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Apple iOS 13.5.5 Can’t Come Soon Enough: Here Are 3 Reasons Why – Forbes

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The next updates for Apple’s iPhone and iPad will be iOS 13.5.5 and iPadOS 13.5.5 (unless a bug appears that needs squishing quickly before then). They can’t be far off, because the first developers’ betas and public betas have appeared, but along with bug fixes there are features which are going to be highly useful.

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To get new features at this stage in an OS’s cycle is pretty rare, so here are the three standouts which it’s worth looking out for.

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Sure, it’s only days since the latest iOS update dropped – iOS 13.5.1, which was also when iPadOS 13.5.1 arrived. But that update had one specific purpose: to patch a vulnerability which allowed anyone to jailbreak their iPhone – and risked bad actors exploiting the weakness, too.

So, the last new features came with iOS 13.5, back in May. Here are the three headline extras of iOS 13.5.5. that we know about – or think we do.

News+ to gain audio

How do you consume your news features?

For a lot of people it’s a combination of radio, TV, online newspapers, apps and podcasts. Ah, yes, podcasts. The Apple News+ subscription service could do with some of those. The subscription price of $9.99 a month is good value for so many magazines and newspapers, but even so, shouldn’t you expect audio as well?

The iOS 13.5.5 beta shows a new tab in the Apple News app that reads “Audio”. Because it’s only in beta, there’s no actual playable content just yet, even for those signed up for the public beta.

When it’s live, it will almost certainly mean there will be audio versions of curated articles from publications available in Apple News+.

It will have an interface similar to the Podcasts app, according to Jeff Benjamin from 9to5Mac.

It seems that non-subscribers will be able to access little bits of audio but you’ll need the full subscription to hear everything.

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Apple is doubtless still sorting licensing issues for this right now. Choosing the articles, employing the actors to read them and recording the audio versions will take time, so don’t expect a full library of audible goodness on day one. But it will be a big step forward for the News+ platform. After all, it’s believed that Apple News+ hasn’t taken off quite the way the company would have liked. Which brings us to the second feature I’m looking forward to.

Apple News+ and other services bundles

Forensic examination of code in iOS 13.5.5. beta by Filipe Espósito at 9to5Mac suggests that we may soon be able to buy Apple services together for a lower price.

This is something that’s been rumored since 2019, but references to a “bundle offer” and to a “bundle subscription” appearing in the code are new, apparently.

It’s not clear when this might come – some sources say not until 2021 – or which services might be included. After all, although Apple launched TV+ alongside the Apple Arcade games subscription, that wouldn’t be the best fit, perhaps. Either Apple Music ($9.99 a month) or Apple TV+ ($4.99 a month) could make a tempting combo with Apple News+, especially if the price is right.

iPad Keyboard backlighting

The third feature is something I think about, well, every time I use my iPad Pro with its spectacular Magic Keyboard. The Magic Keyboard, unlike Smart Keyboards from Apple that have preceded it, is backlit. So you can use it in a dark room without squinting crazily or tipping the iPad screen toward the keys to try and make out which key is which.

But adjusting the brightness of the keyboard isn’t quite as simple as it might be. I mean, it’s designed so it adjusts the brightness automatically based on the lighting conditions, but your idea of what’s right and the keyboard’s aren’t always the same thing.

There’s no row of function keys on the Magic Keyboard, you see, so that’s not where you go to adjust brightness as you might on a regular laptop. Instead, you need to stop what you’re doing, open the Settings app, go to General, then Keyboard and then Hardware Keyboard.

Only then do you reach a screen where you can adjust the brightness.

According to 9to5Mac, iPadOS 13.5.5 has references in the code which suggest that there will be keyboard shortcuts to offer the capabilities which would normally fall to the function keys.

It looks like the shortcuts will allow simple, quick adjustment of the Keyboard backlighting, iPad display brightness and more.

They’re not active in the software beta so it’s not clear if they will be customizable or exactly how they will work.

It’s also worth noting that it’s not clear whether, though the code is in place in iPadOS 13.5.5, if that’s when it will debut or whether we’ll have to wait for iPadOS 14. Let’s hope it’s coming soon.

The final release of the software is imminent. When it launches, I’ll report on exactly what is, and what isn’t, included.


Follow me on Instagram by clicking here: davidphelantech and Twitter: @davidphelan2009

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PlayStation 5 Pro rumored to beef up GPU and ray tracing, bring AI acceleration

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The PlayStation 5 launched in late 2020, though it feels like it arrived later due to supply issues. A Pro model will reportedly arrive four years later with a much improved GPU, AI acceleration and other enhancements.

The GPU will be the biggest upgrade on the PS5 Pro. Rumors claim up to 45% higher rasterization performance and 33.5 TFLOPs of compute power. Future SDK versions will support resolutions up to 8K and higher frame rates with 4K @ 120fps and 8K @ 60fps being possible.

Ray tracing performance is set to include 2-3 times, even 4 times on some occasions. This is thanks to a massive increase from 18 BVH4 work groups to 30 BVH8. The so-called “Bounding Volume Hierarchies” help speed up ray intersection calculations (i.e. does this ray of light hit this object or not?). We will skip the technical details, but the digit after BVH means that each individual work group will be able to do more work.

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The Pro will also feature the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling and antialiasing technology (PSSR for short). This will be especially helpful for ray tracing, which sees computation demands explode as resolution goes up.

The PlayStation 5 Pro will also bring a custom machine learning architecture. An AI Accelerator will offer up to 300 TOPS of 8-bit and 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point computation. This might be the most interesting part as modern generative models can create realistic textures and speech, write out text based on a prompt and so on – what can developers do with this?

The console will also come with a modest boost to the CPU, which will have a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that goes up to 3.85GHz (from 3.5GHz), a 10% increase. By the sound of it, the PS5 Pro is very close to thermal limits, so this mode will drop GPU frequency by 1.5% (resulting in 1% performance loss).

The Pro model will have faster RAM that does 18 gigatransfers per second, a 28% increase from 448GB/s to 576GB/s. This is needed to feed the beefier GPU.

The audio subsystem will also get a boost with 35% more performance that can be spent on higher quality sound effects.

The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to have 1TB onboard storage and a detachable Blu-ray drive similar to the slim models. Sony might release the Pro model in Fall 2024, but there has been no official acknowledgment of the console.

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Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is for lower-tier high-end phones – MobileSyrup

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Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon 8-series chip aimed at devices that aren’t quite flagships but are not quite mid-range either.

The new chip offers manufacturers more options but also further contributes the Qualcomm’s increasingly weird and confusing product lineup. The new 8s Gen 3 is like the opposite of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ chips, which typically offer a little more than the company’s annual flagship product.

The 8s Gen 3 matches most of what Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship offers, but with just a little less. For example, the chips have a similar GPU, but the 8s Gen 3’s version has one less performance core and runs at a lower frequency. Additionally, the 8s Gen 3 uses the previous generation Snapdraogn X70 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 support, compared to the X75 modem in the 8 Gen 3.

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Since AI capabilities were one of the major highlights of the 8 Gen 3, the 8s Gen 3, unsurprisingly, also sports similar (but not quite as good) AI chops. The 8s Gen 3 can support generative AI on-device and is capable of running large language models (LLMs) of up to 10 billion parameters. That includes LLMs like Llama 2 and Gemini Nano.

While that’s all well and good, it’ll be interesting to see how manufacturers use the 8s Gen 3, and how consumers respond to the new chip. Flagships will likely keep going for the flagship Qualcomm chips, like the 8 Gen 3 or inevitable 8+ Gen 3, whenever it arrives. But Qualcomm also offers the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, just a hair below the new 8s Gen 3. Will the 8s Gen3 offer enough to make it a worthwhile choice over the 7 Gen 3? If you’re already looking at the 8s Gen 3, does it make sense to just go for the 8 Gen 3? Only time will tell.

Qualcomm expects the 8s Gen 3 to land in devices from Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi and Xiaomi in the coming months, though notably, none of those brands sell phones in Canada.

Header image credit: Qualcomm

Source: Qualcomm Via: The Verge 

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Google partnership 'missing piece' in Apple AI strategy – analysts – Proactive Investors USA

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News of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Google’s discussions over the rollout of the latter’s Gemini AI chatbot on iPhones sent shares higher and prompted positive feedback from analysts on Monday.

Apple climbed 1.4% on the reports that it would license Gemini to power new features in its latest iPhone software, while Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) jumped 4.6%.

As per Wedbush, such an agreement is the “missing piece” in Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy, due to materialise with the release of IOS 18 software for its products this year.

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Such plans could involve the introduction of an AI App Store, as per Wedbush, alongside the incorporation of new features into the iPhone 16, expected in September.

These may well be among features unveiled by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, such as homegrown large language models.

“This is a major win for Google to get onto the Apple ecosystem and have access to the golden installed base of Cupertino,” analysts said in a note.

Indeed, some 2 billion-plus Apple devices are said to currently be in circulation globally, with Wedbush also highlighting a likely “major license fee” attached to the deal.

“For Apple, this will give them the foundation and technology blueprint to double down on AI features currently being developed,” the bank continued.

This should help “make sure that iPhone 16 will be a potential game changer iPhone release around AI functionality”.

Though details of the deal, reported by Bloomberg, are slim, Wedbush said more could be expected before June’s conference, while reiterating an ‘outperform’ rating for Apple.

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