Month: September 2023

Enlarge / The Food and Drug Administration headquarters in White Oak, Maryland. (credit: Getty | Congressional Quarterly)

The Food and Drug Administration greenlit two updated COVID-19 vaccine booster shots Monday—a day before advisors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scheduled to meet and vote on recommendations for use of the updated vaccines.

The two shots are the 2023-2024 formulations of mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, both of which target the recent omicron subvariant XBB.1.5. The FDA granted full approval of both Pfizer-BioNTech's updated vaccine (Comirnaty) and Moderna's updated vaccine (Spikevax) for use in those ages 12 years and up. The agency issued emergency use authorizations for both updated vaccines for use in children ages 6 months to 11 years.

If CDC and its advisors sign off on use of the vaccines Tuesday—which is likely—the shots could become fully available at local pharmacies and doctor's offices in the coming days. While the FDA timed today's actions to boost the population ahead of an anticipated winter wave of infection, the regulatory clearance come amid a mild increase of COVID-19 transmission that began in late summer.

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  The Roomba Combo j9+. [credit: iRobot ]

IRobot has even more new robots to take a look at. This week it's refreshing the top-of-the-line lineup with the Roomba Combo j9+, which comes in at $1,399. Just like Combo j7+, this is a vacuum with a mop pad mounted on a swing arm setup. In mop mode, the pad swings under the robot and drags across the floor. When it's time to vacuum the carpet, rather than lifting the pad only a few millimeters and potentially dragging it across the carpet, the whole pad swings around to the top of the robot and looks like a racing spoiler. The upgrade to the j9+ involves a new dock that can refill the robot's water tank and a "SmartScrub" feature that does a better job of mopping.

Most of the new features are enabled by the new dock. These vacuum docks unavoidably just keep growing in size as they get more capable, and the j9+ combo dock is so big that iRobot's press images humorously suggest decorating the Combo j9+ base by putting a vase or some other knickknacks on top. The Combo j9+ dock is approaching the size of a small end table, so iRobot says it gave the dock a "wood-like top to double as a usable surface." It actually looks quite nice, with ribbing around the perimeter and a faux leather tag on the side as an opening handle. Grab the tab, and the front of the dock will swing open like a cabinet.

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  The dock is so big it's like a small piece of furniture now. [credit: iRobot ]

Inside the door, you'll see handy storage bins for new mop pads and dock vacuum bags. In the main body of the dock, there's a white tank at the top that stores the cleaning liquid, and below that is a drawer for the dust bag. Altogether, this will suck dust out of the robot and refill it with water, and iRobot says you'll get "60 days of dirt emptying and 30 days of liquid refill."

Enlarge / It only cost Michael MJD nearly $1,800, plus a replacement display controller, to get to the point where he could play the memory game on a classic iMac. (credit: Michael MJD / YouTube)

Two remarkable things appear in a recent Michael MJD video. One is an iMac G3 from 1999 that responds to not just touchscreen taps and drags, but also touch pressure. The other is a sticker on the side of the Strawberry tray-loading iMac, indicating that it was an "Engineering Prototype" from Elo, a company that was an official "Value Added Reseller" for Apple products.

The first iMac's release was 25 years ago last month. The device was a breakthrough on many levels. The transparent brightly colored plastic, the streamlined shape with rounded corners, and the bold-for-the-time choice to forgo floppy drives and myriad other PC ports made the G3 a style icon, to the point where the G3 is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. It rebuilt and fortified Apple's position in the tech landscape. And, not for nothing, it kicked off an era-defining surge in transparent design.

The iMac G3 heralded some of Apple's future strategies and focus, but the company and its business model contained many aspects of an earlier era. Elo, a company that continues to make touchscreens for point-of-sale systems and other applications, turned some iMacs into touchscreen kiosks, with Apple's approval as a "Value Added Reseller." As Michael MJD points out in his video, the iMac made sense as a good-looking computer you could park on a surface and allow people to manipulate without a keyboard or mouse. What's more, Elo was only one of three known companies offering this kind of third-party touchscreen conversion.

Enlarge / It only cost Michael MJD nearly $1,800, plus a replacement display controller, to get to the point where he could play the memory game on a classic iMac. (credit: Michael MJD / YouTube)

Two remarkable things appear in a recent Michael MJD video. One is an iMac G3 from 1999 that responds to not just touchscreen taps and drags, but also touch pressure. The other is a sticker on the side of the Strawberry tray-loading iMac, indicating that it was an "Engineering Prototype" from Elo, a company that was an official "Value Added Reseller" for Apple products.

The first iMac's release was 25 years ago last month. The device was a breakthrough on many levels. The transparent brightly colored plastic, the streamlined shape with rounded corners, and the bold-for-the-time choice to forgo floppy drives and myriad other PC ports made the G3 a style icon, to the point where the G3 is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. It rebuilt and fortified Apple's position in the tech landscape. And, not for nothing, it kicked off an era-defining surge in transparent design.

The iMac G3 heralded some of Apple's future strategies and focus, but the company and its business model contained many aspects of an earlier era. Elo, a company that continues to make touchscreens for point-of-sale systems and other applications, turned some iMacs into touchscreen kiosks, with Apple's approval as a "Value Added Reseller." As Michael MJD points out in his video, the iMac made sense as a good-looking computer you could park on a surface and allow people to manipulate without a keyboard or mouse. What's more, Elo was only one of three known companies offering this kind of third-party touchscreen conversion.