Month: October 2021

Steam Deck Verified ratings will let you know which games run on the handheld gaming PC

Valve’s Steam Deck is a portable game system that’s basically a handheld gaming PC. But it has a custom AMD Ryzen processor with RDNA 2 graphics. It ships with Steam’s Linux-based Steam OS software pre-installed. It has controllers and touchpads, but no physical keyboard. And the display resolution is lower than some gaming PCs. So […]

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Valve’s Steam Deck is a portable game system that’s basically a handheld gaming PC. But it has a custom AMD Ryzen processor with RDNA 2 graphics. It ships with Steam’s Linux-based Steam OS software pre-installed. It has controllers and touchpads, but no physical keyboard. And the display resolution is lower than some gaming PCs.

So while Valve says “many” of the 50 thousand games available from the Steam game client will run on the Steam Deck without any problems, not every game will be compatible. So the company has launched a new Steam Deck Verified rating to let you know if the Steam Deck can handle the games you want to play.

The ratings are basically broken down into four categories:

  • Games with a green check box are verified, and should run well out of the box.
  • Games with a yellow information icon are playable, but may require you to do a little tweaking before you can play.
  • Games with a grey line through a circle icon are unsupported and won’t offer a good experience if you try to run them on a Steam Deck.
  • Games with a grey question mark fall into an unknown category, indicating that Valve hasn’t tested the game yet and doesn’t have enough information to let you know if they’re playable on a Steam Deck or not.

Valve says the icons will be visible in the Steam game client when you’re shopping for games or browsing your library. In addition to the icon itself, there’s a Learn More button that you can press to get more information about why a game is playable or unsupported rather than verified.

The company says it checks games to ensure that they:

  • Support the Steam Deck’s input system, working with the built-in controllers and automatically bringing up the on-screen keyboard when you need it.
  • Support 1280 x 800 or 1280 x 720 pixel display resolutions and that text is legible at those settings.
  • Don’t display any compatibility warnings and launchers or other features can be navigated using controllers.
  • Work with Proton, Valve’s compatibility software that allows Windows games to run on Linux, assuming they’re not natively available for Linux. This includes all aspects of the game, including anti-cheat software, which also has to be compatible with Linux.

Game ratings may change over time if game developers update their titles or as Valve updates Steam OS. But there are some things that will likely remain constant – for example, the Steam Deck isn’t designed to support virtual reality games and experiences and doesn’t really have the horsepower for it. So any game that requires a VR headset will be listed as unsupported.

The Steam Deck is available for pre-order for $399 and up, and it’s set to begin shipping in December to customers who have already placed pre-orders, although new customers will not receive their units until the second quarter of 2022.

via Steam Community

Latest Steam Deck news:

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MacBook Pro upgrades bring M1 Pro and Max chips, ProMotion Displays (with camera notches) and the return of Fn keys

Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops bring a big boost in CPU performance, an even bigger boost in graphics performance, the highest quality screens to date for an Apple laptop and the return of some features that Pro users have been missing. New MacBook Pro 14.2 inch and 16.2 inch laptops are available for pre-order today […]

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Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops bring a big boost in CPU performance, an even bigger boost in graphics performance, the highest quality screens to date for an Apple laptop and the return of some features that Pro users have been missing.

New MacBook Pro 14.2 inch and 16.2 inch laptops are available for pre-order today with prices starting at $1999 and $2499, respectively, and the new laptops powered by Apple M1 Pro or M1 Max chips will be available starting next week.

At first glance, the new laptops bring back a couple of classic features. The physical Fn keys are back, and the Touch Bar is gone. While Apple isn’t giving users any full-sized USB ports, the new MacBook Pro’s three Thunderbolt 4 ports are joined by an HDMI port and SD card reader. And while you can charge the notebook via a Thunderbolt port, there’s also a MagSafe charging system.

Apple also says that the new MacBook Pro laptops are its first to support fast charging. Plug in the laptops for 30 minutes to get a 50% charge.

Apple has also upgraded its displays. The MacBook Pro 16 has a 3456 x 2234 pixel display, while the 14 inch model has a 3024 x 1964 pixel screen. Both are what Apple calls Liquid Retina XDR displays that feature:

  • Mini LED technology
  • 120 Hz refresh rates with ProMotion tech for variable refresh rates
  • Up to 1,000 nits sustained brightness
  • 1,600 nits peak brightness
  • 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio
  • P3 wide color gamut
  • 1 billion colors

Interestingly, Apple has also taken a page out of its iPhone playbook and brought a camera notch to its MacBook Pro laptops. While this gives the notebook a higher screen-to-body ratio, it also means that a chunk it taken out of the top of the screen, which may look funny in full-screen applications.

Speaking of the camera, Apple has upgraded that too, with a new 1080p camera that the company says offers double the resolution and twice the low-light performance of previous-gen MacBook Pro cameras.

Apple is also improving support for external displays, something that has been a weak point of its Macs with M1 chips.

The speaker system has also been upgraded to a 6-speaker setup consisting of two tweeters and four woofers for 80% more bass including an extra half octave of low notes. There’s support for spatial audio, and the upgraded speakers aren’t just limited to the larger MacBook Pro: they’re included in both models.

At the heart of Apple’s new laptops are the company’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. They’re based on the same technology as the Apple M1 chips introduced last year. But the new models have additional CPU and GPU cores, support for more (and faster) memory, and many other upgrades.

The Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max chips both feature up to 10 CPU cores, but the Pro has up to 16-core graphics, support for up to 32GB of unified RAM, and 2,000GB/S memory bandwidth, while the M1 Max has up to 32-core graphics, up to 64GB of RAM, and 4,000GB/s memory bandwidth.

Apple says that makes the new MacBooks significantly faster than previous-gen models:

  • MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Pro or M1 Max offers 2X the CPU performance of previous-gen with Intel Core i9
  • MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Pro offers 2.5X faster graphics than the previous-gen with Radeon Pro 5600M
  • MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Max offers 4X faster graphics than Radeon Pro 5600
  • MacBook Pro 16 with M1 Pro or Max offers 5X faster machine learning performance than previous-gen with Core i9
  • MacBook Pro 14 with M1 Pro or M1 Max offers 3.7X the CPU performance of previous-gen with Intel Core i7
  • MacBook Pro 14 with M1 Pro offers 9X faster graphics performance than previous-gen with Core i7
  • MacBook Pro 14 with M1 Max has 13X faster graphics
  • MacBook Pro 14 with M1 Pro or Max offers 11X faster ML performance

At the same time, Apple notes that its new chips are more energy efficient, with the new MacBook Pro 14 lasting for up to 17 hours on a charge when playing local video, and the 16 inch model getting up to 21 hours of battery life under the same conditions.

Given that Apple’s M1 chip was already sitting atop the charts when it came to performance-per-watt, it’ll be interesting to see how the new MacBook Pro fairs against Intel and AMD-powered competition in real-world testing moving forward.

Apple seems pretty confident, claiming that, for example, its new chips can outperform the latest quad-core or octa-core chips from competitors while using significantly less power and even offering GPU performance that comes within striking distance of the most powerful discrete GPUs available for laptops, while using 100W less power.

The company says new MacBook Pro laptops can support multiple external displays, including the company’s 6016 x 3384 Pro Display XDR. How many displays you can plug in depends on which chip you get though:

  • M1 Pro supports up to two Pro Display XDRs
  • M1 Max supports up to three Pro Display XDRs and a 4K TV

Note that in order to get full performance though, you do have to pay a little extra. Apple glossed over this in its product announcement, but the starting prices for its new laptops get you entry-level versions of the M1 Pro and M1 max chips with fewer GPU cores.

For example, say you want a MacBook Pro 14 with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Here’s what you’ll end up paying for different CPU options:

  • $1,999 for MacBook Pro 14 w/M1 Pro with 8-core CPU and 14-core graphics
  • $2,199 for MacBook Pro 14 w/M1 Pro with 10-core CPU and 14-core graphics
  • $2,299 for MacBook Pro 14 w/M1 Pro with 10-core CPU and 16-core graphics
  • $2,499 for MacBook Pro 14 w/M1 Max with 10-core CPU and 24-core graphics
  • $2,699 for MacBook Pro 14 w/M1 Max with 10-core CPU and 32-core graphics

The $2,499 starting price for the MacBook Pro 16 does cover the top tier M1 Pro chip. But you’ll still end up paying more if you want more graphics performance:

  • $2,499 for MacBook Pro 16 w/M1 Pro with 10-core CPU and 16-core CPU
  • $2,699 for MacBook Pro 16 w/M1 Max with 10-core CPU and 24-core graphics
  • $2,899 for MacBook Pro 16 w/M1 Max with 10-core CPU and 32-core graphics

All of those chips have the same 16-core Neural Engine for hardware-accelerated machine learning and AI performance. Note that the prices will climb substantially if you want to configure a system with additional storage or memory.

press releases (MacBook Pro)(M1 Pro and M1 Max)

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Apple: Macbook Pro bekommt Notch und Magsafe

Apple hat das Macbook Pro in neuem Gehäuse, mit neuem SoC, einem eigenen Magsafe-Ladeport und Mini-LED-Display mit Kerbe vorgestellt. (Macbook, Apple)

Apple hat das Macbook Pro in neuem Gehäuse, mit neuem SoC, einem eigenen Magsafe-Ladeport und Mini-LED-Display mit Kerbe vorgestellt. (Macbook, Apple)

Disinformation guru “Hacker X” names his employer: NaturalNews.com

Rob Willis now says no to a “half-assed whistleblow.”

Picture of Rob Willis.

Rob Willis.

Robert Willis, the hacker who helped build a massive, US-based disinformation network and was profiled in a recent Ars Technica feature, has decided to name names. In a blog post today, Willis confirmed he worked for Mike Adams, who goes by "the Health Ranger" at the site NaturalNews.com. This matches the documentation previously seen by Ars Technica in the course of reporting the piece.

Willis had joined NaturalNews.com in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and helped the site build out a network of anonymized websites that looked independent but secretly promoted the "health" information and pro-Trump political writings of Mike Adams and NaturalNews.com.

NaturalNews has long been linked to disinformation. In 2019, The Atlantic named it one of the top producers of anti-vax content on the Internet. The site has touted homeopathy, urged "natural" remedies for things like cancer, and warned about "chemtrails." NaturalNews content has been banned from Facebook, and the site has been called a "powerful conspiracy empire."

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macOS Monterey is coming to a Mac near you on October 25

Focus, Universal Control, and Shortcuts will define this low-key release.

macOS Monterey is coming to a Mac near you on October 25

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple will release macOS Monterey, the next major version of its Mac operating system, on October 25, the company announced today. The new software will also ship on the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros Apple is releasing next week.

Compared to the major redesign Apple gave macOS last year with Big Sur, Monterey is a low-key release, not unlike iOS 15. One of the major new features is Shortcuts support, which originally appeared in iOS 12 back in 2018. Shortcuts doesn't immediately replace Automator or AppleScript, but it will most likely become the go-to way to automate complex tasks on Macs. Other major features include Universal Control, which allows you to use one Mac's keyboard and trackpad to seamlessly control multiple Macs or iPads, as well as a Focus mode that adds more granularity to the Do Not Disturb feature.

Monterey will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, though it won't run on everything that currently supports macOS Big Sur. The full support list drops a handful of 2013 and 2014-model Intel Macs, as well as the first iteration of the 12-inch MacBook from 2015:

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In-Ears: Apple stellt Airpods 3 vor

Apple hat auf seinem Event die Airpods 3 vorgestellt, die den Airpods 3 Pro sehr ähnlich sehen – allerdings ohne Geräuschunterdrückung. (Kopfhörer, Sound-Hardware)

Apple hat auf seinem Event die Airpods 3 vorgestellt, die den Airpods 3 Pro sehr ähnlich sehen - allerdings ohne Geräuschunterdrückung. (Kopfhörer, Sound-Hardware)

Apple intros 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with display notches, M1 Pro, and M1 Max

M1 Pro and M1 Max include 10 CPU cores, 16 or 32 GPU cores, and up to 64 GB RAM.

The new MacBook Pro.

Enlarge / The new MacBook Pro. (credit: Apple)

Nearly a year after announcing the first, low-end M1 Macs last November, Apple has finally unveiled its higher-end Macs. New 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will include the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, faster successors that build upon the foundation of the original M1, as well as more ports, and a slight redesign. This marks the most significant change to the MacBook Pro since the Touch Bar was introduced back in 2016.

Both MacBook Pro models will be available for ordering today, and they'll begin shipping next week. The 14-inch model starts at $1999, which will get you a version of the M1 Pro with an 8-core CPU and 14-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. The 16-inch model will start at $2,499, which includes the full version of the M1 Pro with a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. Color options remain relatively staid: you can get silver or space gray, but not the rainbow of color options you get with the 24-inch iMac.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro uses a 16.2-inch display with a 3456×2234 pixel resolution, while the 14-inch model uses a 14.2-inch display with a 3456×2234 resolution. Both screens use mini LED backlighting and slimmer bezels almost all the way around the screen, albeit at the expense of an iPhone-style display notch at the top of the screen for the improved 1080p webcam. Both screens also support Apple's ProMotion feature, increasing the typical 60 Hz refresh rate up to a smoother 120 Hz.

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Live updates from Apple’s October 2021 “Unleashed” event

Apple is updating its MacBook Pro lineup with new models featuring more powerful Apple Silicon chips, adding a new 3rd-gen set of AirPods Pro to its lineup, and announcing a cheaper Apple Music plan. Here are the latest updates from Apple’s Unleashed event, in reverse chronological order. The MacBook Pro 14 is available for pre-order […]

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Apple is updating its MacBook Pro lineup with new models featuring more powerful Apple Silicon chips, adding a new 3rd-gen set of AirPods Pro to its lineup, and announcing a cheaper Apple Music plan.

Here are the latest updates from Apple’s Unleashed event, in reverse chronological order.

Apple introduces 10-core M1 Pro chip with 16-core graphics and 10-core M1 Max with 32-core graphics, delivering 70% better CPU performance and 2-4X faster GPU performance than the M1. Apple says they use far less power than PCs with discret4e graphics. pic.twitter.com/EMIctBwtac

— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) October 18, 2021

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