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WWDC 2016

Control all your accessories in the Home app, including cameras and door locks.

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Apple launched HomeKit two years ago during the crazy early years of home automation. At that time, it was tough to add devices to your smart home suite due to incompatibility and lack of security. Today at Apple WWDC, Craig Federighi announced that Apple has an app called Home that integrates with an enormous range of devices, including cameras and door locks. He said that Apple has partnered with "every major maker of home accessories," as well as home builders in the US and China. The home builders bit was particularly interesting, as it means Apple is working to integrate Home into the physical structure of buildings, so "you can move in and just start controlling your home." Imagine shopping for a house and having to worry about whether it's compatible with Apple or Android.

The big IOT news at WWDC this year was the Home app, though. It fully integrates HomeKit into all your iOS devices as well as AppleTV. You can see Home right on your iOS home screen, and when you launch it you'll see all your accessories, no matter who made them. Federighi showed the audience how easy it is to tap the lights accessory and turn on or dim the lights.

You can also control several accessories at once by creating a "scene." For example, your Good Night Scene might lock the door, close the shades, turn down the heat, and turn off all the lights. If you want to feel like you're waking up in a science fiction movie, use Siri to activate a scene. "Siri, good morning!" you can say as you wake up, and Home will automatically start your coffee pot and turn on your local NPR radio station for the morning news. You can also set up geofences so that movement outside or in a particular area of the house will trigger a scene. When your car rolls up your driveway, for example, it could automatically open the garage door and turn on the kitchen lights.

Enlarge / RIP iPhone 4S, we knew ye all-too-well. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple has just announced the hardware support list for iOS 10, the next version of its smartphone and tablet OS that will be released in beta form soon and in final form later this year. After a surprising stay of execution last year, it looks like Apple is set to stop providing updates for a fair handful of older devices: the iPhone 4S, the iPad 2, the original iPad Mini, the 3rd-generation iPad, and the fifth-generation iPod Touch.

Here's the full list of supported hardware:

• iPhone 5, 5C, 5S, 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, and SE.
• iPad 4, iPad Air, and iPad Air 2.
• Both iPad Pros.
• iPad Mini 2 and newer.
• Sixth-generation iPod Touch.

All the dropped devices have something in common: some version of the Apple A5 SoC. The A5 has been actively supported for longer than any of Apple's other chips to date; it was originally included in the iPad 2 in March of 2011, the last hardware launched by Steve Jobs before he passed away in October of that year. It later made its way into the iPhone 4S, and it was added to the fifth-generation iPod Touch and the iPad Mini in 2012. The first Retina iPad used a faster A5X variant, and the the third-generation Apple TV used a version with a single CPU core (Apple dropped support for that Apple TV box last year).

Enlarge / Older Macs like this late 2008 MacBook Pro are getting the axe in Sierra. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—For the first time since Mountain Lion was released in 2012, a new Mac operating system release will end support for older hardware. Older Macs, mostly models from 2007, 2008, and 2009, won't run this fall's new macOS Sierra.

To run Sierra, you'll need:

• MacBook (late 2009 and later)
• iMac (late 2009 and later)
• MacBook Air (2010 and later)
• MacBook Pro (2010 and later)
• Mac Mini (2010 and later)
• Mac Pro (2010 and later)

Many of these Macs were already missing out on Yosemite and El Capitan-era features like AirDrop, Continuity, and the Metal graphics API.

At E3 today, Microsoft announced the next member of the Xbox family: code-name Project Scorpio. The company calls it an uncompromised gaming machine. Project Scorpio will reportedly come with a 6 TFLOPS GPU, 8-core CPU, and 320GB/s of memory bandwidth. It will be capable of 4K, 60 frame per second gaming and support VR. What headset that VR support will use remains a mystery.

Microsoft emphasized that Scorpio will be a part of the Xbox family: all games and peripherals that work on Xbox One and Xbox One S will be fully compatible with Project Scorpio. Microsoft's Phil Spencer said this is the start of gaming beyond generations—entering a world where hardware improvements don't mean ditching your game library, echoing his previous promises about hardware upgrades.

Fallout 4 featured heavily in the launch announcement, suggesting that it will see a VR-enabled Scorpio-related update in the future.

At E3 today, Microsoft updated the Xbox One's controller to go with the new Xbox One S. If white isn't your thing, there will now also be an alternative.

At the Xbox Design Lab you'll be able to pick custom colors for the front face, mushroom sticks, D-pad, and shoulder buttons. Microsoft says more than 8 million different color combinations are possible. Custom controllers will cost $79.99, and you can get them engraved with your gamertag for another $9.99.

Microsoft's E3 event has ended. We will continue to update this post as more information becomes available throughout the day.