Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. And I’m back from a week-long stint in Washington, D.C., covering politics and tariffs, and eating a lot of bagels. As always, if you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
🔮 The fate of TikTok is coming soon
🫨 A preview of Nintendo’s Switch 2
📉 Tariffs and the tech stock slump
🕙 A smartwatch darling makes its long-awaited comeback
SOCIAL MEDIA
Fate of TikTok to be decided soon – maybe, hopefully
The fate of TikTok in the United States has been brewing for months: will it be banned, bought or survive through some obscure legal loophole? Whatever happens, it sounds like we’ll get an answer soon. On Thursday, Vice-President JD Vance said that the Trump administration will make a decision on an American buyer before this Saturday’s deadline. (A quick refresher: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law banning the app unless it’s sold to a non-Chinese buyer, for which Trump has delayed the enforcement until Saturday.)
“It’ll come out before the deadline,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News. “I think that we’re in a good place. We’re going to keep on working at it.” Several American companies and entrepreneurs have made offers, including billionaire Frank McCourt, YouTuber MrBeast, the founder of OnlyFans Tim Stokely, and a last-minute bid from Amazon. The New York Times has reported that the tech giant Oracle, which currently hosts American user data, and the private equity firm Blackstone, could also be involved in a potential deal. But even if the Trump administration approves it, the structure of that deal would still need to satisfy the conditions of the federal law.
TECH STOCKS
U.S. tech companies already feeling the pain from tariffs
Just a few months ago, tech stocks were soaring on the hopes of a business-friendly Trump administration. But now in the aftermath of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, some American tech companies are leading the global market meltdown. By the time markets closed Thursday, Apple had sunk, reeling from an aggregate 54-per-cent tariff on China, which is the base for much of the iPhone maker’s manufacturing. Nvidia slumped, as did Amazon. The U.S. imported nearly US$486-billion in electronics last year, the second-biggest sector for imports, after machinery, according to Census Bureau data. Experts warn that the tariffs would make AI servers pricier too, potentially adding millions in extra costs and upending AI development plans at Big Tech. Potential tariff side effects haven’t hit OpenAI though – the AI giant just completed a deal that values the company at US$300-billion.
VIDEO GAMES
Nintendo Switch 2 launches this June
The Switch 2 comes out June 5.Richard Drew/The Associated Press
This week Nintendo released new details about the Switch 2, the successor to its extremely popular handheld-hybrid console. Launching June 5, the Switch 2 has a bigger screen, more ways to use the Joy-Con controllers, and a new chat function that allows you to share your screen and talk to other gamers while playing. Nintendo also teased some new games, including Mario Kart World and a James Bond title, dubbed Project 007, which I personally hope will have some of the charms of the classic Nintendo64 first-person shooter, Goldeneye. In my household, however, the same rules will apply to the new 007 game: no one is allowed to choose Oddjob in multiplayer.
What else we’re reading this week:
This startup says it can clean your blood of microplastics (WIRED)
OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI (The Verge)
$150k to find love? Inside the high-stakes Silicon Valley matchmaking scene (The San Francisco Standard)
Adult Money
GADGETS
The Pebble smartwatch is making a comeback.Core Devices
PebbleOS smartwatch, US$149-$225
In 2012, Canadian engineer Eric Migicovsky launched Pebble, a stylish smartwatch that predated the Apple Watch by two years. Funded through Kickstarter, it became the platform’s most successful campaign of all time, raising more than US$10-million in a month. The watch could alert you to calls, e-mails and text messages, and had an e-paper display like e-readers, which gave it a week-long battery life. But Pebble failed to live up to the hype and after missing sales targets, the company was sold to Fitbit. Later, Fitbit was acquired by Google, and consequently, Pebble was too.
But Migicovsky is back with two new Pebble smartwatches. (Or rather, Pebble-ish. Google owns the Pebble trademark, so the watches are being released under the brand name Core Devices.) The company is launching two watches: The Core 2 Duo, which has a black-and-white display, and the Core Time 2, which has a larger 64-colour display. They’re available for preorder now and will be shipping in July and December, respectively. The new watches run on the open source PebbleOS and will be compatible with the 10,000 Pebble apps available. Pebble has always had a cult following, but since its first watch came on the market 12 years ago, the wearable tech market has grown dramatically so it’s up against a lot of competition. One big thing it has going for it? The battery life lasts 30 days.
Culture radar
The Globe reviewer's teenage kids gave A Minecraft Movie 9/10. He was less impressed.Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures/The Associated Press
More than 10 years after it was originally announced, A Minecraft Movie is finally out. According to Globe film critic Radheyan Simonpillai, however, maybe the film should never have made it out of development. “If Minecraft is the game where kids exercise their creativity by building new digital worlds full of tunnels and fortresses, A Minecraft Movie is where that creativity goes to die.” Ouch. He describes it as a jumbled mess of “video-game-to-movie tropes and self-deprecating gags” that fails to deliver. But in his review, Simonpillai concedes that his two teenage kids rated the movie a nine out of 10, saying they loved the callbacks to their childhood memories of playing the game. So, it looks like the verdict is still out. Read Simonpillai’s full review.