Well, welcome to the TechMain right home for Tuesday, September 19th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. Bunch of internal Microsoft documents have leaked, so now we know the new Xbox that's coming next year. Also their full gaming roadmap, which includes Convergence by 2028. Microsoft's Chief Product Officer looks like he might take over Alexa, Google sets Bard loose on your Gmail, and what's new in those new iOS releases from Apple? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.
Very weird story this. Over 100 internal Microsoft documents have leaked from the whole FTC versus Microsoft trial. The FTC says that, quote, Microsoft was responsible for the error in uploading these documents to the court. Quoting NBC News on that. The files were uploaded Friday to a website hosted by the US District Court for the Northern District of California, where the FTC is suing the Black Microsoft's acquisition of the video game company Activision Blizzard.
They include more than 100 documents, many of them partially redacted, related to Microsoft's Xbox plans. What are those plans? What was in this accidental treasure trove? Well, I guess we're getting a new Xbox Series X Refresh in 2024. Code named Brooklyn, including a new controller and a cylindrical, discless design. Quoting the verge.
Internal confidential Microsoft documents reveal that the new device has two terabytes of storage up from one terabyte, a USB-C front port with power delivery, and an all new more immersive controller. The new controller, codenamed CABIL, is set to be announced later this year and will include an accelerometer for gyrosupport. It has a two-tone color scheme and will support a direct connection to the cloud, Bluetooth 5.2, and presumably an updated Xbox wireless 2 connection.
Microsoft also lists precision haptic feedback and VCA haptics, double as speakers, as specs for the controller. It will also have quieter buttons and thumbsticks, a rechargeable and swappable battery, modular thumbsticks, and you'll be able to lift it up to wake it. Inside the new Xbox Series X design, Microsoft is also adding Wi-Fi 6E support, a Bluetooth 5.2 radio, and the company is shrinking the existing die to 6 nanometers for improved efficiency.
The PSU power will be reduced by 15% according to Microsoft's document. Microsoft is targeting the same 499 launch price for the Xbox Series X. Microsoft lists a roadmap for this new Xbox Series X console and controller alongside a refreshed Xbox Series S with one terabyte of storage. Microsoft just launched a refreshed Xbox Series S in black, but there could be another refresh on the way in 2024 with Wi-Fi 6E support and Bluetooth 5.2. It will also include this new Xbox controller.
But there's more Microsoft's gaming plans seem to include what they're calling full conversion by 2028, in other words unifying its cloud platform and its hardware to deliver what is calling cloud hybrid games. Goatting the verge again. Our vision is to develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences. Those are the words.
On just one slide from a leaked presentation dubbed the next generation of gaming at Microsoft which appears to be a May 2022 pitch document entirely around this idea. The company imagined you playing these games using the combined power of a sub-$99 gadget possibly a handheld and its X-Cloud platform simultaneously.
I am familiar with this idea because it's the one I advocated for in June 2021 pointing out how Microsoft had a unique opportunity to build games that scale from native hardware to the cloud. It's something that Microsoft's kind of sort of already tried by offering photorealistic scenery and Microsoft flight simulator by streaming in that data from a two petabyte cloud instead of your Xbox or PC where most of the game is running.
But the best example is still this Amazon demo from 2014 where the Lord of the Rings ask armies don't actually live on your device. It's only the ballista that runs locally so you can feel that responsive experience. Now in these documents Microsoft calling the idea cohesive hybrid compute a cloud to edge architecture across Silicon graphics and OS enabling ubiquitous play is interesting. If it's happening it may already be happening.
The team suggested it would need to ink partnerships with AMD for the Silicon by the first quarter of this year to lock down the company's Navi five graphics for reference were only on Navi three right now as well as potentially napping the company's Zen six CPU cores. It's also considering arm by the way.
Microsoft suspected it would also need an NPU machine learning AI co-processor to provide a wide variety of benefits including super resolution latency compression, frame rate, interpolation and more. The documents include an entire potential roadmap for the technology that would have seen hardware design begin in 2024 the first dev kits arriving in 2027 and the first hybrid cloud games being produced from 2024 through 2026 and quote.
Also Microsoft related Microsoft's chief product officer panos penay is leaving that company after 19 years there ahead of the September 21st surface event later this week by the way. Consumer marketing chief use F. Medi will step up to lead windows and surface after penay leaves. Now you know how I feel about covering executive shuffles but here's what's interesting sources are also saying that penay is headed to Amazon to run the Alexa and echo unit.
Amazon's long time hardware chief Dave limp said in August that he is retiring. Quoting Bloomberg. Penays move marks the latest senior executive swap between the two companies two years ago Microsoft hired senior Amazon cloud executive Charlie Bell to run its cybersecurity efforts. That initially raised the possibility that Amazon might file suit because Bell had signed an agreement prohibiting him from joining arrival. But the two companies reached a pact that allowed Bell to make the move.
One year ago Microsoft removed non-compete from new employment agreements and said it will not enforce them in existing contracts except for its most senior employees. The company hasn't sought to block such moves in several years. Pnays served as general manager for surface when the initial tablets were introduced in 2012 since then he's led an expansion into laptops, desktops and accessories.
The devices attracted comparisons to Apple thanks to glitzy launch events and a focus on detail and high quality design. Amazon in the last decade build a massive consumer electronics business that's mostly predicated on selling utilitarian budget price hardware, echo dot speakers, fire sticks and tablets. But the company's flagship product the Alexa voice assistant has struggled to build on its early promise as a companion shopping and smart home hub.
Google has updated Bard to use data from Gmail docs and drive, not just the web. This is all in aid of helping you find and summarize emails, highlight points in a document and more. Quoting the verge. There's a whole range of use cases for these integrations which Google calls extensions but they should save you from having to sift through a mountain of emails or documents to find a particular piece of information.
You can then have Bard use that information in other ways such as putting it into a chart or creating a bulleted summary. This feature is only available in English for now. While giving Bard access to your personal email and documents, well raised concerns about privacy and data usage, Google says that it won't use this information to train Bard's public model nor will it be seen by human reviewers. You also don't have to turn on the integrations with Gmail docs and drive yourself.
Google will ask you to opt in first and you can disable it at any time. To use the feature, Jack Crotchek, the product lead of Bard tells the verge you can either have Bard directly search within your Gmail, for example, by prefacing your question with at mail or you could simply ask, check my email for information related to my upcoming flight. Bard's extensions aren't limited to just Gmail docs and drive either.
Google also announced that the chatbot will also connect with maps, YouTube, and Google flights. This means you can now ask Bard to pull real-time flight information, find nearby attractions, surface, YouTube videos on a certain topic, and a lot more. Google will enable these three extensions by default. Google is making some other notable improvements to Bard too. That includes a new way to double check Bard's answers through the chatbots. Google it button.
While the button previously let you search for topics related to Bard's answer on Google, it will now show whether Bard's answers contain information that Google search, corroborates, or contradicts. When you press the Google it button on supported answers, Google will highlight the information verified by search in green, while any unvalidated answers will be highlighted in orange. You can mouse over the highlighted sentences for more context on what Bard might have gotten right or wrong.
Google is also adding a way to continue a conversation with Bard based on a shared link, allowing you to build on a question someone has already asked. Growing your business is crucial to success, so you can't take chances on spending dollars and getting nothing in return. With the IBATA Performance Network, you can be confident your money is working just as hard as you are, and you can see results to prove it.
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Though I should note that all of the reviews of the Pro and Max models remark on how much nicer they are to hold with the rounded edges and the lighter case. No, instead, let's focus on things that are more new, which more people can experience right now. Today, iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 are out and a reminder of what they get you, a bigger bet on widgets and the modularization of apps and needed stage manager fixes. Quoting the verge.
iOS 17 feels like another step toward making your iPhone feel more like it's yours. The lock screen customization that arrived with iOS 16 is carried through in the phone app where you can express a little personality with your contact card. You can type swears freely without autocorrect swooping in with it's prim little ducking. Live voicemail feels like an acknowledgement that none of us actually want to answer a phone call and related. I will never be answering the phone again.
In no particular order, here are my favorite features on iOS 17. High on the list of delightful features is standby mode, which turns your iPhone into a little bedside clock. All you have to do is turn your phone sideways while it charges. You can pick from a few clock faces, a counter view with widgets or habit display photos. This works with any charger, wired, cheat or magsafe.
When you stick the phone on an official magsafe charger, the phone will remember which standby screen you use with it so you could have different presets for your desk or your nightstand. This one incentive to spring for the real magsafe as opposed to magsafe compatible, cheat with a magnet. But the fact that standby works with any old charger is a win, frankly, and on Apple like.
If you have an iPhone 14 Pro, the standby display will stay on, but a non-14 Pro, you can wake the display by tapping the screen or the surface it's sitting on the same way you can with an Apple watch and bedside mode. Tapping my nightstand doesn't quite work every time I try it, success probably varies depending on the type of table and charger you're using. But I like this as an option for checking the time in the middle of the night. Then there's live voicemail for the phone call a verse.
This one is fairly self-explanatory. When a call comes in, you now have the option to send it to voicemail from the call screen and read a live transcription of the caller's message. You can pick up, block the caller or just read the transcription and silently marvel as one robot tells another robot how you could be saving 50% on your cable bill. What a time to be alive, end quote. There's also the new interactive widgets which are coming to both iPad OS and iOS.
And then there's the whole new watch OS system which is out now and basically upends how everyone has interacted with their watches until now. Quoting the verge again. All I have to do is swipe up and then voila. I have some on a list of widget features for my watch featuring my most commonly used apps. They're there regardless of which watch face I choose which gives me more options in how I customize the Apple Watch to best fit my needs.
Say I want a distraction free watch face for my work focus but I don't want to sacrifice the ability to quickly see how far I am on my activity rings. With widgets I don't have to sit down, scratch my head and do multi-dimensional calculus just to figure out which minimalistic watch face will afford me that. The widgets themselves can swoosh in quite a bit of information that a tiny complication often can't for instance.
I could use the new palette watch face and still swipe up to see temperature for the next 5 hours. If I need to see more I can tap that widget and it brings up a redesigned weather app that displays the information much more prominently. Without trying it yourself it's hard to grasp why this is different from a complication. What I think it boils down to though is flexibility and overall speed. You can absorb so much in an instant from a well-designed graphic.
It's like how scanning a block of text in a logo graphic language like Chinese or Japanese is faster than doing the same in English. It's not perfect. After all widgets and complications are created equal, the weather app for example is much more useful as a widget than a complication. The opposite though is true for the timer app. The complication is faster. On the ultra there's no beating the action button to launch the workout app as for the activity app.
It's a toss up between widgets and complications depending on which watch face you're using. The point is that widgets allow you to use aesthetic watch faces with greater flexibility especially if you like programming specific watch faces for focus modes. For now you're limited to widgets for Apple's native apps. I imagine it will be much more fun and customizable when third party app developers start coming out with their own widgets.
Hopefully it also encourages developers to get creative with Apple Watch apps as well. But perhaps the best app related change is the grid. That God for Saken Honeycomb grid where you have to pinch and zoom cursing under your breath while you look for that one app with the logo you can't remember is no more. Instead it's a grid slash list hybrid. You still get the logos but they scroll in a more orderly list fashion. Samsung Galaxy Watch users will know what I'm talking about.
I weep at the beauty of it. I've edited the grid view so that my most frequently used apps are front and center with less frequently used apps lower down. You can't do this with the regular list format which is strictly alphabetical. I hate hate hate scrolling all the way down to S for settings or T for timer. Jiggle mode is still a pain on such a tiny screen but it's worth it. Almost everything today came from the verge. Just worked out like that. See you tomorrow.