Forecast for gadgets: sublime to silly

Mookkie, a smart pet feeder which recognizes individual animals, is displayed during a press event for CES 2019 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 6, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Through a wide-angle camera that deploys logic similar to the "face-unlock" feature of modern smartphones, Mookkie records images of the animal for which food is intended, then deploys the trillion operations per second necessary for visual recognition, allowing the product to visually identify the presence of the pet and activate a door opening to allow access to food. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images less Mookkie, a smart pet feeder which recognizes individual animals, is displayed during a press event for CES 2019 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 6, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Through a ... more Photo: ROBYN BECK, Contributor / AFP/Getty Images Photo: ROBYN BECK, Contributor / AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Forecast for gadgets: sublime to silly 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

CES, the personal technology trade show that swarms Las Vegas at the start of each year, concluded Friday. The wraps were taken off a slew of new products and services that were intriguing, lustworthy or downright goofy. Just which gadgets end up in consumers’ hands — and even then not shoved into a storage closet or sock drawer — remains to be seen.

This year’s extravaganza featured a variety of themes, from the coming of the next-generation 5G cellular network to the beginning of higher-resolution 8K TVs to internet-connected everything. Are you ready for a toilet that reponds to Alexa- or Siri-like voice commands?

Here’s a look at some highlights from CES, including one product that, on the surface, seems really stupid — but for pet owners, could be really useful.

iTunes on Samsung TVs

Except for a notorious Windows client, Apple’s iTunes music and video store has largely been confined to the Macintosh / iOS ecosystem. But in a surprise announcement at the start of CES, Samsung announced that an iTunes app would be coming to its 2018 and 2019 lines of HDTVs, allowing owners of those devices to see movies and TV shows from that service without using Apple TV, that company’s streaming box.

TOO SMART: Home items are getting smarter and creepier, like it or not

In addition, both Samsung and LG TVs will support AirPlay 2, Apple’s technology for beaming content from iPhones, Macs and iPads to other devices.

Why is Apple doing this? Apple is opening up its walled garden as it seeks growth in services. With iPhone sales slowing, Apple’s looking to spread its branches to non-Apple hardware. For example, its Apple Music service can now play songs over Amazon’s Echo digital assistant devices. In addition, Apple is expected to launch its own streaming service sometime this year, and this app will serve as a beachhead.

Look for the iTunes app to show up on Samsung’s TVs sometime this spring.

5G and not 5G

This will be the year that all the major cellular carriers begin switching on 5G, the successor to 4G LTE, the data service found on most modern smartphones. 5G promises dramatic increases in speed and latency (the time it takes to receive information online after it has been requested) to the point that new applications and services will be born.

With that in mind, 5G was all the buzz at CES. Samsung showed off its planned initial 5G phone, though it was kept in a glass box on the show floor, untouchable. Qualcomm and Intel talked about the hardware they will sell to enable it. Verizon and AT&T bragged about being the first to market with 5G, though there’s some debate about that.

Don’t expect 5G to become mainstream in 2019. Coverage will be spotty at best, bugs will still need ironing out and early hardware and service pricing will be high. What you’ll hear at the 2020 CES will be far more realistic.

FASTER: 5G is coming this year - here's what you need to know

By the way, AT&T received much mockery for announcing during CES week that it was updating some of its customers’ Android-based phones to change the 4G LTE indicator icon to read “5G E.” AT&T markets a beefed-up version of LTE as “5G Evolution” — it’s available here in Houston — and the new icon will show up when those phones are connected to that network.

Pundits and analysts reacted with a collective sneer, accusing AT&T of deliberately confusing its customers, who won’t really notice a boost in speed when that 5G E indicator fires up.

LG’s rollup TV

Speaking of LG, a product that the company first showed off at last year’s CES came closer to reality this time around. The Signature OLED TV R is a 65-inch, 4K HDTV that disappears into its base.

OLED TVs are known for their brilliant displays, and those who got a good look at the Signature R say it’s no slouch visually. But when you don’t want it there, it’s not, descending smoothly into its base in just seconds.

If you like, you can have just part of the screen peeking from the base to display music controls and the state of your smart-home devices, a configuration called Line Mode.

How much will this cost you when it hits showrooms this spring? LG isn’t saying, but start saving your pennies now — the company says it will be priced as a premium product.

Bonus: CES also saw the emergency of 8K TVs, considered the next iteration of television displays. This won’t be mainstream this year, either.

Revenge of the laptop

Laptop computers are so 2005, but new ones still made a splash at CES this year. New technologies allowed some notebooks to get astonishingly thin, while others rivaled desktops both in power and size.

ADVANCED: IBM, Exxon Mobil make quantum computing leap

Huawei, which earned critical praise last year with its MateBook 13, updated it and earned raves at CES. The 13-inch Windows 10 computer is less just .59 inches thick, 11.26-by-8.31 inches and weighs just under 3 pounds. It runs Intel’s newer Whiskey Lake processors and starts at $999.

On the other end of the spectrum is the latest version of Dell’s Alienware Area 51m, a high-end gaming notebook that stretches the boundaries of what a portable PC can do. With a 17-inch display, Intel’s ninth-generation desktop processors and desktop-quality nVidia GeForce RTX display processors. Dell says most of its components are user-serviceable and upgradeable, though in some instances you’ll only be able to do so with proprietary Dell parts.

All this is packed into an 8.5-pound case that’s 1.5 inches thick. It starts at $2,549, and you can mortgage your home to buy it at the end of the month.

Tech for kittie

The elevator pitch for this product — a food dish for dogs and cats that uses facial recognition to release meals — seems dumb at first glance. But Mookkie could actually be a godsend for pet owners with one more than animal and a need for specialized feeding.

My daughter, for example, has two cats. One is grossly overweight (his name: Sarge), and really needs low-calorie cat food. The Mookkie pet feeder uses artificial intelligence and face recognition to tell one cat from another, so only the right cat would receive the diet food. And, of course, there’s a smartphone app for controlling settings and seeing how much the animal is actually eating.

Is Mookkie worth $189, which is what it will cost when released this fall? My daughter seemed to think so.

Dwight Silverman is the technology editor for the Houston Chronicle and the grillmaster for the TechBurger tech news site. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Get more tasty tech news at TechBurger. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Subscribe to the Chronicle for regular access to TechBurger stories and to be able to comment.