As the Trump administration’s trade war oscillates, tech manufacturers are trying to deal with the unpredictable nature of an economy held hostage to a single man’s whims. But smaller, more niche businesses simply can’t deal with the uncertainty of prices that might double tomorrow—so they’re out, at least as far as shipping to customers in the US. The latest example is Keyboardio, a custom keyboard shop run by two people in California. Keyboardio specializes in the kind of gorgeous, wood-cased ergonomic designs that always draw crowds at keyboard meetups. But because essential parts like PCBs come from China, even if their wooden cases are sourced from American wood, both the standard tariffs and the crackdowns on de minimis shipping exceptions make it impossible to remain profitable for US sales, as the two explain in a lengthy blog post. The post was updated four times in three days in April to deal with the US and China’s dueling policies. But starting May 2nd, there will simply be no way to keep sales going while remaining profitable. Keyboardio announced (spotted by Tom’s Hardware) that it will “suspend all shipping to the United States until we’re confident that your orders will get to you quickly and reliably.” Keyboardio isn’t the first small gadget supplier to make this call, and it won’t be the last. Retro Dodo reports that Anbernic—a favorite of the exploding retro handheld emulation gadget scene—announced that it would be “suspending all orders shipping from China to the United States.” Stock currently available in American warehouses will be the last available to US residents until further notice. Bigger brands are feeling the pinch, too. Razer’s high-powered gaming laptops briefly disappeared from its ordering page earlier this month even as it was announcing new accessories, and Logitech’s mice and keyboards have jumped in price by up to 25 percent. Yesterday, logistics giant Hapag Lloyd says that among its customers, 30 percent have simply cancelled shipments originating from China and bound for the United States. The International Monetary Fund predicts a slowing impact to the broader global economy as companies try to account for the apparent self-sabotage of the United States buying public. Razer If you’d like to dig deeper into how the Trump tariffs are affecting both US businesses and technology buyers, Gamers Nexus has an exhaustive breakdown available on YouTube. Notably, PC case and component maker Hyte (who’s based in California) is shutting down all shipments to the US. Hyte broke down the component, manufacturing, and shipping cost of individual cases, explaining how and why simply shifting manufacturing to the United States is economically impossible. Cooler Master, Thermal Grizzly, Corsair, and CyberPowerPC all expressed similar woes, saying that the unpredictability of the tariff situation can lead to disaster. A shipment could leave port in China when the tariff rate is 20 percent but arrive when it’s 150 percent—and that alone can be so detrimental to the business that it directly results in employee layoffs. Larger companies can try to compensate with fewer products on offer shipped in bigger batches when the situation is less chaotic, but smaller companies will simply shut down sales in the US… or may be in danger of complete collapse altogether. The full video is almost three hours long, but absolutely worth watching if you’d like to see an incredibly detailed breakdown of how US companies are being clobbered by constantly-shifting policies that are beyond anyone’s ability to predict. The Trump administration has temporarily scaled back import tariffs from most countries to “just” 10 percent, a policy that would already have been considered a huge burden. Dozens of countries have indicated a willingness to bargain to avoid the more onerous tariffs announced earlier this year. But with China refusing to bow to Trump’s demands and several rounds of one-upmanship between the countries, the current rate on most Chinese imports to the United States is a staggering 145 percent. A television made in China and valued at $100 will be charged $145 to enter the country, effectively making its price $245. Apparently, reacting to panic in the tech industry specifically, the administration later scaled back the China tariffs on computers, computer components, smartphones, and some smaller parts to “only” 20 percent. Messaging on what counts and what doesn’t, and how long these and other policies will remain in place, is confused at best. The Trump administration claims that it is actively negotiating with China and that the tariff rate will go down substantially in the near future. Chinese officials have denied that active negotiations are occurring. Read...

Microsoft has updated its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant with several new features, The Verge reports. The redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot app now has access to OpenAI’s impressive GPT-4o model, which was released last month, via Copilot Create. This means you can now generate cutting-edge images, videos, and other content. Another big feature update is Notebooks, which are project-based notebooks for organizing information like files, pages, and links, which can then be shared with Copilot. This gives Copilot a more focused collection of context to work with, which then informs its answers when you use Copilot for aid in a given project. Microsoft Other improvements include a better AI search that integrates with third-party platforms like Google Drive, Slack, and Jira; an improved chat interface that now remembers past conversations and can customize responses based on your work patterns and preferences; and an Agent Store for quick access to AI agents from both Microsoft and third parties. Note that Microsoft 365 Copilot is not the same thing as regular Copilot. The former is intended for business use cases while the latter is for personal use by individual consumers. The two are different, but this update does bring the user interface of Microsoft 365 Copilot more in line with what you’ve likely seen in Copilot itself. Further reading: ChatGPT’s advanced AI is free for Windows users Read...

Last week I spent a few days watching the Asus and Best Buy websites like a hawk, waiting for that slinky little Zenbook A14 to start shipping. It’s a really cool, lightweight laptop with battery life for days, literally. But it has one design problem that I see all too often on otherwise good laptops: The USB-C ports are only on one side. This sucks. Allow me to use several hundred words to explain why. There are a lot of great things about USB-C. Access to incredibly fast data transfers. Video capabilities on a (somewhat) universal standard. But the greatest for me, by a wide margin, is that you can use it to charge up almost any device with the same cable. I want every single device that I own with a battery to allow charging via a USB-C port. And we’re almost there. My phone, my tablet, my laptop, my headphones, even my portable batteries that I use to charge all of them on the go, each one uses USB-C. All of this is good. But for most of the time, a phone, a tablet, headphones, et cetera only need one USB-C port. That’s all that’s practical for these devices. A laptop needs multiple USB-C ports. At least two, if only so you can charge it up and use one extra device like a flash drive without needing to bring along a dongle. And at least one of those should be on both sides of the laptop. Further reading: Buying a USB-C cable? Beware these 6 crucial gotchas Flexible charging is important In my case, this is specifically so that you can charge it up from the left or the right. And it’s important for laptops in particular, because laptops are mobile devices, and mobile devices that are bigger and bulkier than phones and tablets. My ThinkPad X1 Nano, pictured above, was considered pretty premium when it came out three years ago. It’s super lightweight and designed for business travel. And yet both of its USB-C ports — its only ports — are on the left side. Extremely frustrating! Pexels/Thirdman When you’re on the go and you need a charge, you can’t always find an ideal spot for it. Maybe you’re in a cafe and the charger is on one side of the table against the wall. Or in a hotel where it’s only on one side of the bed. A bus where the outlet beneath your seat is busted and you have to ask your fellow passenger if you can politely invade their space. (Fix your busses, Martz, the Wi-Fi hasn’t worked in years.) The point is that if you can only charge on one side of your laptop, you’re going to be put in an awkward position up to half of the time. You can twist yourself into an uncomfortable pretzel, or just get a super-long charging cable and carry it with you. And I’ll point out that both of those were solutions from the Before Times, when every brand had its own barrel port or proprietary charger. But you shouldn’t have to — laptops should be designed with this basic use case in mind. Some are, but many aren’t, even “premium” designs like that aforementioned Zenbook A14, which only features a lonely little USB-A port on the right (which can’t charge up the device). Even Apple, a company that proclaims its meticulous design process in its advertising, has USB-C ports on only one side of the MacBook Air. If you want the basic creature comfort of charging on either side, you have to step up to the MacBook Pro. Foundry Here’s what really steams me. When I’m travelling I often carry a USB-C monitor, specifically a ThinkVision M14. This is made by Lenovo, the same company that made my laptop. And it has USB-C ports on both sides, specifically to make it easier to charge, both for itself and its pass-through laptop charging feature. Why are laptops like this? I’ve spoken about this little pet peeve with many of my fellow tech writers, and plenty of regular laptop users too. I’ve never met one who didn’t agree with my viewpoint. So I’m absolutely certain that laptop makers are aware of our desires here. In fact, I know it: I spoke to a former tech writer person I’d worked with, who now works for a PC manufacturer and asked them if they’d raised the point with their new employer. They said that yes, they had in fact spoken with the engineering teams that decide where to put laptop ports and told them that people want USB-C charging on both sides. The engineers responded that it added expense to the design, so it doesn’t make it into some models. Mattias Inghe I’m sure that’s true. My own knowledge of the ins and outs of electronics design is just enough that I don’t doubt it. A modern USB-C port is complicated — it needs extra design work and electronics elements for battery charging, for video output, for standards like Thunderbolt and the fastest data. Every small adjustment, every tiny decision made in the design process has a cost that affects the final manufacturing and, thus the eventual retail price of a product. But I reject this as a definitive reason to make this choice. You can say the same thing about tons of other elements of laptop design — say, using a trackpad that supports multi-touch gestures or a keyboard that has LED backlighting. Asus told me it spent a huge amount of time and resources engineering the hinge on the Zenbook A14, to make sure it can easily open with just one finger. And the presenter was immensely proud of the “Ceraluminum” coating on the entire laptop — as they should be, it’s really nice! None of these elements are strictly necessary. You can operate a laptop without them. But all of them add to the overall experience of a product. Little things that we as end users barely think about, sometimes don’t even notice, can have a huge impact on our final impression of a device. It’s worth the extra work However much extra it might cost to get a USB-C port on both sides of a laptop, it’s worth it. Again, that’s according to me, every other tech writer who reviews laptops, and everyone else they’ve spoken to on the subject. Note that both the Framework Laptop and Intel’s new modular guidelines allow for full-power USB-C on both sides of the laptop, and these devices are made for sustainability with far more engineering necessary than a permanently soldered port. And while I don’t have a component breakdown to make my case, I’m pretty darn confident that it’s not an unattainable design goal for laptops, especially once you get out of the budget category. Allow me to illustrate. This is a Lenovo Legion Go. It costs $700. It has a USB-C port on the top and on the bottom. Mattias Inghe This is the Asus ROG Gaming Phone. It costs $849. It has two USB-C ports, one on the side and one on the bottom, and I’m pretty sure it takes a lot more engineering work to fit two ports on a phone than on a laptop. This is the Nintendo Switch 2. I don’t know how much it costs yet, but given Nintendo’s mass-market savvy and the price of the original, I’d be flabbergasted if it’ll launch at anything north of $500. It has USB-C ports on the top and bottom. Nintendo This is the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, a small, cheap, ChromeOS-powered tablet, topping out at $399 for the most expensive model. How many USB-C ports does it have? I’ll give you three guesses, but you’ll only need one, because it’s two. Two USB-C ports, on two different sides. And again, this is the same company that made my laptop in the header image, equipping a cheaper device with this handy design feature. Michael Crider/IDG I think I’ve made my point. If all of these devices can fit a secondary USB-C charging port, into both their design and their budget, there’s no reason that manufacturers can’t do this for every laptop with USB-C capability. And they absolutely should. Further reading: The best USB-C cables for charging and data transfer Read...

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