With some of the first Mac Studios arriving in the wild, teardowns are hitting the web. One teardown video spotted by 9to5Macreveals that Apple’s latest Mac computer may allow for storage upgrades.
According to a teardown from Max Tech on YouTube, the Mac Studio includes what appears to be accessible SSD slots for adding extra storage. Of course, ‘accessible’ is doing a lot of work there.
To get to the slots, you need to remove a rubber ring from the bottom of the Mac Studio, unscrew the bottom plate and remove it, as well as take out the power supply and some other components. Moreover, Max Tech notes in the video that the SSD slot and available space don’t seem compatible with the SSD from his Mac Pro.
In other words, it seems likely the Mac Studio won’t offer user-upgradeable storage. Instead, Apple may offer authorized SSD storage upgrades, or maybe even upgrade kits similar to what it did with the Mac Pro, sometime in the future.
It’s worth noting that Apple officially says the Mac Studio’s storage is “not user accessible” and the company recommends that customers get a higher-capacity storage configuration when they order the Mac Studio if they think they’ll need more storage in the future.
Of course, people who need extra storage may be able to get by with an external SSD connected to one of the Mac Studio’s multiple Thunderbolt ports. It likely won’t be as fast as the built-in SSD, but it’d work in a pinch (especially for anyone wary of opening up their Mac).
As for the Mac Studio RAM, well, it’s built into the M1 Max or Ultra chip options. Although that does mean you can’t upgrade the memory, there are benefits too — higher speed, for example, and the memory will benefit from the cooling the chip gets.
On March 17th, Warner Bros. gave us our first extensive look at gameplay from Hogwarts Legacy, and it’s honestly looking like the Harry Potter game I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid.
Until now, pretty much every “Wizarding World” game has been a retelling of the same stories featured in the seven Potter books/eight Potter films. While there’s a certain novelty to that, especially for kids, what was always most tantalizing was a game that let you live out your own Hogwarts adventure, not a version of Harry’s.
With that in mind, Hogwarts Legacy ticks pretty much every box I could have hoped for. The ability to create your own witch or wizard and get sorted into one of Hogwarts’ four houses? An original story set many years before Harry was even born? An expansive open-world to explore with a broom or Hippogriff? A slew of flashy spells for dynamic combat? It really seems like developer Avalanche Software has understood the assignment.
If only it were that simple.
At this point, you’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding the game. It’s one that, rather unfortunately, actually has nothing to do with Avalanche itself. Instead, it pertains to Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, who’s come under fire in recent years for repeatedly making transphobic remarks. To reiterate: this is recurring behaviour, not a one-off tweet from years ago. Now, I personally know some people, either social media acquaintances or actual friends and family, who don’t see why this is a problem. Many others certainly don’t, either, and this can come down to people being genuinely unaware, deliberately ignorant or just plain bigoted.
As a straight, (half) white cis-gendered male, I originally didn’t understand either; admittedly, I’ve benefited from living in my own relatively hate-free bubble. But what I’ve done over the past year, and what I’d encourage others to do, is simply listen to what Rowling’s critics are saying.
With that in mind, I’d like to share just a few resources to better explain how Rowling is actively harming an already extremely marginalized and vulnerable community. These are people who know far more about the subject than me and can maybe help inform just a bit.
Those articles all cover Rowling’s transphobia in general, but there have also been some good pieces to relate it to back to Hogwarts Legacy. For one, trans woman Jessie Earl, a video producer at GameSpot, penned an incredibly detailed and nuanced piece about Rowling and Hogwarts Legacy. The majority of her piece unpacks Rowling’s falsehoods and dangerous rhetoric, before explaining how that all relates to the game.
Then there are organizations you can learn from and support, including:
Canadian Professional Association for Transgender Health (CPATH) — the largest national multidisciplinary, professional organization in the world, which aims to support trans and gender diverse people GLAAD — an organization aiming to support the LGBTQ+ community in general
Trans Lifeline — a grassroots organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people (Canadians can dial 1-877-330-6366)
Trans Pulse Canada — a community-based survey of the health and well-being of trans/non-binary people in Canada
A more comprehensive list of Canadian trans-supporting charitable groups can be found here.
Ultimately, you should make your own choice about buying Hogwarts Legacy. As some of the pieces above state, you’re not a bad person for doing that. If you feel complicated about it, that’s certainly reasonable, too. But hopefully, you can at least read a bit more about Rowling’s actions from those being negatively impacted by them and keep that all in mind, regardless of whether you end up playing the game.
Image credit: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Ubisoft announced plans to expand its Winnipeg, Manitoba studio to 300 employees by 2030, creating an additional 200 jobs.
The expansion will triple the size of the current studio and includes an investment of $139 million in the province of Manitoba. That will bring Ubisoft’s total investment in Manitoba to $264 million since 2018.
Moreover, Ubisoft says it will meet its previous goal of growing the Winnipeg studio to 100 employees within five years in March 2022.
Michael Henderson, Ubisoft Winnipeg’s managing director, said in a press release:
“The first three years of Ubisoft Winnipeg have already been an exceptional success. The city has proved to be a hidden gem of techno-creative talent, and an environment that is right for growth thanks to the leadership of Province of Manitoba and City of Winnipeg. We look forward to continuing to grow the industry by attracting national and international talent to the city, and investing in the development of innovation & the next generation of talent locally.”
Ubisoft says the Winnipeg studio plays a strategic role as a triple-A co-development studio that builds tools and technology that help teams create immersive, engaging game worlds.
“In its first years, Ubisoft Winnipeg has already contributed to core technologies such as our Snowdrop engine, taken a leadership role in Machine Learning, and developed innovative new procedural tools and technologies that have the potential to change the way we build worlds,” said Nicolas Rioux, Ubisoft’s Global Deputy Vice President of Production Technology.
Ubisoft will hire additional programmers, including engine, tools, and online programmers, along with talent from other specialized areas of expertise. Roles are open now — you can check those out on Ubisoft’s Careers page.
Humble Bundle has launched a new ‘Stand with Ukraine’ bundle that offers 100 percent of proceeds to humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine. These charities include Razom for Ukraine, International Rescue Committee, International Medical Corps and Direct Relief.
This Humble Bundle includes 123 games like Back 4 Blood, Satisfactory, Metro Exodus, Slay the Spire and Fable Anniversary.
The starting amount for this Humble Bundle is $51.31 CAD for all 123 titles, and Humble says it’s managed to raise $1.9 million USD (about $2.3 million CAD) at the time of writing.
Amazon Canada has discounted several smart home accessories along with tablets, laptops, monitors and Kindle e-readers as part of its ‘Daily Deals’ promotion.
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It looks like Twitter might soon allow users to add pronouns to their profile.
Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi has discovered proof that the social media platform is developing a pronoun feature and that it might currently be testing the functionality.
It’s odd this feature hasn’t hit Twitter yet. Facebook users have been able to choose pronouns for a while, and Instagram let its users add pronouns last year. Even Slack, Zoom and LinkedIn users can add preferred pronouns.
Twitter will likely make a formal announcement regarding the feature soon.
Valve’s handheld Steam Deck can now run Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly called xCloud) platform through Edge.
It was previously possible to play Xbox Cloud Gaming titles through Chrome but handheld controls didn’t work, forcing players to use an external controller with the portable. Now a new beta Linux version of Microsoft Edge designed specifically for the Steam Deck includes full support for the potable’s built-in controls.
In a recent Reddit post, Miss Quarry, a community manager at Microsoft Edge, explained that Edge’s development team worked closely with Valve to bring full Xbox Cloud Gaming support to the Steam Deck through Edge.
“We’re particularly excited about this ourselves as we feel it can open new opportunities in the Linux gaming community,” said Quarry. Microsoft’s Catherine Gluckstein, the company’s head of product and strategy, also tweeted about the new Linux version of Edge designed for the Steam Deck.
This opens up the Steam Deck to the wide variety of Xbox Cloud Gaming titles, including Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Sea of Thieves, Minecraft Dungeons, The Outer Worlds and more. Microsoft has also released a detailed guide to creating a simple link to Xbox Cloud gaming on the Steam Deck to make it easier to access from the handheld. I’ve yet to try out Xbox Game Streaming with the Steam Deck, but I imagine the performance would be similar to playing a title through Edge on an iPhone or iPad.
It’s worth noting that several Xbox Game Studios titles are already compatible with the Steam Deck directly through Valve’s SteamOS, including Prey, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5 and more.
In other Steam Deck-related news, the device is now capable of running Windows, though the experience is far from perfect.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes Xbox Cloud Gaming, costs $16.99 per month. I’ll have a review of Valve’s Steam Deck on MobileSyrup in the coming days.
With Steam support on the horizon (but still vaguely distant), now seems like a great time for Chrome OS to get variable refresh rate (VRR) support.
First spotted by About Chromebooks, Chrome OS 101 is now hitting the Dev Channel with VRR support. The functionality isn’t enabled by default — instead, it appears to be hidden behind a flag (on of Chrome’s semi-hidden settings available by typing ‘chrome://flags’ in the URL bar).
The feature boasts the following description:
“Enable Variable Refresh Rate
Enable the variable refresh rate (Adaptive Sync) setting for capable displays”
9to5Googlesuggests the feature might only work with external displays rather than Chromeboooks’ built-in screens. Still, if the support is there, it opens the door for Chromebooks with built-in VRR-capable displays down the road.
For those not familiar with VRR, it allows displays to adapt the refresh rate (the number of times the screen refreshes each second) to match the frames per second (fps) of content. VRR is particularly useful for games, where the framerate can vary depending on what’s happening.
For example, a pre-rendered cutscene might run at 30fps, while a walking section of the game could run at 70fps. When a more intense encounter happens — say, an explosion — the framerate could drop suddenly. VRR enables the display to match, reducing screen tear and making things feel smooth.
Typically, displays run at a set refresh rate (most run at 60Hz, or 60 refreshes per second). If content doesn’t sync with that, you can see tears (where the screen refreshes mid-frame, splitting the image) or other artifacts.
9to5 also points out the VRR will be a bigger deal when Chromebook hardware catches up. Most Chromebooks use integrated GPUs that aren’t as powerful as, say, discrete AMD or Nvidia GPUs popular among PC gamers. VRR could still be helpful, but may not be as significant a factor on lower-end hardware.
Either way, it’s good to see the feature make its way to Chromebooks as Google prepares to push the platform into gaming.
Google announced plans to tweak the Play Store for people with big screen devices to make it easier to find quality apps that work well for large displays like tablets, foldables, or Chromebooks.
The announcement came via a post on Google’s Developers blog. The search giant says it will change how the Play Store ranks and promotes apps, how it displays reviews, alert messages and more.
On devices with big screens, the Play Store will use new logic for ranking and featuring apps that accounts for features like support for different device orientations, keyboard support, and more. The changes should prioritize high-quality apps in rankings.
“This will affect how apps are surfaced in search results and recommendations on the homepage, with the goal of helping users find the apps that are best optimized for their device,” Google explained in the blog post.
The search giant also said it planned to deepen investment in editorial content across Play “to highlight apps that have been optimized for large screens.”
As for reviews, Google plans to tweak the Play Store so it surfaces reviews for similar device types to what you’re using. In other words, Play will show smartphone users reviews left by other smartphone users, while tablet users will see reviews from other tablets users.
Finally, Google said it would change alerts that appear on apps that don’t meet compatibility requirements for large screen devices. The idea is that the alert will give users a better idea of how an app will run on their device after they install it, but Google didn’t provide much detail beyond that it will share more information later in 2022.
The changes to Play Store come as Google develops several improvements for large screen devices, such as the Android 12L update focused on improving the Android experience for tablets and foldables. What’s particularly interesting about the effort is that Google doesn’t make any tablets, foldables, and only one Chromebook (from 2019).
In other words, the company has virtually no skin in the large-screen game — could the work to improve these parts of the Android experience herald new big-screen devices from Google? Perhaps a return of the much-loved Nexus 7 (Pixel 7?) or maybe even a Pixel foldable? Only time will tell.
Despite receiving lacklustre reviews, I’m still looking forward to the upcoming Halo TV series.
That said, until now, I assumed that I’d likely need to shell out some extra cash to subscribe to Paramount+, a streaming service that pales in comparison to its counterpart in the U.S, given the Halo TV show is exclusive to the platform.
According to a recent tweet from Halo series senior community manager John Junyszek, that won’t be the case — at least for the first few episodes. Just in time for the Halo TV show’s first episode on March 24th, Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can get 30 days of Paramount+ for free. This offer launches on March 23rd.
Along with the Halo TV series, Paramount+ features Survivor, NCIS: Los Angeles, Seal Team and more.
After the 30-day trial, Paramount+ costs $5.99 in Canada. On the other hand, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate costs $16.99/month and is required for cloud game streaming. The service also includes Xbox Live Gold and EA Play.
