Author: angel

Here are the features being removed or deprecated in Windows 10 version 1909

Yesterday, Microsoft released the Windows 10 November 2019 Update. It’s a small update, with a small list of new features. It’s no surprise, since Windows 10 version 1909 is really just an enablement package that lights up some new features and bumps up the build number. Version 1903 and 1909 are even serviced with the exact same cumulative updates.

Microsoft has updated its support documents to show which features are being removed or deprecated in the new update. Being that this is a small update, it should come as no surprise that this list is small as well.

And then there are the features that are being deprecated. This means that these features are still included in the OS, but they’re not longer being actively developed. It also means that they may be removed in a future release.

My People is probably the most consumer-facing feature that’s being deprecated. Presumably, it wasn’t being used much.

The next feature update is Windows 10 20H1, which is due out in the first half of 2020. The good news is that it’s pretty much done, so if a deprecated feature on the list isn’t removed just yet, it probably won’t be.

Motorola’s folding Razr leaks again just hours before official launch event

Images of Motorola’s unannounced foldable Razr phone have surfaced once again, this time via the device’s Federal Communications Commission certification. MySmartPrice was first to spot the listing, which shows photographs of the phone from every angle, giving us another look at its notched folding display as well as a second display on the exterior of the phone.

There’s not a whole lot of new information here, thanks to the deluge of images of the device that leaked out last month. However, these are the first shots to give us a good look at the bottom of the phone, revealing a USB-C charging port and no headphone jack. Slightly more surprising is how much the phone’s hinges seem to protrude from the sides of the device, although, as MySmartPrice notes, this could be because the photographs are of a pre-production sample.

Unfortunately, the images don’t appear to offer any more clues about what that small button below the phone’s screen is able to do. It seems likely that it’s a combination home button / fingerprint sensor, but we’ve got our fingers crossed for a spring-loaded mechanism that flips open with a button press. It’s also unclear whether the phone’s external screen is touch-enabled or a more simple notification display.

If we had to guess, we’d say these images just appeared because Motorola will officially announce the device later today. Stay tuned.

Nikon D750 Replacement Coming in Early 2020 with 24MP Sensor, Better AF and More: Report

The D750 is a favorite among Nikon DSLR shooters, but in 2019 it’s really starting to show its age. Thankfully, the latest reports hint at a replacement coming sooner rather than later, and as of this morning, we have our first set of rumored specs for the unconfirmed DSLR.

This set of specifications come from Nikon Rumors, who claims that the camera will not be called the D760. Instead, sources tell NR that the camera will be “a merger of the D700 series and the D800 series” with a model number between D760 and D800.

Beyond this, several of the rumored specs read like a DSLR version of the mirrorless Nikon Z6: with a 24MP BSI sensor, 4K/30p and 1080/120p video support, better high-ISO performance than the D850, touchscreen, updated UI, and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. Where it differs will be the dual UHS-II SD memory card slots and a (obviously) DSLR-style autofocus system with between 51 and 153 AF points.

As with any “first set” of rumored specifications, we suggest taking these with a grain of salt, but it sounds like Nikon does have a D750 DSLR replacement in the works for those users who don’t want to jump on the mirrorless bandwagon. According to Nikon Rumors, the official announcement “could be as early as January-February.”

Eurocom Will Let You Spec a Core i9-9900KS in its X4C and X7C Notebooks

If you don’t fear heavy laptops and prioritize performance over mobility, there’s a new Eurocom you may want to consider. As spotted by Anandtech, the company is integrating Intel’s latest gaming chip, the Core i9-9900KS into its notebooks.

More specifically, those models are its X4C and X7C notebooks. We’re curious how much of the time Eurocom’s machines will be able to keep these chips at their boost speeds. Reportedly, Eurocom will also be offering the units with de-lidded CPUs and better cooling setups, claiming that the’ll be able to overclock the chips even further – in a laptop.

The X4C and X7C notebooks are fully-customizable notebooks that come with 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch displays, respectively. They can be configured to hold heaps of memory, up to RTX 2080 graphics cards (or Quadro P5000 cards in the X7C model), and up to 128 GB of DDR4 memory. There is also room for multiple storage devices with RAID setups, and more. The main catch is that they’re heavy, weighing in at 7.5 pounds for the X4C and 8.6 pounds for the X7C, and they’re both about 1.5 to 1.6 inches thick.

Pricing for the units starts at $2,187 for the X4C, whereas the X7C weirdly goes for $21 less at $2,166. Adding the 5 GHz Intel Coffee lake chip adds $333 to the price over the standard Intel Core i7-9700K.

Intel unveils its first chips built for AI in the cloud

Intel is no stranger to AI-oriented chips, but now it’s turning its attention to those chips that might be thousands of miles away. The tech firm has introduced two new Nervana Neural Network Processors, the NNP-T1000 (below) and NNP-I1000 (above), that are Intel’s first ASICs designed explicitly for AI in the cloud. The NNT-T chip is meant for training AIs in a ‘balanced’ design that can scale from small computer clusters through to supercomputers, while the NNP-I model handles “intense” inference tasks.

The chipmaker also unveiled a next-gen Movidius Vision Processing Unit whose updated computer vision architecture promises over 10 times the inference performance while reportedly managing efficiency six times better than rivals. Those claims have yet to pan out in the real world, but it’s safe to presume that anyone relying on Intel tech for visual AI work will want to give this a look.

You’ll have to be patient for the Movidius chip when it won’t ship until sometime in the first half of 2020. This could nonetheless represent a big leap for AI performance, at least among companies that aren’t relying on rivals like NVIDIA. Intel warned that bleeding-edge uses of AI could require performance to double every 3.5 months — that’s not going to happen if companies simply rely on conventional CPUs. And when internet giants like Facebook and Baidu lean heavily on Intel for AI, you might see practical benefits like faster site loads or more advanced AI features.

Chrome OS will soon show when your Chromebook will reach End of Life

In recent months, we’ve all become more aware of the fact that every Chromebook has a built-in expiration date after which it will no longer receive updates. Likely in an effort to increase transparency, Google is now making information about your Chromebook’s End of Life date easily viewable within Chrome OS.

Every Chromebook has been promised roughly six and a half years of Chrome OS updates — give or take for devices that are closely based on older models — with Google recently extending those dates by another year for over 100 devices.

Up to this point, checking your device’s update expiry date was a bit of a hassle, which required you to find your specific Chromebook in the massive list of every ever Chromebook released and its associated End of Life date. Now, as reported by XDA-Developers, Google has developed a much easier solution, coming with Chrome OS 80.

In recent builds of Chrome OS Canary, a new option has appeared in the Settings app under “About Chrome OS.” Click over to the recently added “Additional details” page, and you’ll find a new section labeled “Update schedule” that lists your Chromebook’s End of Life date, like so.

The “Learn more” link leads to a page teaching you what you should do next when faced with the dreaded “Final Software Update” pop-up on your Chromebook, which is, of course, buy a new one.

While this doesn’t do much to solve the issue of Chromebooks losing updates far earlier than most Windows and macOS computers, it’s at least a nice gesture on Google’s part to make the information more accessible. Hopefully this will help those with older Chromebooks have more notice and be able to buy a new Chromebook before their device reaches End of Life.

This built-in way of checking your Chromebook’s End of Life date is currently only available in pre-release versions of Chrome OS 80, which is scheduled to release sometime in February.

AMD Ryzen 9 APUs could present a new challenge for Intel

AMD has been doing everything right and is looking to parlay its recent victories into sustained success for the long haul. According to hardware leaker @Komachi, the chipmaker could do just that through the use of integrated graphics.

As TechRadar highlights, a list of processors recently published by the hardware leaker highlights four Ryzen 9 parts – two 45W units and two 15W “Pro” models – sporting a B12 designation. This, according to the leaker, indicates the presence of 12 graphical compute units.

Ryzen 9 APUs, as the publication points out, could benefit from heightened clock speeds and increased efficiency afforded by their 7-nanometer design. This, in turn, would presumably benefit graphics compute units as well. It’d be an interesting alternative to discrete graphics solutions and would of course further press Intel in the portable laptop space.

AMD has had a phenomenal 2019, recently reporting its highest quarterly revenue since 2015. The company still has a lot of ground to make up but has been steering the ship in the right direction with increased market share ever since Q2 2017.

As always, it’s worth reiterating that the post from @Komachi neither confirms nor denies anything as nothing is truly official until official word comes from the horse’s mouth. With CES 2020 less than two months away, however, the timing is certainly right for a hardware announcement.

Review: Samsung’s Space Monitor is handsome and minimal — if you have the desk for it

When Samsung announced the Space Monitor, I knew in an instant that it was going to be something I had to try out in person. Now that I’ve had time to do so, I’m happy to say it’s much as advertised, a streamlined and solid monitor with a smart new design — but not necessarily one for everybody.

Samsung Space Monitor

Pros:

Clever space-saving design

Quiet, attractive look

Solid color out of the box

Cons:

Doesn’t rotate and height depends on distance from wall

Sub-par viewing angles

Doesn’t work with every desk

Price: $400 (27-inch); $500 (32-inch)

We don’t review a lot of monitors at TechCrunch — none, really. This was more of a curiosity to me. I’m interested in design and monitors are usually ugly at best. But I was impressed with Samsung’s approach here and wanted to see if it worked in real life.

The big advance of the Space Monitor is its very low-profile mount, which grips the edge of your desk on the wall side and can be folded up flat against said wall. It can rotate up and down, the monitor tilting to taste — not so far as the Surface Studio, but with that same general range of motion.

The monitor itself comes in two varieties: a larger 32-inch 4K one and a smaller 27-inch one at 2560×1440. I reviewed the smaller one, as the large one has a lower refresh rate and I really don’t have any use for 4K in my workflow.

The ideal situation for this thing is a relatively small work space where having the monitor actually sitting on your desk kind of invalidates all the space around it. With the Space Monitor, the stand is flush with the wall, clearing up the area below and in front of it even when it’s folded outwards. It’s easier than piercing the wall for a free-floating display.

The performance of the monitor, as far as I am able to tell, is good but not great. The colors are vibrant and the default settings are solid, if perhaps a little warm (easily adjusted, of course). The refresh rate goes up to 144 Hz, which is more than enough for gaming, and can easily be tweaked to 120 for those of us who are very picky about video pulldown and other deep frame rate stuff.

One thing that isn’t impressive is the viewing angle. I feel like the sweet spot for this monitor is far narrower than on the Dell Ultrasharp IPS panel I’ve used for years. If you’re not sitting directly in front of it, you’re going to get color and brightness falloff at the edge you’re farthest from.

The bezel is narrow, a bit more than a quarter inch, a little thicker on the bottom side. It’s also nearly flush on the top and sides so you don’t feel like the bezels protrude toward you. All in all it’s a very handsome and understated design, as these things go. It’s worth noting that Samsung appears to have fudged the press imagery a bit and the microscopic bezel you see in official images is not actually what you get.

Installation isn’t quite as easy as just setting something down on your desk, but if you have a compatible desk, it’s literally as easy as sliding the clamp on and tightening it. A custom cable (optional, but convenient) combines HDMI and power into one, and fits into a groove on the back of the stand, eliminating clutter.

But you’ll want to take a good look at your desk to make sure it is compatible. I didn’t, and had to jury-rig a solution.

Basically, unless your desk is more or less solid and has a ledge that the clamp can close down on, you might have a problem. My desk is solid and about an inch and a half thick, but has a sort of wall that juts down about two more inches. I removed and reattached the bottom part of the clamp so it could just barely be slipped around the wall, but then the screw wouldn’t reach the bottom surface of the desk, so I had to fill the gap with a book. (It’s okay, I’ve got lots.)

The stand is plenty stiff and the monitor stays exactly where you’ve put it, but it is a little wobbly — understandable, given that it sits at the very tip of a 14-inch-long arm. I only really noticed when I was typing very hard or bumped the desk, when I noticed it wobbled more and longer than the Dell on its traditional stand.

Now, if you’ve looked closely at the way this monitor and stand is set up, you may have noticed something else: this thing can’t rotate. Yes, unfortunately, the nature of the Space Monitor means that it must always be parallel to the desk edge it’s attached to, and can only move directly perpendicular to it. There is also no way to slide the monitor up and down, or rather to do so you must also move it toward or away from you.

For some this is unacceptable. And although it’s fine for me as a primary monitor, it would never work as a secondary one, like the Dell I now have angled toward me adjacent to the Samsung.

That does significantly limit its use cases, and the spaces in which it works well. But I still feel it’s a great option for some. If you have limited space and plan to primarily work from the sweet spot directly in front of it, this is a solid monitor big enough for productivity, movies and games.

For those seeking a low-profile, space-saving alternative to the usual monitors, the Space Monitor is a great option. But for multiple-monitor setups or people who shift the angle a lot, it probably isn’t the best. At $400 it has strong competition from the usual suspects, but for some people the slight increase in image quality or the ability to slide the monitor up and down isn’t worth losing the desk space or having a clunky design. The Space Monitor is available now, at Samsung’s site or your usual electronics retailer.

Microsoft begins the official rollout of Windows 10 1909

Microsoft is kicking off the official rollout of Windows 10 1909, the Windows 10 November 2019 feature update today, November 12. The timing isn’t surprising, given today is Patch Tuesday, which tends to be when Microsoft commences new feature update rollouts these days.

As it did with Windows 10 1903, the May 2019 Update, Microsoft first rolled out its 1909 feature update to developers about a month ahead of today’s commercial launch. In mid-October, Microsoft made the 1909 client and server ISOs available to developers on MSDN.

Today, Microsoft is starting to make 1909 (Build 18363.418) available to “seekers,” meaning those who proactively go to Windows Update, check for updates and subsequently opt to download it immediately. As it has been doing with recent updates, Microsoft will be throttling delivery, providing the new feature update over the next few weeks to users with devices that Microsoft has deemed most likely to accommodate the 1909 feature update successfully. 

Officials said 1909 is available via Windows Server Update Services and Windows Update for Business. It also will be available vi the Volume License Servicing Center (VLSC) in the next day or so. Users can download from here the Windows 10 1909 Enterprise evaluation edition (Thanks to Tero Alhonen for that link. Officials added that Windows Server 1909 is scheduled for general availability later this month via the Azure Portal and the Volume Licensing Servicing Center.

Microsoft has been testing 1909 in the Slow Ring since July 1. This feature update is unlike previous Windows 10 feature updates, in that Microsoft intentionally decided to limit the number of new features in the release and focus on making changes to the way it services, or updates, this particular release. Though 1909 will look and feel more like a traditional service pack or cumulative update to many users than it will a full feature update, technically it still is a feature update.

As Microsoft officials noted earlier this year, customers who already are running Windows 1903 will find 1909 to be a small, minimally obtrusive update. Those on older Windows 10 feature updates (like 1803 or 1809, for example) will find 1909 to act more like a traditional feature update in terms of size and amount of time required to install it.

Many of the new features in the Windows 10 November 2019 Update are behind-the-scenes improvements to general performance and battery usage efficiency. There are also several feature improvements included for OEMs, application developers, and enterprise administrators. With the release of Windows 10 Version 1909, users of voice-activated digital assistants will be able to converse with associated devices from the Windows 10 lock screen. This handful of new features will be turned on by default. Windows 10 1909 users will start seeing the new Chromium-based Edge browser starting some time after January 15, 2020, and it will be delivered on a staggered, gradual basis to those customers.

Microsoft already is well down the path of testing the next Windows 10 feature update, known as 20H1/2003. Just yesterday, November 11, Microsoft made build number 19013.1122 of 20H1 available for the first time to testers in the Slow Ring. 

Windows 10 20H1 — codenamed “Vibranium” — introduces Cortana as a standalone app, improvements to Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 including Arm64 support, the ability to sign into a device with a Windows Hello PIN, and faster Bluetooth pairing with keyboards and Microsoft mouse devices. 

The next update after 20H1 will be — unsurprisingly, 20H2 — which internally is believed to be codenamed “Manganese.” Now that the Windows and Azure engineering are on the same “semester” development schedule, Microsoft is believed to be targeting summer 2020 as its completion date for 20H2, which means it could begin testing among Fast Ring Insiders any time now. 

Microsoft officials have declined to say whether all the H2 releases of Windows 10 feature updates, going forward, will be like 19H2, meaning very minor and basically similar to a cumulative update for the H1 release. I’ve been hearing from my contacts that 19H2 might just be a one-off that was kind of a catch-up/servicing type of thing that won’t become the new normal. If that’s true, 20H2 could be a more substantial, regular feature update when it arrives.

A related aside: Today, November 12, is the last day that Windows 10 1803 Home, Pro and Pro for Workstation users will get free security and feature updates from Microsoft, as today is the end of support for those 1803 feature updates. Windows 10 1803 Enterprise and Education users still have another year of support left.

Apple Set to Launch MacBook Pro With Bigger Screen, New Keyboard

Apple Inc. plans to debut a new MacBook Pro laptop with a larger screen and revamped keyboard as soon as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the situation. 

This will be the first major update since the MacBook Pro line was redesigned three years ago. Apple is moving from a 15-inch screen to a higher-resolution 16-inch screen, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced products. The display will likely appeal to video and photo editors, gamers and software developers. 

The new keyboard is designed to be more reliable. Some MacBook laptops have been criticized by users in recent years for sticky keys and other problems, prompting Apple to start a keyboard repair program. The speakers will be louder. The existing 13-inch model won’t be updated.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro will replace the current 15-inch model, which starts at $2,399. The new laptop will cost about the same and is expected to go on sale this week, the people said. It won’t be the last Mac launch of the year. Apple plans to release the revamped Mac Pro desktop computer in December, one of the people said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The Mac continues to be a steady seller for Apple, generating roughly $25 billion in annual revenue. This is despite the company pushing more-portable devices such as the iPad and iPad Pro.

The MacBook Pro laptop is Apple’s highest-end portable computer and it is differentiated by faster processors and larger screens. The new models will have main processors from Intel Corp., not Apple-made chips that it plans to add to at least some computers as early as next year, Bloomberg News has reported.

The MacBook Pro and Mac Pro will cap a year of Apple product releases that also included the iPhone 11 line, Apple Watch Series 5 and AirPods Pro.