Month: September 2020

Enlarge / Siri in iOS 14, free from its full-screen shackles. (credit: Samuel Axon)

For a couple of years now, we’ve heard that Apple kept putting off a big home screen overhaul for iOS as it struggled with improving its development process to reduce the number of bugs that ship with its big annual releases like iOS 12 or iOS 13.

After those delays, iOS 14 finally brings that home screen renovation to fruition. Apple has introduced home screen widgets in a variety of sizes, given users new ways to manage their apps, and introduced a non-home screen place to put installed apps.

If your first reaction to those features is that they sound a lot like Android, you’re not wrong—but as usual, Apple has implemented them in its own way. So which is better for users—the recently released Android 11, or iOS 14, which hit devices only a week later?

Enlarge / Ubuntu will be available and supported even for XPS 13s, which weren't bought as "Developer Edition" this time around. (credit: Dell)

The latest update to Dell's XPS 13 product line will be available beginning Wednesday, September 30, and will feature 11th-generation Intel CPUs, aka Tiger Lake. We know a lot of AMD fans are going to be disappointed at no Team Red option—honestly, we're a little disappointed, too; we've been extremely impressed with this year's AMD Renoir laptop CPUs.

However disappointed AMD fans might be, Tiger Lake represents a pretty massive upgrade from last year's Ice Lake and Comet Lake lineup, as we saw directly when we had the chance to test a prototype Tiger Lake laptop earlier this month. The four core/eight thread i7-1185G7 we expect in the highest-end XPS 13 models might not be a match for an eight core/sixteen thread Ryzen 7 4800U—but it hangs pretty even with an eight core/eight thread Ryzen 7 4700U, even on massively multithreaded workloads.

Meanwhile, not every workload is massively multi-threaded—and the Tiger Lake i7 we tested demonstrated extremely fast single-threaded performance. More importantly, its Xe integrated graphics were far and away the highest performing iGPU we've ever seen—they aren't ready to take the place of a gamer's Nvidia RTX series discrete GPU, but we suspect they sounded a death knell for Nvidia's cheaper MX series of discrete laptop GPUs.

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  Holes. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

What good is a next-gen console without any "new" video games to play on it?

That question loomed as I unpacked an Xbox Series X console at my home office last week, nearly two months before its $499 retail launch on November 10. Such early access to a state-of-the-art gaming machine surely comes with some concession, and in my case, that was a severe asterisk on its compatible content. Unlike other console-preview opportunities I've had in my career, this one didn't come with a single new or freshly updated game in the box.

The funny thing is, this is exactly what I'd asked for.

Enlarge / This used Falcon 9 rocket came close to launching on Thursday morning, but a ground sensor reading scrubbed the attempt. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars)

Updates:

Oct. 1, 9:55am ET: Thursday morning's launch attempt of a Falcon 9 rocket got down to T-18 seconds before an automated system triggered an abort. The issue was related to an unexpected ground sensor reading—so yes another ground-systems launch issue in Florida. There have been a lot of those in the last few weeks.

SpaceX has not set a new launch date for the Starlink mission, but assuming the issue can be remedied fairly quickly, it may set up another attempt on Friday morning. If that happens, it's also possible SpaceX will try to launch a GPS III satellite for the Air Force on Friday night, but neither of these dates have yet been confirmed in light of the Starlink scrub.

Oct. 1, 8:25am ET: This mission is back on the pad and ready for launch after a weather delay, and contending with a crowded range. SpaceX deferred to United Launch Alliance this week while that company made two attempts to get its Delta IV Heavy booster off the pad. The second attempt was unsuccessful late on Wednesday night.