Month: October 2018

Enlarge / Do you dare sip from the UWP bottle? (credit: Getty / Microsoft / Aurich)

Our recent review of Forza Horizon 4, arguably Microsoft's biggest new game this holiday season, came packed with praise. The combined chops of car-sim veterans Turn 10 and open-world stunners Playground Games are on full display in this enthralling take on the "Horizon" series fork. We tested the racing game on a variety of hardware, as well, and it proved impressive on both Xbox One X and high-end Windows 10 systems... but the latter came with a significant asterisk.

Sadly, FH4's first pre-release patch rendered the game unplayable on our rig. Worse, loading the game on any other testing rig resulted in the same crash, over and over—with no error message.

We posted that statement after more than a week of back-and-forth with Microsoft and Turn 10 representatives, along with a promise to follow up on any solution we found. In good news, at least, we got the game running on Windows 10 again. But that hasn't sweetened the sour taste in our mouths about the experience of running Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games and apps—and that sour taste has lingered, on and off, for over a year at this point.

The excruciating smokescreen approach

Microsoft's "Xbox Play Anywhere" initiative began in earnest in late 2016 with the launch of Recore, a middling 3D action game. Honestly, that game's Play Anywhere perk—of working on both Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs, so long as they had the same Microsoft account credentials and had a paid copy of the game's digital version—was its most interesting aspect.

Enlarge / Surface Headphones. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has unveiled a new member of the Surface family: the Surface Headphones.

The rather surprising addition to the Surface range is a set of noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones. They're large, over-ear headphones with soft, comfortable ear cups. Each ear cup has a spinning dial: one to control the volume, and the other to control the level of noise cancellation. The headphones know when they're on your head and automatically pause your music when you take them off. And they contain four microphones to pick up clear audio for talking to Cortana or making phone calls. Microsoft estimates they'll last 15 hours on a charge and take less than two hours to recharge over their USB Type-C connector.

The headphones will be available to buy later this year. We've heard the price will be around $350, putting them in the same ballpark as Bose's noise-cancelling headphones. Bose's QuietComfort 35 wireless II headphones, also at $350, look like direct competitors: they too contain microphones designed to give commands to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

The original Surface Studio was one of the strangest, most eye-catching, and enjoyable-to-look-at machines we've used: a giant 28-inch touchscreen with a computer in its base. Today, Microsoft announced Surface Studio 2: the same concept, an even more beautiful screen, and a healthy improvement to the computer specs.

The first-generation Surface Studio has a 4500×3000 28-inch display. The new one retains those specs, but with big improvements to brightness (38 percent increased) and contrast (22 percent increased). To do this, Microsoft has changed the way it makes the screen by using technology first found in the mobile Surface devices. The new screen has smaller transistors controlling each pixel, meaning that more light can pass through; the new pixels also block more light when turned off. The result is that the best-looking screen in computing now looks even better. It's a rich, luscious display that will ruin you for every other screen you look at.

Driving the screen is either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of dedicated GDDR5 or a GTX 1070 with 8GB. This is a substantial upgrade to GTX 965M or 980M found in the first generation, with Microsoft claiming them to be 50 percent faster. Microsoft is continuing to use mobile parts in the Surface Studio, so in a sense these are "current-generation" chips; while Nvidia's desktop RTX 2080s have just hit the market their corresponding mobile chips aren't out yet.

Microsoft

I know, dear reader, that some of you do not care. You do not understand the fuss about Thunderbolt 3; you view it as, at best, a nice-to-have feature and not a dealbreaker. But I'm afraid I am going to stick to my guns. Premium portable systems should include some number of Thunderbolt 3 ports; it's not optional, it's mandatory. The high-speed interconnect is really starting to show its value; external GPU solutions are mature and widespread, there are all manner of high-speed Thunderbolt 3 storage options out there, and single cable monitor-dock-charger solutions are either on the market or arriving imminently. Thunderbolt 3 has proven its value, and more broadly, Type-C ports are small and versatile.

The new refreshes of the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop lack Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C entirely, and for the life of me I cannot understand why. They're premium machines, and their competitors—from HP, from Dell, from Lenovo, from Apple, from Razer, and from more besides—all have at least one Thunderbolt 3 port, often more. I thought this was disappointing in 2016, when Microsoft failed to take what would arguably have been a leadership position with the interface. I thought it was a significant flaw in 2017, though I hoped the Surface Book 2 (which has a single Type-C port used for USB 3.1 generation 1 and charging, but not Thunderbolt 3) was a sign that a corner had been turned. In the fourth quarter of 2018, I think the absence is inexcusable.

Enlarge / The iPhone X running iOS 11. (credit: Samuel Axon)

An Ohio man currently being prosecuted for possession of child pornography is believed to be the first person to have unlocked his Face ID-enabled iPhone after being presented with a warrant and being ordered to do so by law enforcement.

The case of United States v. Grant Michalski was first reported on September 30 by Forbes.

However, whether or not that purported federal warrant specifically authorized such a search, as authorities claims, is unclear—the warrant appears to be sealed by the court. Ars has been unable to locate a copy to see if the agent's account is accurate. Why this warrant would remain sealed is also unclear, given that a later warrant to specifically search the suspect's phone is public.