Tag Archives: Information technology

You can now stream some Xbox games you own, but you still need Game Pass Ultimate

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Microsoft has announced a long-anticipated feature for Xbox Cloud Gaming. Starting today, you'll be able to stream select games that you own on TVs and Meta Quest VR headsets, as well as supported browsers on phones, tablets and PCs in every country where Xbox Cloud Gaming is available. Microsoft plans to expand the feature to Xbox consoles and the Windows Xbox app next year.

You'll still need to be an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member to use this feature, but it means that you're no longer limited to streaming only the games that are on that service. The "stream your own game" option includes support for 50 titles at the outset, with more to be added later. You can stream the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Stray, The Witcher 3, Balatro, Animal Well, NBA 2K25, Baldur’s Gate 3 and several Final Fantasy games. Just look for the "stream your own game" section on Cloud Gaming.

An Xbox spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that "streaming the games you own requires a digitally purchased game." So, you won't be able to stream a physical copy of, say, Farming Simulator 25 via this feature, but if you have the disc in your Xbox Series X, remote play is still an option. 

Although it's broadly good that people have more ways to play their games, this move lines up with Xbox inching toward an all-digital future — one in which gamers without access to fast, reliable Internet connections may be left behind. This also lets Xbox expand its cloud gaming offerings without having to necessarily pay third-party developers and publishers big bucks to get their projects on Game Pass proper. 

The stream your own game initiative also ties into Microsoft's new ad campaign about all kinds of devices being an Xbox when they are, in fact, not. The rollout comes a day after Sony started publicly testing a cloud gaming option on PlayStation Portal, a feature that the device should have had from the beginning. 

Update November 20, 1:41PM ET: Added clarification from Xbox that only digitally purchased games, and not physical copies, are eligible to stream. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/you-can-now-stream-some-xbox-games-you-own-but-you-still-need-game-pass-ultimate-181047095.html?src=rss

Apple patches vulnerabilities used to target Intel-based Macs

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Apple has rolled out updates for its operating systems, which come with security fixes for vulnerabilities that may have already been used to target its customers. The updates are now available for Macs, iPhones, iPads, the Vision Pro and the Safari browser. In its notes, Apple revealed that the security patches will fix bugs affecting WebKit, the rendering engine Safari uses, and JavaScriptCore, which runs JavaScript code on macOS and iOS devices. 

If JavaScriptCore is fooled into processing "maliciously crafted web content," it could execute arbitrary codes, Apple explained. Meanwhile, WebKit could be exploited for cross site scripting attacks if it gets tricked into running malicious content. The company said it's aware of a report that the vulnerabilities could've been actively exploited on Intel-based Mac systems. According to TechCrunch, the bugs are zero-day vulnerabilities, as Apple had no knowledge of their existence when they were exploited. Researchers from Google's Threat Analysis Group were reportedly the ones who discovered the vulnerabilities. The group is known for detecting and analyzing government-backed hacking and attacks. 

Apple didn't say how many devices had been attacked using exploits taking advantage of the bugs, and it didn't say if any information was stolen from the targets. Mac, iPad and iPhones users may want to check their devices for the latest updates, though, so they can install the security fixes as soon as possible. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/apple-patches-vulnerabilities-used-to-target-intel-based-macs-133027514.html?src=rss

The Oura Ring Gen 3 drops to a record low of $249 for Black Friday

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The winter months can be a tough time for keeping up with health and wellbeing as colder, darker weather sets in. For anyone looking for a gadget to help them manage their sleep, activity and other health stats, now could be the right time to look into a wearable. The basic finishes of the Oura Ring Gen 3 are on sale for $249 ahead of Black Friday. That's a $50 savings for the black or silver finish, which is the biggest discount we've seen to date on this wearable. You can also snag the luxe finishes for less than usual right now. The brushed titanium and stealth materials are on sale for $279, down from the usual of $349, while the gold and rose gold options are selling for $349 instead of their typical $449 price tag.

The company did just release the Oura Ring Gen 4, so this deal won't give you the most cutting edge developments in sensors and design. But for someone who wants a less intrusive approach to a wearable, the Gen 3 still has a lot to offer. Our review by Daniel Cooper pointed out that the Oura Ring offers impressively accurate readings even though all its sensors are packed into a much smaller form factor than a smartwatch. While he felt the design of the ring is a little bulky, in practice it was easy to forget that he had it on.

Keep in mind that unless you're upgrading from another Oura product, you'll want to buy the size guide to make sure your new ring fits correctly. When you do buy a sizing kit for the Gen 3, you'll get $10 towards the purchase of the actual wearable.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-oura-ring-gen-3-drops-to-a-record-low-of-249-for-black-friday-195248032.html?src=rss

Black Friday Apple deals 2024: The best Apple sales on iPads, AirPods, Apple Watches and MacBooks

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Apple’s website hardly ever hosts sales of its own and they're not making an exception for 2024. So we have to rely on other retailers, like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and Target to discount Apple devices for Black Friday. This year, the deals are already looking pretty good — if you’ve been waiting for a better price before grabbing that iPad or MacBook, the wait was likely worth it. 

We found new all-time low prices on the Apple Watch Series 10, the 10th generation iPad and the M3 MacBook Air, as well as deals on previous generation devices that’ll still serve you well. And if you’d like a little more info before plunking down your money, you can check out our reviews and buying advice beforehand — all of which is linked below. Here are the best Apple deals for Black Friday.

The tenth generation ipad sits on a pile of books. it looks pretty in the dapled afternoon sun.
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The line between Apple’s tablets and laptops is a little blurry at this point, especially with the release of the iPad Pro this year, which (at the time) housed the company’s most powerful chip. The iPad Air is our current pick for the best iPad you can buy and we were delighted by the iPad mini that came out just last month. The only problem is iPads are among the more expensive tablets you can buy. Hopefully these Black Friday iPad deals help out.

Apple refined the shape on the AirPods 4 for a better fit.
Billy Steele for Engadget

Apple has four models of AirPods right now: The AirPods Pro 2, the over-ear AirPods Max and two AirPods 4, one with active noise cancellation and one without. Apple has been doing a lot of interesting things with their headphones lately, making this a good time to dive in. Though the discounts for Black Friday look to be minor, it's better than paying full price. 

  • Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) for $539 ($10 off): Apple’s only over-ear headphones haven’t had a full revamp in a few years. When the iPhone 16 came out, Apple swapped out the lightning port for a USB-C connector and introduced new colors. While the overall design and build is a bit old at this point, they still deliver balanced sound in a premium package. Also at B&H Photo.

  • Apple AirPods 4 (standard) for $119 ($10 off): Here's a minor discount on Apple’s newest personal audio device. They were announced alongside the iPhone 16 back in September. There are two versions of the AirPods 4, this is the standard version without active noise cancellation. Both have a redesigned shape for a better fit and offer an open ear design (as opposed to the closed-ear shape of the Pro model). We gave them an 88 in our review.  

  • Apple AirPods 4 (ANC) for $169 ($10 off): The new buds with ANC got a respectable 86 in that same review. We noted they had pro-level features like letting you nod or shake your head to respond to Siri’s questions and Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking. 

A person wears the Apple Watch Series 10 on their wrist. It shows a blue screen with the time and other widgets.
Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget

If you take steps or do a workout and you’re not wearing a smartwatch, does it really count? Of course, the Apple Watch is more than a fitness tracker, it’s also a shortcut to your iPhone notifications, a handy Siri portal and an always-on weather forecast. Plus it tells time. While they’re not cheap, these Black Friday Apple Watch discounts should help.

the 2024 macbook air m3 sits on a wooden table outside bear a fence and some trees.
Photo by Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Apple held a quiet Mac Week at the tail end of October in which it announced the new desktop M4 Mac mini, the all-in-one M4 iMac and the M4 MacBook Pro laptop. The MacBook Air from back in March is still the model we recommend for most people

An AirTag in a bag.
Apple

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/black-friday-apple-deals-2024-the-best-apple-sales-on-ipads-airpods-apple-watches-and-macbooks-165143887.html?src=rss

Adobe’s Black Friday deal slashes 50 percent off Creative Cloud plans

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Adobe is making it more affordable to access its apps if you pay for a subscription until Black Friday this year. You can get the 100GB Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan for $30 a month instead of $60 if you sign up for a subscription until November 29. If you're a student, you can get it even cheaper at $16 per month, or 70 percent less than its usual price.

Take note that the offer is only available if you're a first time subscriber, and it requires a one year commitment. You will be paying the discounted rate for the entirety of those 12 months, though, and it's not until your subscription is renewed after the year is over that you'll have to pay for its regular $60-a-month pricing. 

Creative Cloud for Teams is also discounted until November 29 and will cost businesses $45 per month per license, down 50 percent from $90. Meanwhile, Adobe Express for teams will set businesses back $5 per month per license instead of $8. Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps gives you access to 20 of the company's creative apps. They include Photoshop, which is probably the Adobe app you're most familiar with, as well as Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InDesign and Acrobat. In addition, you'll also get cloud storage space, social media templates and thousands of fonts with a subscription. If you want to make a website, you can use the plan's access to Adobe Portfolio create it, and you can also use the included access to Adobe Behance if you want to showcase your creative work. 

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/adobes-black-friday-deal-slashes-50-percent-off-creative-cloud-plans-143039647.html?src=rss

El Capitan ranked the most powerful supercomputer in the world

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When Cray Computing, a supercomputer manufacturer acquired by HP in 2019, announced that it would build El Capitan it expected the computer to reach a peak performance of 1.5 exaflops. Today, the 64th edition of the TOP500 — a long-running ranking of the world's non-distributed supercomputers — was published, and El Capitan not only exceeded that forecast by clocking 1.742 exaflops, but has claimed the title as the most powerful supercomputer in the world right now.

El Capitan is only the third “exascale” computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. Cray had a hand in all three systems.

El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt.

If you’re wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism. Being more powerful than anticipated, it’s likely to occupy the throne for a long while before another exascale computer overtakes it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/el-capitan-ranked-the-most-powerful-supercomputer-in-the-world-180037304.html?src=rss

Apple’s M4 Mac mini drops to a record low of $549 for Black Friday

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Apple's new Mac Mini has only been out in the world for only a few weeks but its already on sale. Right now, you can get the Mac Mini with Apple's M4 chip for $549, down from $574, thanks to a $25 coupon. You can click the coupon right on the product page and it should apply your discount at checkout. This $25 sale is available on the Mac Mini with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of SSD storage. 

The 2024 Mac Mini is available with an M4 or M4 Pro chip, both of which give the desktop computer a real boost from its previous version. We gave the upgrade a 90 in our review, in part due to the Pro's perks (which we'll get into later), but also general features like the base level being 16GB of RAM. This generation also offers front USB-C and headphone ports, as well as a design that's less than half the size of its predecessor.

The Mac Mini with M4 chip should be plenty of power for all your basic tasks. But, if you need a bigger boost, then check out Mac Mini with an M4 Pro chip. It's currently on sale for $1,270, down from $1,370, due to a $100 coupon available on the product page. This deal is available on the model with 24GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage. It's remarkably fast and offers Thunderbolt 5 support, rather than the M4's Thunderbolt 4. Thunderbolt 5 can triple data transfer speeds to 120GB/s, up from 40GB/s. 

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-m4-mac-mini-drops-to-a-record-low-of-549-for-black-friday-144307916.html?src=rss

Apple secretly included quantum dot tech in the M4 MacBook Pro’s display

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Apple's latest M4-powered MacBook Pro is a pretty stellar laptop. We gave it a score of 92 in our review, due in part to its great screen. The display is brighter this time around, peaking at 1,000 nits for SDR (standard dynamic range) content and 1,600 nits for HDR material. However, there's another aspect of the screen about which Apple has strangely been keeping mum.

As noted by display expert Ross Young, Apple used a quantum dot (QD) film instead of a red KSF phosphor film on the display. "In the past, Apple went with the KSF solution due to better efficiency and lack of cadmium (Cd), but the latest Cd-free QD films are very efficient, feature as good or better color gamut and better motion performance," Young explained. That means the latest MacBook Pro screen should offer a wider color range than in the past while making motion look smoother.

Rather than being an early adopter itself, Apple often waits until technology has advanced to the point where it makes sense for the company to use it in products. Apple had considered using quantum dot tech in iMac displays at least as far back as 2015. But as TechRadar notes, cadmium is a toxic element and that would not have squared with Apple's stated commitment to environmentalism efforts, so the company abandoned that idea. However, cadmium-free film now makes quantum dot tech more feasible for Apple.

Quantum dots aren't exactly new. Other manufacturers have been using them in QLED TVs and monitors for many years at this point. QD-OLED panels are becoming more commonplace too. Apple is still using MiniLED backlighting in its MacBook Pros, but this could be a case of the company laying the groundwork for future QD-OLED MacBook Pro variants.

Engadget has contacted Apple for comment.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/apple-secretly-included-quantum-dot-tech-in-the-m4-macbook-pros-display-173424130.html?src=rss

This Black Friday deal brings the DJI Osmo Mobile 6 gimbal down to an all-time-low price

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The DJI Osmo Mobile 6 gimbal is on sale via Amazon for just $89, as part of an early Black Friday deal. This knocks 36 percent off the price and represents a record low for the camera-stabilizing device.

For the uninitiated, this product keeps a steady lock on smartphones so as to provide smooth camera and video footage. The Osmo Mobile 6 is a step up from its predecessors in nearly every way. It features a newly-designed handle that’s more comfortable to hold and a larger clamp to accommodate all of those modern giant phones. The clamp can also wrap itself around smaller phones in bulky cases. 

This model boasts a built-in extension rod, so it doubles as a selfie stick. It also features the company’s ActiveTrack software. This allows for increased stability over longer distances and will actually track subjects as they turn, spin or move. Another new feature is Quick Launch for iPhone models. This automatically forces the phone into the camera view when the gimbal is unfolded.

There’s a built-in status panel to check battery levels, a timelapse feature, gestural controls and a whole lot more. It’s a nifty little gadget. On the downside, this is a lot of money for a smartphone clamp, even at $89. This is for people who prioritize top-tier footage.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-black-friday-deal-brings-the-dji-osmo-mobile-6-gimbal-down-to-an-all-time-low-price-161257824.html?src=rss

The new Xbox ad campaign is confused about what an Xbox is

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These times are very trying and it’s understandable if someone goes a little off the deep end once in a while. Just like Norman Bates said in Psycho, “We all go a little mad sometimes.” However, a new Xbox ad campaign has us a little concerned.

Microsoft launched a new marketing campaign for its Xbox consoles and cloud gaming service called “This is an Xbox.” It features posters and commercials with a bunch of different objects like a laptop, a smartphone and a Meta Quest 3 that are all “an Xbox.”

We confirmed with a thorough fact check that all of those objects are not an Xbox. That may sound like overkill but when you live in a world where there’s a real chance that the goopy mass voiced by Tim Curry in FernGully might become Secretary of the Interior, we’re not taking any chances.

The commercial is even trippier. It zips between objects like a flat screen TV, an ROG Ally and a laptop while Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours” blasts in the background. This time though, it displays the simple sentence “This is an Xbox” with a secondary clause or imperative statement behind it. Is there some kind of malware virus in the AI software that runs our universe or something?

Microsoft, we know this is an ad campaign and that you don’t really believe these non-Xbox items are “an Xbox.” Of course, you want to talk up your cloud gaming service, which is available across all of the devices in the ads. But last I checked, I didn't need an expensive subscription to play games on a regular Xbox.

Also this is the internet, a gathering place for conspiracy weavers, liars and ne’er-do-wells. Reality is hard enough right now without having to debate the merit of what things are. This feels like the kind of stuff that Jobu would pull when she finished decorating the bagel in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Microsoft, do you need help? Don't be afraid to ask.
Microsoft

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/the-new-xbox-ad-campaign-is-confused-about-what-an-xbox-is-231013374.html?src=rss