It’s Monday, June 14 2016 and man. was yesterday ever a big day for tech geeks! Where do we even start? How about some E3 highlights from Microsoft and Sony?
Microsoft was up early in the day, and came out swinging with the announcement of the Xbox One S, a slimmer, 4K HDR-capable Xbox with a power supply built in, so no power brick. It’s expected to start at $300, due this August.
Microsoft also closed the show by announcing yet ANOTHER Xbox console, which may have some confused … how many Xbox’s do we need, but the so-called Project Scorpio is a super-powerful console, we suspect so that it can handle VR gaming with no outside help. This one is a good year-and-a-half away, but something tells us the 2017 Holidays are going to be an exciting time for gamers.
In the middle of all the hardware stuff, Microsoft did show off some new games, some of which you get to play on both Xbox and PC with just one purchase. You can find out more about that at the link below.
Sony later closed out the day with no big hardware announcements, save a progress report on Playstation VR, but Sony’s always been about the games, and they had plenty in store.
An unexpected Spiderman game surfaced, and Arkham VR looked promising, which lets you become Batman in a game intended to take full advantage of Playstation VR. Honestly, there were too many game announcements to count. We’ve got all of them, with video, right here.
If you’re not a gamer, then you might have been keeping some tabs on what Apple was up to at its WWDC 2016 conference, where Tim Cook and crew took the stage to show off what’s new with iOS10, MacOS – it’s not OS X anymore — tvOS, and watchOS. That’s a whole lot of OS, but unlike years prior, there was a little less BS this time around. watchOS was probably the least impressive of the announcements. Basically, it now works the way you would expect it to.
Oh, and you can have Minnie Mouse as your watch face as well. They seemed really excited about that. But iOS 10 had quite a few new features, and Apple seemed most excited about changes to Messenger, which is looking more like its own platform trying to take on Facebook than ever before. You can now automatically substitute emoji for actual words almost automatically, there’s full-screen animation, thought bubbles.
It’s a very … well … animated way of communicating, if you’re into that. And it seemed like the crowd was into that. Siri also got a boost – she’s looking and sounding smarter than ever and she’s been opened up to 3rd party developers so soon you can have her open and take action within third party apps – have her order you an Uber, for example, which is something we’ve always wanted.
The photos app looks more like Google Photos than ever before, and Maps is seeing some major improvements, which will be a boon to CarPlay fans. The Apple Music overhaul, though, was far less impressive. Even though the presentation was a real hoot. Hmmmm … awkward. Apple then wrapped the session with a tear-jerking movie about aspiring developers and Swift Code, the company really is making it easier than ever to learn to code, and that’s to be commended.
Naturally, we’re just skimming the surface of the major highlights, so if you want to dig deeper to find out what your Mac, iPad or iPhone are going to do for you in the coming months, be sure to check out our WWDC wrap-up at the link below.
We finish with breaking news this morning that a Federal Court has ruled that high-speed internet service will be considered a Utility, and therefore subject to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission. The move is being hailed as a win for net neutrality, and will enable much tougher policing of broadband providers, the same providers who, expectedly, claim the FCC is stepping way out of bounds. The US Court of Appeals in DC disagrees, though.
Regardless, there will be most certainly be a litany of courts cases in the months to come as Broadband providers fight for what they believe to be right. Even so, it looks like consumers, and the FCC, may have one the war.
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