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Apple Music’s spatial audio is sometimes amazing but mostly inconsistent

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Late on Monday night, Apple flipped the switch on two new features for its Apple Music subscription service: immersive Dolby Atmos spatial audio and lossless-quality streaming. It feels like the company is really only excited about one of them, though, and it’s not the latter.

Eddy Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and the person who oversees Apple Music. He didn’t mince words when he told Billboard that the sudden proliferation of lossless audio isn’t going to significantly evolve or change how we listen to music. “There’s no question it’s not going to be lossless,” he said when asked about what technologies will bring about the “next-gen” of music streaming. Cue firmly stands on the side of the crowd that argues most people can’t hear any difference between CD-quality or hi-res tracks and the AAC or MP3 files that’ve been filling their ears for so long now. He did acknowledge that the higher-bit rate tracks might matter to music lovers with particularly sharp hearing or premium audio equipment, but he was also direct about how niche that group is.

“The reality of lossless is: if you take 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that’s been in Apple Music that’s compressed, I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 can’t tell the difference.” Cue revealed that he has regularly done blind tests with the Apple Music team, and they confirm how rare it is for anyone to be able to consistently recognize lossless audio. “You can tell somebody, ‘Oh, you’re listening to a lossless [song],’ and they tell you, ‘Oh, wow. That sounds incredible.’ They’re just saying it because you told them it’s lossless and it sounds like the right thing to say, but you just can’t tell.”

If you go by the message that Cue and Apple are pushing, the Dolby Atmos-powered spatial audio feature is where the true breakthrough is. “When I look at Dolby Atmos, I think it’s going to do for music what HD did for television,” Cue said in the Billboard interview. And then he really went in:

“I think this is going to take over everything. It’s the way I want to listen to music when I’m in my car. It’s going to be the way I listen to music immediately with my AirPods. It’s going to be the way I listen to music in my house. In a way, it won’t feel very good when I’m listening to something that’s not Dolby Atmos because it’s so good. It’s like when I’m watching HD, it’s hard to go back.”

“This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are,” Cue told Billboard about mixing for spatial audio. “It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it.”

Problem is, with much of the Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music I’ve sampled so far, it doesn’t seem like everyone is making those right calls. It’s a hit-or-miss game of exploration, and songs that truly showcase the immersive potential of Atmos are more often the exception than the rule. In many cases, spatial audio tracks have an artificial wideness to them, unfamiliar placement of vocals and instrumentation, and just sound… off. Distant? Too reverb-y? Pick your preferred interpretation. Yet, Apple is so confident in Apple Music’s spatial audio that essentially overnight it became the default for millions of customers listening with AirPods.

But let’s back up a bit.

What is spatial audio supposed to do for music?

In a word, it’s all about immersion. Here’s how Cue hyped it: “it makes you feel like you’re onstage, standing right next to the singer, it makes you feel like you might be to the left of the drummer, to the right of the guitarist.” On its website, Apple says “music created in Dolby Atmos is freed from channels, allowing artists to place individual sounds all around you.”

Whoa there. Like all of Apple’s senior executives, Eddy Cue knows how to pitch something. But if you slap on your AirPods and expect to feel like an invisible person standing in the middle of a recording session, you’ll probably be underwhelmed.

When it’s done well, spatial audio does indeed give music a unique feeling of breadth. And it’s in a different way than a high-end pair of headphones might bring the most out of a stereo track’s soundstage. In particular, vocals often have a very distinct placement in the mix and cut through better than on traditional stereo tracks. That’s the most consistent advantage I’ve noticed with spatial audio music. But because of the different mix, you’ll very likely also pick up on details or sounds that ordinarily don’t stand out in the regular version of a song. And on the best Atmos tracks, everything has a lot more room to breathe.

But when engineers don’t put much care into an Atmos mix, it really shows. Sometimes giving everything so much space can take the impact or crunch out of guitars. Or other aspects of a track fall flat. I’ve included just a few samples below where the spatial audio version of a song is an obvious downgrade from the original. But there are many, and when you hit a few in a row where the vocals sound weird or something’s amiss, it can detract from the listening experience.

How many songs are available in Dolby Atmos spatial audio?

Apple currently isn’t providing a hard number, and is instead only saying that “thousands” of tracks are available with spatial audio at launch, with many more on the way.

How do I know when I’m hearing spatial audio on Apple Music?

You’ll see either a Dolby Atmos or Dolby Audio logo appear on the Now Playing screen beneath the album artwork.

A few random, good examples of Apple Music spatial audio:

“Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones — This is one where I nearly buy into Cue’s description. Close your eyes, and you could almost transport yourself to a small club where the spread of this mix feels like a live version of Jones’ career-making hit. Stereo doesn’t take you to the same place.

“Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga — With a very surround sound-esque mix (skip to the second verse at 1:23 for the best examples), this is a great example of an old pop hit with an excellent spatial audio treatment.

“Boom” by Tiësto and Sevenn — A fun, lively track that does give off a nice surround sound effect.

“Black Skinhead” by Kanye West — This one is another good example of the “beyond two-channel” openness that spatial audio can provide.

A whole lot of jazz and classical — If there are two genres that naturally lend themselves to spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, it’s jazz and classical. Orchestras can sound truly massive, and it’s a captivating way to listen to jazz ensembles where it’s easy to hear even the quietest notes.

Other examples where it just sounds wrong

“Buddy Holly” by Weezer — The guitars basically lose all life in this mix and vocals dominate the entire thing in a way that just sounds strange and bad. And yet this song is on Apple’s own playlist meant to showcase Atmos.

“Follow Your Arrow” by Kacey Musgraves — Apple mentioned Musgraves as an artist to check out with Atmos. And while her most recent album Golden Hour sounds… fine… her breakthrough Same Trailer Different Park is pretty rough in spatial audio format. “Follow Your Arrow” seems to lose most of its background vocals, and even the main guitar melody is way quieter here than in the regular mix. It almost comes off like a demo recording.

“What’s My Age Again?” by Blink 182 — This is another song that Apple seems to think makes spatial audio sound good, but I’d strongly argue it does the opposite. Mark Hoppus’ muffled vocals legitimately sound like they were recorded through a phone.

“Alex Chilton” by The Replacements — Is that enough cowbell for you during the chorus? It overpowers everything else and makes me feel like I’m in the old Christopher Walken SNL skit, only with a different band.

I’m curious to hear some of your examples that sound great, and others you’ve found that are a disappointment with Atmos.

Do I need AirPods or Beats headphones for Apple Music spatial audio?

No. Apple Music’s spatial audio works on:

All headphones and earbuds
The loudspeakers on supported iPhones, iPads, and Macs
Apple TV 4K

If you set Dolby Atmos to “always on” in settings for the Music app, you’ll see a pop-up advising that it probably won’t sound right on all speakers, but Apple Music will still play the spatial audio mix if that’s your preference. In fact, Apple clearly states that you can “listen on any headphones” to Apple Music’s spatial audio.

How do I turn off Apple Music spatial audio if I don’t like it?

iOS and iPadOS: Go to Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos (under “audio”), and there you can pick between automatic, always on, and off.

If you’d prefer to leave Atmos on by default but want to quickly switch to a regular stereo version of any song that’s playing, just pull down Control Center, press and hold on the volume slider, and toggle off spatial audio. Apple Music will switch over to stereo. If you turn spatial audio back on, you’ll return to the Atmos track.

macOS: In the Music app, open preferences and select the “playback” tab. Halfway down you’ll see an “audio quality” section and Atmos is in there. You get the same three automatic / always on / off choices as on Apple’s mobile devices.

Head tracking is coming to Apple Music spatial audio this fall

Apple Music’s spatial audio is currently much different than the spatial audio experience you get when watching movies and TV shows on an iPhone or iPad. For videos, Apple includes a head-tracking feature that adjusts the sound placement as you turn your head to keep it anchored to the source device. This trick is exclusive to the AirPods lineup, but it’s a very impressive effect.

Apple has said it plans to bring this sound-changes-as-you-turn-your-head feature to Apple Music in the fall — likely with iOS 15.

Is this just a gimmick?

That’s really the question that remains to be answered. But Apple isn’t alone in hyping multidimensional music (nor is it the first to do so). Amazon, Tidal, and others are also increasingly pushing the experience. I recently reviewed an extravagant Sony speaker that positions 360-degree audio as its main selling point.

Are people like Eddy Cue and Zane Lowe right in their insistence that spatial audio will revolutionize how we consume music in the same way that stereo did? Or is this a gimmick like 3D TVs that will fizzle out and be forgotten within a few years? If it’s going to be the former, it’ll take a lot of work and creativity from artists, producers, and mixers to make this format shine.

Because right now, for every Atmos spatial audio track that’s a standout on Apple Music, there are a dozen others that are quite meh — or worse than in stereo. We’re still in the early days, and now that Atmos is officially part of Apple Music, hopefully the consistency will improve. When you do find those mixes where they totally nail it, it’s something special.

Apple should make it easier to switch between Atmos and stereo

But in the meantime, and to avoid turning people off from Atmos when they land on a lackluster mix, Apple Music should make it easier to go back and forth between spatial audio and regular stereo tracks on a per-song basis. One solution could be displaying a choice when you tap on the Dolby icon, similar to the “go to artist / album” options that appear when tapping on an artist’s name.

How to install the developer beta of iOS 15

In its much-anticipated WWDC session on Monday, June 7th, Apple introduced a load of new features for its upcoming update of its iOS mobile operating system: iOS 15. The developer’s beta is now available for anyone who’d like to download it — and who is a registered developer.

First, the obligatory warning: this version of iOS 15 is going to be very new and very beta. If you’re a developer, you know all this, but it’s worth repeating: it’s best to install this on a phone that isn’t the one that you rely on. In addition, remember that Backups Are Your Friend.

You can find the developers beta of iOS 15 on Apple’s Developers Website. You will, of course, have to sign in (we’re assuming you’ve paid your $99 for a developer’s account). You may be asked to register your device if it isn’t registered already.
Find the iOS 15 profile by choosing Downloads (either from the button on the upper right corner, or by using the two-line drop-down menu on the upper left).
Look for the iOS profile, and allow the download.
Once the profile is downloaded, go to the Settings on your device, find “Profile Downloaded,” and follow the instructions. You will eventually be told to reboot, and then should be able to install the update that is available in Settings > General > Software Update.

If you’re not enrolled as an Apple developer, don’t be downhearted — there will be a public beta available for download sometime in July. When it’s available, we’ll let you know where to find it and how to install it.

Kabuto’s giant smart suitcase announced for Hot Vax Summer

Smart luggage maker Kabuto is now selling a 95L Trunk with magnetically attachable Backpack that itself can double in capacity from 9L to 18L. The hard shell trunk includes a TSA-approved fingerprint lock, removable battery to charge your gadgets, and magnetic Fidlock fasteners, just like those found on the Kabuto Smart Carry-On bags launched on Kickstarter in 2019. Both bags should begin shipping by the end of summer as vaccine-fueled travel begins again.

The $629 (early bird pricing) Kabuto Trunk measures 72 x 36 x 37cm (28 x 14 x 14.5 inches) and weighs 4.7kg / 10.4lb. It can be configured with a $29 30W 10,000mAh battery for smartphones or a beefier $79, 60W, 20,000mAh battery that can also charge most USB-C laptops. The batteries can be stored in an optional $69 Pocket that magnetically attaches to the front of the Trunk and charges devices stored inside or out thanks to an external charging hub. That means you can sit down, wheel the trunk in front of you, plug in your laptop, and place it on the boxy Trunk for a mobile workspace on the go. When you check the Trunk, just pop off the Pocket to keep all your valuables (and battery) with you on the plane. The Trunk is available in black / copper or blue / silver color combinations.

The fingerprint sensor can store up to 10 fingerprints, making it suitable for sharing with family or friends. Like the Carry-On, the Trunk’s fingerprint sensor has its own dedicated replaceable battery that will warn you when the charge is getting low. Nevertheless, you’ll also get a set of slim back-up keys that can be carried in a wallet or purse. Kabuto claims the sensor is fast. I tested the sensor on the 2019 Kabuto Carry-On and that’s already very fast — equivalent to what you’d expect unlocking a modern smartphone. Assigning fingerprints is also quick, although you’ll likely need to relearn the steps should you ever share the bag as it’s not entirely intuitive.

The $299 (early bird pricing) Kabuto Backpack includes a USB-C hub on the side. It doubles in capacity using hidden magnets that incrementally expand the sides of the bag as pressure builds. And like the Pocket, it snaps onto the Kabuto Trunk using a magnetic Fidlock mechanism that Kabuto says can securely hold up to 10kg / 22lb. The Trunk remains upright with the help of four “tires” that Kabuto claims are “the most silent wheels ever.” The Backpack is available in silver, blue, grey, and a nude beige.

The Trunk / Backpack combo is available for $929 via early bird pricing. Kabuto bags are covered by a lifetime warranty and are expected to begin shipping in September at the tail end of Hot Vax Summer, just as the world hopefully emerges from our collective traveling funk.

HBO Max has been busted for days

If you’ve attempted to stream something on HBO Max from an Apple TV sometime during the last several days, you may have noticed that its player controls are unusable. It’s not just you.

Ongoing issues seem to be related to an app update that supposedly addressed “a few bugs lurking around” on June 5th. Since that update released, users have reported that basic playback functionality — such as fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pausing — is borked completely when you try to use the service on an Apple TV box.

How an update this riddled with bugs rolled out to consumers remains unclear. Unfortunately, it’s also unclear when exactly they’re going to be fixed.

There’s legitimately no way to pause, rewind or fast forward on the HBO Max app no matter if you use the apple remote or the remote mobile app. Idk how anyone is watching anything on there

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 7, 2021

Asked for comment on Tuesday, a spokesperson told The Verge that the company was working to fix the issue “as quickly as possible.”

When The Verge’s editor in chief Nilay Patel tweeted about the issue, HBO Max’s EVP and general manager Andy Forssell replied that the company was undertaking “one whale of an effort to address this with app updates as soon as humanly possible.”

“You’ll hear no excuses from us,” Forssell added, “fixes coming.”

But when asked by Patel how it was possible that the update shipped to users with broken playback controls, the HBO Max head said that was “the zillion dollar question.”

@reckless That’s the zillion dollar question. First priority is to deliver for users in addressing the issues, but in parallel we will also dive deep into that question. More to come.

— Andy Forssell (@aforssell) June 7, 2021

On Twitter, the HBO Max help account is replying directly to frustrated users. “We’re aware that our recent #HBOMax app update for @AppleTV led to a number of issues for our viewers,” the account said in one tweet. “Our team is working quickly to restore the experience you’re used to. We appreciate your patience and will provide updates as they become available.”

Separately, on Friday, The Verge contacted the service about reported issues affecting the new Siri Remote’s scrubbing feature — though that issue was not limited to just HBO Max. At the time, a spokesperson said that it was aware of player control issues as well as “a few isolated reports” of HDR playback problems. But the spokesperson also added that the company did not believe the HDR issues were related to an update, as the most recent update at the time did not include changes to the video player itself.

Given the problems with the app right now, if you were hoping to stream the Mare of Easttown finale on your Apple TV box without issue, you may want to hold off.

Windows 11: What We Know About Microsoft’s Likely Next OS

Microsoft is getting ready to announce the biggest update to Windows since Windows 10’s debut in 2015, and even though the company hasn’t officially revealed anything about this update, all signs point to it offering a significantly different experience for PC users. In fact, the update is supposed to be so radical that it could lead to a new version number, Windows 11. Though Microsoft hasn’t confirmed the name change, it has strongly hinted at it, both in the artwork for its June 24th press event and the 11 am time.

What follows is everything we know so far about the update that will likely be called Windows 11.

When Will Windows 11 Be Announced?

Microsoft started teasing Windows 11 on June 2 with an invitation to a digital event called “What’s Next for Windows” scheduled for June 24 at 11am ET. The invitation featured a GIF showcasing a redesigned Windows logo that defies the laws of physics by casting just two shadows that, if you squint, look a bit like “11.”

Join us June 24th at 11 am ET for the #MicrosoftEvent to see what’s next. https://t.co/kSQYIDZSyi pic.twitter.com/Emb5GPHOf0June 2, 2021

Why Do We Think It Will Be Called Windows 11?

Those shadows probably would have been enough to inspire speculation about Windows 11 on their own, but scheduling the event for 11am ET also helped. Many of Microsoft’s events are held later in the day — especially since the pandemic forced those events to be online-only — because the company is based on the West Coast. The working theory is that Microsoft wouldn’t have scheduled an event so early in the day without a good reason; synchronicity with the new version number would qualify.

As for why everyone thinks Microsoft is moving on from Windows 10 even though it was supposed to be “the last version of Windows”: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the Build 2021 developer conference in May that the company planned to “share one of the most significant updates to Windows of the past decade,” which he called “the next generation of Windows,” some time “soon” after the conference. So the speculation is supported by more than just a GIF and an event’s start time.

Nadella didn’t reveal many details about this Windows update at Build 2021, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Windows 11 is a black box. A number of reports, rumors, and ruminations based on the scrapped Windows 10X operating system have offered some clues as to what we might expect from the next generation of Windows, and by all accounts the changes will be significant enough to warrant that moniker.

Also, consider that changing the name of Windows is a great way to generate interest and even spur more PC sales. Everytime there is a new version of Windows, consumers want to buy computers with that OS pre-installed, even if upgrading is easy.

How Windows 11 Could Change the User Experience

Reports indicate that Microsoft has been planning many changes to the Windows 10 user experience for a while now. Windows Central reported in October 2020 that the company was looking to “update many top-level user interfaces such as the Start menu, Action Center, and even File Explorer, with consistent modern designs, better animations, and new features” via a project known internally as “Sun Valley.”

Sun Valley wasn’t supposed to replace the Fluent Design language Microsoft introduced at Build 2017 and expanded to iOS, Android, and the web in 2019, Windows Central said, but was instead meant to expand the design language to additional parts of Windows. This would likely result in a more cohesive user experience than the hodgepodge of design languages present in Windows 10.

User Interface Tweaks

Some of these small-but-notable design problems were pointed out by Microsoft program manager Yulia Klein in the public GitHub repository for WinUI in November 2020. Klein said that “XAML controls are inconsistent with how web and mobile apps are evolving” and that her proposed changes were “part of the work to refresh Xaml UI to align with other platforms while looking familiar on Windows.”

The proposal included changes to toggle switches, sliders, and rating controls used throughout Windows. These user interface elements are nearly ubiquitous; changes would likely have a greater-than-expected effect on the operating system’s design. Klein’s post also made it clear that Microsoft was indeed looking to update Windows’ design, lending credence to the Windows Central report from a month prior.

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Microsoft’s plans to modernize the Windows user experience were all but confirmed by a job listing in January that said:

“On this team, you’ll work with our key platform, Surface, and OEM partners to orchestrate and deliver a sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows experiences to signal to our customers that Windows is BACK and ensure that Windows is considered the best user OS experience for customers.”

Looking for Clues from Windows 10X

It wasn’t hard to connect the dots between Sun Valley and that job listing. As for what this “sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows” might look like, well, those also came from Microsoft itself. The company planned to make several changes to the user experience for Windows 10X, the operating system meant for foldable devices that was repurposed to single-screen devices and eventually cancelled altogether.

Microsoft released a Windows 10X emulator for developers at Build 2020 that showcased a few user experience changes such as a redesigned app switcher, a new Start menu, and a Quick Settings menu for commonly used controls. Now that the changes originally meant for Windows 10X are reaching Windows proper instead, it would make sense for some of these elements to make their way to Windows 11.

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These user experience changes probably won’t be as stark as the jump from Windows 7 to Windows 8. It seems more like Microsoft is fully committing to the Fluent Design language it revealed four years ago, looking to improve the Windows experience on touchscreen devices, and making seemingly inconsequential changes that culminate in a familiar yet noticeably different way of using Windows.

How Windows 11 Could Change the Microsoft Store

Windows 11 might not just change the way the operating system looks—it could also change the way people find, purchase, and install software. That seems to be what Microsoft is hoping, at least, because the company is reportedly working to make the Microsoft Store more important to Windows users and developers alike.

An Appeal to Developers

Windows Central reported in April that Microsoft plans to make three developer-facing changes to its software distribution platform: allowing unpackaged Win32 apps into the Microsoft Store, letting developers host apps and updates themselves, and permitting the use of third-party commerce platforms. All three of those changes would make it easier for Windows developers to offer their products via the Microsoft Store in addition to (or instead of) other distribution options.

The company is also appealing directly to developers’ wallets. It announced at Build 2021 that it would only take a 12% cut of revenues from game sales via the Microsoft Store instead of the 30% cut it was taking before. That change isn’t groundbreaking — the Epic Games Store offers a similar arrangement—but it does make the Microsoft Store more competitive with platforms like Steam. It’s also less than the cut Microsoft takes for other apps sold via the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft currently takes a 15% cut of the revenues from many apps sold via its platform. It also takes a 30% cut from app and in-app purchases made via the “Microsoft Store for Business; Microsoft Store for Education; Microsoft Store on Windows 8 devices; or Microsoft Store on Windows Phone 8 devices” per the App Developer Agreement that was last updated in July 2020. Maybe the new rate for game sales hasn’t been added because similar changes are coming to other apps.

An Appeal to Consumers

The Microsoft Store is also expected to receive a visual overhaul similar to the rest of Windows 11, according to the Windows Central report, as well as updates meant to provide “a more stable download and install experience for large apps and games.” Both could improve the experience of finding software via Microsoft’s storefront. (Even if many Windows users are likely to continue installing apps via the web or competitive platforms simply because that’s what they’ve gotten used to doing.)

This is also a symbiotic relationship. Right now Microsoft has to figure out how to get developers to ship their apps via the Microsoft Store even though it’s not popular among consumers, which means it has to get consumers to download apps via the Microsoft Store even though many developers aren’t invested in the platform. A new version of Windows (aka Windows 11) provides the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to address both of those problems, without carrying the baggage associated with the store’s current iteration.

When Windows 11 Should Arrive

This might be the biggest question mark ahead of Microsoft’s event. The company usually releases major updates to Windows 10 twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, and the Windows 10 May 2021 Update’s release last month makes a September or October launch window for Windows 11 seem like a possibility.

It can be hard to predict operating system release dates, however. Microsoft announced Windows 10X in February 2020 with a planned fall 2020 release date, then announced in July 2020 that the operating system wouldn’t arrive until 2021, and then finally said in May that it was being shelved for the foreseeable future. Major updates to Windows 10 have also been delayed in the past, with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update only starting its automatic rollout in January 2019.

The safe bet would probably be for Windows 11 to arrive sometime between September and December. Microsoft will likely release preview builds before then, however, so those curious about the future of Windows should probably sign up for the Windows Insider Program if they’re comfortable using unstable software.

How to Find Out What Comes Next

Microsoft plans to reveal Windows 11 — or at least the update everyone has taken to calling Windows 11 — during the “What’s Next for Windows” virtual event on June 24 at 11am ET. The event will be live streamed via the Microsoft website and has been given the designated #MicrosoftEvent hashtag for use on social platforms.

AMD Radeon Pro W6800, W6600 and W6600M: RDNA2 Goes Pro

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AMD has officially launched its latest round of professional graphics cards, the Radeon Pro W6800, Radeon Pro W6600, and for laptop users, the Radeon Pro W6600M. Like many of the best graphics cards, these new GPUs leverage AMD’s latest RDNA2 architecture, aka Big Navi, which means they bring ray tracing hardware to the lineup, along with the large Infinity Cache. The W6800 also packs 32GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory, which can greatly benefit certain professional workloads.

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Starting with the top model, the Radeon Pro W6800 has specs that are very similar to the Radeon RX 6800, just with double the VRAM and with a different card design and drivers. It uses the Navi 21 GPU, but with 60 Compute Units and 3840 GPU cores enabled. It delivers up to 17.83 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 35.66 TFLOPS of FP16 performance, equating to a boost clock of around 2320 MHz. Like the RX 6800, it also had a 250W TDP, 16Gbps GDDR6 memory and it supports PCIe Gen4.

On the other hand, the actual card design is completely different from the consumer RX 6000-series parts. Like most previous Radeon Pro designs, the Radeon Pro W6800 features a blower cooler, which tends to be preferable to open-air coolers for workstation use as it better supports the use of multiple cards. AMD also equips the W6800 with six mini-DisplayPort outputs, all supporting DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC. Six of the ports can handle up to 5120×2880 resolutions, and two of the ports can do up to 7680×4320 (presumably that’s with DSC, Display Stream Compression).

AMD provided testimonials and some benchmarks showing how the Radeon Pro W6800 compares to other professional cards. The biggest point in AMD’s favor will likely be the price, with the W6800 officially selling for $2,250. AMD compares it with the Nvidia RTX A6000, which costs over twice as much ($4,649), except AMD’s benchmarks then go back to the RTX 5000, a previous generation and obviously slower competitor — #GrainsOfSalt. Depending on the various benchmarks, AMD also shows significant gains over its previous generation Radeon Pro WX 9100 and W5700.

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The Radeon Pro W6600 takes a big step down in performance, and arguably the most interesting aspect is that it uses AMD’s Navi 23 GPU. Also, it has a suggested price of $649. We still haven’t seen Navi 23 in any desktop GPUs, though it’s expected to eventually show up in the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600. This is the first time we’ve seen official specs for anything using Navi 23 with 11.06 billion transistors. Also, as previously rumored, Navi 23 comes with 32MB of Infinity Cache. That’s a big step down from Navi 22’s 96MB and Navi 21’s 128MB, but of course, it was necessary to hit the desired chip size and cost parameters.

AMD doesn’t give the size or maximum core counts, but the W6600 does include 28 CUs and 1792 GPU cores. It has peak performance of 10.4 TFLOPS FP32 and 20.8 TFLOPS FP16, which works out to a boost clock of around 2900 MHz. It looks like Navi 23 will clock even higher than Navi 22, if that’s correct. Perhaps even more impressive is that the W6600 only has a 100W TDP. Other specs include 8GB of GDDR6 memory, clocked at 14Gbps. It’s a single-slot blower design, with four full-size DisplayPort outputs — again, all 1.4 with DSC, though only one can handle 8K resolutions with the other three maxing out at 5K.

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The Radeon Pro W6600M has nearly identical specs to the W6600, with the only difference being the TDP ranges from 65–95W. All the other features are the same, and actual boost clocks and display connections will be up to the laptop manufacturers. AMD didn’t provide any specific benchmarks of the W6600M, likely because actual laptops using the GPU aren’t yet available for testing.

Overall, AMD claims performance is “up to 79 percent faster” than its previous generation hardware. It can be even more than that in some cases (e.g., anything that uses the ray tracing hardware), but 79% will serve as a reasonable estimate. AMD also shared some performance data with and without the Infinity Cache enabled on the W6800, showing gains of up to 10%, though again, that will vary greatly across workloads.

These Radeon Pro W6800 is available now, with the W6600 slated for availability in Q3 2021. The W6600M should show up first in the HP ZBook G8 mobile workstation in July. Like other professional cards, they come with drivers that include a variety of ISV optimizations.

No New Hardware at WWDC, but Minor MacOS Updates

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Apple’s WWDC event always feels like roulette when it comes to whether or not the company will announce any new devices or big software updates. For the past few weeks, rumors have been swirling that Apple might announce new MacBooks or the follow-up to its successful M1 chip today, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. We did get news on the latest incarnation of MacOS, called Monterey, but the rest of today’s stream was mostly spent on new iOS and iPadOS features (many of which are already present in Android).

(Image credit: Apple)

Monterey, the latest version of MacOS, was today’s biggest announcement outside of the mobile space, although it’s not shaping up to be as major of an update as last year’s Big Sur. It mostly focuses on bringing continuity across your MacBook and other Apple devices, including the ability to control an iMac, iPad and iPhone all with your MacBook’s keyboard and touchpad (or vice versa, presumably). It’ll also introduce new features that are coming to iOS and iPadOS to MacOS devices, but these are the most concrete details we know for now.

Apple did discuss that it’s going to be moving away from Automator and towards interspersing manual task shortcuts throughout the OS. Sort of like Windows Tiles, these shortcuts will let you open different apps from panels, but they’ll also take the form of buttons that show up in other programs and let you easily perform certain tasks. For instance, you might be able to make a gif straight from a photo editing program with a shortcut. It’s unclear exactly how intrusive or useful these shortcuts will be, especially since Apple said Automator would still be supported.

Safari is also getting tab groups, similar to the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox, and will also add Chrome Sync-like features to allow you to browse more easily across your MacBook and your iPhone (which will also get a tab redesign).

(Image credit: Apple)

Speaking of iPhones, iOS 15 is adding a bunch of new features to the device, mostly focused around sharing content. These include spatial audio that tries to cancel ambient noise around you on video calls, plus grid and portrait mode options for FaceTime. FaceTime is also getting links you can send to participants that they can click on to join future calls, much like Zoom or Google Meet.

What’s more interesting are the new content-sharing features. Facetime will now let users watch content from a streaming app together, each having control of the play and pause functions for perfect, automatic syncing. This also applies to music, plus FaceTime will be adding screensharing support as well. While we don’t normally cover phones, these functions are worth nothing as they will be coming to MacOS, too.

Aside from these features, there was a lot of talk about privacy promises, more niche updates like changes to iCloud (iCloud+) and the health app, and sections covering Apple Watch and smart home devices. Plus, iOS will be introducing translation features and other quality-of-life changes that are similar to what’s already on other platforms.

But if, like me, you were hoping for more substantial information on what’s next for Apple Hardware, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Still, if you want to check out any of these OS changes, a limited developer beta starts today and a public beta starts next month.

MSI Debuts Range of Powerful Portable Workstations

(Image credit: MSI)

MSI, more usually known for its gaming laptops and RGB-tastic motherboards, has released details of a new line of Nvidia Studio verified mobile workstations for creative professionals with demanding creative workflows.

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The beefy laptops come in a variety of models (WS76, WS66, WE76, WF76 and WF66) and and sport 11th-gen Intel Core processors (i9s, mainly) and Nvidia RTX A-series GPUs featuring either 6 or 16GB of memory. The A-series are Ampere cards that have been built for designers, engineers, and artists rather than gamers. There are two models available here, the A3000 based on the GA104 GPU seen in the RTX 3070 but with 256 more cores, and the A5000 which is rather similar to an RTX 3080 laptop GPU.

Elsewhere, there’s a maximum of 64GB DDR4-3200 RAM, two NVME slots (one Gen 4, the other Gen 3), Thunderbolt 4, and a scattering of USB and video ports. Ethernet goes up to 2.5GbE, and there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 on board.

Interestingly, you also get a choice of screen sizes, with the WS76 offering 17.3in 4K MiniLED HDR1000-certified display, the WS66 sporting a 15.6in 4K or a useful 1080p touchscreen, and the WE76 tempting with a decadent 17.3in 120Hz IPS panel. You also get a very decent battery, at 99.9Whr, but how long it will last driving that CPU/GPU combo at full tilt will have to wait until we get our hands on one for benchmarking.

At the time of writing, the new laptops were not yet available for sale from MSI’s website.

YouTube’s TikTok competitor Shorts will soon let users sample audio from any YouTube video

Being able to sample audio from other users’ videos is one of TikTok’s greatest strengths. It allows memes to percolate across the platform and lets users discover new content by watching videos with the same sound. Soon, YouTube will expand this feature in its TikTok competitor, Shorts, letting users sample sounds from any content uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube officially announced this feature last month in a community support post, but tells The Verge it should now be available for the first time in new markets as part of the launch of Shorts in the UK, Canada, and a number of Latin American countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela). The YouTube-sampling tool will then roll out to other Shorts markets including the US in the coming weeks.

Shorts users can already sample sounds from other Shorts videos (as well as from a library of licensed music). But this update will greatly expand the audio they have easy access to. The feature will funnel YouTube users into its Shorts feature via a new “Create” button in the mobile app. This will appear underneath videos next to the like and dislike buttons. Clicking it will give users the option to sample the video’s audio in Shorts. Shorts viewers will also be able to tap the audio in any video to head back to the original source in YouTube proper.

Shorts videos sampling audio from YouTube will link back to the original source.

Image: YouTube

This feature will allow longform creators “to benefit by allowing the community to find something interesting in their video,” YouTube’s product lead for Shorts, Todd Sherman, tells The Verge. Shorts users can create something with the sample audio, he says, and the creators of the audio will “get perhaps inbound traffic or exposure from that. From the longform creator perspective I think a lot of folks are excited to have their things remixed.”

Not all creators are happy about this, though. After YouTubers noticed a new check-box in the settings for their video uploads that gives Shorts users access to their audio, many complained that this would let people “steal” their content. Search for “YouTube Shorts permissions” on YouTube itself and you’ll find plenty of videos worrying about exactly this scenario, with thumbnails posing questions like: “YouTube legalized video stealing?”.

The permissions box seems to have been introduced before Shorts users were actually able to sample audio from YouTube videos. Right now it has to be unticked manually for each video, but Sherman tells The Verge the company is working on a bulk opt-out option.

IMPORTANT:

YouTube suddenly automatically checked “Yes” on EVERY YouTube video to allow them to be re-uploaded as Shorts on OTHER channels ???

Please let your YouTuber friends know that they have to go through and uncheck this setting on every video or risk stolen content… pic.twitter.com/b4rjiwmE2c

— Mysticat #Mysty200k (@MysticatLive) April 30, 2021

A YouTube-sampling feature could create other problems, too. A huge array of content has been uploaded to YouTube over the years, much of it sensitive or personal in nature. The uploaders of this content won’t necessarily want their videos to be sampled as this could enable harassment or abuse. Despite this, the sampling feature will be opt-out rather than opt-in. That means all YouTube videos will be sampleable by default, and creators will have to specify which videos they don’t want to be used in Shorts.

Sherman says YouTube is aware of these potential problems, but that the company’s discussions with creators has indicated more excitement. “There is some concern about examples of videos that you might think are personal or sensitive and that’s why creators have asked for the ability to opt out. But they also seem to recognize that it sort of doesn’t work if it’s very selectively an opt-in,” he says.

YouTube originally launched Shorts last September in India before bringing the feature to the US in March. Last month, the company announced plans to pay $100 million to creators to use the app, though exactly how much individual creators can earn isn’t clear.

Twitter blocked in Nigeria after deleting a tweet by its president

Twitter is suspended “indefinitely” in Nigeria, “for the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence,” according to a statement (threaded on Twitter) from the country’s minister of information and culture. The move comes days after the platform removed a threatening tweet by president Muhammadu Buhari which Twitter said violated its “abusive behavior” policy.

The statement from Minister Lai Mohammed did not mention the deleted tweet, or what form the suspension would take.

The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria.

— Fed Min of Info & Cu (@FMICNigeria) June 4, 2021

In Buhari’s deleted tweet, he suggested he would punish secessionists. “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Biafra war,” he wrote. “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.” Buhari was a major general during the Biafra war, which left more than a million people dead.

Twitter’s Public Policy team said in a statement Saturday it was “deeply concerned” and would work to restore access in Nigeria. Reuters reported Saturday that Twitter’s website was not accessible on some of Nigeria’s mobile carriers, but appeared to be working sporadically on other carriers in Lagos and Abuja, two of the country’s biggest cities.

We are deeply concerned by the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria. Access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society.

We will work to restore access for all those in Nigeria who rely on Twitter to communicate and connect with the world. #KeepitOn

— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) June 5, 2021

“Suspending Twitter in Nigeria is just one more way of stating that people’s rights do not matter just what the State wants,” Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria tweeted. “This is a dangerous precedent and must be called out for what it is.” Amnesty called on Nigerian authorities to immediately reverse the suspension, “and other plans to gag the media, repress civic space, and undermine Nigerians’ human rights.”

In April, Twitter opened its first office in Africa in Ghana, which some in Nigeria considered a snub. In its announcement, Twitter cited Ghana’s support of free speech, online freedom and the Open Internet as the reasons for its decision. Nigeria’s information minister said at the time that Twitter’s decision not to locate its Africa offices in Nigeria was due to misrepresentation of the country by the media.

According to a 2020 report from Amnesty International, Nigerian authorities “used repressive laws to harass, intimidate, arrest and detain human rights defenders, activists, media workers and perceived critics. Non-state actors also subjected journalists to intimidation, harassment and beatings.”

Alienware M15 R5 Ryzen Edition review: the right parts at a high price

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The new Alienware M15 R5 Ryzen Edition is a slight undoing of progress, depending on how you look at it. As many gaming laptops are going thinner, this one is heavier and thicker than previous generations. Its design has been tweaked slightly in ways both good and bad, and it has fewer ports than before, too.

Despite all of that, it’s a cause for a small celebration because of the Ryzen processor it uses, marking AMD’s return to Alienware products after a 14-year gap when the brand exclusively used Intel CPUs. And it’s a welcome return, even if this laptop won’t appeal to everyone. AMD’s high-end mobile processors have been a boon to gaming laptops for the last couple of years, bringing long battery life and fast performance that sometimes outpaces and undercuts laptops that have competing Intel processors.

The Ryzen 7 5800H processor brings that magic to the M15 R5 Ryzen Edition, and gaming performance with its RTX 3060 doesn’t struggle to get above 60 FPS in graphically-demanding games — all thanks to being a high-wattage component. This R5 that I tested has 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD for a total cost of about $1,616 currently, which isn’t cheap despite being close to the most affordable version that Alienware makes. If money isn’t an issue, it can be upgraded to the more powerful Ryzen 9 5900HX with Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and more storage and RAM for $2,379.

The high price is something that I couldn’t ignore while reviewing this laptop, especially since Dell (Alienware’s parent company) makes a $1,225 G15 Ryzen Edition that has similar GPU specs that should come close to what this pricier M15 R5 can do. And, if you can settle for a slightly lesser processor, there’s a $900 model in the works that has the RTX 3060, but it isn’t available yet.

The value doesn’t fare well outside of Dell’s world either. Asus is currently the go-to brand for excellent AMD-based gaming laptops that are easier to recommend for people who want something more portable and feature-packed, without sacrificing battery life. Compared to a similar M15 R5 configuration, the ROG Zephyrus G15 offers a QHD display, more storage, a better processor and a powerful RTX 3070 (albeit a lower-powered GPU than you’ll find in the M15 R5) for a few hundred dollars less. The new Strix G15 Advantage Edition looks more garish next to Alienware’s laptop, but it also has fast gaming performance and high-end features for a lower price. Neither of these models feature a webcam, but that might be something you can live without.

The M15 R5 is 19.25mm (0.75 inches) thick for most of the machine (thinner at the front, but slightly thicker in the back) and it weighs 5.34 pounds. Some configurations weigh more, going up to 5.93 pounds. Its heft is jarring if you’ve picked up an ultrabook recently, but it’s an asset in helping its high-wattage RTX 3060 graphics chip (125W maximum graphics power, 1,702MHz boost clock) to perform similarly to a low-wattage RTX 3070. Compared to thinner laptops that have a low-powered 3070, like Asus’ TUF Dash 15, Alienware’s laptop makes up for the difference in CUDA cores with sheer power. It will likely be a solid performer well into the future — perhaps longer than some lower-powered 3070s — despite having a technically lesser component. It’ll just be more of a chore to lug around.

The M15 R5 Ryzen Edition fared well while running some demanding games at their highest settings. Red Dead Redemption 2 managed to reach 63 frames per second. Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at about 80 frames per second with its ray tracing shadows feature and DLSS switched on. Horizon Zero Dawn ran at an average of 68 frames per second. None of them came close to fully taking advantage of the default 1080p display’s 165Hz refresh rate, but most people likely have older games in their library that should be able to display at very fast frame rates on this laptop.

It didn’t take long for this laptop to make a good impression with gaming performance. It took even less time to learn that it gets warm to the touch even while idling with no apps, and that when games (especially graphically-demanding ones) are running, it can get very loud. A fast and quiet gaming laptop is an oxymoron, and the M15 R5 is really just one of many offenders. But I didn’t notice signs of thermal throttling after long periods of gaming, nor did I encounter unexplainable slow-down. You just might want to wear some headphones while gaming. The speakers shoot sound out of the sides of the laptop. It’s serviceable for YouTube videos or video calls, but it doesn’t deliver enough depth or bass for entertainment purposes.

This Ryzen-based gaming laptop can handle any sort of casual browser-based workflow with ease. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the M15 R5 has great battery life, since AMD’s processors have proven to bring efficiency to other gaming laptops, but it still did. This one’s 86Wh battery lasted for about seven hours of mixed use, through sustained use of Microsoft Edge with 10 or so tabs, Spotify, Slack, and some video calls. That’s great for an Alienware laptop. The M15 R3 that I reviewed last year clocked in at just one hour. Though, other AMD-based gaming laptops have the M15 R5 beat. The Strix G15 Advantage Edition lasted over nine hours for my colleague Monica Chin.

One area where the Ryzen Edition got a little hung up is with a video export test in Adobe Premiere Pro. Our video team’s five-minute, thirty-three second 4K file took just over seven minutes to finish exporting. That’s not a bad result, but it’s not going to be fast enough for creators to quickly turn around projects and not nearly as fast as laptops with Intel processors can manage.

The M15 R5’s design is different from earlier models in minor ways. Sometimes, it’s for the better. For instance, this newer model is matte-textured all around, including on its screen bezels, which looks better than the glossy bezels used in previous generations. Some people might like the M15 R3 and R4’s two-toned color design, but the R5 comes in a gunmetal silver color that is striking, and the black plastic covering the keyboard is relatively free of distractions, aside from the backlit keyboard and illuminated Alienware logo. One of my favorite changes is inside of the laptop: Alienware lets you easily upgrade the RAM and storage if you want. Some previous models had RAM soldered onto the motherboard, but this one’s more futureproof.

Alienware shuffled around the keyboard layout, though, and it’s worse off than before. The M15 R5’s keys are still enjoyable to type on, but I make more typing mistakes because the volume keys have been delegated to the right side of the keyboard instead of the top. Also, the arrow keys were previously positioned a little lower than the rest of the keyboard to make them easy to find, but those have been shoved up in this model, resulting in a smaller right shift key. This might not be a problem once you get accustomed to typing on the M15, but it still feels like a step backwards.

The port selection isn’t as generous, either. The Ryzen Edition features three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, an HDMI 2.1 port (capable of 4K output at up to 120Hz), a headphone jack, and a 2.5Gbps ethernet port. It’s not a bad lineup, but it could be better.

Missing from this model, and all other new models that Alienware recently unveiled, is the proprietary amplifier connector for its external GPU enclosure, which has been officially discontinued. Intel-based versions of Alienware’s newest laptops, like the M15 R6, X15, and X17, will support Thunderbolt eGPUs, but the M15 R5 won’t because it lacks a Thunderbolt port. So, you’re just stuck with the GPU that’s inside. Thankfully, the graphics performance is great by default, but there’s a lot of unused space on the R5’s rear where that amplifier port used to be. It would have been nice if Alienware had filled it with an SD card reader and an extra USB-C port.

The M15 R5’s performance didn’t come into question during my testing. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing the great battery life AMD’s processors bring, and it’s great that this GPU can hold its own next to pricier components like the RTX 3070.

But as a whole, Alienware missed the landing when it comes to value. If you want more features for your money, even if it involves swapping some of the M15 R5’s power for a QHD screen and better portability, you should look elsewhere. The M15 R5 isn’t the jaw-dropping value that it needed to be (and that I’d hoped it would be) to steer everyone away from the 2021 gaming laptop frontrunner (so far), the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

Balking AMD’s Claims, Nvidia Says Smartphones Aren’t Ready for Ray Tracing

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia does not have plans to bring its ray tracing-enabled GPU architectures to smartphones or other ultra-mobile devices right now, CEO Jensen Huang told journalists at a Computex meeting this week. The statements come just days after AMD confirmed that upcoming Samsung smartphones using AMD RDNA2 GPU architecture will support ray tracing.

According to Huang, the time for ray tracing in mobile gadgets hasn’t arrived yet.

“Ray tracing games are quite large, to be honest,” Huang said, according to ZDNet. “The data set is quite large, and there will be a time for it. When the time is right we might consider it.”

AMD, meanwhile, has licensed its RDNA2 architecture, which supports ray tracing, to Samsung for use in the upcoming Exynos 2200 SoC expected to power its laptops and other flagship mobile devices. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said this week that the SoC will indeed support ray tracing.

“The next place you’ll find RDNA2 will be the high-performance mobile phone market,” Su said, as reported by AnandTech. “AMD has partnered with industry leader Samsung to accelerate graphics innovation in the mobile market, and we’re happy to announce we will bring custom graphics IP to Samsung’s next flagship SoC, with ray tracing and variable rate shading capabilities. We’re really looking forward to Samsung providing more details later this year.”

Currently, Samsung’s Exynos-powered smartphones use Arm Mali-powered graphics; whereas, Qualcomm Snapdragon-based handsets use Adreno GPUs.

Nvidia is in process of taking over Arm, which develops general-purpose Cortex CPU cores as well as Mali graphics processing units for various system-on-chips (SoCs). Nvidia has long tried to license its GeForce technologies to designers of mobile SoCs and devices without any tangible success. If Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm is approved by various regulators, Nvidia will be able to offer its latest GeForce architectures to Arm licensees. Yet, it appears Nvidia has no immediate plans to bring GeForce RTX to smartphones.

Nvidia’s Ampere and Turing architectures seem to be too bulky for smartphone SoCs (and even for entry-level PC graphics) anyway. For now, the company will have to use its GeForce Now game streaming service to address demanding gamers on smartphones and tablets.

“That’s how we would like to reach Android devices, Chrome devices, iOS devices, MacOS devices, Linux devices — all kinds of devices, whether it’s on TV, or mobile device or PC,” said Huang. “I think that for us, right now, that is the best strategy.”

Yet, ray tracing is nothing new on mobiles. Imagination Technologies architectures since the PowerVR GR6500 introduced in 2014 have supported ray tracing, so it’s up to hardware designers to decide on implementing the capability and game designers to leverage it. Imagination’s PowerVR ray tracing implementation is currently supported by Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5, but it’s unclear whether it’s primarily used for eye candy, performance increase and/or power reduction.

Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream: how to watch the boxing from anywhere, full fight

Floyd ‘Money Man’ Mayweather is set for a blockbuster showdown with YouTube ‘personality’ Logan Paul at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on Sunday 6th June. Mayweather has called the eight-round exhibition bout “legalised bank robbery”. It’s a $50 pay-per-view in the US but only £17 in the UK. Follow our guide on how to watch a Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream from anywhere in the world.

Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream

Date: Sunday 6th June 2021

Venue: Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, FL, USA

Start time: 1am BST / 8pm ET / 10am AEST

Mayweather vs Logan Paul: 4am BST / 11pm ET / 1pm AEST

UK stream: Sky Sports Box Office (£16.95)

Watch anywhere: Try ExpressVPN

US stream: Showtime ($49.99)

AUS stream: Main Event ($49.99)

Rest of world: Fanmio ($49.99)

So, can one of greatest pound-for-pound boxers of all time beat one of social media’s biggest stars? Mayweather vs Logan Paul: Bragging Rights certainly got off to a spicy start this week when Mayweather allegedly punched Logan Paul’s brother at the press conference.

“It’s one thing to sell a fight, and people can say what they want, but one thing no one is going to do, is disrespect me,” Mayweather fumed. “The boxing was the mashed potatoes. I guess these guys now are the gravy.”

Mayweather is undefeated (50-0, 27 KOs) having ended his professional career with a 10th-round stoppage of UFC star Conor McGregor back in August 2017. The Money Man might be a 44-year-old dad of five, but his famous speed and accuracy makes him clear favourite to take this bout.

That said, 26-year-old Logan Paul will be 30lb heavier when he steps into the ring and has a 4-inch reach advantage over his opponent. Paul returns to the ring for the first time after losing to fellow social media star KSI in November by split decision.

It’s an exhibition, so there will be no judges and no official winner. Knock outs will be the referee’s decision. The eight three-minute rounds will be boxed without headgear. The packed undercard features former NFL star wide receiver Chad Johnson making his boxing debut against Brian Maxwell.

Sunday’s unmissable PPV is much cheaper in some countries than in others. Here’s how to find a Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream from anywhere in the world…

Watch Mayweather vs Logan Paul for only £16.95

(Image credit: Sky Sports Box Office)

UK boxing fans can catch this weekend’s big fight live on Sky Sports Box Office for £16.95. Some have grumbled at the price but it’s less than half what it costs in other countries. So, in that sense, it’s a bargain.

If you’re a UK citizen trying to watch from the US or Australia, you can always use a VPN to access a Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream from anywhere in the world. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

You don’t have to be a Sky subscriber. You can watch Mayweather vs Logan Paul online through the Sky Sports Box Office app and website. Simply set up a Box Office account, buy the fight, and you’re good to go.

Mayweather vs Logan Paul: Get the big fight for £16.95

Sky Sports has the rights to the epic Mayweather vs Logan Paul exhibition boxing match. Non-Sky customers can stream the event live for only £16.95 across a range of mobile devices including the iPad. Order in advance and ready for the big fight!

Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream anywhere in the world using a VPN

Even if you have subscribed to the relevant Mayweather vs Logan Paul rights holders, you won’t be able to access these streaming services when outside your own country. The service will know your location based on your IP address, and will automatically block your access.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. A VPN creates a private connection between your device and the internet, such that the servers and services you’re accessing aren’t aware of what you’re doing. All the information passing back and forth is entirely encrypted.

There are many VPN providers out there, with some more reliable and safe than others. As a rule, we’d suggest a paid-for service such as ExpressVPN.

Try ExpressVPN risk-free for 30 days

ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money back guarantee with its VPN service. You can use it to watch Canelo vs Saunders on your mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, games console and more. There’s 24/7 customer support and three months free when you sign-up.

US: Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream

(Image credit: Showtime)

US boxing fans looking for a Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream will need to pay-per-view. Showtime has the exclusive and is charging $49.99. Ouch.

UK boxing fans who find themselves in the States this weekend can use a VPN to watch the boxing via Sky Box Office for only £16.95. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Brian Custer, the veteran sportscaster, will host the Showtime event and will be joined by Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, hosts of the hit late-night Desus & Mero show. The duo will provide their brand of off-the-wall commentary throughout the night.

The Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream will be available through Showtime’s website and apps (iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Android TV, Apple TV 4th Gen+, Xbox One).

Australia: Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream

Aussie boxing fans can order a Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream through Main Event. The price? A one-off fee of AU$49.95.

UK boxing fans who find themselves in Oz this weekend can use a VPN to watch the boxing via Sky Box Office for only £16.95. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Rest of the World: Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream

Not in the UK, US or Australia this weekend? Fanmio has you covered. The streaming site is charging $49.99 for pay-per-view access. It’s not cheap but the price does include a limited edition Mayweather vs Logan Paul T-shirt (you have to the pay the shipping, though, so it’s not entirely ‘free’).

Mayweather vs Logan Paul free live stream

Sadly there are no opportunities for get yourself a Mayweather vs Logan Paul free live stream. The cheapest option is Sky Sports Box Office in the UK (£16.95)

Mayweather vs Logan Paul fight card

(Image credit: Sky Sports Box Office)

Floyd Mayweather vs Logan Paul – Exhibition

Badou Jack vs Dervin Colina – Light Heavyweight

Jarrett Hurd vs Luis Arias – Middleweight

Chad Johnson vs Brian Maxwell – Cruiserweight

Jean Carlos Torres vs Zack Kuhn – Junior Welterweight

Adrian Benton vs Pedro Angel Cruz – Lightweight

Micky Scala vs Adam Ramirez – Junior Middleweight

Dorian Khan vs Jonathan Conde – Featherweight

Jalil Hackett vs Angelo Diaz – Welterweight

Viddal Riley vs Quintell Thompson – Cruiserweight

Mayweather vs Logan Paul tale of the tape

Name: Floyd ‘Money Man’ Mayweather – Logan ‘The Maverick’ Paul

Nationality: American – American

Date of birth: 24th Feb 1977 – 1st April 1995

Height: 5ft 8 inches – 6ft 2 inches

Reach: 72 inches – 76 inches

Total fights: 50 – 1

Record: 50-0, 27 KOs – 0-1, 0 KOs

Floyd Mayweather on Logan Paul

“It’s going to be fun. It’s what I do. There’s a difference between being a YouTube fighter and an elite fighter. I’m a fighter, and I don’t worry about anything. I’ve been a professional for 25 years, and I’ve fought the best and seen every style, and I always came out on top.

“Why not fight Logan Paul? He’s huge on YouTube. He has a huge following. Before I even knew about YouTube, I was huge in boxing. And when you bring his world with my world, man, it’s going to be crazy.

“I never worry about the height or size. It’s all about the skills. That’s one thing about Floyd Mayweather. I’ve got skills.

“The boxing was the mashed potatoes. I guess these guys now are the gravy. I retired from boxing, but I didn’t retire from entertainment or from making money.”

Logan Paul on Floyd Mayweather

“I didn’t choose boxing; boxing chose me. I got challenged to box, and I answered that challenge. I kind of fell perfectly into the sport. Truthfully, boxing is easier on the body than MMA. MMA is hard. I got bad knees. I’m old now. I’m ageing. My upper body is strong, and I have dense bones. My strength is all in my upper body.

“I’m going in there with that energy, and he’s got everything to lose. There’s a lot on the table for him, not a lot on the table for me, and that’s a dangerous man… It’s a fight, so anything can happen.”

Box clever with the best TVs: budget to premium

Apple WWDC 2021: iOS 15, new MacBook Pros, and what else to expect

Apple’s annual developer extravaganza, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is coming up fast, kicking off with the keynote presentation on June 7th at 1PM ET. Like last year, WWDC will be an entirely digital and online-only event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the keynote, that means we can likely expect another tightly produced video highlighting everything Apple has in store.

While we aren’t expecting any announcements on the level of Apple’s shift to custom silicon in its computers, which was WWDC 2020’s big news, Apple presumably has some notable changes in the works for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and its other operating systems. And if the current rumors pan out, we could also see brand-new MacBook Pros with the return of some long-missed features, such as MagSafe charging.

Read on to learn everything we expect from the big show. And don’t be surprised if Apple has a few surprises in store, too.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

iOS 15 may bring improvements to notifications and iMessage

We haven’t heard much about what may be coming to Apple’s next version of its mobile operating system, which will presumably be called iOS 15, but we could see big changes to notifications and possibly iMessage, according to Bloomberg.

For notifications, you may be able to have different notification settings for situations like driving, working, sleeping, or even a custom category, and you’ll be able to flip those on as you need to. You might also be able to set automatic replies based on which notification setting you’re currently using, like what you can do now with Do Not Disturb while driving mode. Personally, I’m hoping iOS 15 will let me allow notifications from a select few people while silencing just about everything else.

As for iMessages, Apple is apparently working on features to make it act like “more of a social network” to compete with Facebook’s WhatsApp, Bloomberg said, but those features are still “early in development” and could be announced at a later date.

Apple also plans to add a feature that shows you apps that are silently collecting data about you, continuing the company’s trend of adding privacy-focused updates to its operating systems.

For iPadOS 15, you can apparently expect a major update to the homescreen, including the ability to put widgets anywhere you want. And with Apple just introducing the new M1-powered iPad Pros, here’s hoping we see some new upgrades to take advantage of the new chip.

In May, Apple also announced a lot of new accessibility features coming to Apple’s operating systems, such as improvements in iOS to VoiceOver, support for bidirectional hearing aids, a built-in background sounds player, and new Memoji customizations like cochlear implants. Apple said these features would arrive “later this year,” which suggests they’ll be included in iOS 15.

We don’t know much about macOS, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15 — but we could see a new “homeOS”

We haven’t heard all that much about upcoming software updates for the Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV, so we’ll just have to wait and see what Apple is cooking up. One tidbit: macOS could be a “more minor” update, Bloomberg says. That wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given that the macOS operating system got a big overhaul with Big Sur last year.

However, we could see the introduction of a brand-new operating system called “homeOS,” which was recently mentioned in and later removed from an Apple job listing. While it’s unclear exactly which devices this OS is for, perhaps it will work on Apple’s home-focused products like the Apple TV and HomePod Mini.

Photo by Alexander Kramer for The Verge

New, redesigned MacBook Pros and a new Apple CPU could be announced

Apple doesn’t always introduce new hardware at WWDC, but this year, new MacBook Pros seem like a possibility. In a May 18th report, Bloomberg said that new MacBook Pros might arrive “as soon as early this summer,” which could indicate an announcement at WWDC.

These new laptops would have new Apple-designed processors that would “greatly outpace the performance and capabilities of the current M1 chips,” according to Bloomberg. The M1 is already pretty dang good, so it sounds like these new chips could be even more impressive.

Apple is apparently planning on releasing two chips for the new Pros. Both should have eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores, while leaving you with the option of either 16 or 32 graphics cores. (By comparison, the M1’s CPU has four high-performance and four energy-efficient cores, while its GPU is offered with either seven or eight cores.) You’ll probably also be able to spec the laptops with as much as 64GB of memory, up from a max of 16GB on M1-equipped computers.

The new laptops should be offered with either 14-inch or 16-inch screens and those screens could have “brighter, higher contrast” displays, according to a Bloomberg report from January. The laptops may also have a new design with flat edges as in the iPhone 12, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in January. I’m curious to see what that design might look like in practice — I worry that the hard edges could be uncomfortable if you have the laptop on your lap.

The best rumor is that the new design may also mark the return of some of the ports and features that were taken away with the now-infamous 2016 MacBook Pro redesign, including a MagSafe charger, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot, Bloomberg said in its May report. And, according to Kuo, the OLED Touch Bar currently found on Intel-based MacBook Pros will apparently be removed in favor of physical function keys.

We could see at least one other new Mac

While it seems like MacBook Pros are the only new hardware we’ll be seeing at WWDC this year, that hasn’t stopped some other Mac rumors from swirling lately, and there’s always the chance Apple could announce more at its big event. According to Bloomberg, Apple also has “a revamped MacBook Air, a new low-end MacBook Pro, and an all-new Mac Pro workstation” in the works as well as a “higher-end Mac Mini desktop and larger iMac,” all of which would be powered by Apple’s custom silicon.

The new Mac Mini may have the same chip as the new MacBook Pros. The new Mac Pro could be a beast, with processors that are “either twice or four times as powerful as the new high-end MacBook Pro chip.”

And the redesigned “higher-end” MacBook Air could arrive as early as the end of this year. Frankly, I hope that refreshed Air arrives even later. I just bought the M1-equipped Air and it’s one of the best computers I’ve ever used, but I have a bad feeling I’ll be first in line to buy a redesigned and more capable Air anyway. (Especially if it gets the MagSafe charger that’s rumored for the new Pros.)

Apple might have dropped a hint about its AR / VR headset

Apple has long been rumored to have a mixed reality headset in the works, and recently, we’ve learned a few more potential details about it. The headset might be very expensive — approximately $3,000, according to one report — though it could be packed with 8K displays, more than a dozen cameras to track hand movements and capture footage, and might weigh less than an iPhone, too.

While the headset could be a ways out, as it’s not expected to ship until 2022 at the earliest, a few suspicious details in Apple’s WWDC promotional images may be hinting toward some kind of reveal of Apple’s upcoming headset or the software on which it runs.

Check out this image below (that I also used at the top of this post), which Apple released alongside the announcement of WWDC in March. Notice the way the app icons are reflected in the glasses — I could imagine some sort of mixed reality headset showing icons in front of your eyes in a similar way.

Those icons sure are reflected in an interesting spot.

Image: Apple

Apple continued that reflections motif with new images released in May — you can see things from the laptop screens reflected in all of the eyes of the Memojis.

Look at those reflections.

Image: Apple

Now, these reflections may just be Apple’s artists flexing their design chops. And if I had to guess, given how far out a rumored mixed reality headset is, I don’t think we’re going to see anything about it at WWDC this year.

But Apple has surprised us in the past, and maybe these images are an indication of one more thing Apple has in store for WWDC.

Have autonomous robots started killing in war? The reality is messier than it appears

It’s the sort of thing that can almost pass for background noise these days: over the past week, a number of publications tentatively declared, based on a UN report from the Libyan civil war, that killer robots may have hunted down humans autonomously for the first time. As one headline put it: “The Age of Autonomous Killer Robots May Already Be Here.”

But is it? As you might guess, it’s a hard question to answer.

The new coverage has sparked a debate among experts that goes to the heart of our problems confronting the rise of autonomous robots in war. Some said the stories were wrongheaded and sensational, while others suggested there was a nugget of truth to the discussion. Diving into the topic doesn’t reveal that the world quietly experienced the opening salvos of the Terminator timeline in 2020. But it does point to a more prosaic and perhaps much more depressing truth: that no one can agree on what a killer robot is, and if we wait for this to happen, their presence in war will have long been normalized.

It’s cheery stuff, isn’t it? It’ll take your mind off the global pandemic at least. Let’s jump in:

The source of all these stories is a 548-page report from the United Nations Security Council that details the tail end of the Second Libyan Civil War, covering a period from October 2019 to January 2021. The report was published in March, and you can read it in full here. To save you time: it is an extremely thorough account of an extremely complex conflict, detailing various troop movements, weapon transfers, raids and skirmishes that took place among the war’s various factions, both foreign and domestic.

The paragraph we’re interested in, though, describes an offensive near Tripoli in March 2020, in which forces supporting the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) routed troops loyal to the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar (referred to in the report as the Haftar Affiliated Forces or HAF). Here’s the relevant passage in full:

Logistics convoys and retreating HAF were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 (see annex 30) and other loitering munitions. The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true “fire, forget and find” capability.”

The Kargu-2 system that’s mentioned here is a quadcopter built in Turkey: it’s essentially a consumer drone that’s used to dive-bomb targets. It can be manually operated or steer itself using machine vision. A second paragraph in the report notes that retreating forces were “subject to continual harassment from the unmanned combat aerial vehicles and lethal autonomous weapons systems” and that the HAF “suffered significant casualties” as a result.

The Kargu-2 drone is essentially a quadcopter that dive-bombs enemies.

Image: STM

But that’s it. That’s all we have. What the report doesn’t say — at least not outright — is that human beings were killed by autonomous robots acting without human supervision. It says humans and vehicles were attacked by a mix of drones, quadcopters, and “loitering munitions” (we’ll get to those later), and that the quadcopters had been programmed to work offline. But whether the attacks took place without connectivity is unclear.

These two paragraphs made their way into the mainstream press via a story in the New Scientist, which ran a piece with the headline: “Drones may have attacked humans fully autonomously for the first time.” The NS is very careful to caveat that military drones might have acted autonomously and that humans might have been killed, but later reports lost this nuance. “Autonomous drone attacked soldiers in Libya all on its own,” read one headline. “For the First Time, Drones Autonomously Attacked Humans,” said another.

Let’s be clear: by itself, the UN does not say for certain whether drones autonomously attacked humans in Libya last year, though it certainly suggests this could have happened. The problem is that even if it did happen, for many experts, it’s just not news.

The reason why some experts took issue with these stories was because they followed the UN’s wording, which doesn’t distinguish clearly between loitering munitions and lethal autonomous weapons systems or LAWS (that’s policy jargon for killer robots).

Loitering munitions, for the uninitiated, are the weapon equivalent of seagulls at the beachfront. They hang around a specific area, float above the masses, and wait to strike their target — usually military hardware of one sort or another (though it’s not impossible that they could be used to target individuals).

The classic example is Israel’s IAI Harpy, which was developed in the 1980s to target anti-air defenses. The Harpy looks like a cross between a missile and a fixed-wing drone, and is fired from the ground into a target area where it can linger for up to nine hours. It scans for telltale radar emissions from anti-air systems and drops onto any it finds. The loitering aspect is crucial as troops will often turn these radars off, given they act like homing beacons.

The IAI Harpy is launched from the ground and can linger for hours over a target area.

Image: IAI

“The thing is, how is this the first time of anything?” tweeted Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Loitering munition have been on the battlefield for a while – most notably in Nagorno-Karaback. It seems to me that what’s new here isn’t the event, but that the UN report calls them lethal autonomous weapon systems.”

Jack McDonald, a lecturer at the department of war studies at King’s College London, says the distinction between the two terms is controversial and constitutes an unsolved problem in the world of arms regulation. “There are people who call ‘loitering munitions’ ‘lethal autonomous weapon systems’ and people who just call them ‘loitering munitions,’” he tells The Verge. “This is a huge, long-running thing. And it’s because the line between something being autonomous and being automated has shifted over the decades.”

So is the Harpy a lethal autonomous weapons system? A killer robot? It depends on who you ask. IAI’s own website describes it as such, calling it “an autonomous weapon for all weather,” and the Harpy certainly fits a makeshift definition of LAWS as “machines that target combatants without human oversight.” But if this is your definition, then you’ve created a very broad church for killer robots. Indeed, under this definition a land mine is a killer robot, as it, too, autonomously targets combatants in war without human oversight.

If killer robots have been around for decades, why has there been so much discussion about them in recent years, with groups like the Campaign To Stop Killer Robots pushing for regulation of this technology in the UN? And why is this incident in Libya special?

The rise of artificial intelligence plays a big role, says Zak Kallenborn, a policy fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government. Advances in AI over the past decade have given weapon-makers access to cheap vision systems that can select targets as quickly as your phone identifies pets, plants, and familiar faces in your camera roll. These systems promise nuanced and precise identification of targets but are also much more prone to mistakes.

“Loitering munitions typically respond to radar emissions, [and] a kid walking down the street isn’t going to have a high-powered radar in their backpack,” Kallenborn tells The Verge. “But AI targeting systems might misclassify the kid as a soldier, because current AI systems are highly brittle — one study showed a change in a single pixel is sufficient to cause machine vision systems to draw radically different conclusions about what it sees. An open question is how often those errors occur during real-world use.”

This is why the incident in Libya is interesting, says Kallenborn, as the Kargu-2 system mentioned in the UN report does seem to use AI to identify targets. According to the quadcopter’s manufacturer, STM, it uses “machine learning algorithms embedded on the platform” to “effectively respond against stationary or mobile targets (i.e. vehicle, person etc.)” Demo videos appear to show it doing exactly that. In the clip below, the quadcopter hones in on a mannequin in a stationary group.

But should we trust a manufacturers’ demo reel or brochure? And does the UN report make it clear that machine learning systems were used in the attack?

Kallenborn’s reading of the report is that it “heavily implies” that this was the case, but McDonald is more skeptical. “I think it’s sensible to say that the Kargu-2 as a platform is open to being used in an autonomous way,” he says. “But we don’t necessarily know if it was.” In a tweet, he also pointed out that this particular skirmish involved long-range missiles and howitzers, making it even harder to attribute casualties to any one system.

What we’re left with is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the fog of war. Or more accurately: the fog of LAWS. We can’t say for certain what happened in Libya and our definitions of what is and isn’t a killer robot are so fluid that even if we knew, there would be disagreement.

For Kallenborn, this is sort of the point: it underscores the difficulties we face trying to create meaningful oversight in the AI-assisted battles of the future. Of course the first use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield won’t announce itself with a press release, he says, because if the weapons work as they’re supposed to, they won’t look at all out of the ordinary. “The problem is autonomy is, at core, a matter of programming,” he says. “The Kargu-2 used autonomously will look exactly like a Kargu-2 used manually.”

Elke Schwarz, a senior lecturer in political theory at Queen Mary University London who’s affiliated with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, tells The Verge that discussions like this show we need to move beyond “slippery and political” debates about definitions and focus on the specific functionality of these systems. What do they do and how do they do it?

“I think we really have to think about the bigger picture […] which is why I focus on the practice, as well as functionality,” says Schwarz. “In my work I try and show that the use of these types of systems is very likely to exacerbate violent action as an ‘easier’ choice. And, as you rightly point out, errors will very likely prevail […] which will likely be addressed only post hoc.”

Schwarz says that despite the myriad difficulties, in terms of both drafting regulation and pushing back against the enthusiasm of militaries around the world to integrate AI into weaponry, “there is critical mass building amongst nations and international organizations to push for a ban for systems that have the capacity to autonomously identify, select and attack targets.”

Indeed, the UN is still conducting a review into possible regulations for LAWS, with results due to be reported later this year. As Schwarz says: “With this news story having made the rounds, now is a great time to mobilize the international community toward awareness and action.”