WW 988: Bubbleable

TWiT Shows Windows Weekly
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Windows Weekly #988 - “Bubbleable” is available now.

  • Xbox faces major leadership upheaval with anticipated studio closures and layoffs as Microsoft’s fiscal year ends
  • Windows Insider Program releases record seven builds while claiming simplification, with screen tint and widget improvements
  • PowerToys reaches version 0.100 milestone with significant quality-of-life enhancements
  • Microsoft announces premium Surface Laptop 8 and 13 with Snapdragon X2 chips at steep pricing
  • Edge switches to two-week update cycle; Game Pass adds CoD: Vanguard

#WindowsWeekly #Xbox #WindowsInsider #PowerToys #Surface #Microsoft

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I’m worried prices will never come down for companies like Apple, even when the RAM crisis is over. Apple mentioned they’re soon going to have to raise prices on all their consumer products (my worry is specifically with the iPad, though) and I’ve never really seen Apple move prices back down after moving them up. It doesn’t seem like a very Apple move to say “the price of RAM has come back down, so we’re going to lower our prices accordingly”.

I feel very fortunate I upgraded my desktop at the time I did, even though RAM was already pretty expensive (thankfully a bundle saved me $300)

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Apple launched the Neo this year. The price of the MacBook Air fell last year and Apple dropped the price of the first iPhone dramatically weeks after launch, even reimbursing early adopters. So never say never.

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At the same time (for this year), they also dropped the least expensive Mac Mini. The now-least-expensive model is about $200 more. This feels like a planned decision to me in the wake of the Neo launch, rather than a reaction to RAM prices. So those people that might have wanted a desktop unit and are somewhat price conscious (like myself) now have few options.

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I guess maybe I’m more worried about this: the cost of the Pro branded gear likely won’t go down in price. You won’t see the iPad Pro dropping in price after they raise the prices due to RAM. But I hope I’m wrong.

Apple does (sometimes) drop the price of it’s base-line gear. But rarely it’s Pro stuff.

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Back when I had an Android phone, Facebook Chat Heads were a super new concept and I loooooved it. I was in my 1st year of college at the time. That’s probably the biggest feature I miss from Android all these years later post moving to iPhone

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Today Tim Cook warned that, indeed, Apple is going to have to raise prices. I expect a steady and increasingly dramatic series of leaks from Apple to prepare us all for the reality coming in September.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-price-increases-memory-supply-199845b1?st=NPpwSV&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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It just shows how much his planning and control of the supply chain over the years, plus their margins, has meant that they could keep the prices level until now.

I found 1TB of 32GB ECC DIMMs in a cupboard that my predecessor forgot about. That was worth about 2,000€ last year, about 6,000€ a couple of months ago, looking at the price comparison sites, they are worth about 15,000€ now!

The general business laptops we purchased have shot up, despite discounts from the manufacturer. In Germany, the prices have gone up around 30%, in the USA, were we don’t get good discounts, because we only have 1 small manufacturing plant, the prices have gone up between 70% and 150%.

Heck, the last 2 Lenovo orders were silently cancelled (the devices never turned up, when we questioned where they were, Lenovo said that they had simply cancelled the order, without informing us!). We have switched to Dell now, but the prices have risen from around $1,200 in October last year to $2,200, even though we have halved the amount of RAM they have!

So, hats off to Apple that they could keep the prices steady for so long, but it was inevitable that the prices would have to rise at some point.

I am now in a dilemma, I dropped my iPhone 16 Pro and the back is broken (interestingly, it is only the coloured part that is broken, the top layer of glass is still intact) and the battery life isn’t stellar, do I fix it and put in a new battery, grab a 17 Pro before the price hikes kick in or wait for the 18 Pro?

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I would wait if I were you. I don’t think the price increase will be that big of a deal to be off-cycle.

If repairing and getting a new battery is cheap, I’d also consider that

If it were me, I would probably buy a new phone now because I’m impatient and love instant gratification.

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The name of the original Rockstar game that Leo and Paul were grasping for was “Lemmings”. This was developed by DMA Design when it was based in Dundee, Scotland. DMA subsequently wrote the first few GTA games. When Take-Two acquired DMA Design, they combined it with Rockstar Games to form Rockstar Studios and then rebranded it as Rockstar North.

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Re: Doom scrolling

I have tried to replace mindlessly scrolling in a social media application with puzzle games. I found a collection for Android that has dozens of games with thousands of levels for each game that are casual enough to pick up and play to kill some time, but easy enough to put down when I actually have to do stuff other than play on my phone. I figure using problem solving and critical thinking skills has to be better than cracking open Facebook and scrolling through the feed for no reason.

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Re: Everything is an XBOX

I always felt like that marketing campaign was a perhaps unintended extension of the Office strategy to make the product available on multiple platforms and devices rather than make them a Windows exclusive. The math makes sense, more customers means more money coming in. When XBOX started to shift the focus from the console to a service that could be played from the device you are already on (assuming a good internet connection and whatnot) it made sense to me. Certainly it was not without its challenges, notably lag, but being where your customers are made sense.

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I had a colleague who’s boyfriend worked for Take Two/Rockstar North, before he went on to become a pop star, for a short period of time, and then work as a video game journalist, ISTR.

He was in Space Raiders, I got to meet him for a Christmas party at work, I was his girlfriend’s manager and picked them up from the hotel and took them to the party, that was a few months before their breakthrough hit, Glam Raid.

I had pretty much forgotten about the Rockstar connection, until you mentioned it.

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The same here, I haven’t used Facebook since 2016 and log into Xing and LinkedIn once or twice a year. I haven’t used Twitter since Musk took over, although I did quickly log in last year, to keep my account from being deleted and my handle being sold off to the highest bidder.

I play a tower defence game (Bloons TD6) and Simon’s Cat. I have tried a few others, but never really got into anything. I’ve finished Simon’s Cat 4 times and I now set myself challenges, like how much money can I make - I am currently at level 4857, I haven‘t lost a single game so far and have collected over 400,000 credits. Bloons is similar, I have completed every level on every difficulty, apart from Unpoppable on the extreme levels and just set myself the challenge of completing every daily challenge at level 100 (most challenges end at 40-60, but you can play on after picking up the daily reward) and collecting monkey towers, I have well over 2,000 at the moment.

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Oh man I LOVED Lemmings. There are some versions around but they just don’t have the appeal of the originals!

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