Tag: introduction

iOS 11.3 will introduce new battery features and AR improvements

Apple is bringing iOS 11.3 to iPhones and iPads this spring, and today the company released a preview of what we can expect from the upgrade. The most notable improvements are the battery health indicator, upgrades to ARKit and the introduction of Health Records. iPhone batteries have been a big subject of discussion lately, with the recent news that Apple has been throttling performance on older phones to balance aging battery life. Now, Apple is replacing batteries on some phones for a low fee. This latest update includes a feature that shows the health of your phone’s battery, as well as if it needs to be serviced. What’s more, users will be able to see if that power management feature is turned on, and toggle it off if they so choose. Additionally, the company introduced improvements to ARKit, its AR SDK for developers. ARKit 1.5 will be able to recognize vertical surfaces such as walls and doors, as well as map objects that are irregular in shape, such as a circular or oval table. The experience will also be clearer, as the real-world view now has 50 percent sharper resolution. Apple also announced Health Records , which allows users to bring all their medical records together within one app. Rather than logging into every single provider separately, Health Records will work with your existing doctors and hospitals to put all your health information into one place. It’s currently available to patients of 12 medical institutions, but more will follow, and all data will be encrypted to ensure privacy. iOS 11.3 has four new Animoji, including a bear, a dragon, a skull and a lion; this brings the total number of Animoji up to 16. Business Chat will also launch within the Messages app as an 11.3 beta feature. This will allow users to communicate directly with businesses such as Hilton, Lowe’s, Discover and Wells Fargo. If you have an Apple developer account, the iOS 11.3 preview is available today; the free public beta preview will follow. The upgrade will be available widely this spring, for the iPhone 5s and later, all iPad Airs and iPad Pros, the iPad fifth generation, iPad Mini 2 and later and the sixth generation of the iPod Touch. Source: Apple (1) , Apple (2)

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iOS 11.3 will introduce new battery features and AR improvements

Bug fixes abound in macOS Sierra 10.12.6, iOS 10.3.3, and watchOS 3.2.3 updates

Enlarge Apple released a slew of software updates today for nearly all of its systems; you can now download macOS Sierra 10.12.6, iOS 10.3.3, watchOS 3.2.3, and tvOS 10.2.2 to any of your compatible devices. The updates appear to be minor, as most of them focus on bug fixes. MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 is the sixth update to this version of Apple’s operating system, and it may very well be the last before the introduction of macOS High Sierra . As per Apple’s usual refresher schedule, macOS High Sierra should be pushed out to users this fall. According to Apple’s information page , macOS Sierra 10.12.6 improves the “security, stability, and compatibility” of Mac systems and tackles three main issues: “Resolves an issue that prevents making certain SMB connections from the Finder.” “Fixes an issue that causes Xsan clients to unexpectedly restart when moving a file within a relation point on a Quantum StorNext File System.” “Improves the stability of Terminal app.” That’s the extent of the details provided for any of these updates. Neither iOS 10.3.3 nor watchOS 3.2.3 lists any new features, but they do mention general “improvements” and “bug fixes.” Similarly to macOS, the operating systems for iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches will be totally revamped when iOS 11 and watchOS 4 launch. Both of those updates are expected to come out alongside macOS High Sierra in the fall. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bug fixes abound in macOS Sierra 10.12.6, iOS 10.3.3, and watchOS 3.2.3 updates

Analysis: PS4 Pro’s “Boost Mode” bumps frame rates up to 38 percent

This Digital Foundry video goes into detail about the PS4 Pro’s Boost Mode improvements on many games. Earlier this week, we were surprised by reports that the new Version 4.5 beta firmware for the PlayStation 4 Pro offered an unannounced “Boost Mode”  promising “improved gameplay, including higher frame rates, for some games that were released before the introduction of PS4 Pro.” The folks over at the excellent Digital Foundry have now put that new mode through its paces , finding frame rate increases of up to 38 percent on unpatched PS4 games. Those frame rate improvements are very dependent on the specific title in question, though. Destiny for instance, is locked to 30fps in its code, and thus gets no benefit from Boost Mode. An intensive online shooter like Battlefield 4 , on the other hand, can stay at a solid 60fps in Boost Mode, without the frequent frame-rate dips that can occur during a 64-player match in base mode. Many games seem to see the same modest 14 percent bump in their frame rates in Boost Mode. That coincidentally matches the 14 percent faster clock speed that the PS4 Pro’s GPU has over the original system (911Mhz vs 800Mhz), suggesting that the additional processor cycles are helping on GPU-limited games. Boost Mode doesn’t seem to make any use of the 18 additional compute cores available in the PS4 Pro, however—for that, you need a game-specific patch to be coded by the developer. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Analysis: PS4 Pro’s “Boost Mode” bumps frame rates up to 38 percent

Windows 10 is getting a picture-in-picture mode

Microsoft just made it easier to use multiple applications at once on Windows 10 , especially when dealing with video-focused programs. The company released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031 to developers today, and the main attraction is the introduction of so-called Compact Overlay windows. The new feature allows users to run a program in a small window that’s pinned above other applications, so it can be seen without being as intrusive as a standard window. Compact Overlay windows appears useful when dealing with video. For example, keeping a YouTube clip or Skype call visible in the corner would make it easier for users to do things like take notes or check email while not losing sight of the video. The good news for developers is that Compact Overlay windows “work just like normal windows in all other ways, ” so it should be relatively painless to adapt existing programs to be compatible with the feature. It’s unclear if Compact Overlay windows can be resized or used with Snap (a feature just pulled from Xbox One ). We’ve asked Microsoft to clarify. The update also adds full-screen Game Bar support for 52 games, including Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto titles. Microsoft isn’t the only company dabbling in picture-in-picture modes. Apple last year debuted a similar feature for MacOS , which works in much the same way, but is only compatible with Safari and iTunes. Compact Overlay windows are only available to developers at the moment, although Microsoft says that the Skype Preview and Movies & TV apps will soon be updated to take advantage of the new feature. Source: Windows

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Windows 10 is getting a picture-in-picture mode

The Libreboot C201 from Minifree is really really really ridiculously open source

 Open source laptops – ones not running any commercial software whatsoever – have been the holy grail for free software fans for years. Now, with the introduction of libreboot, a truly open source boot firmware, the dream is close to fruition. The $730 laptop is a bog standard piece of hardware but it contains only open source software. The OS, Debian, is completely open source and… Read More

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The Libreboot C201 from Minifree is really really really ridiculously open source

Big Changes From Mozilla Mean Firefox Will Get Chrome Extensions

Mozilla announced yesterday a few high-level changes to the way Firefox and Firefox extensions will be developed; among them, the introduction of “a new extension API, called WebExtensions—largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera—to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers.” (Liliputing has a nice breakdown of the changes.) ZDNet reports that at the same time, “Mozilla will be deprecating XPCOM and XUL, the foundations of its extension system, and many Firefox developers are ticked off at these moves.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Big Changes From Mozilla Mean Firefox Will Get Chrome Extensions