Enlarge/ Four new Ryzen 5000 CPUs, all riffs on existing Ryzen 5000 CPUs.
AMD
AMD announced the first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors today: a new lineup of socket AM5 CPUs that bring RDNA 3 integrated GPUs and an AI-accelerating NPU to its desktop platform for the first time. But the company also spent some time on new budget chips for its last-generation AM4 platform. The four new Ryzen 5000 processors cover everything from budget office desktops with integrated GPUs to cost-conscious gaming systems.
At the top of the range is the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, an 8-core CPU with an extra 64MB slab of L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die. At $249, it will be a little over $100 cheaper than the 5800X3D, but with the same core count, cache size, and a slightly lower maximum clock speed (4.1 GHz, down from 4.5 GHz). AMD compared it favorably to the Core i5-13600K in gaming workloads, a chip that currently retails for a bit over $280.
The Ryzen 7 5700 is a $175 8-core processor without 3D V-Cache that should still perform reasonably well in most workloads, though AMD’s spec sheet says that it has less cache than the 5700X and only supports PCI Express 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0. This indicates that the 5700 is actually a 5700G with the integrated graphics disabled; it will be a bit slower than the Ryzen 5700X, despite their similar names, core counts, and clock speeds. The Ryzen 5 5600GT and 5500GT are 6- and 4-core chips with Vega-based integrated graphics, both intended for lower-end systems. At $140 and $125, they essentially amount to minor clock speed bumps for the existing Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 3 5300G.
The new chips are the latest in a surprisingly long line of last hurrahs. Early 2022 brought us some new budget processors and the Ryzen 5800X3D, just a few months before the AM5 platform launched. And in mid-2023, AMD released a limited-edition Ryzen 5600X3D for people who could get to a local Micro Center store and buy one (as of this writing, a quick spot-check of several east coast Micro Centers showed that 5600X3D chips were still broadly available at that price).
It’s hard to recommend that anyone building a new PC go with the socket AM4 platform at this point—even these “new” chips are still using the old Zen 3 architecture and are broadly similar to older products that have been available since late 2020. But they’re still decent cost-efficient upgrade options for people who already have an AM4 motherboard that they use with a Ryzen 1000, 2000, or 3000 processor; if you upgrade from a Ryzen 1000-series chip, it will also help your PC meet Windows 11’s official system requirements, if that’s something you care about.
“AM4 continues to be a key part of our product portfolio,” AMD PR Manager Matthew Hurwitz told Ars when asked why AMD was still releasing new Ryzen 5000 CPUs. “New SKUs give users more options to fit their budget or use case.”
Enlarge/ The complete, small-print list of all the AM4 and AM5 processors AMD will offer as of late January.
AMD
Hurwitz also told us that, unlike the 5600X3D, there would be no availability limitations for any of these new Ryzen 5000 chips. The company also doesn’t immediately plan to discontinue any other Ryzen 5000 CPUs that are still being sold, though “there is always a natural shift from older to newer SKUs as time passes.”
There’s an app for the keyboard promising new features, but it’s not mandatory for the keyboard to work.
Clicks Technology
I used to be a speed demon on phone keyboards. Similar to when I use a mechanical keyboard, I could type with so much ease that during their early days of text messaging, people in my household would ask me to write out their longer messages. Those days of carefree cell phone typing hit a rut when I got my first iPhone.
Now, I can’t start without first looking at my touchscreen keyboard. And I almost always make at least one typo when writing long texts, emails, or documents. That’s why I’m intrigued by the latest attempt to bring old-school physical keyboards to iPhones.
A snap-on keyboard for the iPhone
On Thursday, Clicks Technology unveiled Clicks, a keyboard available for the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max that snaps to the phone like a case. But instead of adding protection, it adds a physical keyboard. Each key boasts 0.22 mm of travel, Jeff Gadway, SVP of product marketing at Clicks, told Ars via email. That seems like miles compared to the flat nature of touchscreens.
Clicks Technology has hinted at plans for releasing Clicks in additional colors beyond what’s seen here.
Clicks Technology
The keyboard connects via the iPhone’s Lightning or USB-C port (whichever the iPhone has). It uses iOS’s support for external keyboards, leveraging the human interface devices (HID) protocol. According to Clicks’ FAQ page, the company decided to forego Bluetooth to avoid pairing complications and latency. Users are supposed to still be able to charge their phones, including with wireless chargers, with Clicks connected.
But if you’re hoping to pair a traditional-style phone keyboard with traditional wired headphones, you’re out of luck. The company’s website says Clicks Technology is “working on a solution” to allow the keyboard and wired headphones to work simultaneously, but you have to pick one or the other for now. Clicks also isn’t considered compatible with MagSafe accessories, though the makers hope to change that eventually.
One look at Clicks’ layout, and I already see appeal in there being a Tab key, which the standard integrated iPhone keyboard lacks. Further, the keyboard is also supposed to make it easier to leverage keyboard shortcuts using its Command (CMD) key. Clicks’ makers highlight shortcuts like launching search (CMD + Space), getting to the home screen (CMD + H), and scrolling through web pages with the space key. Clicks claims to support keyboard shortcuts across “many” third-party apps, according to Thursday’s announcement.
Should the keyboard prove to work well and feel good, it could be a clever way to add more screen real estate for some iPhones since users won’t have a touchscreen keyboard hogging screen space at times. However, I’m curious to see how hard it is to hold and navigate a Clicks-equipped iPhone, including going from the physical keyboard to touchscreen as needed, for longer periods.
But Clicks also impacts iPhone battery life, even though the startup claims the effect is minimal.
“When the backlight is turned off, even on a heavy use day, battery usage will typically be less than ~2 percent. If the backlight is on, usage may increase up to another ~2 percent,” Clicks’ FAQ page, which we’ll have to take with a grain of salt, reads. The keyboard’s backlight turns off automatically after 5 seconds of the keyboard not being used and can be disabled. The keyboard also has an off switch.
When asked for further information, Gadway said the keyboard uses about 4.4 mAh when on but not in use.
“The background Wh consumption when the backlight is off is approximately 0.01628 Wh. It’s important to note that Wh is dependent on the voltage the battery uses, therefore we take the average of 3.7V,” he added.
Some might also be disappointed to notice that Clicks lacks a key for emojis, which have become so prominent in today’s culture that some mechanical keyboards and mice have started including integrated emoji buttons. Clicks says the keyboard doesn’t have an emoji button because iOS external keyboards do not currently support the feature. But there are still ways for Clicks users to bring up the emoji menu, including by pressing multiple keys that the keyboard does have.
Enlarge/ The Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard is making a comeback.
Microsoft
In April, Microsoft announced that it would stop selling Microsoft-branded computer peripherals. Today, Onward Brands announced that it’s giving those discarded Microsoft-stamped gadgets a second life under new branding. Products like the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard will become Incase products with “Designed by Microsoft” branding.
Beyond the computer accessories saying “Designed by Microsoft,” they should be the same keyboards, mice, webcams, headsets, and speakers, Onward, Incase’s parent company, said, per The Verge. Onward said its Incase brand will bring back 23 Microsoft-designed products in 2024 and hopes for availability to start in Q2.
Enlarge/ Some of the Microsoft-designed gear that Incase is relaunching.
Incase also plans to launch an ergonomic keyboard that Microsoft designed but never released. Onward CEO Charlie Tebele told The Verge that there’s “potential” for Incase to release even more designs Microsoft never let us see.
Licensing deal
The return of Microsoft peripheral designs resurrects (albeit in a new form) a line of computer gear started in 1983 when Microsoft released its first mouse, the Microsoft Mouse.
Neither Onward nor Microsoft shared the full terms of their licensing agreement, but Onward claims that Incase will leverage the same supply chain and manufacturing components that Microsoft did, The Verge noted.
“Microsoft will still retain ownership of its designs, so it could potentially bring back classic mice or keyboards itself in the future or continue to renew its license to Incase,” The Verge reported, pointing out that Onward isn’t licensing every single one of Microsoft’s computer peripherals. Some classics, like the Intellimouse or its modern iterations, for example, don’t make the Incase reboot list.
For its part, Microsoft is still “convicted on going under one single” Surface brand, Nancie Gaskill, general manager of Surface, told The Verge.
That said, in Microsoft’s old designs, Incase, whose website is currently filled with backpacks, bags, and laptop and AirPod cases, suddenly finds itself selling keyboards, mice, and other peripherals. Onward’s other brands, Griffin, Incipio, and Survivor, also don’t sell the types of products that Incase is licensing here. If all goes well, Incase could build its own computer accessories portfolio.
Microsoft’s initial departure from Microsoft-brand peripherals meant it would only focus on more expensive, higher-end designs worthy of Surface branding. But that left a gap for the numerous users who felt satisfied with Microsoft’s various designs that were simpler and more affordable. Incase’s venture could help serve those customers, while Microsoft’s legacy with such products can continue without major investment from the tech giant.
Here’s a full list of the Microsoft-designed peripherals that Incase plans to bring back in 2024:
Hey Android users, are you tired of Google’s neglect of Google Assistant? Well, one of Google’s biggest rivals, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is apparently coming for the premium phone space occupied by Google’s voice assistant. Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority found that the ChatGPT app is working on support for Android’s voice assistant APIs and a system-wide overlay UI. If the company rolls out this feature, users could set the ChatGPT app as the system-wide assistant app, allowing it to pop up anywhere in Android and respond to user questions. ChatGPT started as a text-only generative AI but received voice and image input capabilities in September.
Usually, it’s the Google Assistant with system-wide availability in Android, but that’s not special home cooking from Google—it all happens via public APIs that technically any app can plug into. You can only have one app enabled as the system-wide “Default Assistant App,” and beyond the initial setting, the user always has to change it manually. The assistant APIs are designed to be powerful, keeping some parts of the app running 24/7 no matter where you are. Being the default Assistant app enables launching the app via the power button or a gesture, and the assist app can read the current screen text and images for processing.
If some Android manufacturer signed a deal with ChatGPT and included it as a bundled system application, ChatGPT could even use an always-on voice hotword, where saying something like “Hey, ChatGPT” would launch the app even when the screen is off. System apps get more permissions than normal apps, though, and an always-on hotword is locked behind these system app permissions, so ChatGPT would need to sign a distribution deal with some Android manufacturer. Given the red-hot popularity of ChatGPT, though, I’m sure a few would sign up if it were offered.
Rahman found that ChatGPT version 1.2023.352, released last month, included a new activity named “com.openai.voice.assistant.AssistantActivity.” He managed to turn on the normally disabled feature that revealed ChatGPT’s new overlay API. This is the usual semi-transparent spinning orb UI that voice assistants use, although Rahman couldn’t get it to respond to a voice command just yet. This is all half-broken and under development, so it might never see a final release, but companies usually release the features they’re working on.
Of course, the problem with any of these third-party voice assistant apps as a Google Assistant replacement is that they don’t run a serious app ecosystem. As with Bixby and Alexa, there are no good apps to host your notes, reminders, calendar entries, shopping list items, or any other input-based functions you might want to do. As a replacement for Google Search, though, where you ask it a question and get an answer, it would probably be a decent alternative.
Google has neglected Google Assistant for years, but with the rise of generative AI, it’s working on revamping Assistant with some Google Bard smarts. It’s also reportedly working on a different assistant, “Pixie,” which would apparently launch with the Pixel 9, but that will be near the end of 2024.
Enlarge / An Analogue Pocket running Super Mario World on an openFPGA core with the scanline filter enabled.
Andrew Cunningham
We’ve got a soft spot for the Analogue Pocket, the premium portable game console that melds 2020s technology with the design of the original Game Boy. Since its release, Analogue has added some new capabilities via firmware updates, most notably when it added support for emulating more consoles via its OpenFPGA platform in the summer of 2022. This allows the FPGA chip inside of the pocket to emulate the hardware of other systems, in addition to the portable systems the Pocket supports natively.
But aside from finalizing and releasing that 1.1 firmware, 2023 was mostly quiet for Pocket firmware updates. That changed in December when the company released not one but two major firmware upgrades for the Pocket that slipped under our radar during the holidays. These updates delivered a combination of fixes and long-promised features to the handheld, which Analogue has been re-releasing in different color palettes now that the original versions are more consistently in stock.
The most significant update for OpenFPGA fans is the ability to use display filters with third-party FPGA cores. Part of the appeal of the Pocket is its 1,600×1,440 screen, which is sharp enough to perfectly re-create the huge chunky pixels of the original Game Boy screens. By default, most FPGA cores now get access to a similarly high-quality CRT screen filter named after the Sony Trinitron TV, adding a touch of retro-blurriness to the sharp edges of 8- and 16-bit games. I’ve seen lots of bad, unconvincing scanline filters in retro game re-releases, and this isn’t one of them.
The basic Trinitron filter is available by default for “suitable” cores, which in our testing tends to mean “home consoles that were meant to be connected to a CRT TV.” FPGA cores for portable systems like the Game Boy or Game Boy Advance, which shipped with old but scanline-less LCD screens, don’t have the filter available. Third-party FPGA core developers will need to add support for additional screen filters themselves, something that most developers still haven’t done as of this writing.
A zoomed-in photo of the screen with no filters enabled. It’s sharp and crisp, and even zoomed in with a good mirrorless camera it’s difficult to make out individual pixels on the Pocket’s screen.
Andrew Cunningham
The same scene with the Trinitron CRT filter enabled. Subtle scanlines, visible CRT “pixels,” and just the right amount of blurring makes the picture look more period-accurate.
Andrew Cunningham
Zoomed out, scanlines off.
Andrew Cunningham
Scanlines on, default “integer” scaling used. This is the most accurate aspect ratio, but it leaves a black border of unused pixels around the screen.
Andrew Cunningham
Scanlines on, Integer+ mode used. This eliminates the black border and, to my eyes, looks just fine on the Pocket’s screen and makes the effect of the scanline filter easier to see.
Andrew Cunningham
The Trinitron filter looks good on the Pocket’s screen, but it’s subtle; you may appreciate the scanline effect more and notice its downside less if you’re playing while connected to a TV with the Analogue Dock. And at least on the NES and SNES cores I tested it with, it has the undesirable side effect of shrinking the game picture down on what is already a fairly small screen. This default setting can be tweaked without visibly degrading the image quality, at least not to my eyes; just switch from the default Integer scaling mode in the display settings to Integer+.
The screen filters are probably the most interesting and requested new feature for the Pocket, but both firmware updates have many other smaller fixes and additions. Firmware version 1.2 fixes numerous issues with sleep/wake and save states for various games, allows FPGA cores to use cartridge adapters, and lets FPGA cores know when the Pocket is in a dock; when docked, it also adds support for additional controllers and fixes issues with others. Version 2.0 adds support for custom color palettes for Game Boy games, allows FPGA cores to switch aspect ratios when docked, and fixes a “video issue with some openFPGA cores and resolutions” when docked.
To update the Pocket’s firmware, connect the device’s microSD card to your computer and drop one of the firmware update .bin files into the root directory (make sure you delete any older firmware files first since the Pocket won’t delete old update files once it’s done with them). Next time you boot the console, it should install the firmware update and reboot. As usual, when performing any software or firmware update, it’s best to ensure the console is fully charged or plugged in before you start the process.
Enlarge/ A Vectrex console and CRT display with a cart for a long-lost game.
Tim Stevens
The Vectrex may be the most innovative video game console you’ve never heard of. It had everything it needed to prompt a revolution, including controllers far more sophisticated than the competition and the ability to render polygons a decade before gaming’s 3D revolution.
It was years ahead of anything else on the market, yet it could not have launched at a worse time. The Vectrex hit stores at the tail end of 1982. Over the next six months, the then-booming video game market went bust. The Vectrex, a potential revolution in home gaming, was swept into bargain bins, forgotten by all but the most ardent of collectors.
Forty years later, it’s having something of a comeback. New developers are breathing fresh code into this aged machine, hardware hackers and tinkerers are ensuring that tired capacitors and CRTs stay functional, and a new game has seen retail release after sitting unplayed for four decades.
This, finally, could be the Vectrex’s time to shine.
Vectrex history
1982 was a banner year for video games. Titles like Zaxxon, Pole Position, Q*bert, and Dig Dug were fresh in the arcades. In the home gaming scene, seemingly unquenchable consumer desire fueled a period of innovation unlike anything the now $200 billion industry has seen since.
To give some context, Sony sold 11.8 million PlayStation 5s in 2021, the console’s first full year of availability. Back in 1982, 12 million Atari 2600 home consoles flew off store shelves, despite the nascent home gaming industry amounting to a paltry $4 billion.
This boom drove the creation of the Vectrex. The system was born at LA-based hardware design firm Smith Engineering. Envisioned as a portable system with a tiny, 1-inch cathode ray tube screen, the Vectrex concept ultimately grew into the 9-inch screen production version you see here.
Kenner Toys was initially slated to release the system, but when that deal fell through, General Consumer Electronics (GCE) stepped in and brought it to market in late 1982 after a successful debut at that summer’s Consumer Electronics Show. The Vectrex’s initial buzz was so successful that Milton Bradley acquired GCE in 1983.
The Vectrex design was unique, a video game console wholly integrated into a portrait-oriented CRT. This was at a time when most households had just a single television set. Playing Atari back then meant fighting with your siblings and parents about who had control of the TV because missing an episode of The A-Team had real consequences. Not only was DVR technology still decades away, Sony was still trying to say that recording television programs on VCR cassettes was illegal.
But the real reason for the Vectrex’s integrated display was its reliance on a display technique not seen on a home system before (nor since). Vector graphics are a true rarity on the gaming scene. 1979’s Asteroids is probably the most famous example, while 1983’s Star Wars is far and away the most impressive.
Outside of a few exceptions, every video game you’ve ever played has been made up of a series of pixels. Whether it’s CRT, LCD, LED, or even OLED, you’re still talking about images made up of tiny dots of light. As the years have progressed, those pixels have gotten smaller and smaller. Likewise, the graphical power provided by advanced GPU systems like the GeForce RTX 4090 allows those pixels to assemble into ever-more realistic 3D worlds.
Ultimately, though, it’s all a bunch of pixels. On the Vectrex, there are no pixels. As its name implies, graphics here are all made up of vectors. That means straight beams of light drawn from A to B, electrons shot straight and narrow onto a cathode ray tube that glows in response. Connect three such lines, and you have a triangle, a simple polygon, the building block of all mainstream 3D gaming even today.
That lack of pixels means that, even 40 years on, watching a Vectrex game in action is an oddly captivating thing. There’s a fluidity in the rudimentary graphics, an innate sharpness that was not only lacking in other games of the period but that still looks novel today.
Overall fidelity, however, is admittedly low. Though color TVs were well and truly mainstream by 1983, the Vectrex is decidedly black and white, a problem “solved” by some crafty, budget-minded engineering. Most Vectrex titles came with a transparent overlay, a full-color sheet of plastic that clips in place over the display, injecting some hue into the unfortunately desaturated CRT.
Powering this was a relatively simple set of silicon with an 8-bit Motorola 6809 microprocessor at its heart, the same processor behind arcade classics like Robotron: 2084 and many later Williams pinball machines. It ran at a mighty 1 MHz with a whole 1KB of RAM at its disposal.
The chip was paired with an integrated control pad with an analog joystick, far more advanced than the four-way joysticks found on every other home console controller at the time.
All that specialized hardware led to a specialized price. The Vectrex launched in 1982 at $199—about $650 in 2023 dollars. Less than 18 months later, it was dead.
The collector
Sean Kelly is among the world’s preeminent video game collectors. “I’ve been collecting video games for a long time,” he told me. “I’ve had probably over 100,000 video games pass through my hands over the years.” At one point, he said, he had more than 50,000 in his garage.
If that sounds like an industrial operation rather than a mere obsession, you’re not wrong. Kelly is co-founder of the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas, established in 2016 and home to many unicorns of video game collecting, like an original Nintendo World Championship cartridge.
Perhaps it was an affinity for another failed early ’80s console—the Intellivision—that initially fostered Kelly’s love of video games, but he’s had a huge hand in keeping the Vectrex alive. He began by releasing so-called multi-carts, Vectrex cartridges that contained multiple discrete games accessed first by toggling DIP switches and later via a software menu.
Considering many Vectrex titles saw limited releases or no release at all, multi-carts like this were the only way for those few die-hard fans of the system to ever have a chance of playing them.
One of those games was Mail Plane, where you plot optimal delivery routes, then load up the packages and navigate across the country.
Thanks to the Vectrex’s abrupt cancellation, Mail Plane never saw release. You’d be forgiven for thinking it had, though. At Sean’s website, VectrexMulti, you’ll find boxed copies of Mail Plane ready to order.
The game comes in the silvery packaging that was standard for Vectrex releases in its day and even comes with a light pen, a peripheral used for keying in those delivery routes.
Kelly sourced manufacturers for every aspect of the retail packaging. Different prototype versions of the game code were floating around, but Kelly says most were incomplete. “In addition to collecting the video games, I’ve also had a passion for hunting down the people that used to produce the games,” he said. This began a quest to find the most complete version of Mail Plane.
“We would find this former employee or that former employee had a couple of cartridges, and we would go through the cartridges and look at them,” Kelly said, and he ultimately sourced the one closest to final. “Nobody knows for sure if it’s 100 percent complete, but generally, we believe that that’s the most complete version.”
He gave other games the same treatment, including Tour de France, in which you frantically pedal across a polygonal route to Paris, grabbing water bottles along the way and carefully managing the stamina of your rider. It’s an odd title, one that Kelly laments hasn’t exactly been a sales success. “Tour de France is one of the ones that I will be buried with,” he said. “I lost money on Tour de France.”
Kelly declined to say which games have made money, but it’s clear in speaking to him that this is all about passion, not profits.
Along the way, releasing those games provided Kelly and his associates with some valuable experience ahead of a surprise: the discovery of a game that seemingly nobody, not even those who worked for GCE or Milton Bradley, had ever heard of.
The 2024 XPS laptop lineup: 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch.
Scharon Harding
The laptops come in platinum…
Dell
… or graphite.
Dell
The keyboard on the XPS 13.
Dell
The keyboard on the XPS 14 and XPS 16.
Dell
The ports on the left side of the XPS 14 and 16.
Dell
The ports on the right side of the XPS 14 and 16.
Dell
The underside of the XPS 13.
Scharon Harding
Dell’s XPS laptop lineup has long been my go-to for an easy laptop recommendation. With an accessible starting price, a good amount of display options, and an ultrathin build, it was often a fitting choice for the average consumer seeking something with a premium feel and some clout. With the 2024 laptop lineup announced today, the XPS no longer feels like an obvious recommendation.
Dell has reimagined the XPS laptop lineup in the image of what used to be called the Dell XPS 13 Plus. When it launched in 2022, the XPS 13 Plus was a 13.4-inch XPS laptop that was pricier than its non-Plus alternative. The XPS 13 Plus and its 2023 predecessor took extreme design measures, including a capacitive touch function row, unique keyboard, and borderless haptic touchpad to squeeze more power out of its processor.
Those polarizing features are now mandatory in an XPS laptop. The new XPS 13, 14, and 16 look like the XPS 13 Plus. But Dell is no longer calling that design the “Plus.” It’s now just the standard design of a standard XPS laptop.
Additionally, the XPS 17 is getting phased out, while the XPS 15 will be available for another six months with limited Nvidia GPU options until it is also phased out. The XPS 2-in-1 detachable is also being discontinued.
The new XPS laptop lineup
With the 2024 changes, the starting price for Dell’s popular laptop series is now higher than before. The new XPS 13 will start at $1,300. The last XPS 13, which came out in 2022 with a 13th Gen Intel chip, started at $849. By discontinuing the XPS detachable and committing all XPS laptops to the XPS 13 Plus look, Dell is going from having three 13-inch-class XPS options to one (with various specs configurations available).
Technically, the 2024 XPS lineup has better starting prices for those interested in larger screens. The XPS 14 will start at $1,700, and the XPS 16 will start at $1,900. The 2023 XPS 15 debuted with 13th-gen chips at $2,949, while the XPS 17 (9370) debuted with a $3,399 starting price. However, the new XPS 14 and XPS 16 will be released with Intel Arc-integrated graphics. The XPS 15 started with an Arc A370M discrete GPU, and the XPS 17’s starting price got you an RTX 4050 laptop GPU. (Dell hasn’t shared pricing for the new laptops beyond starting prices.)
The new laptops have smaller screens than the XPS 15 and XPS 17. For 2024, the biggest XPS laptop will have a 16.3-inch display instead of a 17-inch one, giving it slightly greater pixel density (277.8 pixels per inch versus 266.4 ppi).
But ultimately, the range of sizes remains mildly shrunken. Rather than ranging from 13.4 to 17 inches with a detachable option, the new lineup is set to 13.4 to 16.3 inches without detachables. And while a 14-inch XPS allows Dell to offer a more portable laptop that can still fit a dedicated graphics card (up to an RTX 4050 laptop GPU), moving from a 13-inch to a 15-inch laptop is more noticeable than moving from 13 to 14 inches.
The Copilot key will, predictably, open up the Copilot generative AI assistant within Windows 10 and Windows 11. On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you can currently do the same thing by pressing Windows + C. For PCs without Copilot enabled, including those that aren’t signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search instead (though this is sort of redundant, since pressing the Windows key and then typing directly into the Start menu also activates the Search function).
A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.
We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn’t mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards “over time.” Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.
If nothing else, this new key is a sign of how much Microsoft wants people to use Copilot and its other generative AI products. Plenty of past company initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to name a few—never managed to become baked into the hardware like this. In the Windows 8 epoch, Microsoft required OEMs to build a Windows button into the display bezel of devices with touchscreens, but that requirement eventually disappeared. If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the way Cortana was, the Copilot key could become a way to quickly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the way that changes to the Windows logo date keyboards from earlier eras.
We’ll definitely see more AI features from Microsoft this year, too—Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi called 2024 “the year of the AI PC” in today’s announcement.
Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all building neural processing units (NPUs) into their latest silicon, and we’ll likely see more updates for Windows apps and features that can take advantage of this new on-device processing capability. Rumors also indicate that we could see a “Windows 12” release as soon as this year; while Windows 11 has mostly had AI features stacked on top of it, a new OS could launch with AI features more deeply integrated into the UI and apps, as well as additional hardware requirements for some features.
Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. Surface devices with the revised keyboard layout are “upcoming.”
Enlarge/ The Galaxy S24 render from OnLeaks. This sure does look familiar.
Samsung is gearing up to launch its next big flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S24. The show has officially been announced for January 17, with Samsung’s reservation website promising “Zoom with Galaxy AI is coming.” Of course, 2023 was the year of generative AI, and Samsung’s interest in the technology is a safe bet.
The show will launch the Galaxy S24, which has already leaked quite a bit, with the big news being a new titanium body. The iPhone made titanium the hot new thing recently with the launch of the iPhone 15, and Samsung has taken notice. The best leak so far has been from Windows Report, which scored official press images of the phones. (The report is no longer online due to a DMCA takedown, which is a good sign of its legitimacy.)
The Windows Report photos showed the smaller Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are getting flat metal sides, reminiscent of the classic iPhone 4/iPhone 15 design. Samsung’s usual design of rounded corners and individual camera lenses complete the phone design, and while they look nice, they also look a lot like an iPhone. Older leaks claimed these two cheaper phones were getting titanium bodies, but well-known Samsung leaker Ice Universe says only the bigger model will be titanium, and these cheaper models will be aluminum.
Apparently official images of the Galaxy S24. This is either the normal or plus mode.
Windows Report
Here’s the ultra model., which has rounded sides and a flat screen.
Windows Report
The normal model (back) and ultra model (front).
Windows Report
The Ultra model was also included in the leaks, and besides being made out of titanium, the sides aren’t changing as much. They’re still rounded, putting the phone in line with previous Ultra models. The front display seems to finally be flat, ending years of a curved screen along the long edges, which would distort videos and other content that got near the edge of the display. The new display is a perfect rectangle and looks much different in press images compared to the old model. One user on X, David Martin, even received legitimate-looking live images of a Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the display looks flat.
Of course, in the US, the new Samsung phone will have Qualcomm’s latest chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and it sounds like some international versions will get the Exynos 2400 SoC. The Ultra is still expected to have a 5000 mAh battery, with the biggest change being a RAM upgrade to 16GB. The Plus model is supposedly getting a bigger 6.7-inch display and a 4900 mAh battery, making it much closer to the Ultra model than usual.
We’ll know a lot more once January 17 rolls around.
Enlarge/ A marketing image for Vizio’s P-series Q9 TV.
Vizio has agreed to pay $3 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged the company misled customers about the refresh rates of its TVs.
In 2018, a lawsuit [PDF], which was later certified as a class action, was filed against Vizio for advertising its 60 Hz and 120 Hz LCD TVs as having an “effective” refresh rate of 120 Hz and 240 Hz, respectively. Vizio was referring to the backlight scanning (or black frame insertion) ability, which it claimed made the TVs look like they were operating at a refresh rate that was twice as fast as they are capable of. Vizio’s claims failed to address the drawbacks that can come from backlight scanning, which include less brightness and the potential for noticeable flickering. The lawsuit complained about Vizio’s language in marketing materials and user manuals.
The lawsuit read:
Vizio knows, or at the very least should know, that its television with 60Hz display panels have a refresh rate of 60 images per second and that backlight manipulation methods cannot and do not increase the effective Hz (refresh rate) of a television.
The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, accused Vizio of using misleading tactics to persuade retailers to sell and recommend Vizio TVs. It accused Vizio of trying “to sell its lesser-quality product at a higher price and allowed Vizio to realize sales it may not have otherwise made if it were truthful regarding the performance capabilities of its televisions.”
Under the settlement terms [PDF] spotted by The Verge, people who bought a Vizio TV in California after April 30, 2014, can file a claim. They’ll receive $17 or up to $50 if the fund allows it. The individual payout may also be under $17 if the claims exceed the $3 million fund. Vizio will also pay attorney fees. People have until March 30 to submit their claims. The final approval hearing is scheduled for June 20.
Vizio also agreed to stop advertising their TVs with 120 and 240 Hz “effective” refresh rates but “will not be obligated to recall or modify labeling for any Vizio-branded television model that has already been sold or distributed to a third party,” according to the agreement. Further, the California-headquartered company will also offer affected customers a “service and limited warranty package conservatively valued at $25” per person.
Vizio, per the settlement, denies any wrongdoing. The company declined to comment on the settlement to Ars.
The settlement comes as tactics for fighting motion blur, like backlight scanning and frame interpolation (known for causing the “soap opera effect“), have been maligned for often making the viewing experience worse. LG and TCL have also faced class-action lawsuits for boosting refresh rate claims by saying that their motion blur-fighting techniques make it seem like their TVs are running at a higher refresh rate than possible. While the case against LG was dismissed, TCL settled for $2,900,000 [PDF].
Despite the criticisms, backlight scanning and motion smoothing remain on default across countless TVs belonging to unsuspecting owners. Class-action cases like Vizio’s that end up having a negative cost for OEMs provide further incentive for them to at least stop using the ability as a way to superficially boost spec sheets.
Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows throughout the ’90s.
But the software had humble beginnings, as we’ve detailed in our history of the IBM PC and elsewhere. It began in mid-1980 as QDOS, or “Quick and Dirty Operating System,” the work of developer Tim Paterson at a company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP). It was later renamed 86-DOS, after the Intel 8086 processor, and this was the version that Microsoft licensed and eventually purchased.
Last week, Internet Archive user f15sim discovered and uploaded a new-old version of 86-DOS to the Internet Archive. Version 0.1-C of 86-DOS is available for download here and can be run using the SIMH emulator; before this, the earliest extant version of 86-DOS was version 0.34, also uploaded by f15sim.
This version of 86-DOS is rudimentary even by the standards of early-’80s-era DOS builds and includes just a handful of utilities, a text-based chess game, and documentation for said chess game. But as early as it is, it remains essentially recognizable as the DOS that would go on to take over the entire PC business. If you’re just interested in screenshots, some have been posted by user NTDEV on the site that used to be Twitter.
According to the version history available on Wikipedia, this build of 86-DOS would date back to roughly August of 1980, shortly after it lost the “QDOS” moniker. By late 1980, SCP was sharing version 0.3x of the software with Microsoft, and by early 1981, it was being developed as the primary operating system of the then-secret IBM Personal Computer. By the middle of 1981, roughly a year after 86-DOS began life as QDOS, Microsoft had purchased the software outright and renamed it MS-DOS.
Microsoft and IBM continued to co-develop MS-DOS for many years; the version IBM licensed and sold on its PCs was called PC DOS, though for most of their history the two products were identical. Microsoft also retained the ability to license the software to other computer manufacturers as MS-DOS, which contributed to the rise of a market of mostly interoperable PC clones. The PC market as we know it today still more or less resembles the PC-compatible market of the mid-to-late 1980s, albeit with dramatically faster and more capable components.
Enlarge/ A Huawei Technologies Co. Mate X5 smartphone arranged in Hong Kong, China, on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023.
Every large smartphone maker except Apple is betting that “foldable” phones will help revive a lackluster mobile market, despite the devices still largely failing to attract mainstream consumers.
Foldables, which have a screen that opens like a book or compact mirror, barely exceed a 1 per cent market share of all smartphones sold globally almost five years after they were first introduced.
But Samsung has doubled down on the product, investing heavily in marketing this year. In July, the Korean group released its 5G Galaxy Z series.
The world’s largest smartphone manufacturer points to estimates from Counterpoint Research that foldable devices may surpass a third of all smartphones costing more than $600 by 2027.
“We will continue to position our foldables as a key engine for our flagship growth with the clear differentiation, experience and flexibility these devices have to offer,” said Samsung.
Other handset makers such as Motorola, China’s Huawei and its spin-off Honor are also pinning their hopes on the product helping to revive a market that suffered its worst year for more than a decade.
“This is the year people [in the industry] really dived in,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight. “Everybody now is betting on this, except Apple.”
The iPhone-maker has yet to show any interest in the category, though patent filings suggest it may one day introduce an iPad that folds in half. Every other big smartphone maker has followed Samsung into the market, including Google’s Pixel Fold and Chinese alternatives from Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi.
“We believe foldables are the future of smartphone devices, just like electric cars were to the auto industry,” said Bond Zhang, UK chief executive of Honor. “We’re approaching a crucial tipping point where foldables may soon become mainstream.”
But market data shows foldables are still far from mainstream. Counterpoint Research estimates about 16 million foldable phones will be sold this year, just 1.3 per cent of the 1.2 billion smartphone market total. Analysts say consumers are deterred by concerns about price, reliability and utility.
“I do wonder if there are too many products chasing too little market share at the moment,” Wood said.
