Andrew Cunningham reports via Ars Technica: For around three years now, the team of independent developers behind the Asahi Linux project has worked to support Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, despite Apple's total lack of involvement. Over the years, the project has gone from a "highly unstable experiment" to a "surprisingly functional and usable desktop operating system." Even Linus Torvalds has used it to run Linux on Apple's hardware. The team has been steadily improving its open source, standards-conformant GPU driver for the M1 and M2 since releasing them in December 2022, and today, the team crossed an important symbolic milestone: The Asahi driver's support for the OpenGL and OpenGL ES graphics have officially passed what Apple offers in macOS. The team's latest graphics driver fully conforms with OpenGL version 4.6 and OpenGL ES version 3.2, the most recent version of either API. Apple's support in macOS tops out at OpenGL 4.1, announced in July 2010.

Developer Alyssa Rosenzweig wrote a detailed blog post that announced the new driver, which had to pass "over 100,000 tests" to be deemed officially conformant. The team achieved this milestone despite the fact that Apple's GPUs don't support some features that would have made implementing these APIs more straightforward. "Regrettably, the M1 doesn't map well to any graphics standard newer than OpenGL ES 3.1," writes Rosenzweig. "While Vulkan makes some of these features optional, the missing features are required to layer DirectX and OpenGL on top. No existing solution on M1 gets past the OpenGL 4.1 feature set... Without hardware support, new features need new tricks. Geometry shaders, tessellation, and transform feedback become compute shaders. Cull distance becomes a transformed interpolated value. Clip control becomes a vertex shader epilogue. The list goes on."

Now that the Asahi GPU driver supports the latest OpenGL and OpenGL ES standards -- released in 2017 and 2015, respectively -- the work turns to supporting the low-overhead Vulkan API on Apple's hardware. Vulkan support in macOS is limited to translation layers like MoltenVK, which translates Vulkan API calls to Metal ones that the hardware and OS can understand. [...] Rosenzweig's blog post didn't give any specific updates on Vulkan except to say that the team was "well on the road" to supporting it. In addition to supporting native Linux apps, supporting more graphics APIs in Asahi will allow the operating system to take better advantage of software like Valve's Proton, which already has a few games written for x86-based Windows PCs running on Arm-based Apple hardware.

Microsoft appears to be readying its own DLSS-like AI upscaling feature for PC games. From a report: X user PhantomOcean3 discovered the feature inside the latest test versions of Windows 11 over the weekend, with Microsoft describing its automatic super resolution as a way to "use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details." That sounds a lot like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which uses AI to upscale games and improve frame rates and image quality. AMD and Intel also offer their own variants, with FSR and XeSS both growing in popularity in recent PC game releases.

Last night in San Francisco's Chinatown, "A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield..." reports the Verge, "generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire." The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopian, but by then flames had already fully engulfed the car.... Waymo representative Sandy Karp told The Verge via email that the fully autonomous car "was not transporting any riders" when it was attacked and fireworks were tossed inside the car, sparking the flames...

The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators... Just last week, a Waymo car struck a cyclist who had reportedly been following behind a truck turning across its path.
The "burnt-out husk of the electric Waymo Jaguar" appears in a video posted on YouTube, according to the article. "Another set of videos posted by software developer Michael Vendi gives a view into the scene as it played out and the fire grew."

San Francisco's 49ers play in the Super Bowl this afteroon, so last night's celebrations for Chinese New Year could be followed by additional celebrations tonight. Police Chief Bill Scott is already urging residents to behave responsibly. "Please don't light anything on fire."

Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: Fresh on the heels of its $40 million fundraise, streaming media company Plex is today announcing its expansion into a new business: a movie rentals storefront. The addition, which will initially be offered to U.S. customers, will give the streamer another means of generating revenue beyond its subscription products and ad-supported streaming -- a diversification that will prove critical as the ad market continues to be unpredictable.

At launch, the marketplace will offer movies from top studios, including WB, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate and A24, which means Plex users will be able to rent titles like "Barbie," "Wonka," "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning," "The Color Purple," "Expend4bles," "PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie," "Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," "Mean Girls" and others. Plex says there will be just over 1,000 titles available to rent starting at $3.99, but the number of titles will grow over time. Titles will also move in and out of windows, so the number of rentals will fluctuate over time, as well. [...]

Once users rent a movie, they have 30 days to watch. After starting the rental, you'll have 48 hours to finish viewing it, similar to other marketplaces. The movie will also appear in the "Continue Watching" section on Plex's home screen if you don't finish watching it upon your first go. The company plans to add more studio partners to its movie rentals store over time, it says. [...] The new movie marketplace will launch across platforms, Plex notes, including its apps on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV/Google TV, Roku, smart TVs (LG, Hisense, Samsung, Sony, VIZIO), game consoles and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices apps that Apple has been testing for Windows machines have officially launched, ending a long preview period and bringing an end to the iTunes app on some computers. The Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices app are part of Apple's effort to split iTunes on PC into multiple platforms to mirror how these apps work on Macs. On Windows 10 and later, PC customers can download the three separate apps to manage devices and access Apple Music and Apple TV content. Microsoft first announced plans for Apple Music and Apple TV apps for the Microsoft Store back in October 2022, so the split from iTunes has been in the works for more than a year.

The Apple Music app gives Windows users a way to listen to and manage music from their iTunes library, including iTunes Store purchases, while the Apple TV app allows users to watch and manage movies and TV shows from iTunes. Both of the apps also give access to Apple's streaming services, Apple Music and Apple TV+. The Apple Devices app is designed to allow PC owners to update, back up, and restore and manage their iPhones and iPads, and sync content from their PCs. Using the standalone apps requires Windows 10 or later, and all three apps must be installed to transition away from iTunes. After the apps have been added to a PC, iTunes is used only to access podcasts and audiobooks. The iTunes library should not be deleted, because it is used by the Apple Music and Apple TV apps.

IDC, in a press release: A new forecast from IDC shows shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) PCs -- personal computers with specific system-on-a-chip (SoC) capabilities designed to run generative AI tasks locally -- growing from nearly 50 million units in 2024 to more than 167 million in 2027. By the end of the forecast, IDC expects AI PCs will represent nearly 60% of all PC shipments worldwide. [...] Until recently, running an AI task locally on a PC was done on the central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processing unit (GPU), or a combination of the two. However, this can have a negative impact on the PC's performance and battery life because these chips are not optimized to run AI efficiently. PC silicon vendors have now introduced AI-specific silicon to their SoCs called neural processing units (NPUs) that run these tasks more efficiently.

To date, IDC has identified three types of NPU-enabled AI PCs:
1. Hardware-enabled AI PCs include an NPU that offers less than 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) performance and typically enables specific AI features within apps to run locally. Qualcomm, Apple, AMD, and Intel are all shipping chips in this category today.

2. Next-generation AI PCs include an NPU with 40 to 60 TOPS performance and an AI-first operating system (OS) that enables persistent and pervasive AI capabilities in the OS and apps. Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel have all announced future chips for this category, with delivery expected to begin in 2024. Microsoft is expected to roll out major updates (and updated system specifications) to Windows 11 to take advantage of these high-TOPS NPUs.

3. Advanced AI PCs are PCs that offer more than 60 TOPS of NPU performance. While no silicon vendors have announced such products, IDC expects them to appear in the coming years. This IDC forecast does not include advanced AI PCs, but they will be incorporated into future updates. Michael Dell, commenting on X: This is correct and might be underestimating it. AI PCs are coming fast and Dell is ready.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Most people know that Microsoft really wants everyone to move onto Windows 11. But just in case there are some Windows 10 users still unaware of this fact, the company is once again nagging them to upgrade with full-screen, multi-slide popups. The lengthy advertisement for Windows 11 was highlighted by Windows Latest after it installed the optional January update (in preview) on a Windows 10 machine.

The nagging Windows 11 upgrade promo consists of an excruciating number of screens (i.e., more than one): The first informs users that they can switch to Windows 11 for free and that they can still use their PC while the newer OS is set up in the background; another is Microsoft recommending the move and noting that users can revert to Windows 10 within the first ten days of upgrading; the last is for those who decide to stay on Windows 10, with a reminder that Windows 11 remains a free upgrade option. There is another panel that lists some of Windows 11 features, but this only appears for those who select the 'See what's inside' button.

An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer Microsoft released the first Windows Server 2025 Insider preview build last week. However, soon after, a newer version was leaked online. As first reported by Windows Latest, the leaked version contains some new in-development features, including new settings for a Windows 'sudo' command.

These settings are only available after enabling developer mode, and the sudo command does not currently work from the command line yet, showing it is early in development. However, the sudo settings provide some clues as to how the command will work, with the ability to run sudo applications 'In a new windows', 'With input disabled', and 'Inline'....

It is important to note that Microsoft commonly tests new features in preview builds that do not make it into the production builds.
Obligatory XKCD.

Mozilla claims in a new 74-page research report that Microsoft "repeatedly uses harmful design" and "dark patterns" to push users toward Microsoft Edge and away from rival browsers like Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome browser. PCMag: "Microsoft uses the harmful preselection, visual interference, trick wording, and disguised ads patterns to skew user choice," the report argues, adding that "Microsoft's harmful design practices mean users are unable to download, install, use, or set as default an alternative browser without interference." The researchers claim this harms consumers because they can experience "distortion of choice," lose trust in the broader tech industry, and even possibly experience "emotional distress" as a result of Microsoft's efforts.

For the study, user experiences were tested on Windows 10 Home and Windows 11 Pro as well as the Windows 11 Home Insider Preview Version. The UK-based testers did not attempt to use a VPN to change or hide their IP addresses during their investigation. While Microsoft recently said it will allow users in the European Union to uninstall Edge as part of its efforts to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), it's unclear whether US, UK, or other users around the globe could ever get the same option. Some Windows 11 users can remove five other apps that come preinstalled, however.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's adoption of Rust continues apace if a posting on the IT titan's careers website is anything to go by. Although headcount at Microsoft might currently be down -- by two percent compared to the previous year -- recruitment persists at the Windows giant. In this case, the company is forming a team of Rustaceans to tackle a platform move away from C#.

The job, a principal software architect for Microsoft 365, has responsibilities that include "guiding technical direction, design and implementation of Rust component libraries, SDKs, and re-implementation of existing global scale C# based services to Rust." According to the post, the job lurks within the Substrate App Platform group, part of the Microsoft 365 Core Platform organization. The Substrate does the heavy lifting behind the scenes for Microsoft's cloud services, making a rewrite into Rust quite a statement of intent. Microsoft said: "We are forming a new team focused on enabling the adoption of the Rust programming language as the foundation to modernizing global scale platform services, and beyond."

Google has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that you can now customize what games you can watch in your Multiview window. The keyword here is "games" because this feature is still limited to just sporting events at this time. From the report: One of YouTube TV's best features is the ability to offer the option to watch up to four sporting or news events at once on the same screen. The only downside has been the fact that customers have been unable to pick what games are in these windows. Instead, YouTube TV gives you a number of premade multiview options to pick from. Now, though, YouTube TV seems to be testing your ability to pick what games you want on your TV.

Yesterday, YouTube TV started to give some NBA League Pass subscribers the ability to pick which games they want to watch from a handful of games in a list. From there, YouTube TV would create a multiview channel for you to watch the games you pick. Google says this feature is coming to all devices that support multiview and you can only create these channels from preselected NBA games. Sadly, you can't pick any channel you want but only from a list of preselected games to create your own multiview channel.

For the first time, Microsoft's Q2 earnings report includes the impact of the company's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. "While Microsoft isn't breaking out specific numbers, it says that its overall gaming revenue increased by 49 percent, 44 points of which came from the 'net impact' of the Activision deal," reports Engadget. From the report: Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, which includes Xbox, Surface and Windows, was up 19 percent ($16.9 billion) since last year. The company says the Activision deal accounted for 15 points of that increase. It's a huge change for a division that's been severely impacted by dwindling PC sales (which affects Windows licenses and Surfaces) and struggling Xbox consoles. PC device revenues were down 9 percent for the quarter, while Xbox hardware sales were up 3 percent. Xbox content and services revenue is also up 61 percent since last year, 55 points of which comes from Activision. Overall, Microsoft reported revenues of $62 billion, up from $52.7 billion a year earlier. Microsoft's cloud division posted revenue growth of 28%, with its intelligent-cloud revenue up 20% to $25.9 billion. Meanwhile, its productivity and business-processes segment generated $19.2 billion.

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don't use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I'd left off in Chrome. I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I'd been working on. I didn't even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused why all my tabs were suddenly logged out.

After the shock wore off, I looked to make sure I hadn't accidentally allowed this behavior. I found a setting in Microsoft Edge that imports data from Google Chrome on each launch. "Always have access to your recent browsing data each time you browse on Microsoft Edge," reads Microsoft's description of the feature in Edge. This setting was disabled, and I had never been asked to turn it on. So I went to install the same Windows update on a laptop, which actually resulted in it failing and my having to do a system restore. Once the system restore was complete, the same thing happened. Edge opened automatically with all of my Chrome tabs. I haven't been able to replicate the behavior on other PCs, but a number of X users replied to my post about this saying they have experienced the same thing in the past.

New submitter betso.net shares a report: A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

Benj Edwards reports via Ars Technica: In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows. In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, "We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service."

Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, "After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist." The earliest record we've found of the Hobbes archive online is this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At around 32 years old, minimum, that makes Hobbes one of the oldest software archives on the Internet, akin to the University of Michigan's archives and ibiblio at UNC.

"As important as its historically underhanded business dealings were for its success, Microsoft didn't have to cheat to win," argues a new article in the Register.

"The Unix companies were doing a great job of killing themselves off." You see, while there were many attempts to create software development standards for Unix, they were too general to do much good — for example Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) — or they became mired in the business consortium fights between the Open Systems Foundation and Unix International, which became known as the Unix wars.

While the Unix companies were busy ripping each other to shreds, Microsoft was smiling all the way to the bank. The core problem was that the Unix companies couldn't settle on software standards. Independent Software Vendors (ISV) had to write applications for each Unix platform. Each of these had only a minute desktop market share. It simply made no business sense for programmers to write one version of an application for SCO OpenDesktop (also known as OpenDeathtrap), another for NeXTStep, and still another one for SunOS. Does that sound familiar? That kind of thing is still a problem for the Linux desktop, and it's why I'm a big fan of Linux containerized desktop applications, such as Red Hat's Flatpak and Canonical's Snap.

By the time the two sides finally made peace by joining forces in The Open Group in 1996, it was too late. Unix was crowded out on the conventional desktop, and the workstation became pretty much a Sun Microsystems-only play.
Linux's GPL license created an "enforced" consortia that allowed it to take over, according to the article — and with Linus Torvalds as Linux's single leader, "it avoided the old Unix trap of in-fighting... I've been to many Linux Plumbers meetings. There, I've seen him and the top Linux kernel developers work with each other without any drama. Today's Linux is a group effort... The Linux distributors and developers have learned their Unix history lessons. They've realized that it takes more than open source; it takes open standards and consensus to make a successful desktop operating system.
And the article also points out that one of those early Unix desktops "is still alive, well, and running in about one in four desktops." That operating system, of course, is macOS X, the direct descendent of NeXT's NeXTSTEP. You could argue that macOS, based on the multi-threaded, multi-processing microkernel operating system Mach, BSD Unix, and the open source Darwin, is the most successful of all Unix operating systems.

Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac's 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac's relevance, too. He also scoffed: "Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever," he said.

Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated.

Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading:
Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules.
Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal.
Mac at 40: The Eras Tour.
40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever.
The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).

Microsoft is getting ready to place Teams meeting reminders on the Start menu in Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a new build of Windows 11 with Dev Channel testers that includes a Teams meeting reminder in the recommended section of the Start menu. Microsoft is also testing an improved way to instantly access new photos and screenshots from Android devices. [...] The Teams meeting reminders will be displayed alongside the regular recently used and recommended file list on the Start menu, and they won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11.

In a blog post today, Google announced that WebGPU is "now enabled by default in Chrome 121 on devices running Android 12 and greater powered by Qualcomm and ARM GPUs," with support for more Android devices rolling out gradually. Previously, the API was only available on Windows PCs that support Direct3D 12, macOS, and ChromeOS devices that support Vulkan.

Google says WebGPU "offers significant benefits such as greatly reduced JavaScript workload for the same graphics and more than three times improvements in machine learning model inferences." With lower-level access to a device's GPU, developers are able to enable richer and more complex visual content in web applications. This will be especially apparent with games, as you can see in this demo.

Next up: WebGPU for Chrome on Linux.

Microsoft today made Reading Coach, its AI-powered tool that provides learners with personalized reading practice, available at no cost to anyone with a Microsoft account. From a report: As of this morning, Reading Coach is accessible on the web in preview -- a Windows app is forthcoming. And soon (in late spring), Reading Coach will integrate with learning management systems such as Canva, Microsoft says. Reading Coach builds on Reading Progress, a plug-in for the education-focused version of Microsoft Teams, Teams for Education, designed to help teachers foster reading fluency in their students. Inspired by the success of Reading Progress (evidently), Microsoft launched Reading Coach in 2022 as a part of Teams for Education and Immersive Reader, the company's cross-platform assistive service for language and reading comprehension.