PlayStation 4 console hardware finally revealed

PlayStation 4 console hardware finally revealed

Well, we know what the controller and the Eye look like, we’ve got all sorts of details about what’s under the hood and we’ve even seen some games in action. What we haven’t seen yet is the PlayStation 4 itself. Well, thankfully Sony didn’t make us wait too long at this year’s E3 before fleshing out those little sneak peaks with a full on reveal. Shocker: it’s all black! Well, almost all black. There is a strip of purple dividing the mostly murdered-out tower. Like the Xbox One it’s a pretty unassuming looking console. Gone are the dramatic swoops and curves of the PS3, and so are just about any obvious buttons. The two halves of the PS4 are slightly offset and angled to create a slightly agressive profile when viewed from the right angle, but mostly it seems designed not to draw attention to itself — pretty much the exact opposite of the last generation of gaming platforms.

The one portion of the device with the Sony and PlayStation logos on it is that glossy “piano black” we’re all familiar with. But, the rest of the device appears to be a matte black which makes the console look serious. And not business serious like a BlackBerry, hostile serious like a knife. As you can see, as with previous iterations, there is a stand for keeping the console upright, should you have more vertical than horizontal space. There’s plenty of images in the galleries below. But, don’t worry, we’ll be back with plenty more once we get to see it in the flesh.

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Apple brings file-sharing capabilities to iOS 7 with AirDrop

Apple brings filesharing capabilities to iOS 7 with AirDrop

Amongst the significant changes and feature enhancements we’ve already seen on iOS 7, it appears that AirDrop will be featured in the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system. The file-sharing feature will be available on the iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad mini and 5th-gen iPod touch, but apparently nothing earlier than that. The peer-to-peer feature was briefly shown off at WWDC in the Control Center, and it means there is “no need to wander around the room bumping your phones.” We wonder if this means we shouldn’t expect any NFC capabilities in the next version of the iPhone or iPad, but it’s still a little too early to make that correlation.

Here’s Apple’s official statement on AirDrop for iOS7:

“AirDrop is an entirely new way to quickly and easily share content with people nearby. When you’ve got something you want to share, AirDrop shows you your contacts close by. Just select who you want to share with and AirDrop does the rest. AirDrop transfers are peer-to-peer so you can use it anywhere, without any network or set up required, and transfers are fully encrypted so your content is protected and private.”

Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.

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Apple confirms new Mac Pros will be assembled in the USA

Springsteen will be proud. Today, Apple has confirmed that the company’s new Mac Pro line of desktops will be assembled in the US before they arrive later this year. While we were promised it a fair while back, Tim Cook was certainly right when he said it would involve an existing line of deviceseven if it arrives with a completely new look.

Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.

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Apple announces new Mac Pro with cylindrical design, 12-core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, flash storage, Thunderbolt 2.0 and support for up to three 4K displays

Apple's new Mac Pro announced with cylindrical design, 12core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, Thunderbolt 20 and support for 4K displays

It’s been brewing for a while, and now Apple has finally redesigned its flagship cheese grater pro desktop. The 2013-era Mac Pro has been totally redesigned with a new, cylindrical chassis and vastly upgraded internals that have been designed to last for “(another) 10 years.” At the center of the new Mac Pro is a 12-core, 256-bit Intel Xeon E5 processor with 1,866MHz DDR3 RAM capable of 60GB/s data transmission. Following the trend of the MacBooks, the new power tower uses PCIe-based flash storage, and so pro users will be relying upon four USB 3.0 and six Lightning 2.0 ports (that can take up to 6 devices per port with 20Gbps throughput) for expandability. Fortunately, for those of you who intend on placing the hardware beneath your desk, the expansion ports light up to help you find your connections in the gloom. Other connections include HDMI-out 1.4, dual gigabit Ethernet jacks, WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and the usual pair of 3.5mm audio in and out ports.

This machine is also the first Mac that’ll ship with dual AMD FirePro GPUs as standard, which’ll support 4K displays. Of course, the most striking change is in the design, which occupies 1/8th the volume of the current Mac Pro and stands 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches wide. The chance is thanks to a new thermal core, a triangular air duct that runs through the center of the hardware — with one huge fan mounted at the top. Presumably, this new model has also been tweaked to conform to new regulations concerning electrical shielding, meaning that the hardware can finally return to European shores when it arrives later in the year — at a (probably high) price that’s still to be decided.

Update: You can now check out our eyes-on of the new machine here!

Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from WWDC 2013.

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Source: Apple

Mac OS X Mavericks to integrate iOS notifications

OS X Mavericks capable of receiving iOS notifications

If you have a Mac and use an iOS device, Apple just announced an enjoyable feature to go along with the new version of OS X, also known as Mavericks: the ability to push iOS notifications directly to your Mac, regardless of whether or not Safari is open. The alerts show up as a banner in the top right corner of your display, much the same as any other Mac-related banner; additionally, any missed notifications will pop up in your lock screen any time you wake up your device.

Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from WWDC 2013.

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Apple announces Anki Drive, an AI robotics app controlled through iOS

Apple announces Anki, an AI app for iOS

Apple is just starting its WWDC keynote this morning, but it’s already announcing something quite interesting: a new company called Anki and its inaugural iOS app called Anki Drive, which centers around artificial intelligence and robotics. The name, which is Japanese for “memorize,” features smart cars that are capable of driving themselves (although you can certainly take over at any time) and communicate with your iPhone using Bluetooth LE. These intelligent vehicles, when placed upon a printed race track, can sense the track up to 500 times a second. The iOS-exclusive game is available as a beta in the App Store today, which you’ll need to sign up for — the full release won’t be coming until this fall — and it’s billed as a “video game in the real world.” According to the developers, “the real fun is when you take control of these cars yourselves,” which we can definitely attest to — the WWDC demo cars had weapons, after all.

Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from WWDC 2013.

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Source: Anki

Apple reportedly lands radio service deal with Sony ahead of WWDC

iPhone podcasts app

Apple was supposedly waiting for a deal with Sony before it could launch its rumored internet radio service. That roadblock may have just been cleared: AllThingsD claims that Apple has reached an agreement at the last minute, which gives it the all clear to announce the streaming feature at WWDC. Other details aren’t immediately available, but previous rumors have suggested that Apple won’t deploy the ad-backed service right away; we may end up waiting a few months before we can tune in. If the rumors are true, though, Monday’s keynote will be more interesting than we first thought.

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Source: AllThingsD

HTC One with stock Android coming June 26th for $599 (updated)

Sundar Pichai

Speaking to Walt Mossberg at D11 this morning, Google’s Sundar Pichai offered glorious news for anyone who loves the HTC One but craves an untouched Android experience: he confirmed that there is indeed a stock Android 4.2.2 version of the flagship device One coming, and it will be fully unlocked for T-Mobile and AT&T at the solid price of $599. It’ll go on sale in the Google Play Store on June 26th, the same date as its $649 counterpart, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 stock edition. The new version of the device — which will be sold in the US initially — will come SIM-unlocked, with an unlocked bootloader and 32GB storage. In terms of radios, it will offer quadband LTE (700/850/AWS/1900), triband HSPA+ (850/1900/2100) and the usual quadband GSM / EDGE. Sadly, this means that T-Mobile users will enjoy LTE and EDGE, but won’t be able to take advantage of AWS on the 3G side.

There is some give and take involved with such a device, of course; since it’s pure stock, Sense-specific features (BlinkFeed, Zoe and so on) won’t be included, since they aren’t optimized to work on vanilla Android. Still, we’re quite excited to see companies like HTC and Samsung embrace the “Nexus experience” and offer choice to its users, and we’re hoping this is just the beginning of a new trend.

Update: HTC confirmed to us that the Google Edition will retain the same two-button setup, and they’ll have the same functions as before: short press of Home for Home, long press for Google Now and double tap for Recent Apps. The back button will also remain the same, and the black menu bar that plagues third-party apps that haven’t complied with Google’s design specifications isn’t going anywhere. We were also told that Beats Audio will still be integrated into the device as a hardware optimization, but the visual indicator — currently found in the status bar on the original One — won’t be there.

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Source: HTC

Xbox One runs three operating systems, including cut-down Windows for apps

Xbox One runs three operating systems, including cutdown Windows for apps

The latest update out of the currently unfolding announcement in Redmond: the next-generation Xbox will run three operating systems simultaneously. Complementing Windows 8 and RT on PCs and tablets, there’ll be a third distinct version of Microsoft’s operating system that has been pared down specifically for the new console. This will be the main system OS used to run apps such as Skype and other non-game titles downloaded from the Xbox storefront. At the same time, virtualization technology similar to Microsoft’s Hyper-V will be used to allocate the bulk of system resources to a second, dedicated “Xbox OS” when the user loads up a game. This game OS will remain a fixed entity throughout the life of the console, so that game developers can be confident their games will run regardless of how much the Windows side of the machine gets updated. Finally, the third OS sounds like a small layer to assist with the virtualization, allowing the two main personalities of the console to talk to each other. Read on for more.

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Xbox One hardware and specs: 8-core CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and more

Xbox One hardware and specs

Slot-loading Blu-ray drive? Check. HDMI in and out? Absolutely, considering the Xbox One is meant to play a central role in the living room. There’s an octa-core processor based on AMD’s Jaguar design and 8GB of RAM to go up against the Sony PlayStation 4, plus USB 3.0 ports, 500GB of hard drive storage, WiFi Direct for communicating with the new controller and other devices, and a humungous amount of silicon to drive it all: no fewer than five billion transistors, which compares to 1.4 billion in your average Intel or AMD chip (although Microsoft may be included other processors and DSPs in that count). And just in case you’re wondering, the switch to an x86 PC-style architecture will indeed preclude backwards compatibility with 360 games.

As for the box itself, well, it looks rather a like a little HTPC with black and silver case and a big Xbox logo — a visage with actually tallies with the fact that’s running a PC-like x86 architecture inside. There’s a full list of specs after the break, which we’re continuing to build out as more details pour out of Microsoft’s Xbox One ongoing launch event.

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