The Morning After: Apple's CES ad and Amazon's Alexa army

Welcome to your Monday morning! Engadget is reporting live from the world's biggest tech event, CES. We'll be here delivering all the biggest news from the likes of Google, Samsung, Sony and the rest. Expect liveblogs and three epic days of our live stage shows, which all culminates with the official Best of CES awards on Thursday at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Here's the earliest CES news -- more incoming.

It's borrowing a page from 1950s sci-fi.Elon Musk teases final look of SpaceX's Starship test vehicle

Elon Musk has posted concept artwork showing what SpaceX's completed Starship vehicle will look like. It's borrowing more than a few cues from 1950s sci-fi, with its gleaming stainless-steel body. The test mule will be 30 feet across like the completed Starship, but it'll be shorter and will, unsurprisingly, go without windows. It's intended to fly suborbital Grasshopper flights and prove that the basic formula is sound before moving on to orbital missions in 2020.

Apple never attends CES, but it's here in spirit.Apple took out a CES ad to troll its competitors over privacy

Apple never attends CES, but it's here. Kinda. As tech companies and tech media descended on Vegas, one of the first things many saw was a multi-storey ad from Apple trumpeting its privacy credentials.

The copy was a cheeky riff on the classic Vegas slogan: What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone. Apple is making the most of the fact that its phones aren't trading on your personal data -- at a show where it doesn't maintain a physical presence.

It's a big figure, but what does it actually mean?Amazon reports over 100 million Alexa devices sold

Amazon is usually coy about its hardware sales, let alone how well its voice assistant Alexa is doing. Its now announced that 100 million Alexa-equipped devices have been sold to date. Although there aren't any more details, that's a big number. We're just wondering exactly how many people are actively using Amazon's voice assistant, and whether Google has its own voice-assistant numbers to boast about.

It's the first time they're available on non-Apple living-room hardware.
Samsung's 2019 smart TVs will support iTunes and AirPlay 2

Until now, using Apple's services on your TV has meant... well, buying an Apple TV. No more: Samsung has revealed its 2019 smart TVs (plus updated 2018 sets) will offer both iTunes Movies and TV shows as well as AirPlay 2 casting. Yes, you can buy or rent videos from iTunes and watch them in 4K HDR glory without buying extra Apple hardware or otherwise bending over backward. The iTunes app will even play nicely with Samsung's ecosystem, too, supporting the Universal Guide, search features and the latest version of Bixby. The features will be available beginning this spring on the 2019 sets.

Or, if you prefer something larger, it can be a 219-inch 'The Window.' Yeah.Samsung shows off a 75-inch 4K 'The Wall' TV made with MicroLEDs

Last year, Samsung showed off the modular MicroLED panels that make up its The Wall TV technology. This year, it's updated the tech in two directions -- larger and smaller, and apparently even made it see-through. We've seen MicroLED panels put together to create a 219-inch 'The Wall' and 'The Window' display -- last year's massive screen measured only 146-inches. Samsung also announced a version of The Wall that might fit in more homes, with 4K resolution available in a 75-inch size. There's no word on how much that will cost, but it's more realistic for consumer use than the 34-foot movie-theater screen the tech was originally made for.

The dream is to have this in every grocery store.BreadBot delivers freshly baked bread every six minutes

Robots that give the gift of carbs -- they're the real future.

But wait, there's more...

• Huawei P30 might revive the headphone jack

• Watch this giant laundry-folding robot handle a stack of shirts

• Whill's next personal electronic vehicle drives itself

• JAXJOX's smart kettlebell is a gateway to its subscription classes

• Moen's showers get smarter with Google Assistant

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