Darrell Etherington

Darrell Etherington

Editor at Large

Darrell Etherington is Editor at Large at TechCrunch. He’s spent most of his career at TC, with a couple of breaks to gain experience in industry-leading technology companies including Apple and Shopify.

The Latest from Darrell Etherington

As layoffs deepen, AI’s role in the cuts is murky – but it definitely has one

Layoffs season is extending into a sustained state, defying more typical formations of cyclical boom and bust periods in tech. Meanwhile, AI continues to be ascendant — or at least the current v

Apple’s reluctant, punitive compliance with regulators will burn its political and developer goodwill

Apple is on a roll when it comes to having its hand forced by state entities and governing bodies: Alternative payment methods, stripping features from existing hardware, allowing alternate app stores

VR needs to build for its best use cases — not for all-around computing

Apple’s Vision Pro launch resembles its Apple Watch debut in more ways than one, but to me the most telling similarity is in the marketing approach. Apple has striven to distance the Vision Pro

Forget Apple Vision Pro — rabbit r1 is 2024’s most exciting launch yet

The year is off to a quick start in terms of new product launches and availability, even leaving aside the usual mid-tier smorgasbord that is CES. Apple just started pre-sales of its Vision Pro mixed

Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales ban to resume January 18

Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 sales will be halted again in the U.S. starting at 5 PM tomorrow, January 18, due to the rejection of a bid by Apple to have the sales ban paused throughou

Elon’s Tesla robot is sort of ‘ok’ at folding laundry in pre-scripted demo

Elon Musk’s Optimus humanoid robot from Tesla is doing more stuff — this time folding a t-shirt on a table in a development facility. The robot looks to be fairly competent when it comes t

Apple’s fix for the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales ban could be disabling a useless feature

Apple is readying a more permanent fix for the ITC ruling that ended up temporarily blocking sales of its Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9 models in the U.S. (which are both now back on sale — t

The year of ‘does this serve us’ and the rejection of reification

2024 has arrived, and with it, a renewed interest in artificial intelligence, which seems like it’ll probably continue to enjoy at least middling hype throughout the year. Of course, it’s

Will Apple’s Vision Pro launch be a Groundhog Day for immersive computing?

Apple’s Vision Pro headset is set to finally launch in the U.S. on February 2, at a retail price of $3,499. At that price, there’s no doubt it’ll have limited appeal, which seems jus

I broke my wrist: Meta Quest 3 and Supernatural helped me through

A few weeks ago, I broke my wrist (in a very stupid way, e-scooters are bad) and the prospect of a protracted recovery period with extremely limited mobility in that arm was really not something I was

AI isn’t and won’t soon be evil or even smart, but it’s also irreversibly pervasive

Artificial intelligence — or rather, the variety based on large language models we’re currently enthralled with — is already in the autumn of its hype cycle, but unlike crypto, it wo

Xbox Cloud Gaming now available on Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro

Xbox has brought is Cloud Gaming service to Meta Quest VR headset devices, as both companies said it would at the launch of the latest Quest 3 hardware earlier this year. The Xbox Cloud Gaming app has

With iMessage thanks to Beeper Mini, the OnePlus Open is my new favorite phone

Multi-platform messaging startup Beeper, founded by YC and Pebble alum Eric Migicovsky, delivered an iMessage experience for Android that doesn’t use any intermediaries and, as such, should be (

The end of Elon

Standing on the rear bed of his greatest boondoggle, his face obscured in shadow, the billionaire who built a rabid fanbase through seemingly inhuman feats of engineering and willpower cut a greatly r

With AI chatbots, will Elon Musk and the ultra-rich replace the masses?

Elon Musk is hyping the imminent release of his ChatGPT competitor Grok, yet another example of how his entire personality is just itself a biological LLM made by ingesting all of Reddit and 4chan. Gr

OpenAI will benefit from unity of purpose with Sam Altman’s return

In case you missed it, Sam Altman is back as OpenAI CEO. His reinstatement comes after a whirlwind few days in which we saw unusual corporate governance lead to an attempt to oust Altman, despite supp

Microsoft is the only real winner in the OpenAI debacle

OpenAI is in the process of fully collapsing on itself, following the ousting of former CEO Sam Altman in a shocking board decision. Exactly why the board decided to fire Altman is still unclear, but

Building digital infrastructure for developing countries with Nasrat Khalid from Aseel

Host Becca Szkutak is joined by our old friend Darrell Etherington to talk with Nasrat Khalid of Aseel.

Apple, it’s time to fold

Apple is relatively fresh off its annual iPhone refresh, having just released the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro in September. The hardware updates for this generation are solid and meaningful, but also iterati

The iPhone 15’s best friend is an ultra-budget, stripped-down version of Apple Vision Pro

iPhone 15 got USB-C, a great upgrade just for the sake of cable management sanity, but that also brought support for native video out. That means you can connect displays to the iPhone easily with a s
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