Key Takeaways
- Raspberry Pi enthusiasts had a great week with cool projects like a 65-inch gaming mirror and a Blackberry keyboard pocket PC.
- Plugable’s new USB hub doubles as a shelf, saving precious desk space for iMac users.
- Apple’s Let Loose event featured exciting releases like the new iPad Air and Pro, M4 chips, and the Pencil Pro.
Did you miss out on the news this week? If you did, there were some really good parts for Apple fans as the company announced several products during its Let Loose event. But even if you’re not interested in new iPads, we still saw a ton of cool Raspberry Pi projects. So, here are all the cool news stories we saw this week.
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Raspberry Pi 5 review: The holy grail of DIY projects got even better (and rarer)
The Raspberry Pi 5 is one of the most powerful consumer-grade SBCs out there. Sadly, its limited stock means you’ll have a hard time finding one.
5 This Pi-powered pocket PC features a Blackberry keyboard and trackpad
Build your own Blackberry
Remember when pocket PCs were a thing? As smartphones got better at their jobs, we saw fewer and fewer portable devices with full-blown keyboards on them. However, that doesn’t mean people moved away from them. In fact, with a Raspberry Pi, you can make your own pocket PC with its own miniature keyboard and trackpad. The Blackberry may be gone, but we don’t have to forget how good it felt to type on a physical keyboard.
4 Plugable’s new USB hub is tailor-made for the iMac, and it doubles as a shelf
Don’t sacrifice desk space for your hub
USB hubs are nice, but they can take up valuable desk real estate. Fortunately, Plugable has a solution for this by making a USB hub that also doubles as a shield, giving this handy peripheral two uses at once. Plugable also revealed an Ethernet USB adapter that would fit nicely with the hub.
Build your own hacking device
The Flipper One may be gone, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on the idea of portable hacking devices. In fact, in a bid to make these ethical hacking tools cheaper and easier for people to get their hands on, someone has released the schematics for the Hackbat, a Raspberry Pi-based pen-testing device you can use to test your network’s security. Best of all, because all the parts come cheap, you don’t need to shell out a lot to have a reliable pen-testing device in your toolkit.
2 Someone made a 65-inch retro gaming magic mirror with a Raspberry Pi, and it looks amazing
Gaming with style
We weren’t joking when we said this week was great for Raspberry Pi enthusiasts. However, in our defense, there was no way we weren’t going to feature this cool magic mirror you can use to play retro games on. The screen comes in at a whopping 65 inches, and it all runs off of a single Pi. And while the developer had issues getting the screen to turn, it’s still a seriously cool project for any retro gaming fans out there.
1 Apple hosts the Let Loose event
Lots of good news for iPad fans
Source: Apple
Finally, we couldn’t round out this news digest without mentioning Apple. The tech giant held its “Let Loose” event, during which it dropped a lot of bombshells. We at XDA were documenting all the hot releases as they came out, so if you missed the presentation, we’ve got you covered.
We started with the new iPad Air that, for the first time in its history, now comes with a 13” variant. After that, we checked out the iPad Pro which manages to squish all of its hardware in a shell that’s thinner than a Nano. And while the new Snapdragon X chips are getting close to Apple’s M3 levels, the tech giant retook the lead after it announced its new range of M4 chips. We also saw the new Pencil Pro that does what the Microsoft Slim Pen 2 has done for years, and we saw the iPad 9 get the axe. Oh, and people really hated the iPad Pro ad.