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Microsoft's announcement came at the end of a Wednesday blog post authored by Panos Panay, chief product officer of Windows Devices at Microsoft. The blog post reiterated many of the claims made by chief executive Satya Nadella during the company's earnings call, such as the claim that 1.4 billion users now use Windows. Panay also reiterated many of Microsoft's thematic statements, such as how the world has evolved into a hybrid working environment.
It was what's next for Windows, though, that was the most interesting part of his statement. "Next month we're bringing new experiences to Windows that include a public preview of how you can use Android apps on Windows 11 through the Microsoft Store and our partnerships with Amazon and Intel, taskbar improvements with call mute and unmute, easier window sharing and bringing weather to the taskbar, plus the introduction of two new redesigned apps, Notepad and Media Player."
All of these features have been "released" previously as part of the Windows Insider program, specifically for members of the Windows Insider Dev Channel, where Microsoft tests out new code. Microsoft has s
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"Looking across the industry, 2021 was dominated by two recurring themes, unprecedented demand, and ecosystem supply constraints," Gelsinger said.
Intel reported record revenue for the quarter—$20.5 billion, up 3 percent from a year ago, on $4.6 billion in profits. But the company's Client Computing Group (CCG) reported sales that fell 7 percent to $10.1 billion. Supply constraints hit Intel's PC customers, lowering their ability to ship PCs. Notebook revenue fell 16 percent, though desktop revenue helped offset it, growing 19 percent.
"This [the constraints] was most acutely felt in the client market, particularly in notebooks," Gelsinger told analysts. "But constraints have widely impacted other markets including automotive, the Internet of Things and the data center. As we predicted, these ecosystem constraints are expected to persist through 2022 and into 2023. With incremental improvements over this period, the industry will continue to see challenges in a variety of areas, including specialty and overall foundries shortages, substrates, as well as third party silica."
Gelsinger also named power controllers, display LED controllers, and different component pieces as other areas where shortages are a concern.
With that said, Gelsinger said Intel is well positioned to navigate the market, given that the company has always emphasized building chips from its own fabs. The company said this week that it plans to build a new megafab complex in Ohio,
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PCWorld's Gordon Ung took care of our usual exhaustive review of the new generation of Alder Lake chips, starting with the absolute top-of-the-line Core i9-12900HK. He compared it to both AMD's latest and greatest, the Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Intel's last-gen Tiger Lake Core i9-11980HK.
Because of the nature of pre-built laptops, the tests aren't as perfectly controlled as desktop benchmarks. Even so, we can glean some pretty definitive results based on crunching the numbers. If you don't have time to go through more than 6000 words of scrupulous detail — or maybe you just can't fit it into your lunch break — here are the important points to take away, as we wait for review units to start flowing in to inform our roundup of the best laptops.
The new 12th-gen chips are speed demons
Perhaps you could be forgiven for predicting this plot twist beforehand, but Intel's new top-of-the-line chip is faster than its old top-of-the-line chip. But this is no mere iterative bump: The Core i9 Alder Lake CPU beats out Intel's previous best effort by a considerable margin, especially when it comes to intense media applications.
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Black Panther, Top Gun, The Batman, Uncharted, Avatar 2... 2022 promises to be huge -- but the delays have already started.
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Google, no stranger to lawsuits about its practices these days, is facing a fresh legal broadside from Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine. Racine (pictured) has launched an action claiming that Google has violated the Consumer Protection Procedures act in the state, specifically about location tracking. Essentially, Racine believes that while Google says its users can opt-out of having their whereabouts identified, such tracking remains in place. Racine's claim is being mirrored by similar AG-led lawsuits in Texas, Washington State and Indiana.
Google claims that changing your device and account settings protects your data. The truth is, since 2014, Google has systematically surveilled users no matter what settings they choose.
— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) January 24, 2022Much of this controversy was first publicized back in 2018 when an Associated Press report identified that location tracking remained active regardless of the user's choice. The claim says that between 2014 and 2019, despite these promises, tracking data was stored in a Web and App Activity database. As our deep dive on the subject explained, Google did enable users to go in and erase their location from this file, but the process was slow and laborious.
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