With the next version of Chrome, Google is moving ahead with a plan to improve privacy and security by reining in some abilities of extensions used to customize the browser. The move had angered some developers who expected earlier it would cripple ad blockers. Manifest v3, the programming interface behind Google’s security plans, will arrive …
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Microsoft is bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming to iOS and Windows PCs next year. In a blog post Wednesday, Microsoft said its cloud-gaming platform will be available in spring 2021 as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for Windows PCs through the Xbox app and web browsers and for Apple’s iOS through mobile web browsers. “Whatever screen you choose, we want …
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You can certainly spend $1,000 or $1,500 or more on a laptop, but the question is: Should you? After all, it doesn’t take a lot of horsepower to delivery a satisfying experience web browsing or doing ordinary productivity work like creating documents and spreadsheets. To figure out how much laptop you really need, we enlisted CNET laptop guru Dan Ackerman …
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Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 processor won’t support a much ballyhooed video compression technology developed by Google, Netflix and other technology giants, dealing a blow to data efficiency and streaming quality improvements for the next-generation of Android phones. Judd Heape, a Qualcomm vice president for product management, says the mobile chip leader couldn’t include AV1 technology in the new chip because …
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Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Apple will reportedly unveil an augmented- or mixed-reality headset. Apple hasn’t discussed any headgear yet. But augmented reality is alive and well on the iPhone — and it’s only getting better. Apple’s depth-sensing lidar sensor (available on the iPhone 12 Pro and latest iPads), with its advanced 3D-scanning possibilities, feels like the backbone of the Apple headsets of …
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The latest iPhones can take remarkably impressive 3D photos and scans, especially with the rear lidar sensor. But, of course, iPhones don’t have 3D screens. The $349 Looking Glass Portrait is a 7.9-inch desktop photo frame-sized display with a built-in Raspberry Pi 4 computer that aims to be a 3D viewer for those photos, and a holographic mini monitor for interactive …
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MacOS 11 Big Sur arrived last month, and it’s got a few geeky features for long-time Mac users. But it also teams up with Apple’s new M1 chip (the first in a line known as Apple silicon) to turn the page on a new chapter for the Mac. So let’s break it down. If you’re a traditional Mac user, you’re …
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If you’re the kind of gamer who wants to play games the second they become available, you’ll want to install the latest Xbox update. It gives of owners of the next-gen Xbox Series X and S and older One models the ability to preinstall titles coming to the Microsoft consoles’ Game Pass subscription service, the company noted in a blog …
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If you look at Apple’s new lineup of iPhones and Macs, you’ll probably struggle to see the difference from last year’s models. They’re roughly the same size and shape. This year’s iPhone 12 family is a bit boxier than 2019’s iPhone 11, though there is a new, smaller iPhone 12 Mini. The same goes for Mac exteriors. It’s hard to pinpoint …
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At some point, the line between what we see in a VR headset and what we see in the real world may melt away. Finnish AR/VR headset maker Varjo could be approaching that moment with its latest lidar-enabled XR-3 headset, available to order today. At $5,495, plus a required $1,495 yearly software license, this is hardly cheap (a version without …
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