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Microsoft will offer console streaming for free to Xbox One owners – TechCrunch

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Microsoft’s Sunday E3 pressure was all about the games. In fact, while the company did offer some information about hardware and services, the information all arrived fast and furious at the end of the conference. While it’s probably unsurprising that the company had very little to offer in the way of information about its upcoming 8K console, Project Scarlett, most of us expected Project xCloud to get a lot more face time on stage.

The company powered through a whole lot of information about its upcoming streaming offering like it was going out of style (or, perhaps, like the lights were going out at its own theater). The speed and brevity of it all left a number of audience members confused on the specifics — and caused some to speculate that the service night not be as far along as Microsoft had hoped.

We caught up with a few Microsoft reps on our final day at the show to answer some questions. The company is unsurprisingly still mum on a number of key details around the offering. A couple of key things are worth clarifying, though. For starters console stream is not considered a part of Project xCloud. Rather, the ability to play games on one’s own Xbox One remotely is a separate feature that will be coming to users via a software update.

Asked what advantages console streaming has over the parallel xCloud offering, Microsoft’s answer was simple: it’s free. Fair enough. This serves a two-fold purpose. First, it helps differentiate Microsoft’s streaming offerings from Stadia and second, it provides another value proposition for the console itself. As to how performance is expected to differ between console streaming and XCloud, it wouldn’t comment.

As I wrote earlier today, the company does see the potential of a large scale move to the cloud, but anticipates that such a shift is a long ways off. After all, if it didn’t, it likely wouldn’t have announced a new console this week at E3.

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Apple Vision Pro Headset Is Real, And It Expertly Blends AR With VR

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Apple seems to have joined Meta in going down the productivity path, instead of catering specifically to the gaming market. The headset is controlled with a user’s “eyes, hands, and voice” instead of controllers. Expect advanced hand and eye tracking as standard. Gestures themselves are designed to be “subtle and natural,” and Siri also plays a part.

Users can utilize a variety of apps, and scale them to their needs. If you hate looking at your living room, “environments” can also be added to change your backdrop, and their transparency can be altered via a wheel on the headset. It also syncs with iCloud, and interacts seamlessly with the rest of Apple’s ecosystem. If you must have some form of input, Vision Pro will automatically connect with a Mac or iPhone, and can connect to things like keyboards via Bluetooth.

Apple has suggested it could particularly benefit remote workers, and people who regularly attend virtual meetings. The device also has a slim profile, which could mean it is comfortable to wear for extended periods. As current VR-users may know, this is vital when working in a headset for an extended period, or if you’re using one as a home entertainment system. 

As far as gaming is concerned, Apple did give a glimpse of some capability — however, there is nothing to suggest you’ll get a similar experience to the one currently offered by devices like the Quest 2 headset.

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Mac Pro With M2 Ultra Serves Up Big Expandability At A Big Price

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At WWDC 2023, Apple talked extensively about the storage expansion versatility of the new Mac Pro. It offers seven PCIe expansion slots, with six of them supporting the PCIe Gen 4 standard that is twice as faster. The I/O situation is handled by a total of eight Thunderbolt 4 bolts — two on the top and six at the back.

There’s also a trio of USB Type-A ports, a pair of high-bandwidth HDMI ports that allow up to 8K video streams, and a pair of Ethernet ports with a peak 10Gbps data throughput. You can hook up to six Pro Display XDR monitors to the new Mac Pro, if you desire that many screens on your workstation for some reason.

The Mac Pro starts at $6,999 for the tower setup, but if you want the rack-mounted format, you will have to cough up $7,499 at the bare minimum. A student discount brings the asking price of Apple’s updated Mac Pro to $6,599.

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How To Sync Your iPhone And iPad In A Few Simple Steps

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This is a fairly simple process, but bear in mind that you’ll need to empty out the device you wish to share and sync files to (rather than from) for this to work, so transfer or backup anything you don’t want to lose permanently.

  1. Make sure both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
  2. Perform a factory reset on your target device (i.e. the one you want to transfer or copy files over to).
  3. Open the Settings (gear icon) app on whichever device you want to be your main source, and select your name at the top of the menu, then choose iCloud. You can see how much storage you have used versus what’s available at the top of the iCloud menu.
  4. Select iCloud Backup from the menu, under Device Backups, then turn on the Back Up This iPhone (or iPad) toggle.
  5. Select Back Up Now, then wait for the backup process to finish. This may take several minutes, depending on the number of files and amount of space required.
  6. Turn on the new or factory reset device and follow the on-screen setup prompts, then select Restore from iCloud Backup.
  7. Choose your recent backup and wait for the syncing process to finish.

Now both your iPhone and iPad are synced over iCloud. Any documents, photos, videos, etc that are created, saved, or edited one will automatically sync to the other with no additional input necessary.

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