Mustafa Mahmoud 2 days ago Featured Tech News, Online, Software & Gaming
In less than two years, Google Stadia has gone from a promising new cloud based platform which positioned itself as the future of gaming, to a shell of itself, with many of its promises still unfulfilled. In another blow to the game streaming service, the Product Head for Stadia has now left the company.
In a report by The Information (accessed by 9to5Google), John Justice, the Vice President and product head of Stadia has left Google. Though Justice himself has yet to comment on the matter, Google did confirm the departure, releasing a statement to 9to5Google, saying “We can confirm John is no longer with Google and we wish him well on his next step.”
Ever since its launch in 2019, Google Stadia has never managed to grab a foothold of the gaming market, and based on its current trajectory and actions, it may never manage to do so.
While the initial pitch promising 4K60fps gaming, no loading and so much more, the product itself left a lot to be desired. Furthermore, basic features were missing for years, with the service’s storefront only recently getting a search bar.
With Google already shuttering its first-party game studios, and now the departure of the VP, it begs the question as to what Google has planned for the service, or whether it will soon be on its way to the Google Graveyard.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
KitGuru says: What do you think of this departure? Are you surprised? How long do you think Stadia will survive for before being shut down? Let us know down below.
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Matthew Wilson 2 days ago General Tech, Professional
Synology has a new pair of professional-grade storage racks launching this week. The 12-bay RackStation RS2421+ and RS2421RP+, and 16-bay RS2821RP+ will be available starting this month, built to excel in large-scale infrastructure backups, business-level file serving and private cloud services.
Speaking on the new racks, Julien Chen, product manager at Synology, explained that both new RackStation products support “essential remote work applications” and well as offering a path for mass storage upgrades with redundant power to ensure file servers are protected in the event of a surge or outage.
In the table below, you can see the specs and features for both new RackStations:
RS2421+ RS2421RP+
RS2821RP+
CPU
Quad-core AMD V1500B
Memory
4 GB ECC DDR4 (max. 32 GB)
Form Factor
2U
3U
Drive Bays6
12 (max. 24)
16 (max. 28)
iSCSI 4K random read IOPS
106K
105K
iSCSI 4K random write IOPS
59K
59K
SMB Seq. 64K read
2200 MB/s
2200 MB/s
SMB Seq. 64K write
1154 MB/s
1164 MB/s
Network Interface
4 x Gigabit RJ-45
PCIe Slots
1 x Gen 3.0 8x slot
Redundant Power Supply
RP+ model only
Yes
Warranty7
5-year limited warranty
Both new RackStation units boast higher performance than their predecessors. The RS2421(RP)+ gets a 103% and 161% boost to random write and read IOPS speeds, while the RS2821(RP)+ delivers 115% and 162% higher random write/read IOPS.
Both devices can be fitted with a dual-port Synology 10GbE or 25GbE NIC for better throughput, or a Synology M.2 adapter card and NVMe SSDs to create a speedy cache. Each rackmount also comes with a three year warranty, which can be extended to five years.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Are you considering a server upgrade for your business? Will you be considering an upgrade to a Synology RackStation for storage?
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Microsoft will begin removing Adobe Flash from Windows next month
Microsoft has revealed plans to start removing Adobe Flash from Windows 10 this year. Flash …
In 2020, Microsoft was battling to bring xCloud or Xbox Game Streaming to the iPhone and iPad, and the conversations had an unlikely victim: Shadow — a third-party cloud gaming app that lets you stream PC games to an iPhone or iPad.
Emails between Microsoft and Apple, revealed in the Epic v. Apple trial today, show how the Xbox maker was trying to get xCloud on iOS. Microsoft was trying to figure out how Shadow, Netflix, and other similar “interactive” apps were able to exist in the App Store while Apple was refusing to approve xCloud. Microsoft put forward Shadow as an example of such a service, only to see it suddenly removed from the store.
“We were showing two examples where a game or an application was able to exist, and we didn’t understand why we couldn’t,” explained Lori Wright, Microsoft’s head of business development for Xbox, during the Epic v. Apple trial today. “I believe they [Apple] ended up pulling Shadow out of the App Store based off this email we sent until they submitted changes. That was not our intention of course, it was a byproduct.”
Shadow on iPhone.Image: Shadow
While Shadow’s removal wasn’t permanent, Apple has temporarily removed the app from the App Store twice in the past year. Shadow was first removed in February last year, with Apple reportedly citing a “failure to act in accordance with a specific part of the Apple App Store Guidelines.” Apple once again removed Shadow from the App Store in February, and the app returned a week later.
Shadow revealed that the app was removed the second time “due to a misunderstanding” around the nature of the app. “Unlike game streaming services, Shadow provides a full Windows 10 PC, rather than a library of games,” explained Luc Hancock, a community manager for Shadow. “This unique approach allows Shadow to comply with the App Store guidelines, so that you can access your Shadow PC on any iOS device to run your favorite games and software.”
Valve struggled for more than a year to launch its Steam Link game streaming service on iOS. Apple rejected the app, likely because it allowed an iOS user to access another app store, Steam, within Apple’s tightly controlled ecosystem. Apple revised its rules after rejecting Steam Link, and the app was finally approved two years ago in May 2019.
xCloud on iOS via the web.Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Apple continued to make it difficult for services like xCloud and Stadia to run the way Microsoft and Google wanted to on iOS devices after those conversations, only slowly making App Store policy carve-outs that would let the services operate under severe restrictions. Apple now insists that developers individually submit games as separate apps using their streaming tech, only then bundling them together as a “catalog”-style app.
Microsoft wasn’t impressed with Apple’s approach, calling it a “bad experience for customers.” This public spat has now boiled over into the courtroom battle between Epic Games and Apple, with lawyers on Epic’s side questioning Microsoft and Nvidia representatives about their struggles to bring cloud gaming apps to iOS.
Both Microsoft and Nvidia have had to give in to Apple’s restrictions and launch their cloud gaming services through the Safari web browser instead.
Walmart’s unannounced cloud gaming service, codenamed Project Storm, has been detailed in new confidential emails. An exhibit in the Epic Games v. Apple trial reveals Walmart’s efforts to pitch its cloud gaming service to Epic Games and get Fortnite on board.
“I played Walmart’s demo on an Android phone (with an Xbox controller) and the experience felt like playing on PS4 and superior to playing on Android or iOS,” said Epic Games co-founder Mark Rein in an email thread from April 2019. Rein also excitedly shares a photo of a game clip with the rest of the Epic Games executive team, showing how Walmart was planning to sell this in stores to let a phone attach to a controller. “They’re going to sell the clip for a crazy low amount, they were saying something like $2,” said Rein.
How Walmart was building its cloud streaming service.
A presentation attached to the emails shows how Walmart had been pitching its cloud gaming service to publishers like Epic Games. The company was planning to run the service on Windows, with third-party game launchers like Steam, Uplay, Origin, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Bethesda Launcher supported.
It’s not clear from Walmart’s presentation when the company planned to launch the service, with a beta period originally set to launch in July 2019. An early mock-up of the user experience looks very similar to other cloud gaming services, with a list of games, genres, and a search function.
An early look at Walmart’s Project Storm service.
Walmart was planning what it describes as an “open ecosystem,” with the ability to stream from the cloud or download and play games locally. The technology behind Walmart’s cloud gaming service is LiquidSky, a service Walmart acquired. LiquidSky was previously powered by IBM Cloud’s bare metal servers and Nvidia GPUs, and it appears to offer a powerful Windows PC for cloud gaming.
Epic Games was one of many publishers to which Walmart pitched. Reports originally surfaced about Walmart’s plans in 2019, but the company has still not officially announced any cloud gaming service. Sources familiar with Walmart’s plans tell The Verge that some publishers and developers had signed up to produce or host games on Walmart’s service, but that the launch had been put on hold once the pandemic began last year.
It’s not clear if Walmart’s cloud gaming service will still launch. We reached out to Walmart to comment on Project Storm, but the company did not respond in time for publication.
Either way, Mark Rein seemed interested in Walmart’s pitch and exploring services like Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now. “Walmart is open to exploring all kinds of business models, but I expect their service will be the least expensive of all of these because they’re Walmart and that’s their gig.”
Epic Games ultimately partnered with Nvidia to launch Fortnite on GeForce Now last year. It’s currently the only way to play Fortnite on iOS, after the Epic dispute with Apple led to the removal of Fortnite from the App Store.
I have some old telephones lying around – few of them fully functional anymore. I was going to throw out one of them when I realized I could replace the inner wiring with a Raspberry Pi, and have the Google Assistant running on it.
While it’s certainly easier to call “hey google” across the room, there’s something fun about picking up the phone, asking it a question, and having it immediately respond. This is how to install the Google Assistant on an old rotary telephone with a Raspberry Pi Zero.
What You’ll Need to make an old phone into a Google Assistant
A Raspberry Pi Zero with soldered GPIO pins, a memory card (with Raspberry Pi OS on it), and power adapter
An old telephone with a functional receiver (speaker and microphone), and a functioning hook switch that you don’t mind destroying
A few female jumper cables, wire strippers, and electrical tape or solder
A few types of screwdrivers depending on your phone
1 USB audio adapter compatible with linux
1 male-male 3.5mm audio cable
1 Raspberry Pi Zero micro USB to USB A female adapter
How to Install the Google Assistant on an Old Phone
This Raspberry Pi project is quite extensive and can take a bit of time, so I’ve split it up into four distinct parts:
Registering with Google
Authenticating with Google
Wiring your telephone
Setting up the assistant
Registering With Google
Before we use a Raspberry Pi as a Google Assistant, we must register the device with Google. This process can be a bit confusing if you’ve never used Google Cloud Platform before, but the steps should be easy enough to follow.
1. Clone this repository to your raspberry pi.
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/rydercalmdown/google_assistant_telephone
2. Navigate to https://console.actions.google.com in your browser. This site allows us to manage Google Assistant Actions, as well as register custom Google Assistant devices.
3. Click “New Project” and fill in the required information. The name doesn’t matter – just pick something you can remember.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
4. In a new tab, visit this link to Google Cloud Platform, and confirm that the name of the project you just created appears in the top bar – if not, select it. Then, click the “Enable” button to turn on the API.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
5. In your original tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Are you looking for device registration? Click here”
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
6. On the next page, click “Register Model”.
7. Fill in the required information and copy down the Model ID to file – you will need it later.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
8. Click Download OAuth 2.0 credentials to download the credentials file your Raspberry Pi will use to make requests.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
9. Rename the downloaded file tooauth_config_credentials.json and transfer it to your pi. Place it into the repository folder you cloned in step 1.
# Rename your downloaded file
cd ~/Downloads
mv your_unique_secret_file_name.json oauth_config_credentials.json
# Move the file into your repository
scp oauth_config_credentials.json pi@your_pis_ip_address:/home/pi/google_assistant_telephone
10. Back in the browser, after downloading and renaming the credentials, click the “Next” button.
11. On the “Specify traits” tab, click “Save Traits” without adjusting any settings to complete the setup.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Authenticating With Google
We’ve now registered a device with Google. Next, it’s time to authenticate this device so it has access to our Google account and personalized assistant.
1. Navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials/consent ensuring that the project matches the name you decided in Step 3 of “Registering With Google”.
2. Select “External” and click the “Create” button.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. Fill in an App name. Once again, this doesn’t really matter – but to keep it simple I went with the same name as before.
4. Select your email from the dropdown in User support email. This is in case any users of your app need to contact you, but since we won’t be making the app public, there’s no need to worry.
5. Add that same email under “Developer contact information” and click “Save and Continue”.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
6. On the next page, click Add or Remove Scopes to bring up the scopes sidebar.
7. Search for “Google Assistant API” in the search bar, and check the /auth/assistant-sdk-prototype scope. Then click update, followed by “Save and Continue” at the bottom of the page.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
8. On the next page, click “Save and Continue” to skip Optional Info.
9. With the setup complete, click “OAuth Consent Screen” in the sidebar to refresh the page – then “Add User” under Test Users.
10. Add your Google account’s email, and click save.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
11. Next, on your pi navigate to the downloaded repository and run the following command:
cd ~/google_assistant_telephone
make authenticate
12. Follow the link it gives you and complete the Authentication process in your browser. Once the process is complete, copy the code and paste it back in your terminal.
13. If successful, you’ll see a message indicating “credentials saved:” followed by a path to the credentials. Use this path to move the credentials into the current directory. Transfer these credentials to your repository’s root directory
Depending on your rotary phone, this process will vary widely. These are the steps that I used, but likely this will require a fair bit of trial and error on your part. Make sure you use a phone you don’t care about, as it won’t be able to work normally after this.
1. Take the cover off the telephone. You may need to loosen a screw on the bottom.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
2. Find and strip the wires connected to the hook switch. We’ll connect these wires to the pi’s GPIO pins to determine if the receiver has been picked up or set down.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. Connect the hook switch wires to GPIO Board pin 18 and ground. You may need to solder the wires from the hook switch to jumper wires to connect them easier, or just attach them together with a bit of electrical tape.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
4. Connect your USB audio adapter to the raspberry pi zero. You will need a USB-micro to female USB-A adapter to do this.
5. Solder the microphone and speaker in the handset to two separate 3.5mm cables. These will carry the signal from the pi to the speaker, and from the microphone to the pi. You should be able to connect these within the phone case and use the original handset cord. This will take a bit of trial and error to determine which wires belong to the speaker, and which to the microphone.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
6. Connect the 3.5mm cables to the USB audio adapter being mindful to connect them in the proper order.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
7. Tuck the pi into the phone, and close up the cover – or keep it open while you debug setting up the assistant. Run the power adapter connected to the pi out the back of the case where the original telephone wire would go.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Setting Up The Assistant
1. Run the installation script. It’ll take care of base and python requirements. If you have a Raspberry Pi Zero, the compilation process can take hours and will appear stuck on a step installing grpc (it just moves very slowly). I’d recommend leaving it running over night.
cd google_assistant_telephone
make install
2. Configure your USB audio by running the following command. It will take care of editing your alsamixer config, setting your USB card as your default audio output, and setting volumes for the speaker and microphone.
make configure-audio
3. Test and adjust your volumes by running the following command, speaking, and listening through your phone’s handset. If your volume is not high enough on your microphone or speaker, set it with the alsamixer command.
# Run, speak something into the microphone, and listen
make test
# Set volumes
alsamixer
4. Export your project ID to an environment variable. You can retrieve your project ID by visiting this URL, selecting your project, clicking the three dots next to your profile photo in the top right, and clicking “Project Settings”
export PROJECT_ID=your-project-id
5. Export your model ID from the Registering With Google steps to an environment variable.
6. Run the make run command. It will take care of registering this device, and saving the configuration to disk so you won’t need the environment variables in the future.
make run
7. Test your assistant by picking up the phone, and asking it a simple question, like “What is the capital of Canada?” If all goes well, you’ll see some logs in the terminal, and the assistant will respond. To ask another question, hang up the receiver and pick it up again.
8. Finally, run the following command to configure the assistant to run on boot.
Since its launch in 2015, Apple Music garnered 72 million subscribers by the end of 2020 and even more impressively (depending on who you ask) racked up a five-star review from us.
Five iOS updates and a couple of hefty interface refreshes later, the arrival of the splendid HomePod Mini (despite the discontinuation of the original HomePod) means there’s no better time to get fully acquainted with the ins and outs of Apple’s music streaming service. You won’t get far with Apple’s little smart speaker if you don’t, at any rate – and there’s so much to enjoy.
Whether you’re on the free three-month trial or already a subscriber and regular user, we’ve pulled together some key tips, tricks and features to make sure you get the utmost from Apple Music.
Read our Apple Music review
Set-up
1. How to unsubscribe
Sure, this is something of a negative note to start on – but if you’re signing up for the three-month Apple Music free trial and don’t want to commit to paying for the service afterwards, you can opt out straight away.
To do this, click on your profile icon in the top right corner of the screen in the For You tab, hit View Account, then View Apple ID and sign in to your iTunes account.
Next, tap Subscriptions halfway down the page. Here you can ‘cancel’ your free trial so it won’t automatically renew – don’t worry, you can still use it free for the three months. This is also how to select your subscription choice in future. Savvy.
2. Bulk unfollow artists
When you sign up to the Apple Music service, Apple will take the liberty of ‘following’ any artist already in your library as part of its Connect feature. This means your Connect section (now relegated to the Made For You tab) will be full of new and seemingly never-ending content from these artists. This may not be what you’re after, especially if you once bought Baby Shark (for a kid’s party or something. We don’t judge).
It’s on by default, but you can switch it off by tapping the profile icon, then clicking on ‘Notifications’ (to see the artists you supposedly ‘like’) and then sliding the ‘New Music’ and ‘Show in Library’ buttons to ‘off’. Now you can make sure you only hear from the artists you really like.
3. Sign in to iCloud Music for extra features…
You might want to enable iCloud Music Library to get the most from Apple Music if you’re using an iPhone or iPad. A number of features are only available with iCloud Music activated – most notably offline listening. In your iPhone/iPad, go to Settings > Music and toggle iCloud Music Library on.
4. Or don’t…
This can present some problems to users with a big existing library, especially if you have your own playlists. Apple will match these with its own tracks so you can listen offline – but it may not always get the right version. So if you’re precious about your existing downloads (and rightly so), you may want to turn off iCloud. To do this, simply toggle the iCloud Music Library option off.
5. Or have iCloud Music on mobile only
If you have a big existing music library and you’re not sure about Apple matching it for access on your mobile, you can turn this feature off on your computer but leave it on for your mobile. This way your existing library is left alone but you can still have offline tracks on the Apple Music mobile app. Turn off iCloud Music Library on your Mac by going to Preferences > General, then unchecking iCloud Music Library.
6. Multiple devices
The Apple Music Individual Membership plan, yours for £9.99 per month, can be associated with up to ten devices, five of which can be computers. You can only stream on one device at a time, as is the case on Spotify, Tidal and other services.
7. Multiple devices at once
If you want to listen to multiple devices at the same time then you’ll need a Family Membership. This gives simultaneous streaming access for up to six different people for £14.99 per month.
Interface
8. View album information for now-playing track
One slightly hidden feature is viewing the album of the track that’s currently playing. You can do this in two ways. The easiest way is to tap on the artist and album name at the top of the now-playing window. A pop-up will appear asking if you want to ‘Go to Album’ or ‘Go to Artist’. Click on the Album option.
The second, slightly longer method is to tap the three-button icon in the bottom corner of the screen, then tap ‘Show Album’ on the pop-up menu. That’ll take you there.
9. View artist page
Same as above, but select ‘Go to Artist’.
Or, if you’ve used the longer method: once you’re transported to the album page, click the artist’s name (highlighted in that pinky-red text). For both methods, you’ll be taken to the artist’s landing page where you can see all their music and related content (such as new releases, playlists they’re featured in, bio, and similar artists).
10. Explicit tracks
If you were wondering what that little ‘E’ was next to certain tracks, it doesn’t stand for exclusive, it’s for explicit. So prepare your ears (or your child’s).
Organising your music
11. Optimise your storage
This one is a no-brainer. Because why fill up your phone’s storage space with music you’re not listening to? The Optimise Storage feature in Apple Music will automatically delete downloaded songs if storage is running low and you haven’t listened to them in a fair while.
It’s a neat, simple feature that keeps your phone free of music you don’t need. And once you’ve toggled a button, you’re all set. It works when you’re low on storage. To set it up, open the Settings menu on your iPhone, scroll to Music, then Optimise Storage. Boom.
12. Offline music
You can save tracks, albums and playlists to your phone for offline playback (when you don’t have an internet connection) if iCloud Music is enabled (see point 3).
You can only download music that’s been added to your library. If there’s a ‘+’ icon next to a song, that means it isn’t added to your library. Tap it to add. It’ll then transform into a cloud icon, meaning it’s not been downloaded yet. Tap the cloud to download.
You can identify the songs downloaded on your device as they won’t have any icon next to them.
13. Viewing offline music
No mobile or network coverage? Simply select the Downloaded Music category in the Library tab to only see the music stored on your phone for offline listening.
Remember: this is both downloaded songs and playlists from Apple Music, as well as your own music files physically stored on the phone.
14. Sort songs alphabetically by artist (or however you’d prefer)
Want to sort your music library alphabetically by title instead of by artists (the default setting)? In the Library tab, select Songs and tap ‘Sort’ in the top right corner. Then select Title, Recently Added or Artist in the pop-up menu. Hey presto.
15. Shuffle and repeat
Wondering where the shuffle and repeat icons have gone? On the Now Playing screen, you’ll see them right underneath the track and artist, next to ‘Playing Next’.
Music curation
16. Love tracks (or don’t)
Much of Apple Music’s draw is centred on the For You tab, where you’ll find recommended albums and artists based on the music you like. To give Apple’s algorithms a steer, you need to tap the Love (heart) icon on the pop-up menu for every song (or album) you like.
There’s now also a Dislike option right next to it (with a thumbs-down icon) to tell Apple songs you don’t want it to recommend. You can do this for whole playlists, too.
17. Adjust the EQ
You can use Apple Music to change the way music sounds on iPhone with EQ settings, volume limit options and Sound Check. Simply go to Settings > Music > EQ to choose from an exhaustive list of presets. To normalise the volume level of your audio: go to Settings > Music, and toggle on Sound Check.
18. New music
Need to find new music? Click on the Browse tab and you’ll find a section called New Music dedicated to the latest releases, albums, playlists, music videos and more.
In Browse’s Playlists section, you’ll find curated playlists from the likes of Pitchfork, NME and Sonos, as well as playlists for your every mood and activity.
19. Browse new music by genre
Tailor to your musical tastes even further by going to the Genres section and filtering music by, you guessed it, genre.
You can filter playlists by genre, too, in the Playlists section.
20. Use built-in Shazam
Here’s a bit of insider knowledge: Shazam is built right into iPhones, even without a download of the app. This nifty tool can help you figure out what songs are playing when you’re in the car and can’t scrutinise your screen (do not scroll and drive), or while watching shows or movies.
If you’re trying to put a name to a song, simply tap the Shazam button on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. And here’s the best bit: the app will identify the music you’ve captured and save it to your library.
To use this feature, open the Control Center in your device’s Settings and add the Music Recognition icon to your ‘Included Controls’ – if music recognition is enabled on your device, you’ll be able to swipe up and see the Shazam icon from your iPhone’s lock screen. Now, tap this Shazam music recognition button to swiftly identify what’s playing around you.
Radio and TV
21. Create your own radio station
You can play an Apple-curated selection of music based on a certain artist or track. Simply click on the three dots on an artist or a track and select Create Station from the pop-up menu to listen to related music. Tap the ‘love’ icon on subsequent songs to tell Apple to keep playing more songs like it.
22. Listen to live radio on Apple Music
Apple Music subscribers can now tune in to not one but three live radio stations: Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country. Click on the Radio icon at the bottom of the home screen, then scroll down to Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, or Apple Music Country to tune in live, see upcoming shows, and listen to previously aired shows on-demand.
23. Listen to broadcast radio
You can also tune in to your favorite broadcast radio stations, including your local ones. To do this, go to Search, search for the radio station by its name, call sign, frequency, or nickname, then tap or click the radio station to listen to it live. And don’t forget, you can also ask Siri to play a radio station by name.
24. Play music videos on Apple TV
Apple Music makes it easy to watch music videos on Apple TV. There’s actually a Videos screen in the Apple Music app that includes the hottest new music videos and video playlists, and it’s accessible right from the app on your Apple TV. To use it, open Music on Apple TV and swipe to Videos. Then, swipe down to see a menu of video categories. Depending on the video, you can add it to a playlist or your library or remove it from your library.
More features
25. Share your listening history with your friends
Fancy sharing new sonic discoveries with your friends? You can do it by creating an Apple Music profile within the app. Then, if your friends subscribe and create a profile, you can see what they are listening to, too.
To create a profile, tap Listen Now and, in the upper-right corner of this screen on your iPhone, tap the photo icon. (On an Android device, tap the More button, then tap Account). Now, tap See What Friends Are Listening To. Follow the onscreen prompts to create a username, find and follow friends, share playlists and more.
You can also control what you share (nobody needs to know all of your listening habits, right?) hide certain playlists, block or unblock users or follow your friends’ accounts.
26. Siri + Apple Music = clever
You can use voice control to play your music, whether you’re on your iPhone or Apple Watch ( for instance: “Hey Siri, play AC/DC”). But it’s actually even cleverer than that. You can start a radio station by saying “play AC/DC station”.
Apple Music can also play by date, popularity and release date, so “play the number one hit from April 1988”, “play the top songs by AC/DC” or “play the newest song by AC/DC*” all work. It can be a little hit and miss at times, but it’s worth experimenting with all sorts of commands.
(*other bands are available. They’re not as good, though)
(Image credit: Apple)
27. Siri + Apple Music + HomePod Mini = cleverer
Siri voice commands and Apple Music are the key ingredients to a great Apple HomePod Mini speaker experience, so if you’ve bought yourself a new HomePod Mini, you can ask it all sorts of questions to get your favourite tunes playing. Start off with “Hey Siri, play something I like” and it’ll use your Apple Music profile to create a personalised radio station of songs you know and like.
Amazon Echo vs Apple HomePod Mini: which is the best smart speaker?
28. Turn off Listening History for Apple HomePod Mini
If you have a HomePod Mini, you might not want your kids or that friend who only loves country music messing up your carefully curated For You recommendations when they start shouting out song requests.
Keep your Apple Music profile separate from what the Mini’s been playing by firing up the Home app (which you should’ve downloaded when setting it up), head to the Details section and switch ‘Use Listening History’ to off.
29. Wake and stream
Want to wake up to the sound of your favourite song? When setting an alarm in your iPhone’s Clock app, tap Sound > Pick a song (under the Songs section) and then choose a track from your Apple Music library.
30. Lyrics
You can karaoke! Scroll up from the now playing screen, and lyrics (where available) will appear. Alternatively, tap the Lyrics tab in the pop-up options menu.
Since iOS 12, searching for songs by lyrics is a thing, too. Just start typing lyrics in the search box and voila – you’ll get the song you’re looking for (or at least suggestions for what it could be).
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Home/Software & Gaming/Fortnite is not on Xbox Cloud Gaming due to competition with Epic PC offerings
Matthew Wilson 16 hours ago Software & Gaming
With the Epic Games V Apple trial set to get underway in just a matter of days, court documents are starting to reveal some interesting facts about both companies. One court document reveals that Epic Games is keeping Fortnite off of Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service, as Epic views it as a competitor to its own PC offerings.
The document, which was uncovered by The Verge, goes over deposition questions directed towards Epic Games VP of business development, Joe Kreiner. When asked about why Fortnite isn’t on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Streaming service, Kreiner said: “we viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings”.
As a result, Fortnite isn’t available to stream on Microsoft’s service, although it is available elsewhere, including Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service.
On GeForce Now, all revenue made through microtransactions and in-game subscriptions goes straight to Epic Games, while on the Xbox, Epic has to use the Xbox Store for in-game transactions. However, Kreiner does admit that Epic Games hasn’t negotiated this with Microsoft.
This line of questioning is all part of the lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple. Epic’s case against Apple is centred around iOS App Store policies, which prohibit rival app stores and payment processing methods from being used. Due to this, Fortnite was removed from the iOS platform last year.
KitGuru Says: We’re going to get some interesting looks behind the scenes of mobile, PC and console businesses during this case. The Epic V Apple trial is set to begin next week.
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Earlier today, Microsoft released a blog post sharing the company’s thoughts on the gaming industry and its focus for gaming in 2021 and beyond. Microsoft’s goal has changed for the Xbox team and its gaming initiatives from focusing more on a specific platform (i.e the Xbox consoles) to being focused on multiple platforms, specifically the PC.
Microsoft’s end goal is to be a ‘player first’ company, focusing more on the game rather than the platform it’s on. This means that we’ll be seeing more and more features being focused on the PC platform, and not just the Xbox consoles alone.
This is good news for PC gamers is that Microsoft is now focusing more than ever before on the PC gaming ecosystem, which hopefully means more and more gaming optimizations for the PC and more cross-play potential, which is what Microsoft also highlighted in its blog post.
For example, Microsoft shares more details on Halo Infinite which is getting a significant amount of PC development time and will fully support features such as ultrawide (21:9) and super ultrawide (32:9) screens, triple keybinds, and higher fidelity graphics which will be PC exclusive.
Plus, Halo infinite will also have cross-play capabilities with PC and the latest Xbox Series X/S consoles.
Microsoft is also expanding its cloud gaming services to allow any device to stream over 100 console games to your PC. A few days ago, Microsoft announced the beta for its cloud gaming service, and it will work with both Windows 10 devices and Apple iOS devices through web browsers such as Edge, Chrome, and Safari.
As for developers, Microsoft is adding more features to give developers an easier time making games for PCs. Currently, there’s a new DirectX12 feature called the Agility SDK, allowing developers to push the latest DirectX 12 features and updates to their games without the end user (player) requiring an operating system update.
Microsoft is also working on other features like Auto HDR technology and continuing to work on DirectStorage technology, which was an Xbox exclusive feature but is now being developed for the PC.
These are just some of the features Microsoft addressed in its blog post, but overall it’s great to see Microsoft focusing on the PC player experience just as much as on the Xbox consoles.
No matter how much web browsers improve, it feels like they can’t keep pace with everything we want to do. Open one too many tabs on a few-year-old laptop, and your fan starts spinning, your battery life dips, your system starts to slow. A faster or cleaner PC might fix it, but a startup called Mighty has a different idea: a $30-a-month web browser that lives in the cloud.
Instead of your own physical computer interacting with each website, you stream a remote web browser instead, one that lives on a powerful computer many miles away with its own 1,000Mbps connection to the internet.
Suddenly, your decent internet connection would feel like one of the fastest internet connections in the world, with websites loading nigh-instantly and intensive web apps running smoothly without monopolizing your RAM, CPU, GPU and battery, no matter how many tabs you’ve got open — because the only thing your computer is doing is effectively streaming a video of that remote computer (much like Netflix, YouTube, Google Stadia, etc.) while sending your keyboard and mouse commands to the cloud.
Skeptical? I definitely am, but perhaps not for the reason you’d think — because I tried this exact idea nearly a decade ago, and it absolutely works in practice. In 2012, cloud gaming pioneer OnLive introduced a virtual desktop web browser that would let you load full websites on an iPad in the blink of an eye and stream 4K video from YouTube. (Quite the feat in 2012!) I called it the fastest web browser you’ve ever used, and OnLive’s asking price was just $5 a month.
Cloud desktop providers like Shadow have also offered similar capabilities; when you rent their gaming-PCs-in-the-cloud ($12-15 a month), you can use those virtual PCs’ built-in web browsers to get similar speeds, thanks to the fact they typically live in data centers with very few hops to (and possibly direct peering arrangements with) major content delivery networks.
Mighty argues that by focusing on the browser (rather than recreating a whole Windows PC), it can give more people what they actually want. “Most people want an experience where the underlying OS and the application (the browser) interoperate seamlessly versus having to tame two desktop experiences,” founder Suhail Doshi commented at Hacker News. Mighty claims it’ll eliminate distracting cookies and ads, automatically notify you about Zoom meetings, quick search Google Docs and presumably other integrations to come. Mighty also says it encrypts your data and keystrokes, among other security promises.
But it’s not entirely clear why it costs so much more, or who would be willing to pay $30 a month for such a subscription — you’d think the kinds of people who can afford a monthly browser bill on top of their monthly internet bill would be the same kinds of people who can afford a faster PC and faster internet to begin with. Gigabit fiber is already a reality for some homes, and it’s not like Mighty will turn your iffy 25/3 connection into a gigabit one; while Doshi tells me it’ll technically work with a 20Mbps connection, he says he’s targeting 80+Mbps households right now.
Then again, it’s not like everyone has a real choice of internet service provider, no matter how much money they make. As Jürgen Geuter (aka tante) points out below, this feels more like an indictment than innovation. It’s been a decade, and we still haven’t solved these problems.
“Streaming your browser to you because rendering the HTML is too slow on your machine” is not innovation but a mark of shame on everyone building websites and browsers.
Tech failed as an industry. https://t.co/JJC0WomArb
— tante (@tante) April 28, 2021
I agree with my colleague Tom: I genuinely want to know who’d actually pay for this and why. Would you?
I want to meet whoever is going to spend $30 a month to stream a Chromium browser from the cloud just to avoid RAM hungry Chrome https://t.co/4pl6jL2zUV
Epic Games is holding back Fortnite from being available on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service, according to a new deposition made public as part of the Epic case against Apple. The Fortnite developer views Microsoft’s xCloud service as competition to its PC offerings, and the company is deliberately not offering Fortnite on xCloud as a result.
Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development, was questioned over why Fortnite isn’t available on xCloud, and confirmed it was a deliberate choice. “We viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings,” says Kreiner in the deposition. The court document makes it appear like Kreiner may go on to explain why, but the next part of the questioning has been redacted.
Fortnite is a free-to-play game on Xbox, and the only way to currently access the game on an iPhone is through Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. Epic Games partnered with Nvidia last year to launch Fortnite on GeForce Now and has helped Nvidia offer a number of other games from its PC game store on the Nvidia cloud gaming service, where all of the revenue from the original game’s purchase or any in-app purchases goes back to Epic rather than Nvidia. As far as Epic is concerned, the game is simply running on a PC.
That is likely a key reason why Epic has favored Nvidia over Microsoft to host Fortnite in the cloud. Microsoft doesn’t currently allow rival game stores on Xbox or xCloud in any form, and all transactions go through Microsoft there. In fact, Kreiner even admits that Epic Games hasn’t tried to negotiate with Microsoft over the requirement to have to use the Xbox maker’s store and commerce engine.
Epic’s entire case against Apple is centered on the App Store, and the company believes Apple should allow rival app stores on iOS devices or rival payment processing platforms. Epic is trying to fight Apple’s App Store policies, a 30 percent (15 percent for some) cut for subscriptions and in-app purchases, and the removal of Fortnite from the App Store. Kreiner’s questioning is part of this ongoing lawsuit, and it’s a huge case that’s already shining a light on the practices throughout the mobile and game industry that result in consumers being able to access games and apps across devices beyond just the iPhone.
The popularity of its cloud computing services, as well as the small matter of its software output, sent Microsoft profits soaring in the first three months of 2021 to $14.8 billion. This represents a 38% rise over the same period in 2020 according to a Microsoft press release and the Associated Press.
The company’s total revenue in the period was $41.7 billion, of which $13 billion came from what MS refers to as ‘personal computing,’ which grew thanks to increased demand for gaming and strong PC sales, which Microsoft receives licensing revenue for. The star of the show was clearly Xbox, which contributed to a 34% increase in sales following the launch of the Series S and X consoles at the end of last year, and the rush by many gamers to secure one ready for the holiday season. Surface hardware managed a 12% increase in revenue.
It’s the cloud, however, which accounts for the largest rise of 23% to revenue of $15.1 billion as more and more individuals, companies, and even governments switch to working online. Of this, the largest growth came from Azure, which saw its revenue grow by 50%. “Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
The first quarter of 2021 was unusually strong for PC sales, in part due to unfulfilled demand following the components backlog. The rise in sales across the industry was also due to a weak first quarter in 2020, as the Coronavirus pandemic disrupted Asian supply chains. As Microsoft earns licensing fees for every PC sold with Windows installed, it benefits greatly from increased sales across the industry.
AMD crushed expectations with its first quarter 2021 financial results today with a record quarterly revenue of $3.45B, an increase of 93% year over year (YoY). AMD grew in every segment of its businesses despite constant product shortages for its consumer CPUs and GPUs at retail, a byproduct of record demand and pandemic-spurred supply chain disruptions.
It’s no secret that AMD has been plagued by shortages of consumer CPUs and GPUs, but the company is obviously selling every piece of silicon it can punch out. AMD raked in $2.1 billion for the computing and graphics segment (Consumer CPUs and GPUs), a 46% improvement over the prior year, driven by Ryzen and Radeon sales.
AMD’s Ryzen processors set records for revenue and average selling prices (ASPs), and AMD says it has increased its desktop PC market share again, an encouraging sign for the company after Intel stole back some desktop PC market share last quarter. However, Intel reported last week that it suffered a sharp decline in ASPs for both its notebook and desktop PC chips due to a shift in its sales mix to lower-end processors. That shift is likely due to AMD’s continued performance lead with its Ryzen 5000 processors and strong sales of its higher-end models. AMD CEO Lisa Su remarked that AMD remains firmly focused on its high-end products.
AMD is also doing well in the notebook segment, with Su remarking, “We delivered our sixth straight quarter of record mobile processor revenue based on sustained demand for Ryzen 4000 series processors and the launch of our new Ryzen 5000 series processors.” Notably, Intel also sold a record number of notebook PC chips last quarter, but it suffered a sharp 43% decline in average selling prices.
Su also said that the company had doubled sales of its Radeon 6000 GPUs over the prior quarter and that GPU supply will improve in the next quarter.
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AMD’s Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom (EESC) group, which covers data center chips and game consoles, was up an incredible 286% over last year as it raked in $1.35 billion, largely driven by strong EPYC processor sales that more than doubled (consoles declined slightly during the quarter).
Notably, during its last earnings report, Intel claimed that its data center processor business suffered from the second quarter in a row of cloud “digestion,” meaning customers were still working through their existing inventory of chips, leading to a massive drop in its own revenue for this important high-margin segment. On the surface, it appears that some of that drubbing took place at the hands of AMD’s EPYC Rome and Milan chips. AMD’s data center revenue accounted for a ‘high-teens’ percentage of the company’s revenue.
AMD reported gross margins of 46%, which is flat for the year. The company has also raised its guidance for the year by $1.3 billion dollars, indicating that it expects the impressive performance will continue throughout the end of the year. That’s an increase from the previously-projected 37% annual growth to a projection for 50% annual growth. Su commented that this increased projection is due to increased demand in both the data center and consumer markets.
Overall, AMD posted an almost flawless quarter, especially in light of the current state of the global market. AMD also guides for an impressive $3.6 billion next quarter, an impressive 86% YoY gain during what is historically a slower quarter.
Microsoft now has 145 million people using its Microsoft Teams communications app. This is another increase of 26 percent since Microsoft revealed Teams usage had jumped during the pandemic to 115 million daily active users in October 2020. Usage of Teams has spiked over the past year, with businesses continuing to flock to services like Teams, Slack, and Zoom.
To put the 145 million figure in perspective, at the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft had around 32 million daily active users of Microsoft Teams. That jumped to 75 million in a matter of weeks, and these numbers have more than doubled since even the early days of the pandemic. It’s an impressive amount of growth, just as Microsoft has been aggressively pushing businesses to move to the cloud and adopt Teams over the past year.
As always, it’s difficult to compare to rival services. Google and Zoom don’t reveal daily active users and opt for a more vague daily active participants. This means a single user could be counted multiple times if they participate in different meetings during a day. Zoom revealed it had 300 million daily active participants last year, and Google said last year it had 100 million daily active participants. Slack revealed it had 12.5 million concurrent users during the beginning of the pandemic last year, but the company has shied away from daily active user counts ever since.
Microsoft’s explosive Teams growth might explain why the service has experienced troubles this year. Teams went down worldwide for many users for two hours this morning, after a similar outage earlier this month and connectivity issues last month.
During the height of the pandemic last year, Google was the rare tech giant that actually saw a revenue decline — the first in the company’s history — but only by 2 percent. To say Google has now recovered would be the understatement of the week: Alphabet’s just-released Q1 2021 earnings show it raking in a stunning amount of cash this spring, nearly as high as the all-time record revenues and profit it set last quarter.
Alphabet’s filing (PDF) shows revenues of $55.3 billion, nearly as much as the $56.9 billion it pulled in Q4 2020, alongside $17.9 billion in profit compared to $15.2 billion. That’s also 34 percent more revenue year over year, though that’s admittedly comparing to March 2020 when the effects of some pandemic shutdowns may have been included in the results.
Alphabet’s all-important Google Cloud business does still seem to be losing money — last quarter, it broke out Google Cloud sales for the first time ever to reveal an eye-watering $5.6 billion loss in 2020. But the bleeding has slowed, with the company losing less than a billion dollars ($974M, to be precise) on over $4 billion in revenue. Each prior reported quarter saw over a billion in losses after pulling in under $4B, so those are both improvements.
We also learned for the first time last year how much money YouTube brings in (it was a $15-billion-a-year business in 2020), and while YouTube didn’t pull in quite as much money in the spring quarter as in Q4 ($6.0B vs. $6.9B previously), it’s still a huge increase from the flat $4 billion YouTube’s ads delivered a year ago in Q1 2020. Back-to-back $6B quarters for YouTube would suggest we’ll be looking at far more than a $15 billion-a-year business — assuming people don’t dramatically cut back on their YouTube viewing as vaccine availability spreads and people get back out in the world.
It’s hard to tell how Google’s hardware business is doing because Alphabet bundles it into a giant “Google Services” category that not only includes YouTube and Search but also the company’s entire ads business, the Chrome browser, and Android’s software revenue. But the company does have a “Google other” category that it makes distinct from its search and ads businesses, and that category pulled in $2 billion more year-over-year to reach $6.49 billion in revenue.
Alphabet’s “Other Bets,” comprised of its experimental projects like self-driving company Waymo, health company Verily, and Google Fiber, is unsurprisingly still small. It pulled in only $198 million in revenue for an operating loss of $1.15 billion.
Developing… we’ll be updating this story with more info from Alphabet / Google’s earnings release and the investor conference call at 5PM ET.
Microsoft posted the third quarter of its 2021 financial results today, reporting revenue of $41.7 billion and a net income of $15.5 billion. Revenue is up 19 percent, and net income has increased by 44 percent. Once again, Microsoft has seen strong growth for Surface, Xbox, and cloud-related services.
The PC market isn’t slowing down, despite a global chip shortage, and Microsoft is benefiting from this once again. Windows OEM revenue has grown by 10 percent, reflecting the strong consumer PC demand. Windows non-pro OEM revenue also grew 44 percent, and only Windows OEM Pro revenue declined by 2 percent.
Surface Laptop 4.Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
Surface hit a $2 billion business milestone in the previous quarter, and Microsoft has recorded $1.5 billion of revenue in Q3. That may look like a dip, but it’s actually up 12 percent year over year during what’s usually a more quiet quarter for Surface sales.
While Microsoft just unveiled its new Surface Laptop 4 and accessories earlier this month, the Surface Pro 7 Plus also debuted for businesses and schools during this recent quarter. The Surface Pro is Microsoft’s most popular Surface device, and this latest model includes a bigger battery, Intel’s 11th Gen processors, a removable SSD, and LTE.
Xbox Series X.
Microsoft is also home to Xbox hardware and games, and once again revenue has grown across gaming. This is the second quarter of sales of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, and hardware revenue has grown by a massive 232 percent thanks to these next-gen consoles.
Xbox content and services revenue has also increased by 34 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Gaming became a key hobby for many during 2020, and that trend has remained throughout 2021. Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue is up 50 percent, after reaching $5 billion for the first quarter ever last quarter.
Developing…
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