Tech – Page 2

I’ve already been using a “Steam Machine” for months, and I think it’s great

Features, gaming, steam deck, steam machine, steamos, Tech / Kelly Newman / November 17, 2025

or, “the impatient person’s guide to buying a Steam Machine”

With a little know-how, you can get yourself a Steam Machine right this minute.

I started trying to install SteamOS on other PCs basically as soon as Valve made it possible. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Valve’s second big foray into first-party PC hardware isn’t a sequel to the much-imitated Steam Deck portable, but rather a desktop computer called the Steam Machine. And while it could go on your desk, Valve clearly intends for it to fit in an entertainment center under a TV—next to, or perhaps even instead of, a game console like the Xbox or PlayStation 5.

I am pretty sure this idea could work, and it’s because I’ve already been experimenting with what is essentially a “Steam Machine” underneath my own TV for months, starting in May when Valve began making it possible to install SteamOS on certain kinds of generic PC hardware.

Depending on what it costs—and we can only guess what it will cost—the Steam Machine could be a good fit for people who just want to plug a more powerful version of the Steam Deck experience into their TVs. But for people who like tinkering or who, like me, have been messing with miniature TV-connecting gaming PCs for years and are simply tired of trying to make Windows workable, the future promised by the Steam Machine is already here.

My TV PC setup

I had always been sort of TV PC-curious, but I can trace my current setup to December 2018, when, according to a Micro Center receipt in my inbox, I built a $504.51 PC in a tiny InWin Chopin case centered on an AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor.

At the time, the Ryzen brand was only a couple of years old, and the 2400G had impressed reviewers by combining a competent-enough quad-core CPU with a usably performant integrated GPU. And the good news was: It worked! It was nowhere near as good as the graphical experience that, say, a PlayStation 4 could provide, but it worked well for older and indie games, while also giving me access to a TV-connected computer for the occasions when I wanted to stream things from a browser, or participate in a living room-scale Zoom call (something that would become the box’s main job during the pandemic-induced isolation of 2020 and early 2021).

(This PC evolved over time and currently uses a Ryzen 8700G processor, which includes AMD’s best CPU and integrated GPU for socketed desktop motherboards. I did this to get more stable 1080p performance in more games, but I would not recommend this build to most people right now—more on that in a bit.)

The main problem was Windows, which was not and still is not particularly well-optimized for controller-driven living room use. What I really wanted was a startup process that felt more or less like a game console: hit the power button, and automatically get launched into a gamepad-navigable interface that would let me launch and play things without touching a mouse or keyboard.

There are third-party apps like Launchbox that make a go of providing this functionality for people more interested in emulation or who own games from multiple PC storefronts. What I eventually settled on was a sort of hacky fix that allowed my user account to log in automatically, and then automatically launch Steam in Big Picture Mode.

This worked… fine—except when I needed to interact with a mouse and keyboard to install driver updates, or when some component of the Windows UI would steal focus from the Big Picture Mode window and make it impossible to use the controller to navigate.

So when reports indicated that Valve was working on a SteamOS version that would run on more hardware, I was immediately interested. SteamOS was designed to boot right into its gaming interface, and the desktop mode was its own separate thing that you needed to open up manually—ideal for my usage model, since I didn’t want to give up the desktop mode but also didn’t need to use it often. But I did run into some bumps during the installation process, which I’ll share here in case it helps you avoid them.

SteamOS or Bazzite

Bazzite’s desktop mode wallpaper. A community supported alternative to SteamOS, Bazzite offers much wider hardware compatibility but can have rough edges. Credit: Bazzite

I had trouble using Valve’s official restore image (SteamOS version 3.7.7, from this support page) to get newer hardware working, which may be one reason why that language was softened. It was no problem to install official first-party SteamOS on slightly older hardware, like the Ryzen 7040 version of the Framework Laptop 13 or an older Acer laptop with a Ryzen 6000-series processor installed. But trying to install the software on newer hardware failed no matter what I tried. Those systems included the Ryzen AI 300 version of the Framework Laptop; a socket AM5 testbed desktop with a dedicated Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU; and, to my great disappointment, my TV desktop’s Ryzen 7 8700G.

There’s very little information out there about installing or troubleshooting SteamOS on generic hardware, but if you poke around on Reddit about much of anything, you’ll quickly meet a specific Type of Guy who believes that anyone with hardware compatibility issues should just use Bazzite, a community-developed alternate operating system that attempts to provide a SteamOS-ish alternative with wider hardware support (including for Intel and Nvidia hardware, which isn’t likely to be supported by the official SteamOS any time soon).

And so Bazzite I tried! Indicating that I used an AMD GPU and wanted to boot into the SteamOS interface offered me the exact same image that Bazzite offers for the Steam Deck and other handhelds, and it installed on my Ryzen desktop with minimal fuss.

Bazzite also came painfully close to what I wanted it to be, in terms of user experience—a desktop mode to boot into on the occasions I needed one, but otherwise I could just fire up the Xbox controller I had paired to the PC and jump right into a game.

But Bazzite was sunk by the same kind of bugs and edge cases that often chase me away from Linux operating systems when I try them. The main issue was that periodically, the system would boot up into desktop mode without asking (usually this seemed to happen when the Steam client software needed an update, but I can’t say for sure). Restarting the system would usually boot it back into the SteamOS interface—but I’d need to log in all over again, and the OS would switch Bluetooth off by default. Not only am I having to dig out a keyboard and mouse to solve this problem, but I’m needing to use a wired keyboard until I could get Bluetooth turned back on.

By the time this had happened twice, I was sure it wasn’t a fluke; by the time it had happened four or five times, I was determined to blow the entire operating system away and try again. And I was particularly interested in trying actual, for-real SteamOS again, just in case a new Bazzite install would have the same problems as the one I was already using.

After some digging, I found this directory. If you look through those folders, you’ll see OS images for various versions of SteamOS, including newer versions of SteamOS 3.7 (the “stable” version you’ll find on the Deck) and builds of both SteamOS 3.8 and 3.9 (the Deck will pull these down if you switch from the “stable” OS channel to “main”). Not all of those folders include the repair image you need to wipe a device and install SteamOS, but a few do—this one, dated October 27, is the most recent as of this writing.

Those newer versions of the operating system include changes that expand SteamOS’s hardware support, most notably a step up from Linux kernel version 6.11 to version 6.16. And it was that steamdeck-repair-main-20251027.1000-3.8.0.img.zip file that I was finally able to flash to a USB drive and install on my TV desktop using Valve’s instructions.

It has only been a week or so since then, but at least so far I’m finally getting what I wanted: the same experience as on my Deck, just on my TV, with hardware that is somewhat better-suited for a larger and higher-resolution screen (and that’s the main reason to do this, rather than use a docked Steam Deck for everything).

The SteamOS experience

The “console-like experience” designed for the Steam Deck also works well with a TV and a gamepad. Credit: Valve

Once the OS is installed and is up and running, anyone who has used a Steam Deck will find it instantly familiar, and all you’ll need to do to get going is connect or pair a gamepad and/or a keyboard and mouse.

Most of the bugs and quirks I’ve run into stem from the fact that this software was developed for standalone handheld gaming consoles first and foremost. There are multiple settings toggles—including those for adaptive brightness and HDMI-CEC—that serve a purpose on the Steam Deck but just don’t function on a desktop, where these features usually aren’t present or aren’t supported.

SteamOS is also pretty hit or miss about selecting the correct resolution and refresh rate for a connected display. Navigate to the Settings, to Display, and then turn off the “Automatically Set Resolution” toggle, and you’ll see a full list of supported resolutions and refresh rates that you can pick from. You may also want to scroll down and change the “Maximum Game Resolution” from “Native” to the actual native resolution of your screen, since I occasionally encountered games that wouldn’t offer resolutions that were supported by the display I was using.

Similarly, you may need to navigate to the Audio settings and switch output devices if you’re sending audio over HDMI. I also needed to turn the audio output volume up to around 80 percent before the sound coming out of my Steam Machine would match the volume of all the other boxes connected to my TV.

And if you’ve never used SteamOS before, it’s worth reading up on some of its limitations. While its compatibility with Windows games is quite good, Valve’s Proton compatibility layer is in continuous development, and not every game will play perfectly or play at all. Games that use anti-cheat software are still broadly incompatible with SteamOS, since many anti-cheat programs hook into the Windows kernel in ways that are impossible to translate or emulate. And while it’s possible to run games from other storefronts like Epic or GOG, it’s best done with third-party software like the Heroic Games Launcher, adding an extra layer of complexity.

And although SteamOS includes a useful desktop mode, it’s really not meant to be used as a day-to-day workhorse operating system—security features like “using a password to log in” are off by default in the interest of expediency, and you need to open your system to bootloader tampering just to install it. It’s fine for installing and running the odd desktop app every once in a while, but I’d hesitate to trust it with anything sensitive.

Finally, while our tests have shown that SteamOS generally performs at least as well, if not better, than Windows running on the same hardware, the first-party version of SteamOS is still made with handhelds and other low-power hardware in mind. In my limited testing of SteamOS on desktops with both integrated and with more powerful dedicated GPUs, I’ve generally found that those observations hold up. But I’ve only tested on a narrow range of hardware, and you could easily encounter a setup where SteamOS just doesn’t run games as well as Windows does.

Rolling your own Steam Machine

A Ryzen 7 8700G-based “Steam Machine,” in an InWin Chopin Max case. I enjoy PC building, but the economics of this box aren’t great for most people. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Say you’re interested in having a Steam Machine, you don’t want to wait for Valve, and you don’t just happen to have a spare ideally configured AMD-based PC to sacrifice to the testing gods.

I am more or less happy with my custom-built mini ITX Steam Machine, but I find it difficult to recommend this hardware combination to basically anybody at this point. For me, it scratched a PC-building itch, and the potential for future upgradability is mildly interesting to me. But given the high cost of AMD’s Socket AM5 platform and spiking costs for RAM and SSDs, it’s going to be difficult to put together an 8700G-focused system in an InWin Chopin for less than $800. And that’s a whole lot to pay for a years-old Radeon 780M GPU.

For a more budget-friendly Steam Machine, consider the range of no-name mini PCs available on Amazon and some other places. We’ve dabbled with systems from manufacturers like Aoostar, Beelink, Bosgame, and GMKtec before and come away conditionally impressed by the ratio of utility-to-performance, and YouTubers like RetroGameCorps and ETA Prime periodically cover new ones and generally have positive things to say. You’re rolling the dice on long-term reliability and support, but it’s also tough to argue with the convenience of the form factor or the pricing compared to a custom-built system.

If you’re going this route, we have some general recommendations and performance numbers, based on testing of similar chips in other laptops and desktops. Note that the Ryzen 6800U/Radeon 680M system is an Acer Swift Edge 16 laptop with 16GB of soldered DDR5, while the Ryzen 7840U/Radeon 780M system is a Framework Laptop 13 with non-soldered DDR5. Performance may differ a few FPS in either direction depending on your hardware configuration. The Ryzen 7700X/Radeon RX 7600 system is a custom-built testbed desktop similar to the one we use for testing CPUs and GPUs; based on hardware alone, we’d expect the real Steam Machine to perform near or slightly below .

A handful of numbers from a single game, to show relative performance differences between some integrated and low-end dedicated AMD GPUs. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

In the $350 to $400 range, look for PCs with a Ryzen 6800-series chip in them, like the 6800H or 6850H (here’s one from GMKTec for $385, and one from Beelink for $379). These processors come with a Radeon 680M integrated GPU, with 12 compute units (CUs) based on the RDNA2 architecture. These boxes will offer performance slightly superior to the actual Steam Deck, which uses eight RDNA2 CUs and squeezes them into a system with a small power envelope.

If you can spend around $500, that generally seems to get you the best performance for the price right now. Look for processors in the Ryzen 7040 or 8040 series, or the Ryzen 250 series (here’s one for $$490 from GMKtec, one for $499 from Bosgame, and one for $449 from Aoostar). These chips all offer broadly similar combinations of eight Zen 4-based CPU cores, and a 12-core Radeon 780M GPU based on the RDNA3 architecture.

In a mini desktop, this GPU can come pretty close to doubling the performance of the Steam Deck, though it will still fall short of most dedicated graphics cards. It’s similar to the performance level of the non-Extreme version of the Ryzen Z2 chip for competing handhelds. The 780M is also the same GPU that comes with the Ryzen 8700G desktop chip I use, and I’ve found that it gets you decent 1080p performance in many games.

The GPU is the most important thing to focus on in these systems, since it’s going to have the most impact on the way games actually run. But keep an eye on RAM and storage, too; a 1TB SSD is obviously preferable to a 500GB SSD. And while most of these come with a healthy 32GB of RAM by default, pay attention to the type of RAM. If it just says “DDR5,” that’s most likely to be socketed RAM that’s a bit slower, but which you can upgrade yourself if you want. If it comes with LPDDR5X, that’s going to be soldered down, but also a bit faster, maximizing your graphics performance.

The Steam Deck is a useful benchmark here, because it’s a fixed hardware platform that’s popular enough that PC game developers sometimes go out of their way to target. Games often include Steam Deck-specific graphics presets, which are a useful starting point when you’re fiddling with settings.

I would generally try to avoid systems with Ryzen AI 300-series chips in them—their Radeon 890M GPUs are faster, but they can also be twice as expensive as the Radeon 780M boxes. I’d also stay away from anything with Ryzen 5000 or 3000-series chips, or Ryzen 7030-series chips. The price tags on these $200 to $300 systems are tempting, and they will probably run SteamOS, but their older Vega-based GPUs will fall far short of the Steam Deck’s GPU, let alone the Radeon 680M or 780M.

The Framework Desktop is a compelling alternative to the actual Steam Machine, if you don’t mind paying for it. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

OK, but what if you have more money to spend, and you’re more interested in 1440p or 4K gaming performance (roughly what Valve is targeting with the actual Steam Machine)? I think that the Framework Desktop is a surprisingly good fit here; $1,200 will get you a console-sized PC with an eight-core Zen 5 CPU, a Radeon 8050S GPU with 32 CUs based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture (the Steam Machine has 28 RDNA3 CUs), 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. I can confirm firsthand that SteamOS 3.8/3.9 installs and runs just fine.

This desktop is probably a bit more expensive than the Steam Machine will end up being, but it’s impossible to say how much more expensive before Valve actually puts out a price.

The TV PC is ready for its close-up

TV-connected PCs have historically been a niche thing. They’re expensive, they’re finicky, and purpose-built game consoles have always provided a more pleasant and seamless experience for people who just want to do everything with a controller from the couch.

But the TV PC could finally be ready for its moment. In SteamOS, Valve has created a pretty good, pretty widely compatible Windows substitute that buries a lot of the PC’s complexity (without totally removing it, for the people who want it sometimes). Like the Nintendo Switch, Valve has crafted a user interface that feels good to use on a handheld screen and on a TV from 10 feet away.

And this is happening at the same time as a weird detente in the console wars, where Sony seems to be embracing PC ports and easing up on exclusive releases at the same time as Microsoft seems, for all intents and purposes, to be winding down the Xbox hardware operation in favor of Windows. Valve is way out in front of Microsoft on its console-style PC interface at the same time as the PC is becoming a sort of universally compatible über-console.

I’m kind of the ideal audience for the Steam Machine; nearly all my PC games are on Steam, I play practically nothing that requires anti-cheat software, and I play mostly graphically undemanding indie games rather than GPU-bruising AAA titles. So, you know, take my enthusiasm for the concept with a grain of salt.

But as someone who has already functionally been living with a Steam Machine for months, I think that Valve’s new hardware could do for living room PCs what the Steam Deck has done for handhelds: defining and expanding a product category that others have tried and failed to crack. This year, my Steam Machine has ably kept up with me as I’ve played Silksong, UFO 50, Dave the Diver, both HD-2D Dragon Quest remakes, part of a bad-guy run through Baldur’s Gate III, some multiplayer Vampire Survivors experimentation, several Jackbox Party Pack sessions, and more besides. I’ve never been less tempted to buy a PlayStation 5.

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

I’ve already been using a “Steam Machine” for months, and I think it’s great Read More »

Google will let Android power users bypass upcoming sideloading restrictions

Apps, developers, Google, Tech / 9u50fv / November 13, 2025

Google recently decided that the freedom afforded by Android was a bit too much and announced developer verification, a system that will require developers outside the Google Play platform to register with Google. Users and developers didn’t accept Google’s rationale and have been complaining loudly. As Google begins early access testing, it has conceded that “experienced users” should have an escape hatch.

According to Google, online scam and malware campaigns are getting more aggressive, and there’s real harm being done in spite of the platform’s sideloading scare screens. Google says it’s common for scammers to use social engineering to create a false sense of urgency, prompting users to bypass Android’s built-in protections to install malicious apps.

Google’s solution to this problem, as announced several months ago, is to force everyone making apps to verify their identities. Unverified apps won’t install on any Google-certified device once verification rolls out. Without this, the company claims malware creators can endlessly create new apps to scam people. However, the centralized nature of verification threatened to introduce numerous headaches into a process that used to be straightforward for power users.

This isn’t the first time Google has had to pull back on its plans. Each time the company releases a new tidbit about verification, it compromises a little more. Previously, it confirmed that a free verification option would be available for hobbyists and students who wanted to install apps on a small number of devices. It also conceded that installation over ADB via a connected computer would still be allowed.

Now, Google has had to acknowledge that its plans for verification are causing major backlash among developers and people who know what an APK is. So there will be an alternative, but we don’t know how it will work just yet.

How high is your risk tolerance?

Google’s latest verification update explains that the company has received a lot of feedback from users and developers who want to be able to sideload without worrying about verification status. For those with “higher risk tolerance,” Google is exploring ways to make that happen. This is a partial victory for power users, but the nature of Google’s “advanced flow” for sideloading is murky.

Google will let Android power users bypass upcoming sideloading restrictions Read More »

Review: New Framework Laptop 16 takes a fresh stab at the upgradeable laptop GPU

AMD, AMD Ryzen, Features, framework, framework laptop 13, framework laptop 16, gaming, NVIDIA, nvidia geforce, Reviews, right to repair, Tech / 9u50fv / November 12, 2025

framework laptop 16, take two

New components make it more useful and powerful but no less odd.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The original Framework Laptop 16 was trying to crack a problem that laptop makers have wrestled with on and off for years: Can you deliver a reasonably powerful, portable workstation and gaming laptop that supports graphics card upgrades just like a desktop PC?

Specs at a glance: Framework Laptop 16 (2025)
OS	Windows 11 25H2
CPU	AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (4 Zen 5 cores, 4 Zen 5c cores)
RAM	32GB DDR5-5600 (upgradeable)
GPU	AMD Radeon 860M (integrated)/Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (dedicated)
SSD	1TB Western Digital Black SN770
Battery	85 WHr
Display	16-inch 2560×1600 165 Hz matte non-touchscreen
Connectivity	6x recessed USB-C ports (2x USB 4, 4x USB 3.2) with customizable “Expansion Card” dongles
Weight	4.63 pounds (2.1 kg) without GPU, 5.29 pounds (2.4 kg) with GPU
Price as tested	Roughly $2,649 for pre-built edition; $2,517 for DIY edition with no OS

Even in these days of mostly incremental, not-too-exciting GPU upgrades, the graphics card in a gaming PC or graphics-centric workstation will still feel its age faster than your CPU will. And the chance to upgrade that one component for hundreds of dollars instead of spending thousands replacing the entire machine is an appealing proposition.

Upgradeable, swappable GPUs would also make your laptop more flexible—you can pick and choose from various GPUs from multiple vendors based on what you want and need, whether that’s raw performance, power efficiency, Linux support, or CUDA capabilities.

Framework’s first upgrade to the Laptop 16—the company’s first upgrade to any of its products aside from the original Laptop 13—gets us pretty close to that reality. The laptop can now support two interchangeable motherboards: one with an older AMD Ryzen 7040-series CPU and one with a new Ryzen AI 300-series CPU. And both motherboards can be used either with just an integrated GPU or with dedicated GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia.

The Nvidia GeForce 5070 graphics module is the most exciting and significant part of this batch of updates, but there are plenty of other updates and revisions to the laptop’s external and internal components, too. These upgrades don’t address all of our problems with the initial version of the laptop, but they do help quite a bit. And a steady flow of updates like these would definitely make the Laptop 16 a platform worth investing in.

Re-meet the Framework Laptop 16

Framework’s Laptop 13 stacked on top of the 16. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Framework treats each of its laptops as a platform to be modified and built upon rather than something to be wholly redesigned and replaced every time it’s updated. So these reviews necessarily re-cover ground we have already covered—I’ve also reused some of the photos from last time, since this is quite literally the same laptop in most respects. I’ll point you to the earlier review for detailed notes on the build process and how the laptop is put together.

To summarize our high-level notes about the look, feel, and design of the Framework Laptop 16: While the Framework Laptop 13 can plausibly claim to be in the same size and weight class as portables like the 13-inch MacBook Air, the Framework Laptop 16 is generally larger and heavier than the likes of the 16-inch MacBook Pro or portable PC workstations like the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 or Dell 16 Premium. That’s doubly true once you actually add a dedicated graphics module to the Laptop 16—these protrude a couple of inches from the back of the laptop and add around two-thirds of a pound to its weight.

	Frame-work 16 (no GPU)	Frame-work 16 (GPU)	Apple 16-inch MBP	Dell 16 Premium	Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8	HP ZBook X G1i	Lenovo Legion Pro 5i Gen 10	Razer Blade 16
Size (H x W x D inches)	0.71 x 14.04 x 10.63	0.82 x 14.04 x 11.43	0.66 x 14.01 x 9.77	0.75 x 14.1 x 9.4	0.39-0.62 x 13.95 x 9.49	0.9 x 14.02 x 9.88	0.85-1.01 x 14.34 x 10.55	0.59-0.69 x 13.98 x 9.86
Weight	4.63 lbs	5.29 lbs	4.7-4.8 lbs	4.65 pounds	4.06 lbs	4.5 lbs	5.56 lbs	4.71 lbs

You certainly can find laptops from the major PC OEMs that come close to or even exceed the size and weight of the Laptop 16. But in most cases, you’ll find that comparably specced and priced laptops are an inch or two less deep and at least half a pound lighter than the Laptop 16 with a dedicated GPU installed.

But if you’re buying from Framework, you’re probably at least notionally interested in customizing, upgrading, and repairing your laptop over time, all things that Framework continues to do better than any other company.

The Laptop 16’s customizable keyboard deck is still probably its coolest feature—it’s a magnetically attached series of panels that allows you to remove and replace components without worrying about the delicate and finicky ribbon cables the Laptop 13 uses. Practically, the most important aspect of this customizable keyboard area is that it lets you decide whether you want to install a dedicated number pad or not; this also allows you to choose whether you want the trackpad to be aligned with the center of the laptop or with wherever the middle of the keyboard is.

It might look a little rough, but the customizable keyboard deck is still probably the coolest thing about the Laptop 16 in day-to-day use. Andrew Cunningham

But Framework also sells an assortment of other functional and cosmetic panels and spacers to let users customize the laptop to their liking. The coolest, oddest accessories are still probably the LED matrix spacers and the clear, legend-less keyboard and number pad modules. We still think this assortment of panels gives the system a vaguely unfinished look, but Framework is clearly going for function over form here.

The Laptop 16 also continues to use Framework’s customizable, swappable Expansion Card modules. In theory, these let you pick the number and type of ports your laptop has, as well as customize your port setup on the fly based on what you need. But as with all AMD Ryzen-based Framework Laptops, there are some limits to what each port can do.

According to Framework’s support page, there’s no single Expansion Card slot that is truly universal:

Ports 1 and 4 support full 40Gbps USB 4 transfer speeds, display outputs, and up to 240 W charging, but if you use a USB-A Expansion Card in those slots, you’ll increase power use and reduce battery life.
Ports 2 and 4 support display outputs, up to 240 W charging, and lower power usage for USB-A ports, but they top out at 10Gbps USB 3.2 transfer speeds. Additionally, port 5 (the middle port on the right side of the laptop, if you’re looking at it head-on) supports the DisplayPort 1.4 standard where the others support DisplayPort 2.1.
Ports 3 and 4 are limited to 10Gbps USB 3.2 transfer speeds and don’t support display outputs or charging.

The Laptop 16 also doesn’t include a dedicated headphone jack, so users will need to burn one of their Expansion Card slots to get one.

Practically speaking, most users will be able to come up with a port arrangement that fits their needs, and it’s still handy to be able to add and remove things like Ethernet ports, HDMI ports, or SD card readers on an as-needed basis. But choosing the right Expansion Card slot for the job will still require some forethought, and customizable ports aren’t as much of a selling point for a 16-inch laptop as they are for a 13-inch laptop (the Framework Laptop 13 was partly a response to laptops like the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13 that only came with a small number of USB-C ports; larger laptops have mostly kept their larger number and variety of ports).

What’s new in 2025’s Framework Laptop 16?

An upgraded motherboard and a new graphics module form the heart of this year’s Laptop 16 upgrade. The motherboard steps up from AMD Ryzen 7040-series processors to AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 and Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chips. These are the same processors Framework put into the Laptop 13 earlier this year, though they ought to be able to run a bit faster in the Laptop 16 due to its larger heatsink and dual-fan cooling system.

Along with an upgrade from Zen 4-based CPU cores to Zen 5 cores, the Ryzen AI series includes an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU) that is fast enough to earn Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC label. These PCs have access to a handful of unique Windows 11 AI and machine-learning features (yes, Recall, but not just Recall) that are processed locally rather than in the cloud. If you don’t care about these features, you can mostly just ignore them, but if you do care, this is the first version of the Laptop 16 to support them.

Most of the new motherboard’s other specs and features are pretty similar to the first-generation version; there are two SO-DIMM slots for up to 96GB of DDR5-5600, one M.2 2280 slot for the system’s main SSD, and one M.2 2230 slot for a secondary SSD. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth connectivity are provided by an AMD RZ717 Wi-Fi card that can at least theoretically also be replaced with something faster down the line if you want.

The more exciting upgrade, however, may be the GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. This is the first time Framework has offered an Nvidia product—its other GPUs have all come from either Intel or AMD—and it gives the new Laptop 16 access to Nvidia technologies like DLSS and CUDA, as well as much-improved performance for games with ray-traced lighting effects.

Those hoping for truly high-end graphics options for the Laptop 16 will need to keep waiting, though. The laptop version of the RTX 5070 is actually the same chip as the desktop version of the RTX 5060, a $300 graphics card with 8GB of RAM. As much as it adds to the Laptop 16, it still won’t let you come anywhere near 4K in most modern games, and for some, it may even struggle to take full advantage of the internal 165 Hz 1600p screen. Professional workloads (including AI workloads) that require more graphics RAM will also find the mobile 5070 lacking.

Old 180 W charger on top, new 240 W charger on bottom. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Other components have gotten small updates as well. For those who upgrade an existing Laptop 16 with the new motherboard, Framework is selling 2nd-generation keyboard and number pad components. But their main update over the originals is new firmware that “includes a fix to prevent the system from waking while carried in a bag.” Owners of the original keyboard can install a firmware update to get the same functionality (and make their input modules compatible with the new board).

Upgraders should also note that the original system’s 180 W power adapter has been replaced with a 240 W model, the maximum amount of power that current USB-C and USB-PD standards are capable of delivering. You can charge the laptop with just about any USB-C power brick, but anything lower than 240 W risks reducing performance (or having the battery drain faster than it can charge).

Finally, the laptop uses a second-generation 16-inch, 2560×1600, 165 Hz LCD screen. It’s essentially identical in every way to the first-generation screen, but it formally supports G-Sync, Nvidia’s adaptive sync implementation. The original screen can still be used with the new motherboard, but it only supports AMD’s FreeSync, and Framework told us a few months ago that the panel supplier had no experience providing consumer-facing firmware updates that might add G-Sync to the old display. It’s probably not worth replacing the entire screen for, but it’s worth noting whether you’re upgrading the laptop or buying a new one.

Performance

Framework sent us the lower-end Ryzen AI 7 350 processor configuration for our new board, making it difficult to do straightforward apples-to-apples comparisons to the high-end Ryzen 9 7940HS in our first-generation Framework board. We did test the new chip, and you’ll see its results in our charts.

We’ve also provided numbers from the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in the Asus Zenbook S16 UM5606W to show approximately where you can expect the high-end Framework Laptop 16 configuration to land (Framework’s integrated graphics performance will be marginally worse since it’s using slower socketed RAM rather than LPDDR5X; other numbers may differ based on how each manufacturer has configured the chip’s power usage and thermal behavior). We’ve also included numbers from the same chip in the Framework Laptop 13, though Framework’s spec sheets indicate that the chips have different power limits and thus will perform differently.

We were able to test the new GeForce GPU in multiple configurations—both paired with the new Ryzen AI 7 350 processor and with the old Ryzen 9 7940HS chip. This should give anyone who bought the original Laptop 16 an idea of what kind of performance increase they can expect from the new GPU alone. In all, we’ve tested or re-tested:

The Ryzen 7 7940HS CPU from the first-generation Laptop 16 and its integrated Radeon 780M GPU
The Ryzen 7 7940HS and the original Radeon RX 7700S GPU module
The Ryzen 7 7940HS and the new GeForce RTX 5070 GPU module, for upgraders who only want to grab the new GPU
The Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU and the GeForce RTX 5070 GPU

We also did some light testing on the Radeon 860M integrated GPU included with the Ryzen AI 7 350.

All the Laptop 16 performance tests were run with Windows’ Best Performance power preset enabled, which will slightly boost performance at the expense of power efficiency.

Given all of those hardware combinations, we simply ran out of time to test the new motherboard with the old Radeon RX 7700S GPU—Framework is continuing to sell it, so it is a realistic combination of components. But our RTX 5070 testing suggests that these GPUs will perform pretty much the same regardless of which CPU you pair them with.

If you’re buying the cheaper Laptop 16 with the Ryzen AI 7 350, the good news is that it generally performs at least as well as—and usually a bit better than—the high-end Ryzen 9 7940HS from the last-generation model. Performance is also pretty similar to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in smaller, thinner laptops—the extra power and cooling capacity in the Laptop 16 is paying off here. People choosing between a PC and a Mac should note that none of these Ryzen chips come anywhere near the M4 Pro used in comparably priced 16-inch MacBook Pros, but that’s just where the PC ecosystem is these days.

How big an upgrade the GeForce 5070 will be depends on the game you’re playing. In titles like Borderlands 3 that naturally run a bit better on AMD’s GPUs, there’s not much of a difference at all. In games like Cyberpunk 2077 with heavy ray-tracing effects enabled, the mobile RTX 5070 can be nearly twice as fast as the RX 7700S.

Most games will fall somewhere in between those two extremes; our tests show that the improvements hover between 20 and 30 percent most of the time, just a shade less than the 30 to 40 percent improvement that Framework claimed in its original announcement.

Beyond raw performance, the other thing you get with an Nvidia GPU is access to a bunch of important proprietary technologies like DLSS upscaling and CUDA—these technologies are often better and more widely supported than the equivalent technologies that AMD’s or Intel’s GPUs use, thanks in part to Nvidia’s overall dominance of the dedicated GPU market.

In the tests we’ve run on them, the Radeon 860M and 890M are both respectable integrated GPUs (the lower-end 860M typically falls just short of last generation’s top-end 780M, but it’s very close). They’re never able to provide more than a fraction of the Radeon RX 7700S’s performance, let alone the RTX 5070, but they’ll handle a lot of lighter games at 1080p. I would not buy a system this large or heavy just to use it with an integrated GPU.

Better to be unique than perfect

It’s expensive and quirky, but the Framework Laptop 16 is worth considering because it’s so different from what most other laptop makers are doing. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Our original Framework Laptop 16 review called it “fascinating but flawed,” and the parts that made it flawed haven’t really changed much over the last two years. It’s still relatively large and heavy; the Expansion Card system still makes less sense in a larger laptop than it does in a thin-and-light; the puzzle-like grid of input modules and spacers looks kind of rough and unfinished.

But the upgrades do help to shift things in the Laptop 16’s favor. Its modular and upgradeable design was always a theoretical selling point, but the laptop now actually offers options that other laptops don’t.

The presence of both AMD and Nvidia GPUs is a big step up in flexibility for both gaming and professional applications. The GeForce module is a better all-around choice, with slightly to significantly faster game performance and proprietary technologies like DLSS and CUDA, while the Radeon GPU is a cheaper option with better support for Linux.

Given their cost, I still wish that these GPUs were more powerful—they’re between $350 or $449 for the Radeon RX 7700S and between $650 and $699 for the RTX 5070 (prices vary a bit and are cheaper when you’re buying them together with a new laptop rather than buying them separately). You’ll basically always spend more for a gaming laptop than you will for a gaming desktop with similar or better performance, but that does feel like an awful lot to spend for GPUs that are still limited to 8GB of RAM.

Cost is a major issue for the Laptop 16 in general. You may save money in the long run by buying a laptop that you can replace piece-by-piece as you need to rather than all at once. But it’s not even remotely difficult to find similar specs from the major PC makers for hundreds of dollars less. We can’t vouch for the build quality or longevity of any of those PCs, but it does mean that you have to be willing to pay an awful lot just for Framework’s modularity and upgradeability. That’s true to some degree of the Laptop 13 as well, but the price gap between the 13 and competing systems isn’t as large as it is for the 16.

Whatever its lingering issues, the Framework Laptop 16 is still worth considering because there’s nothing else quite like it, at least if you’re in the market for something semi-portable and semi-powerful. The MacBook Pro exists if you want something more appliance-like, and there’s a whole spectrum of gaming and workstation PCs in between with all kinds of specs, sizes, and prices. To stand out from those devices, it’s probably better to be unique than to be perfect, and the reformulated Laptop 16 certainly clears that bar.

The good

Modular, repairable, upgradeable design that’s made to last
Cool, customizable keyboard deck
Nvidia GeForce GPU option gives the Laptop 16 access to some gaming and GPU computing features that weren’t usable with AMD GPUs
GPU upgrade can be added to first-generation Framework Laptop 16
New processors are a decent performance improvement and are worth considering for new buyers
Old Ryzen 7040-series motherboard is sticking around as an entry-level option, knocking $100 off the former base price ($1,299 and up for a barebones DIY edition, $1,599 and up for the cheapest pre-built)
Framework’s software support has gotten better in the last year

The bad

Big and bulky for the specs you get
Mix-and-match input modules and spacers give it a rough, unfinished sort of look
Ryzen AI motherboards are more expensive than the originals were when they launched

The ugly

It’ll cost you—the absolute bare minimum price for Ryzen AI 7 350 and RTX 5070 combo is $2,149, and that’s without RAM, an SSD, or an operating system

Review: New Framework Laptop 16 takes a fresh stab at the upgradeable laptop GPU Read More »

Google announces even more AI in Photos app, powered by Nano Banana

AI, AI images, Artificial Intelligence, Google, google photos, Tech / Beth Washington / November 11, 2025

We’re running out of ways to tell you that Google is releasing more generative AI features, but that’s what’s happening in Google Photos today. The Big G is finally making good on its promise to add its market-leading Nano Banana image-editing model to the app. The model powers a couple of features, and it’s not just for Google’s Android platform. Nano Banana edits are also coming to the iOS version of the app.

Nano Banana started making waves when it appeared earlier this year as an unbranded demo. You simply feed the model an image and tell it what edits you want to see. Google said Nano Banana was destined for the Photos app back in October, but it’s only now beginning the rollout. The Photos app already had conversational editing in the “Help Me Edit” feature, but it was running an older non-fruit model that produced inferior results. Nano Banana editing will produce AI slop, yes, but it’s better slop.

Nano Banana in Help me edit

Google says the updated Help Me Edit feature has access to your private face groups, so you can use names in your instructions. For example, you could type “Remove Riley’s sunglasses,” and Nano Banana will identify Riley in the photo (assuming you have a person of that name saved) and make the edit without further instructions. You can also ask for more fantastical edits in Help Me Edit, changing the style of the image from top to bottom.

Google announces even more AI in Photos app, powered by Nano Banana Read More »

Apple TV execs dismiss introducing an ad tier, buying Warner Bros. Discovery

ads, Apple, Apple TV, streaming, Tech / Shannon Garcia / November 10, 2025

Focused on original content

Another obvious way to grow Apple TV is through more subscribers. With talk of Warner Bros. Discovery considering a sale, it’s worth wondering if Apple TV may try to grow through acquisition. But the execs Screen International spoke with seemed focused on building out Apple TV’s library with originals. Cue noted that “at least in the timeframe that we’re thinking about right now, we’re not looking at licensing any content or adding anything to our service.”

“We’re building an all-original services; we’re not building on the back of pre-existing IP or library,” Jamie Erlicht, one of Apple’s heads of worldwide video, said.

More directly, when asked if Apple might buy Warner Bros., A24, or Disney, Cue pointed out that Apple hasn’t historically done “a lot of major acquisitions.”

“We do very small acquisitions in general, not related to Apple TV, so I don’t see that happening because we like what we’re doing,” Cue said.

Since its 2019 debut, some have questioned whether Apple TV is an authentic attempt to improve streaming options for customers, or if Apple TV is a “vanity project,” as Screen International put it, or if the service is merely a tool for getting people to buy other Apple products. Naturally, the interviewed executives claimed that the service is built on a commitment to distributing unique and premium shows and movies.

The interview provided more insight on how Apple TV leadership defines the latter. Zack Van Amburg, one of Apple’s heads of worldwide video, said:

A core tenet of everything Apple does is the notion that humanity needs to be at the center of it, and that’s everything from app design to hardware engineering, to everything in between. We try to think a little more deeply about that.

Our shows and our movies tend to be about the emotional experience, the stakes involved, even when we’re doing a comedy.

Apple TV execs dismiss introducing an ad tier, buying Warner Bros. Discovery Read More »

Commercial spyware “Landfall” ran rampant on Samsung phones for almost a year

android, malware, samsung, Security, smartphones, spyware, Tech / Mike M. / November 8, 2025

Before the April 2025 patch, Samsung phones had a vulnerability in their image processing library. This is a zero-click attack because the user doesn’t need to launch anything. When the system processes the malicious image for display, it extracts shared object library files from the ZIP to run the Landfall spyware. The payload also modifies the device’s SELinux policy to give Landfall expanded permissions and access to data.

Landfall flowchart — How Landfall exploits Samsung phones. Credit: Unit 42

The infected files appear to have been delivered to targets via messaging apps like WhatsApp. Unit 42 notes that Landfall’s code references several specific Samsung phones, including the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S23, Galaxy S24, Galaxy Z Flip 4, and Galaxy Z Fold 4. Once active, Landfall reaches out to a remote server with basic device information. The operators can then extract a wealth of data, like user and hardware IDs, installed apps, contacts, any files stored on the device, and browsing history. It can also activate the camera and microphone to spy on the user.

Removing the spyware is no easy feat, either. Because of its ability to manipulate SELinux policies, it can burrow deeply into the system software. It also includes several tools that help evade detection. Based on the VirusTotal submissions, Unit 42 believes Landfall was active in 2024 and early 2025 in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Morocco. The vulnerability may have been present in Samsung’s software from Android 13 through Android 15, the company suggests.

Unit 42 says that several naming schemes and server responses share similarities with industrial spyware developed by big cyber-intelligence firms like NSO Group and Variston. However, they cannot directly tie Landfall to any particular group. While this attack was highly targeted, the details are now in the open, and other threat actors could now employ similar methods to access unpatched devices. Anyone with a supported Samsung phone should make certain they are on the April 2025 patch or later.

Commercial spyware “Landfall” ran rampant on Samsung phones for almost a year Read More »

Gemini Deep Research comes to Google Finance, backed by prediction market data

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Tech / Kelly Newman / November 8, 2025

Bet on it

Financial markets can turn on a dime, and AI can’t predict the future. However, Google seems to think that people make smart predictions in aggregate when there’s money on the line. That’s why, as part of the Finance update, Google has partnered with Kalshi and Polymarket, the current leaders in online prediction markets.

These platforms let people place bets on, well, just about anything. If you have a hunch when Google will release Gemini 3.0, when the government shutdown will end, or the number of Tweets Elon Musk will post this month, you can place a wager on it. Maybe you’ll earn money, but more likely, you’ll lose it—only 12.7 percent of crypto wallets on Polymarket show profits.

Google Finance prediction markets — Credit: Google

Google says it will get fresh prediction data from both sites, which will allow Gemini to speculate on the future with “the wisdom of crowds.” Google suggests you could type “What will GDP growth be for 2025?” into the search box. Finance will pull the latest probabilities from Kalshi and Polymarket to generate a response that could include graphs and charts based on people’s bets. Naturally, Google does not make promises as to the accuracy of these predictions.

The new AI features of Google Finance are coming to all US users in the next few weeks, and starting this week, the service will make its debut in India. Likewise, the predictions market data will arrive in the next couple of weeks. If that’s not fast enough, you can opt-in to get early access via the Google Labs page.

Gemini Deep Research comes to Google Finance, backed by prediction market data Read More »

Higher prices, simpler streaming expected if HBO Max folds into Paramount+

HBO, HBO Max, mergers, paramount, paramount plus, streaming, Tech, warner bros. discovery / 9u50fv / November 7, 2025

The end of HBO Max is “certainly plausible.”

A still from the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us. Credit: HBO

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a ‘for sale’ sign up. And that could mean big changes for subscribers to the company’s most popular streaming service, HBO Max.

After receiving unsolicited acquisition offers, WBD recently declared itself open to “strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.” WBD drew new attention by being open to selling its streaming business (WBD is also still open to moving forward with previously shared plans to split into a cable company and a streaming and movie studios company next year).

Naturally, mergers and acquisitions talk has heated up since then, with Paramount as one of the most eager suitors. Paramount, which merged with Skydance in August, is reportedly planning to keep “much of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. intact” if a deal happens, per a Bloomberg report that cited unnamed people familiar with the plans of David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO.

For HBO Max subscribers, the most pertinent part of Bloomberg’s report follows:

Under Ellison’s plan, Warner Bros.’ HBO Max streaming service would merge into the existing Paramount+ platform, one of the people said. He believes combining the offerings will allow more people to see the work of film and TV show creators. The libraries of the two companies will make Paramount+ more compelling for subscribers.

The purported strategy would likely end the ability to subscribe to HBO Max in favor of the opportunity to pay for a beefier version of Paramount+.

More broadly, the merger talks bring into question the future for HBO Max subscribers should Warner Bros. engage in any sort of M&A activity with one of its most desirable businesses.

Higher prices are possible

Choice is typically seen as good for consumers. But in the case of streaming, which only recently overtook broadcast and cable viewing, the recent expansion of services available is often viewed negatively. Streaming fragmentation forces people to jump from service to service in order to find something to watch and to pay for more subscriptions.

As a result, a WBD merger could be a double-edged sword for streaming subscribers. The most obvious con is the potential for price hikes.

Speaking to Ars about a potential WBD merger, Vikrant Mathur, co-founder of streaming technology provider Future Today, said:

On one hand, it means subscribers getting access to a larger library, a simpler content discovery, and a consistent streaming experience, but on the other, we risk increasing subscription costs for current subscribers of both services, a trend that has been leading to subscription fatigue and diminishing the original promise of streaming.

Max Alderman, partner at FE International, an M&A advisory firm with a specialty in content businesses, said HBO Max subscribers can expect “friction” if Paramount buys HBO Max. He pointed out that overlapping platforms often result in “temporary confusion around pricing, content access, and brand continuity.” Alderman added:

Over the longer run, though, a combined offering could improve content breadth and potentially deliver better value per dollar.

Still, a Paramount-owned HBO Max stands the risk of failing to meet subscribers’ expectations, “especially for a service like HBO Max that’s earned a reputation for high-end, prestige programming,” Julie Clark, VP of media and entertainment at TransUnion, which works in streaming ads, told Ars.

The end of HBO Max?

With cable declining, HBO Max is the HBO brand’s best bet at longevity. The idea of HBO dissolving into shows and movies that you find on Paramount+ doesn’t sound like a fitting ending to a 53-year-old brand that has brought us shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and White Lotus. HBO has gone through multiple streaming rebrands, but the end of a dedicated HBO streaming service, as suggested by Bloomberg’s report, is a different level. Yet, HBO Max folding into Paramount+ is “certainly plausible,” according to Alderman.

“The current market doesn’t support redundant platforms competing for the same audience,” he explained.

Today’s streaming services are focused on reaching and maintaining profitability long term. In its most recent earnings report, Paramount’s streaming business, which includes Paramount+, BET+, and Pluto TV, reported adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization of $157 million, up from $26 million a year ago. The numbers were largely driven by Paramount+ growing subscribers to 77.7 million and charging more.

In its earnings report this week, WBD said that its streaming business, which includes HBO Max and Discovery+, posted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of $345 million, compared to $289 million a year ago. WBD claims 128 million streaming subscribers, primarily through HBO Max.

“This potential merger underscores the escalating content and distribution costs in the industry,” Alderman said. “For [subscription video on demand platforms] to succeed, they need scale of revenue, as well as operational cost efficiencies, both of which can come through consolidation.”

It’s understandable that a brand that acquires HBO Max would seek to streamline operations with any streaming business that it already owns. But it’s hard to imagine any buyer throwing out the HBO name.

“I’d be skeptical that the HBO brand is going away completely. We’ve seen the name yo-yo, and it’s clear that it still packs a punch for consumers looking for premium content,” Clark said.

Even if HBO Max lives as a tile within the Paramount+ app, or the app of another buyer, (à la Hulu under Disney+), it wouldn’t make sense to get rid of the legendary acronym completely.

“HBO is one of the few streaming brands that still commands prestige pricing,” Alderman said.

If a company does acquire any form of HBO, one of its top challenges is expected to be streamlining operations while maintaining HBO’s premium brand. This could be especially difficult under a “more mainstream umbrella like Paramount+,” Alderman noted.

Streaming has already diluted the HBO brand somewhat. Through streaming, HBO is now associated with stuff from DC Comics and Cartoon Network, as well as reality shows, like 90 Day Fiancé and Naked and Afraid. Merging with Paramount+ or even Netflix could expand the HBO umbrella more.

That expanded umbrella could allow a company like Paramount to better compete against Netflix, something WBD executives have shied away from. HBO Max is “not everything for everyone in a household,” JB Perrette, WBD’s streaming president and CEO, said this spring.

“What people want from us in a world where they’ve got Netflix and Amazon [Prime Video] are those things that differentiate us,” Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content, told The Wall Street Journal in May.

A “stress test” for more streaming mergers

Aside from the impact on HBO Max subscribers, WBD’s merger talks have broad implications. A deal would open the door for much more consolidation in the streaming space, something that experts have been anticipating for some years and that addresses the boom of streaming services. Per Clark, discussions of a Paramount-WBD merger are “less about two studios joining forces and more about a stress test for future M&A.”

If WBD accepts a Paramount bid and that bid clears regulatory hurdles, it would signal that “premium content under fewer umbrellas is back in play,” Clark said.

A Paramount-WBD merger is likely to speed up consolidation among mid-tier players, like NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, and AMC, Alderman said, pointing to these companies’ interest in scaling their streaming businesses and in building differentiated portfolios to counter Netflix and Disney+’s expansive libraries.

If Paramount and WBD don’t merge, Clark expects to see more “piecemeal” strategies, such as rights-sharing, joint venture bundles, and streaming-as-a-service models.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

Higher prices, simpler streaming expected if HBO Max folds into Paramount+ Read More »

YouTube TV’s Disney blackout reminds users that they don’t own what they stream

Disney, DVR, Google, streaming, Tech, youtube, youtube TV / Mike M. / November 6, 2025

“I don’t know (or care) which side is responsible for this, but the DVR is not VOD, it is your recording, and shows recorded before the dispute should be available. This is a hard lesson for us all,” an apparently affected customer wrote on Reddit this week.

For current or former cable subscribers, this experience isn’t new. Carrier disputes have temporarily and permanently killed cable subscribers’ access to many channels over the years. And since the early 2000s, many cable companies have phased out DVRs with local storage in favor of cloud-based DVRs. Since then, cable companies have been able to revoke customers’ access to DVR files if, for example, the customer stopped paying for the channel from which the content was recorded. What we’re seeing with YouTube TV’s DVR feature is one of several ways that streaming services mirror cable companies.

Google exits Movies Anywhere

In a move that appears to be best described as tit for tat, Google has removed content purchased via Google Play and YouTube from Movies Anywhere, a Disney-owned unified platform that lets people access digital video purchases from various distributors, including Amazon Prime Video and Fandango.

In removing users’ content, Google may gain some leverage in its discussions with Disney, which is reportedly seeking a larger carriage fee from YouTube TV. The content removals, however, are just one more pain point of the fragmented streaming landscape customers are already dealing with.

Customers inconvenienced

As of this writing, Google and Disney have yet to reach an agreement. On Monday, Google publicly rejected Disney’s request to restore ABC to YouTube TV for yesterday’s election day, although the company showed a willingness to find a way to quickly bring back ABC and ESPN (“the channels that people want,” per Google). Disney has escalated things by making its content unavailable to rent or purchase from all Google platforms.

Google is trying to appease customers by saying it will give YouTube TV subscribers a $20 credit if Disney “content is unavailable for an extended period of time.” Some people online have reported receiving a $10 credit already.

Regardless of how this saga ends, the immediate effects have inconvenienced customers of both companies. People subscribe to streaming services and rely on digital video purchases and recordings for easy, instant access, which Google and Disney’s disagreement has disrupted. The squabble has also served as another reminder that in the streaming age, you don’t really own anything.

YouTube TV’s Disney blackout reminds users that they don’t own what they stream Read More »

Google settlement with Epic caps Play Store fees, boosts other Android app stores

Apps, epic, Google, Google v. Epic, play store, Tech / 9u50fv / November 5, 2025

Under the terms, Google agrees to implement a system in the next version of Android that will give third-party app stores a way to become officially registered as an application source. These “Registered App Stores” will be installable from websites with a single click and without the alarming warnings that accompany traditional sideloads. Again, this will be supported globally rather than only in the US, as the previous order required.

The motion filed with the court doesn’t include much detail on how Registered App Stores will operate once installed. Given Epic’s aversion to the scare screens that appear when sideloading apps, installs managed by registered third-party stores may also be low-friction. The Play Store can install apps without forcing the user to clear a bunch of warnings, and it can update apps automatically. We may see similar capabilities for third parties once Google adds the promised support in the next version of Android.

epic harmful installation — This is the kind of “friction” the settlement would avoid. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

Importantly, Google is allowed to create “reasonable requirements” for certifying these app stores. Reviews may be carried out, and Google can charge fees for that process; however, the fees cannot be revenue-dependent.

The changes detailed in the settlement are not as wide-ranging as Judge Donato’s original order but still mark a shift toward openness. Third-party app stores are getting a boost, developers will enjoy lower fees, and Google won’t drag the process out for years. The parties claim in their joint motion that the agreement does not seek to undo the jury verdict or sidestep the court’s previous order. Rather, it aims to reinforce the court’s intent while eliminating potential delays in realigning the app market.

Google and Epic are going to court on Thursday to ask Judge Donato to approve the settlement, and Google could put the billing changes into practice by late this year. The app store changes would come around June next year when we expect Android 17 to begin rolling out. However, Google’s Android Canary and Beta releases may offer a glimpse of this system earlier in 2026.

Google settlement with Epic caps Play Store fees, boosts other Android app stores Read More »

How to declutter, quiet down, and take the AI out of Windows 11 25H2

Evergreen, Features, install, Tech, Windows 11 / 9u50fv / November 5, 2025

A new major Windows 11 release means a new guide for cleaning up the OS.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

It’s that time of year again—temperatures are dropping, leaves are changing color, and Microsoft is gradually rolling out another major yearly update to Windows 11.

The Windows 11 25H2 update is relatively minor compared to last year’s 24H2 update (the “25” here is a reference to the year the update was released, while the “H2” denotes that it was released in the second half of the year, a vestigial suffix from when Microsoft would release two major Windows updates per year). The 24H2 update came with some major under-the-hood overhauls of core Windows components and significant performance improvements for the Arm version; 25H2 is largely 24H2, but with a rolled-over version number to keep it in line with Microsoft’s timeline for security updates and tech support.

But Microsoft’s continuous update cadence for Windows 11 means that even the 24H2 version as it currently exists isn’t the same one Microsoft released a year ago.

To keep things current, we’ve combed through our Windows cleanup guide, updating it for the current build of Windows 11 25H2 (26200.7019) to help anyone who needs a fresh Windows install or who is finally updating from Windows 10 now that Microsoft is winding down support for it. We’ll outline dozens of individual steps you can take to clean up a “clean install” of Windows 11, which has taken an especially user-hostile attitude toward advertising and forcing the use of other Microsoft products.

As before, this is not a guide about creating an extremely stripped-down, telemetry-free version of Windows; we stick to the things that Microsoft officially supports turning off and removing. There are plenty of experimental hacks and scripts that take it a few steps farther, and/or automate some of the steps we outline here—NTDev’s Tiny11 project is one—but removing built-in Windows components can cause unexpected compatibility and security problems, and Tiny11 has historically had issues with basic table-stakes stuff like “installing security updates.”

These guides capture moments in time, and regular monthly Windows patches, app updates downloaded through the Microsoft Store, and other factors all can and will cause small variations from our directions. You may also see apps or drivers specific to your PC’s manufacturer. This guide also doesn’t cover the additional bloatware that may come out of the box with a new PC, starting instead with a freshly installed copy of Windows from a USB drive.

Table of Contents

Starting with Setup: Avoiding Microsoft account sign-in

The most contentious part of Windows 11’s setup process relative to earlier Windows versions is that it mandates a Microsoft account sign-in, with none of the readily apparent “limited account” fallbacks that existed in Windows 10. As of Windows 11 22H2, that’s true of both the Home and Pro editions.

There are two reasons I can think of not to sign in with a Microsoft account. The first is that you want nothing to do with a Microsoft account, thank you very much. Signing in makes Windows bombard you with more Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Game Pass subscription upsells since all you need to do is add them to an account that already exists, and Windows setup will offer subscriptions to each if you sign in first.

The second—which describes my situation—is that you do use a Microsoft account because it offers some handy benefits like automated encryption of your local drive (having those encryption keys tied to my account has saved me a couple of times) or syncing of browser info and some preferences. But you don’t want to sign in at setup, either because you don’t want to be bothered with the extra upsells or you prefer your user folder to be located at “C:UsersAndrew” rather than “C:Users.”

Regardless of your reasoning, if you don’t want to bother with sign-in at setup, you have a few different options:

Use the command line

During Windows 11 Setup, after selecting a language and keyboard layout but before connecting to a network, hit Shift+F10 to open the command prompt (depending on your keyboard, you may also need to hit the Fn key before pressing F10). Type OOBEBYPASSNRO, hit Enter, and wait for the PC to reboot.

When it comes back, click “I don’t have Internet” on the network setup screen, and you’ll have recovered the option to use “limited setup” (aka a local account) again, like older versions of Windows 10 and 11 offered.

This option has been removed from some Windows 11 testing builds, but it still works as of this writing in 25H2. We may see this option removed in a future update to Windows.

For Windows 11 Pro

For Windows 11 Pro users, there’s a command-line-free workaround you can take advantage of.

Proceed through the Windows 11 setup as you normally would, including connecting to a network and allowing the system to check for updates. Eventually, you’ll be asked whether you’re setting your PC up for personal use or for “work or school.”

Select the “work or school” option, then “sign-in options,” at which point you’ll finally be given a button that says “domain join instead.” Click this to indicate you’re planning to join the PC to a corporate domain (even though you aren’t), and you’ll see the normal workflow for creating a “limited” local account.

The downside is that you’re starting your relationship with your new Windows install by lying to it. But hey, if you’re using the AI features, your computer is probably going to lie to you, too. It all balances out.

Using the Rufus tool

The Rufus tool can streamline a few of the more popular tweaks and workarounds for Windows 11 install media. Rufus is a venerable open source app for creating bootable USB media for both Windows and Linux. If you find yourself doing a lot of Windows 11 installs and don’t want to deal with Microsoft accounts, Rufus lets you tweak the install media itself so that the “limited setup” options always appear, no matter which edition of Windows you’re using.

To start, grab Rufus and then a fresh Windows 11 ISO file from Microsoft. You’ll also want an 8GB or larger USB drive; I’d recommend a 16GB or larger drive that supports USB 3.0 speeds, both to make things go a little faster and to leave yourself extra room for drivers, app installers, and anything else you might want to set a new PC up for the first time. (I also like this SanDisk drive that has a USB-C connector on one end and a USB-A connector on the other to ensure compatibility with all kinds of PCs.)

Fire up Rufus, select your USB drive and the Windows ISO, and hit Start to copy over all of the Windows files. After you hit Start, you’ll be asked if you want to disable some system requirements checks, remove the Microsoft account requirement, or turn off all the data collection settings that Windows asks you about the first time you set it up. What you do here is up to you; I usually turn off the sign-in requirement, but disabling the Secure Boot and TPM checks doesn’t stop those features from working once Windows is installed and running.

The rest of Windows 11 setup

The main thing I do here, other than declining any and all Microsoft 365 or Game Pass offers, is turn all the toggles on the privacy settings screen to “no.” This covers location services, the Find My Device feature, and four toggles that collectively send a small pile of usage and browsing data to Microsoft that it uses “to enhance your Microsoft experiences.” Pro tip: Use the Tab key and spacebar to quickly toggle these without clicking or scrolling.

Of these, I can imagine enabling Find My Device if you’re worried about theft or location services if you want Windows and apps to be able to access your location. But I tend not to send any extra telemetry or browsing data other than the basics (the only exception being on machines I enroll in the Windows Insider Preview program for testing, since Microsoft requires you to send more detailed usage data from those machines to help it test its beta software). If you want to change any of these settings after setup, they’re all in the Settings app under Privacy & Security.

If you have signed in with a Microsoft account during setup, you can expect to see several additional setup screens that aren’t offered when you’re signing in with a local account, including attempts to sell Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. Accept or decline these offers as desired.

Cleaning up Windows 11

Reboot once this is done, and you’ll be at the Windows desktop. Start by installing any drivers you need, plus Windows updates.

When you first connect to the Internet, Windows may or may not decide to automatically pull down a few extraneous third-party apps and app shortcuts, things like Spotify or Grammarly—this has happened to me consistently in most Windows 11 installs I’ve done over the years, though it hasn’t generally happened on the 24H2 and 25H2 PCs I’ve set up.

Open the Start menu and right-click each of the apps you don’t want to remove the icons for and/or uninstall. Some of these third-party apps are just stubs that won’t actually be installed to your computer until you try to run them, so removing them directly from the Start menu will get rid of them entirely.

Right-clicking and uninstalling the unwanted apps that are pinned to the Start menu is the fastest (and, for some, the only) way to get rid of them. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The other apps and services included in a fresh Windows install generally at least have the excuse of being first-party software, though their usefulness will be highly user-specific: Xbox, the new Outlook app, Clipchamp, and LinkedIn are the ones that stand out, plus the ad-driven free-to-play version of the Solitaire suite that replaced the simple built-in version during the Windows 8 era.

Rather than tell you what I remove, I’ll tell you everything that can be removed from the Installed Apps section of the Settings app (also quickly accessible by right-clicking the Start button in the taskbar). You can make your own decisions here; I generally leave the in-box versions of classic Windows apps like Sound Recorder and Calculator while removing things I don’t use, like To Do or Clipchamp.

This list should be current for a fresh, fully updated install of Windows 11 25H2, at least in the US, but it doesn’t include any apps that might be specific to your hardware, like audio or GPU settings apps. Some individual apps may or may not appear as part of your Windows install.

Calculator
Camera
Clock (may also appear as Windows Clock)
Copilot
Family
Feedback Hub
Game Assist
Media Player
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft Clipchamp
Microsoft OneDrive: Removing this, if you don’t use it, should also get rid of notifications about OneDrive and turning on Windows Backup.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft To Do
News
Notepad
Outlook for Windows
Paint
Photos
Power Automate
Quick Assist
Remote Desktop Connection
Snipping Tool
Solitaire & Casual Games
Sound Recorder
Sticky Notes
Terminal
Weather
Web Media Extensions
Xbox
Xbox Live

In Windows 11 23H2, Microsoft moved almost all of Windows’ non-removable apps to a System Components section, where they can be configured but not removed; this is where things like Phone Link, the Microsoft Store, Dev Home, and the Game Bar have ended up. The exception is Edge and its associated updater and WebView components; these are not removable, but they aren’t listed as “system components” for some reason, either.

Start, Search, Taskbar, and lock screen decluttering

Microsoft has been on a yearslong crusade against unused space in the Start menu and taskbar, which means there’s plenty here to turn off.

Right-click an empty space on the desktop, click Personalize, and click any of the other built-in Windows themes to turn off the Windows Spotlight dynamic wallpapers and the “Learn about this picture” icon.
Right-click the Taskbar and click Taskbar settings. I usually disable the Widgets board; you can leave this if you want to keep the little local weather icon in the lower-left corner of your screen, but this space is also sometimes used to present junky news articles from the Microsoft Start service.
- If you want to keep Widgets enabled but clean it up a bit, open the Widgets menu, click the Settings gear in the top-right corner, scroll to “Show or hide feeds,” and turn the feed off. This will keep the weather, local sports scores, stocks, and a few other widgets, but it will get rid of the spammy news articles.
Also in the Taskbar settings, I usually change the Search field to “search icon only” to get rid of the picture in the search field and reduce the amount of space it takes up. Toggle the different settings until you find one you like.

Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Recommendations & offers and disable “Personalized offers,” “Improve Start and search results,” “Show notifications in Settings,” “Recommendations and offers in Settings,” and “Advertising ID” (some of these may already be turned off). These settings mostly either send data to Microsoft or clutter up the Settings app with various recommendations and ads.
Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Diagnostics & feedback, scroll down to “Feedback frequency,” and select “Never” to turn off all notifications requesting feedback about various Windows features.
Open Settings > Privacy & Security, click Search and disable “Show search highlights.” This cleans up the Search menu quite a bit, focusing it on searches you’ve done yourself and locally installed apps.

Open Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Under “Personalize your lock screen,” switch from “Windows spotlight” to either Picture or Slideshow to use local images for your lock screen, and then uncheck the “get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more” box that appears. This will hide the other text boxes and clickable elements that Windows automatically adds to the lock screen in Spotlight mode. Under “Lock screen status,” select “none” to hide the weather widget and other stocks and news widgets from your lock screen.
If you own a newer Windows PC with a dedicated Copilot key, you can navigate to Settings > Personalization > Text input and scroll down to remap the key. Unfortunately, its usefulness is still limited—you can reassign it to the Search function or to the built-in Microsoft 365 app, but by default, Windows doesn’t give you the option to reassign it to open any old app.

By default, the Start menu will occasionally make “helpful” suggestions about third-party Microsoft Store apps to grab. These can and should be turned off.

Open Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.” This will disable a feature where Microsoft Store apps you haven’t installed can show up in Recommendations along with your other files. You can also decide whether you want to be able to see more pinned apps or more recent/recommended apps and files on the Start menu, depending on what you find more useful.
On the same page, disable “show account-related notifications” to reduce the number of reminders and upsell notifications you see related to your Microsoft account.

Open Settings > System > Notifications, scroll down, and expand the additional settings section. Uncheck all three boxes here, which should get rid of all the “finish setting up your PC” prompts, among other things.
Also feel free to disable notifications from any specific apps you don’t want to hear from.

In-app AI features

Microsoft has steadily been adding image and text generation capabilities to some of the bedrock in-box Windows apps, from Paint and Photos to Notepad.

Exactly which AI features you’re offered will depend on whether you’ve signed in with a Microsoft account or not or whether you’re using a Copilot+ PC with access to more AI features that are executed locally on your PC rather than in the cloud (more on those in a minute).

But the short version is that it’s usually not possible to turn off or remove these AI features without uninstalling the entire app. Apps like Notepad and Edge do have toggles for shutting off Copilot and other related features, but no such toggles exist in Paint, for example.

Even if you can find some Registry key or another backdoor way to shut these things off, there’s no guarantee the settings will stick as these apps are updated; it’s probably easier to just try to ignore any AI features within these apps that you don’t plan to use.

Removing Recall, and other extra steps for Copilot+ PCs

So far, everything we’ve covered has been applicable to any PC that can run Windows 11. But new PCs with the Copilot+ branding—anything with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip in it or things with certain Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI CPUs—get extra features that other Windows 11 PCs don’t have. Given that these are their own unique subclass of PCs, it’s worth exploring what’s included and what can be turned off.

Removing Recall will be possible, though it’s done through a relatively obscure legacy UI rather than the Settings app. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

One Copilot+ feature that can be fully removed, in part because of the backlash it initially caused, is the data-scraping Recall feature. Recall won’t be enabled on your Copilot+ system unless you’re signed in with a Microsoft account and you explicitly opt in. But if fully removing the feature gives you extra peace of mind, then by all means, remove it.

If you just want to make sure Recall isn’t active, navigate to Settings > Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots. This is where you adjust Recall’s settings and verify whether it’s turned on or off.
To fully remove Recall, open Settings > System > Optional Features, scroll down to the bottom of this screen, and click More Windows features. This will open the old “Turn Windows features on or off” Control Panel applet used to turn on or remove some legacy or power-user-centric components, like old versions of the .NET Framework or Hyper-V. It’s arranged alphabetically.
In Settings > Privacy & security > Click to Do, you’ll also find a toggle to disable Click to Do, a Copilot+ feature that takes a screenshot of your desktop and tries to make recommendations or suggest actions you might perform (copying and pasting text or an image, for example).

Apps like Paint or Photos may also prompt you to install an extension for AI-powered image generation from the Microsoft Store. This extension—which weighs in at well over a gigabyte as of this writing—is not installed by default. If you have installed it, you can remove it by opening Settings > Apps > Installed apps and removing “ImageCreationHostApp.”

Bonus: Cleaning up Microsoft Edge

I use Edge out of pragmatism rather than love—”the speed, compatibility, and extensions ecosystem of Chrome, backed by the resources of a large company that isn’t Google” is still a decent pitch. But Edge has become steadily less appealing as Microsoft has begun pushing its own services more aggressively and stuffing the browser with AI features. In a vacuum, Firefox aligns better with what I want from a browser, but it just doesn’t respond well to my normal tab-monster habits despite several earnest attempts to switch—things bog down and RAM runs out. I’ve also had mixed experience with the less-prominent Chromium clones, like Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave. So Edge it is, at least for now.

The main problem with Edge on a new install of Windows is that even more than Windows, it exists in a universe where no one would ever want to switch search engines or shut off any of Microsoft’s “value-added features” except by accident. Case in point: Signing in with a Microsoft account will happily sync your bookmarks, extensions, and many kinds of personal data. But many settings for search engine changes or for opting out of Microsoft services do not sync between systems and require a fresh setup each time.

Below are the Edge settings I change to maximize the browser’s usefulness (and usable screen space) while minimizing annoying distractions; it involves turning off most of the stuff Microsoft has added to the Chromium version of Edge since it entered public preview many years ago. Here’s a list of things to tweak, whether you sign in with a Microsoft account or not.

On the Start page when you first open the browser, hit the Settings gear in the upper-right corner. Turn off “Quick links” (or if you leave them on, turn off “Show sponsored links”) and then turn off “show content.” Whether you leave the custom background or the weather widget is up to you.
Click the “your privacy choices” link at the bottom of the menu and turn off the “share my data with third parties for personalized ads” toggle.

Edge has scattered some of the settings we change over the last year, but the browser is still full of toggles we prefer to keep turned off. Andrew Cunningham

In the Edge UI, click the ellipsis icon near the upper-right corner of the screen and click Settings.
Click Profiles in the left Settings sidebar. Click Microsoft Rewards, and then turn it off.
Click Privacy, Search, & Services in the Settings sidebar.
- In Tracking prevention, I set tracking prevention to “strict,” though if you use some other kind of content blocker, this may be redundant; it can also occasionally prompt “it looks like you’re using an ad-blocker” pop-up from sites even if you aren’t.
- In Privacy, if they’re enabled, disable the toggles under “Optional diagnostic data,” “Help improve Microsoft products,” and “Allow Microsoft to save your browsing activity.”
- In Search and connected experiences, disable the “Suggest similar sites when a website can’t be found,” “Save time and money with Shopping in Microsoft Edge,” and “Organize your tabs” toggles.
  - If you want to switch from Bing, click “Address bar and search” and switch to your preferred engine, whether that’s Google, DuckDuckGo, or something else. Then click “Search suggestions and filters” and disable “Show me search and site suggestions using my typed characters.”

These settings retain basic spellcheck without any of the AI-related additions. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Click Appearance in the left-hand Settings sidebar, and scroll down to Copilot and sidebar
- Turn the sidebar off, and turn off the “Personalize my top sites in customize sidebar” and “Allow sidebar apps to show notifications” toggles.
- Click Copilot under App specific settings. Turn off “Show Copilot button on the toolbar.” Then, back in the Copilot and sidebar settings, turn off the “Show sidebar button” toggle that has just appeared.
Click Languages in the left-hand navigation. Disable “Use Copilot for writing on the web.” Turn off “use text prediction” if you want to prevent things you type from being sent to Microsoft, and switch the spellchecker from Microsoft Editor to Basic. (I don’t actually mind Microsoft Editor, but it’s worth remembering if you’re trying to minimize the amount of data Edge sends back to the company.)

Windows-as-a-nuisance

The most time-consuming part of installing a fresh, direct-from-Microsoft copy of Windows XP or Windows 7 was usually reinstalling all the apps you wanted to run on your PC, from your preferred browser to Office, Adobe Reader, Photoshop, and the VLC player. You still need to do all of that in a new Windows 11 installation. But now more than ever, most people will want to go through the OS and turn off a bunch of stuff to make the day-to-day experience of using the operating system less annoying.

That’s more relevant now that Microsoft has formally ended support for Windows 10. Yes, Windows 10 users can get an extra year of security updates relatively easily, but many who have been putting off the Windows 11 upgrade will be taking the plunge this year.

The settings changes we’ve recommended here may not fix everything, but they can at least give you some peace, shoving Microsoft into the background and allowing you to do what you want with your PC without as much hassle. Ideally, Microsoft would insist on respectful, user-friendly defaults itself. But until that happens, these changes are the best you can do.

How to declutter, quiet down, and take the AI out of Windows 11 25H2 Read More »

So long, Assistant—Gemini is taking over Google Maps

AI, Google, Google Gemini, google maps, Tech / Kelly Newman / November 5, 2025

Google is in the process of purging Assistant across its products, and the next target is Google Maps. Starting today, Gemini will begin rolling out in Maps, powering new experiences for navigation, location info, and more. This update will eventually completely usurp Google Assistant’s hands-free role in Maps, but the rollout will take time. So for now, the smart assistant in Google Maps will still depend on how you’re running the app.

Across all Gemini’s incarnations, Google stresses its conversational abilities. Whereas Assistant was hard-pressed to keep one or two balls in the air, you can theoretically give Gemini much more complex instructions. Google’s demo includes someone asking for nearby restaurants with cheap vegan food, but instead of just providing a list, it suggests something based on the user’s input. Gemini can also offer more information about the location.

Maps will also get its own Gemini-infused version of Lens for after you park. You will be able to point the camera at a landmark, restaurant, or other business to get instant answers to your questions. This experience will be distinct from the version of Lens available in the Google app, focused on giving you location-based information. Maybe you want to know about the menu at a restaurant or what it’s like inside. Sure, you could open the door… but AI!

Google Maps with Gemini

While Google has recently been forced to acknowledge that hallucinations are inevitable, the Maps team says it does not expect that to be a problem with this version of Gemini. The suggestions coming from the generative AI bot are grounded in Google’s billions of place listings and Street View photos. This will, allegedly, make the robot less likely to make up a location. Google also says in no uncertain terms that Gemini is not responsible for choosing your route.

So long, Assistant—Gemini is taking over Google Maps Read More »