Month: October 2020

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  The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, side by side. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

The iPhone 12 is like an album of Apple’s greatest iPhone hits. It combines the well-regarded design aesthetic of the iPhone 5, the promised generational leap in wireless technology of the iPhone 3G, and the dense camera system and large OLED screen of more modern flagships.

The iPhone 12 wraps up so many attractive features, in fact, that it makes it hard to recommend the iPhone 12 Pro to any but a very small number of people. There’s just not much to differentiate them, and that’s a good thing. The cheaper iPhone 12 is more than good enough for just about anyone.

That’s where things stand today, anyway. But it will all change again in a few weeks. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are the middle children between the two models that will later generate the most buzz, I think—the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Today Nintendo is a household name, the family-friendly gaming equivalent of a major brand like Disney. But it wasn't always that way.

Ars Technica's latest War Stories video looks at the early days of Nintendo's 80s invasion of American shores and the marketing muscle it took to convince the American public that this Japanese company could revive a floundering video game market.

Building a brand

Perhaps more than anyone else, the person who helped massage Nintendo's early branding and image in the United States was Gail Tilden, the company's US marketing manager. When she started in 1983, Nintendo of America was still a small 70-person company focused on arcade games like Donkey Kong and one-off portables in the Game & Watch line.

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  Chevrolet did not share any images of the K5 Blazer-E, so instead here's a photo of a 1979 K5 Blazer I found on Wikipedia. [credit: By 79k5driver - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, ]

I don't know about you, but I am totally here for the growing trend of putting electric propulsion in classic cars. Much of the pioneering work has been done by small aftermarket shops: Zelectric and EV West in California, Electric Classic Cars in the UK, and so on. But increasingly, OEMs are giving it a go as well. For a while, Jaguar was preparing to sell a (very expensive) conversion kit for its XKE-engined cars, although sadly that has been cancelled. Volkswagen has been working with eClassics on an electric conversion of the Type 1 bus. And here in the US, the annual SEMA show has featured some factory-blessed high voltage hot rods for the last couple of years.

SEMA is going virtual this year, and one of the cars that Chevrolet will show off will be a 1977 K5 Blazer—called the Blazer-E—that previews the company's new eCrate aftermarket powertrain. The build team traded the Blazer's huge 6.6L V8, with its meagre 175hp (130kW), for the 200hp (150kW) motor from the Bolt EV, which connects to the Blazer's four-wheel drive system via a four-speed auto that replaces the original three-speed transmission.

The fuel tank and exhaust also went in the recycling bin, and a 60kWh lithium-ion battery pack was mounted in the Blazer's cargo area. This is also from the Bolt EV and includes all the wiring and power electronics one needs to manage a modern battery EV powertrain.