearing aid. I'd be interested in an AirPod that dealt with that, but only at a reasonable price. Otherwise, I will just ask people to speak up. One more thing. The battery needs to be easily replaceable. 

$50 million a season with ten episodes seems like quite a bargain compared to what Amazon spent for the first season of "The Rings of Power." That $50 million for a season wouldn't even cover a single episode of the latter.

Accounting for just the production budget of $465 million, when spread over The Rings of Power’s eight episodes, it results in a cost per episode of $58.1 million. But if we include purchasing the rights on top of that, it equates to a jaw-dropping $89.4 million per episode. In both instances, it makes The Rings of Power the most expensive TV show ever made and by some margin.

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/09/01/the-rings-of-power-cost-per-episode-budget-most-expensive-tv-show/

Given how often many people glance at their phones and how much additional hassle opening up a folding phone would be, I doubt the idea of a folding phone makes much sense.

Apple might be better advised to adopt a different idea, one that'd allow them to offer a larger-screen option—either folding or not—to all their latest model iPhones. The larger screen be a wireless extension of the existing screen much like people add an additional display to a MacBook. The usual UI would work with it just like on the iPhone itself, so the learning curve would be easy.

If I were about to spend over $3000, I wouldn't be bothered by a 25-minute sales pitch. Indeed, I'd demand a lot more than that before I'd buy.

Most of this articles seems to be about the money Masimo makes out of patent settlements. Is Masimo a serious company or is it a patent troll that keeps up a charade of selling medical products.

To research that I checked Amazon.

• Their Masimo MightySat Fingertip Pulse Oximeter currently sells for $269.99. It has a 4.5 star rating and has sold a mere 50+ in the past month. That's not much business for a company that's spending $100 million on lawyers. They have no business to save worth speaking of.
• A similar looking Innovo Deluxe Fingertip Pulse Oximeter has a slightly better 4.7 star rating, sells for $34.99 and has sold 5K+ in the past month. Indeed, Amazon has page after page filled with pulse oximeters selling for between $25 and $45. Masimo's is such a far outliner I could not find another even close to its price.

What's really odd is when I had Amazon display pulse oximeters priced from high to low, the Masimo did not even appear. The most expensive one displayed is from Zacurate at $44.99. I've been told by people at Amazon that its search results aren't literally accurate, that some items aren't displayed for reasons known only to Amazon. I suspect Amazon considers the Masimo so grossly overpriced, it doesn't bother to list it in some search results. In fact when I searched for Masimo pulse oximeter by name, it only came up fifth. 

Also, there's nothing remarkable about Masimo's product even though it sells for about six times the market price. Accuracy certainly isn't a factor. It's displays two digits on a tiny display just like all the other products, that's a 1% accuracy, which is fine for that purpose. There's also deception in this claim. 

• Clinically Proven Technology: Powered by Masimo SET, the same technology used by 9 of the top 10 US hospitals and is used to monitor more than 200 Million patients annually.

Yeah, that "same technology" is not only used by "top hospitals," it's almost certainly used in these inexpensive home ones. That's where that 200 million figure comes from for a country with about 330 million people.  It would not surprise me if it was being made in the same Chinese factories that make those $25 pulse oximeters. It looks much the same.

I've been known to criticize Apple's business tactics, but in this case I'm on Apple's side. They're battling a dishonest patent troll that sells overpriced sham products. I wish them every success.