Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 09/19 – Bunch Of Microsoft Roadmaps Leak

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Bunch of internal Microsoft documents have leaked, so now we know the new Xbox that is coming next year, and 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 OS releases from Apple. Sponsors: IPN.Ibotta.com/ride Miro.com/podcast Links: Microsoft's Xbox plans revealed in emails tied to FTC case (NBCNews) Microsoft’s next Xbox, coming 2028, envisions hybrid computing (The Verge) Amazon Is Poised to Hire Departing Microsoft Product Chief (Bloomberg) Google’s Bard chatbot can now find answers in your Gmail, Docs, Drive (The Verge) iOS 17 is a lot of little updates that make a big impact (The Verge) watchOS 10 preview: widgets all the way down (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMame right home for Tuesday, September 19th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. A bunch of internal Microsoft documents have leaked,

so now we know the new Xbox that it'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 barred 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 U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where the FTC is suing to block 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, end quote. 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 2 terabytes of storage up from 1 terabyte, a USBC front port with power delivery, and an all-new, more immersive controller. The new controller code named Sibil is set to be announced later this year, and will include an accelerometer for gyro support. 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 dye 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, end quote. 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. Quoting 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, end quote. 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-esque armies don't actually live on your device. It's only the Belista 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-5 graphics, for reference, we're only on Navi 3 right now, as well as potentially nabbing the company's Zen 6 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 27, and the first hybrid cloud games being produced from 2024 through 2026, end quote. Also Microsoft's chief product officer, Panos Panay, is leaving that company after 19 years there. ahead of the September 21st Surface event later this week, by the way. Consumer Marketing Chief

Yusef Medi will step up to lead windows and surface after Penae leaves. Now, you know how I feel about covering executive shuffles, but here's what's interesting. Sources are also saying that Penae is headed to Amazon to run the Alexa and Echo Unit. Amazon's longtime hardware chief, Dave Limp, said in August that he is retiring. Quoting Bloomberg, Penae's 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 a rival. But the two companies reached a pact that allowed Bell to make the move.

One year ago, Microsoft removed non-competes 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. Panet 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 built a massive consumer electronics business that's mostly predicated on selling utilitarian budget-priced 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, end quote. 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 will raise

concerns about privacy and data usage, Google says that it won't use this information to train Bards 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 Krochek, 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

asked 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 chatbot's 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's 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, end quote. Finally today, the new iPhone 15 reviews are out, but I'm just going to skip them because I just don't think there's enough new to go into all of that in terms of the features. 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 its 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 calendar view with widgets or have it display photos. This works with any charger, wired, Chi, 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. That's one incentive to spring for the real MagSafe as opposed to MagSafe compatible, chi with a magnet, but the fact that standby works with any old charger is a win, frankly, and an 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 in 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 averse. 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 collar, or just read the transcription and silently marvel as one robot tells another robot how you could be saving for. 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 watchOS 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've summoned 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 five 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 logographic language, like Chinese or Japanese, is faster than doing the same in English. It's not perfect, not 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'll 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-forsaken 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, end quote. Almost everything today came from The Verge. Just worked out like that. Talk to you tomorrow.