Technology - Google News

The once-doomed MS Paint gets its first redesign in over a decade - Ars Technica
Intel previews its Alder Lake chip, promises hybrid CPUs for desktops and laptops - The Verge
Facebook Surprise-launches New VR Meeting App With Virtual Desktops and up to 50 People - Road to VR

The once-doomed MS Paint gets its first redesign in over a decade - Ars Technica

Posted: 19 Aug 2021 07:44 AM PDT

The redesigned (but not totally rethought) Paint app, coming soon to Windows 11.

Microsoft
The new app gets a dark mode, for starters.

Microsoft
Improved text tools.

Microsoft
An updated interface for selecting tweaked brush tools.

Microsoft
Like so many things in Windows 11, the color picker is now rounded instead of square.

Microsoft

The latest Windows 11 app to get a coat of paint is Paint, everyone's favorite meme-making sketching and doodling app. It's not available for download for Windows Insiders yet, but Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay posted a brief video of the new design, showing off its updated look, a new dark mode, better text tools, updated brushes, and other tweaks that collectively serve to modernize the app a bit.

The new version of Paint stops far short of making it a full-featured photo editing app like Adobe Photoshop or even Apple Photos or Paint.net—you still don't get layers or any advanced effects tools. But the Paint app as it stands in Windows 10 is barely changed from the Windows 7 version of the app, and Windows 7's biggest contribution to Paint was the adoption of the "ribbon" user interface introduced in the then-current Office 2007.

For reference, the Windows 10 version of the Paint app (shown here in the current Windows 11 preview) looked a lot like the Windows 7 version.

Andrew Cunningham
Paint in 2009. Not all that different.

Andrew Cunningham

Back in 2017, Microsoft briefly deprecated the Paint app, officially halting its already stalled-out development and proclaiming that it would be removed from the suite of default Windows apps in favor of the newer Paint 3D. But the app was saved from the Recycle Bin a couple of years later and given an under-the-hood update that improved screen reader support and added keyboard controls. The new update might not signal a renewed commitment to making Paint an actual heavy-duty image editor, but it does at least suggest that Microsoft will be less willing to let the current uncomfortable mix of Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10-era apps continue to coexist in the Windows 11 era. The updated Paint app will be going out to Windows Insiders "soon."

Listing image by Microsoft

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Intel previews its Alder Lake chip, promises hybrid CPUs for desktops and laptops - The Verge

Posted: 19 Aug 2021 06:00 AM PDT

Intel has spent much of 2021 announcing plans for its future: a new IDM 2.0 strategy, new naming schemes for its process nodes, and new desktop GPUs. At Intel's Architecture Day 2021, we finally got a preview of how some of those changes are coming together in new chips, starting with the upcoming Alder Lake lineup later this year.

As the company has been teasing since last year's Architecture Day, Alder Lake will feature Intel's latest hybrid architecture: instead of simply offering the next generation of powerful Intel CPU cores, it'll offer a mix of both performance and efficiency x86 cores, both of which Intel previewed as part of its announcements.

Additionally, Alder Lake will be the first chip released on Intel's newly renamed Intel 7 technology node (not to be confused with Intel 4, which was previously known as Intel's delayed 7nm node, and will be available to consumers sometime in 2023 under the codename "Meteor Lake"). Intel 7 still uses similar technology to the company's current 10nm tech, instead of the bigger leap in manufacturing processes planned for Intel 4.

The new x86 performance core — codenamed "Golden Cove" — is the successor to the Willow Cove cores that are currently found in the company's 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors. Intel claims that it's the most powerful CPU core its ever built, but the company only offered a comparison to its Cypress Cove cores (the version of its 10nm architecture that Intel ported to its 14nm process), not the more advanced Willow Cove cores.

Meanwhile, the company's new x86 Efficient core (codenamed "Gracemont") aims to be "the world's most efficient x86 CPU core" while still offering higher IPC than the company's Skylake chips. Intel claims that for single-thread cases, one of its new efficient cores hits 40 percent more performance at the same power (or similar performance while using 40 percent of the power) of a Skylake core, improvements that double when comparing four Efficient cores running four threads to two Skylake cores running four threads.

Broadly speaking, the "performance" cores are the ones that have featured in Intel's beefier Core-class processors, while the "efficiency" cores resemble the Atom-class processors in lower power devices. And each of those new architectures would be interesting on their own, but Intel plans to combine the two in a hybrid architecture as a core product to its lineup — starting with its upcoming Alder Lake chips this fall — that makes them far more notable.

Intel's dipped its toes into offering hybrid architectures before, with its Lakefield chips last year. Those models, though, only offered a single Sunny Cove performance core with four lower-power Tremont efficiency cores and were limited to only a handful of lower-powered devices like the ThinkPad X1 Fold. Lakefield chips were also supposed to power more dual-screen Windows 10X devices like the Surface Neo, but Microsoft backed out of those plans in favor of Windows 11.

The new Alder Lake chips, however, are aspiring to be far more ambitious. Intel teased a full range of chips from 9W to 125W that would utilize the new hybrid approach, combining multiple high-end performance cores with efficient cores for a wider range of power when users need it and efficiency when running less strenuous tasks.

Given that Intel's announcements today largely focused on the architectures, there are no hard product announcements, but the company did tease several planned Alder Lake SoCs that would utilize the new cores. Those include a desktop SoC with eight performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and integrated memory, graphics, and I/O; a laptop SoC with six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, imaging, Thunderbolt 4 support, memory, I/O, and more powerful Xe graphics all integrated in; and an ultramobile-focused SoC with two performance cores and eight efficiency cores.

To make all that work together, Intel also showed off its new scheduling technology, Intel Thread Director, which is designed to better handle how activity is assigned to performance or efficiency cores depending on need. For example, Thread Director can automatically assign high-priority tasks to performance cores, while offsetting background threads to efficiency cores. Intel also says that it's collaborating with Microsoft specifically to ensure that Thread Director is optimized for "the best performance on Windows 11."

Intel, of course, isn't the first company to use a combination of performance and efficiency cores for optimized computing; the concept has been a cornerstone of Arm's big.LITTLE and DynamicIQ technologies for over a decade. It's been a key part of the domination of Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips for Android phones, Apple's A-series chips in the iPhone, and — perhaps most relevant for comparison to Intel — Apple's M1 computer chips (which feature four high-performance "Firestorm" and four energy-efficient "Icestorm" cores).

We'll have to wait for the first Alder Lake chips to arrive in the coming months to see how Intel's latest attempt at cracking hybrid computing holds up. But it's clear from Architecture Day 2021 that Intel views it as not just a niche for in-between devices but as a key part of its product lineup going forward. Now all that's left to do is see if it can deliver.

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Facebook Surprise-launches New VR Meeting App With Virtual Desktops and up to 50 People - Road to VR

Posted: 19 Aug 2021 03:59 AM PDT

Facebook today is surprise-launching a new app called Horizon Workrooms, a virtual collaboration space that connects both VR and video chat users. With the ability to bring a user's PC or Mac desktop into the virtual room, the app takes a big step toward turning Quest 2 into a collaborative productivity device.

While the long-awaited Facebook Hozion social app has yet to launch, the company has been quietly working on another 'Horizon' product which is launching today for free. Horizon Workrooms is an app built for remote collaboration and team productivity.

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I got to tour the app earlier this week where I sat down with Facebook's VP of XR, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, and two of the leads on the project, alongside a handful of other journalists.

At its core, Horizon Workrooms is built around your desk. Like, your actual desk.

Before using the app, you'll be asked to mark the surface of your desk so that Quest 2 can track it and show a virtual representation of it inside the headset. This is important because it's the anchor for pretty much everything you can do inside of Horizon Workrooms.

Shareable Virtual Desktops

The app includes a fully functional virtual desktop, which leverages a companion app installed on your PC or Mac to stream your computer's desktop to a virtual screen in front of you. This means you can continue to access your computer even while you're inside the headset, and you can even share your screen with others in the room.

To make it easier to use your real keyboard that's on the desk in front of you, Horizon Workrooms supports keyboard tracking which allows it to detect a handful of specific keyboards, and create a virtual representation of them so that you can see and type on without being 'blinded' by the headset.

Right now Horizon Workrooms only supports Macbook keyboards, the Apple Magic keyboard, and the Logitech K830, though the company says they're working to support more in the future.

If you don't happen to have one of these keyboards luckily there's a backup option. You can enable a 'desk passthrough' view which cuts out a portion of the virtual desk in front of you to show your actual hands on your actual keyboard. I was surprised how well it worked. While the passthrough video quality isn't good enough to easily make out the letters on individual keys, for proficient typists it at least makes it easy to keep your hands properly aligned and prevents blindly reaching around for your keyboard. Now if only they could support coffee mug tracking too….

While it's nice to have your usual desktop right in front of you—and all of the productivity capabilities that confers—it's far from a perfect replacement for your actual PC. Latency between the PC and headset is surprisingly high, making mouse movements and keyboard input much more sluggish than you're used to (especially if you have a high refresh rate monitor). Hopefully this is something they can improve going forward.

Virtual Reality & Video Chat Together

Horizon Workrooms isn't exclusive to VR. Non-VR users can be invited to join via a video chat. The app supports up to 16 VR users and 36 video chat users simultaneously, for a total of up to 50 people in one workroom.

The room has a handful of different arrangements focused on different types of meetings. There's a boardroom-style table with two distinct sides, a circular table, and a presentation layout where everyone is facing in the same direction like a classroom. As more users join the space, the table size automatically increases to accommodate.

Presenting & Whiteboarding

While users sit at the table by default, anyone can stand up (like, literally stand up out of your chair), and be transported to the wall of the room next to a large virtual whiteboard. This is especially useful for the classroom-like presentation arrangement, as it gives everyone a clear view of the presenter and anything they write on the whiteboard.

Speaking of writing… Facebook has done something interesting with the whiteboard input. Instead of holding a Quest controller the usual way, the app actually expects you to flip it backwards and hold the handle like a fat marker. When you do this the controller actually turns into a marker in your hand, and then you can use it to write on the whiteboard.

You can write on the whiteboard from your desk or up at the wall | Image courtesy Facebook

It's a neat idea but feels a little funky in practice, perhaps because of how snub the end of the controller handle is compared to what you'd expect from a writing implement. It seems that some changes to the positioning of the marker in your hand (making it stick out a bit further toward the whiteboard) could make it feel more natural.

Facebook says that each workroom gets its own whiteboard and that anything written on the whiteboard is persistent, meaning you can leave your ideas and come back to them another time. You can also export the whiteboard as an image for use elsewhere.

Web-based Interface for Teams

Horizon Workrooms also has a web-based interface built around a 'team' metaphor. It's a place where room administrators can invite users to the team, allowing everyone to text chat, create notes, schedule meetings, and make new virtual workrooms. It's also possible to upload files to the web interface which can be pulled into the VR meetings (for instance, bringing a photo from your PC to annotate on the whiteboard).