Apple’s annual developers conference is around the corner, and the iPhone maker is expected to unveil its latest software developments across multiple operating systems. To no one’s surprise, artificial intelligence and AI-powered upgrades will play a key role at this year’s WWDC. Much of the Apple software news over the past few months has revolved around AI and how it can enhance apps such as Siri.

What also makes WWDC26 particularly significant is that it will likely be the last time Tim Cook takes the stage as Apple CEO at a developers conference before being succeeded by John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. Cook is set to officially step down on September 1, though he will remain with Apple as executive chairman.

When does WWDC26 begin, and how to watch

WWDC26 will kick off on Monday, June 8, at 10 a.m. PT. The event begins with the keynote, where Apple will provide more details about its upcoming operating systems and the AI-driven features we're about to see across its products.

The event’s livestream will be available on Apple’s official website, the Apple TV app, and the Apple YouTube channel.

iOS 27 may be all about an upgraded Siri

Apple is unlikely to make substantial changes to iOS 27’s aesthetics, as the operating system was already revamped with the Liquid Glass interface. However, some minor tweaks could still be on the way. This year’s WWDC, though, is expected to focus largely on Siri and how it can be enhanced with AI.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported earlier this year that Apple is working on a standalone Siri app that would transform the company’s voice assistant into a chatbot-style service. Gurman added that the upgraded Siri is set to become the “centerpiece of its [Apple] next iPhone, iPad and Mac software updates.” The Siri chatbot app is reportedly powered by Gemini AI models and may also support integration with third-party AI agents.

macOS 27 brings subtle improvements

macOS 27 also received the controversial Liquid Glass design last year, but the new interface did not resonate well with some Mac users, raising concerns about usability. According to Mark Gurman's report, Apple does not plan to ditch Liquid Glass in macOS 27, but it is expected to introduce a “slight redesign” and address issues related to shadows and transparency effects. The operating system is also expected to gain several AI-driven features, including the standalone Siri app.

New features for iPadOS 27 and watchOS 27 may be on the way

iPadOS 27 received a major AI boost last year, including live translation and text summaries powered by Apple Intelligence. This year, significant changes are not expected, although Apple may still have some new AI-powered features in development for iPad users.

As for watchOS 27, the addition of new AI features is anticipated, and Apple may make some of its health-monitoring capabilities more reliant on AI. The new watchOS could also introduce new watch faces and other general improvements.

While there have been rumors about the possible launch of an upgraded Mac mini or even a foldable iPhone at WWDC26, such announcements remain unlikely given the event’s strong focus on software. However, some of the software features unveiled at WWDC26 could help lay the groundwork for future Apple hardware.

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Posted Thursday 4 June 2026 at 8:27 am AEST (my time).

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Last year, buying the cheapest MacBook Air from Apple could cost you nearly $1,000. This price tag puts the MacBook Air out of reach for many students and others seeking an affordable macOS-based alternative to Windows laptops. However, after years of introducing stripped-down versions of its best-selling products, such as the iPhone 16e, Apple launched the MacBook Neo earlier this year with a starting price of $599.

The MacBook Neo made a significant splash in the market shortly after its launch. In fact, the device was so well received that Apple reportedly struggled to keep up with demand. At just $599, buyers get a MacBook with an aluminum chassis and sleek design, powered by the A18 Pro chip, the same processor found in the iPhone 16 Pro lineup. If the base 256GB of storage isn't enough, customers can upgrade to 512GB for an additional $100.

For years, the $500 price segment was dominated by Chromebooks. Powered by Google's ChromeOS, these devices were initially designed for students and rely heavily on web applications and cloud storage rather than local file storage. They also tend to feature lower-performance processors and often struggle with demanding workloads and multitasking.

However, the Apple MacBook Neo has established a new standard for laptops in the $500–$600 price range. Paying $600 no longer has to mean settling for a device with a low-quality plastic chassis, a glitchy operating system, or limited performance. With the MacBook Neo, Apple has perfected the art of putting together a decent piece of hardware in a high-quality, affordable package. This is precisely the area where Windows laptops have struggled for years.

Following the MacBook Neo’s release, Windows laptop manufacturers suddenly found themselves competing against a product that offered many of the features and qualities they had long failed to deliver at an affordable price point. Faced with the threat of the MacBook Neo, several companies began accelerating efforts to develop rival products.

This week, we finally got our hands on a slew of affordable Windows laptops designed to challenge the Apple MacBook Neo. Acer introduced the Swift Air 14, featuring a 14-inch 120Hz display and Intel Core Series 3 processors in Core 5 and Core 7 configurations. The device starts at $699 and comes with 8GB of RAM for the base model.

Dell unveiled the XPS 13, featuring an ultra-thin design and a 13.4-inch 2.5K LCD touchscreen. The XPS 13 is also priced at $699 and is powered by Intel Core Series 3 processors. Meanwhile, Asus launched four variants of the Zenbook 14, each equipped with Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm processors. These models feature OLED displays and offer up to 21 hours of battery life.

All three brands appear to be following the formula that helped make the MacBook Neo a success, with more competing models expected to arrive by the end of the year. That said, it's worth noting that the base MacBook Neo is still $100 cheaper than most of its Windows rivals.

The arrival of $600 laptops featuring the latest Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm processors and more refined designs indicates that Windows laptop makers have taken the threat of the MacBook Neo seriously and are unwilling to cede the competitive landscape to Apple. And that is very good news for Windows users.

Windows users now have more choice in the $600 laptop segment. These devices emphasize lightweight, minimalist designs and are available in a range of colors. They also feature the latest Intel, Qualcomm, or AMD processors, delivering good performance while supporting the AI-powered features. Before the launch of the MacBook Neo, it was difficult to imagine Windows laptops in this price range offering such a combination of design, performance, and features.

While the hardware specifications of the MacBook Neo and its Windows rivals may appear similar, several factors still give Apple an advantage at this price point. Chief among them is Apple’s mature and highly integrated ecosystem.

The companies currently positioning their products as MacBook Neo competitors all rely on Microsoft’s software ecosystem and do not control the operating systems that power their devices. Apple, by contrast, maintains full control over both its hardware and software, allowing it to deliver a tightly integrated user experience.

From the iPhone and MacBook to the iPad and Apple Watch, Apple’s products are designed to work seamlessly together within a unified ecosystem. This level of integration reduces users’ reliance on third-party products and services and remains one of Apple’s strongest competitive advantages against any rival.

If you were shopping for a laptop in the $600 price range, would you choose the MacBook Neo or one of its Windows-based rivals? Let us know in the comments.

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Posted Thursday 4 June 2026 at 8:27 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Microsoft’s Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft’s opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. There’s Microsoft Scout, an OpenClaw-based “Autopilot” agent that can hook into Microsoft 365 data to perform tasks for users; several new AI models; an expanded preview of “Codename MDASH,” which is a “multi-model agentic scanning system” meant to detect and fix software vulnerabilities.

A few of those announcements stood out to us as particularly interesting, either for esoteric technical reasons or because they seem like they may have some utility for those who aren’t spending their every waking moment using generative AI tools. (Microsoft’s recent efforts to make its flagship operating system faster, more reliable, more useful, and less annoying didn’t really come up, but there have been plenty of other announcements on that front lately.)

On the hardware front, we didn’t get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday’s Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is “a compact developer PC” built around Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of built-in memory.

The Dev Box looks a little like a cartoon anvil or piano fell onto an Xbox Series X and flattened it. Its aluminum casing was designed “to double as a heatsink,” and its preloaded version of Windows 11 Pro will include a “purposeful” set of developer-centric default settings and preinstalled tools.

This is a follow-up of sorts to the Windows Dev Kit 2023, also known as “Project Volterra.” This Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3-powered PC was essentially the system board from a Surface Pro tablet stuffed into a plastic box, and it was introduced alongside Arm-native versions of several Microsoft developer tools. It helped to set the stage for the Arm-based flagship Surface devices that launched the next year, which benefitted from a better and faster x86-to-Arm code translation technology called Prism and a greater number of Arm-native third-party apps that didn’t need to be translated in the first place.

Microsoft didn’t announce pricing or specific specs for the RTX Spark Dev Box, but you can probably expect it to cost quite a bit more than the $600 that Project Volterra did. Hopefully, Microsoft can keep the price at least somewhat lower than the $4,699 asking price for Nvidia’s similarly specced DGX Spark box.

Linux tools and AI guardrails

On the software side, several developer-centric changes are coming to Windows 11, particularly for users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Microsoft is introducing a Windows-native version of the coreutils command line tools, so that commands or scripts made for Linux work within Windows and the other way around; the ability to run WSL inside of containers, said to be arriving in “the coming months”; and something called Windows Developer Configurations that uses the WinGet tool to quickly set up “a distraction-free dev environment with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, WSL, PowerShell 7 and developer-optimized settings with one command on any Windows 11 device.”

Finally, for people who are curious about AI agents like OpenClaw but nervous about giving them free rein on your system (and access to all of your personal data), Microsoft is introducing Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC). These are “enterprise-grade sandboxed environments” for AI agents like OpenClaw on Windows. Specific agents can be given specific instructions, and Windows will continuously enforce those restrictions. In theory, this could be used to prevent OpenClaw from accessing personal accounts on a work computer, or vice versa, or from deleting things without asking.

The GitHub repo for MXC also mentions that it provides “multiple containment backends” that can be used to contain other kinds of plugins and tools. So if the concept sounds interesting to you but you don’t care about AI agents, they could still be worth learning about.

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Posted Wednesday 3 June 2026 at 2:33 pm AEST (my time).

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I love mini PCs, and as such, ASUS has all my attention with its dual Computex and Microsoft Build reveal of its new Ascent QN10.

On the outside, it looks like a normal mini PC that could have been made by any of the manufacturers in the space. But inside it has what I've been waiting to see.

Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X2 Elite. Hoo boy.

So let's get right down to business. The releases from both Build and Computex are, of course, full of talk about AI, and yes, this is very much an AI PC. Like pretty much everything else coming out right now.

But here's what we're looking at on the hardware front.

At Build 2026, Microsoft unveiled its vision for the future of computing in the era of AI: A platform that exists liminally between devices and the cloud, capable of agentic capabilities and being always available to assist you in the flow of work.

This vision is codenamed Project Solara, but it’s more than just a vision. Microsoft is already working towards this future, building out a new, lightweight and secure OS on top of AOSP, not Windows, that it calls the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP.)

It’s an OS that’s designed to be invisible, hosting an Agent Shell that can dynamically load and tailor multiple cloud-based agents. It’s not a platform that runs traditional apps, but rather AI that can interface with services and tasks on your behalf via an adaptive access layer that the user interacts with.

Just days ago, Microsoft unveiled Surface Laptop Ultra, its most powerful and capable Surface PC yet, powered by NVIDIA's new RTX Spark superchip and Windows on Arm. It's a feat of engineering, featuring the most ports, the best display, and the largest trackpad ever fitted to a Surface.

I was able to get my hands on an early sample unit at Computex 2026, and to say I was impressed would be an understatement. Of course, the star of the show is the RTX Spark, which I was shown plenty of demos of showcasing its raw power. But we'll get to that later.

First up, let's talk about the design. Surface Laptop Ultra is basically a beefed-up Surface Laptop 8 15-inch. It's both thicker and heavier to accommodate the more powerful RTX Spark SoC, but this results in a device that feels incredible. It's chunky and hefty, but in a good way, just like the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

If you squint, I wouldn't fault you for thinking this is a MacBook Pro.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

The device looks super clean when closed.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

It's beefy and bulky, but I like that.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

Yeah, not beating the MacBook clone allegations here.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

And "just like the 16-inch MacBook Pro" is the theme of this device. It's very clear to me that Microsoft is going after the high-end MacBook Pro crowd with Surface Laptop Ultra. While the device is very Surface, there's no denying that it also heavily resembles a MacBook Pro, right down to the port selection.

 

Surface Laptop Ultra features a full-sized HDMI port and two USB-C ports on the left, and one USB-C port, a USB-A port, and a full-sized SD card reader on the right. The USB-C port on the right is special, however. It's larger than a normal USB-C port and takes normal USB-C cables, but Microsoft wasn't willing to tell me why the port is larger.

 

Many Surface fans immediately noticed that Microsoft's Surface Connect port appears to be missing on Surface Laptop Ultra, but it seems that may not be entirely true. While the proprietary magnetic Surface Connect port is gone, I believe that Microsoft may have engineered the world's first breakaway USB-C port that maintains what made Surface Connect so special.

 

This USB-C port is special... and we don't yet know why.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

The right-side port line-up

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

The left-side port lineup.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

Of course, the company didn't confirm this to me, but it's clear that the right USB-C port is different for some reason. The company said it would have more to share about specific features of the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year, so we'll have to see. For now, I'm of the belief that this USB-C port features a breakaway design, perhaps even magnetic for easier alignment? Time will tell.

 

Moving onto the trackpad, which is the largest ever fitted to a Surface. It feels fantastic, and supports Windows 11's new haptic signals system that provides subtle feedback when you interact with certain parts of the Windows UI and apps. I've already done a full hands-on with this experience, but it elevates the Windows UX in a way similar to what haptics can do to phones. Everyone loves iPhone haptics, and Surface Laptop Ultra has a very similar feature.

 

The keyboard is also incredible, just like on the Surface Laptop 8. I'd argue that Surface has the best keyboard and trackpad in the business, matching or perhaps even surpassing that of the MacBook Pro. I had no complaints typing or mousing around on Surface Laptop Ultra. Windows felt very smooth and easy to use.

 

The keyboard and trackpad might be the best available on any laptop, period.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

The trackpad is nice and large, and supports Windows 11 haptic signals.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

I just love how this looks.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

That's also helped by the 15-inch mini-LED screen, which is 120Hz and looks fantastic. I do wish it were an OLED display panel, but it's still incredibly crisp with great color contrast. Of course, Microsoft didn't share specific details on the display panel or color optimizations, but it looks great.

 

I wasn't able to test audio performance, but I'm assured that the speakers built into the device will rival the MacBook Pro 16-inch, which many consider to be the best speakers in a laptop you can buy.

 

Of course, it's what's under the hood that's making waves in the tech industry right now. This is Microsoft's first RTX Spark device, and its design was influenced by the raw power of RTX Spark. Surface Laptop Ultra is thicker to accommodate RTX Spark's thermal output, featuring the largest fans ever put in a Surface PC to keep the chip cool.

 

Yeah, RTX Spark is pretty capable.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

That means the device can get loud under max load. In a number of the demos I was shown, the Surface Laptop Ultra's fans were running at full blast, and I could hear them from a few feet away. With that said, under normal use, the device was essentially completely silent. I understand that the fans only spin up to max when under sustained load for long periods, which many of the demo units had been.

 

On RTX Spark performance, yeah, this is the real deal. It's an Arm SoC, meaning it relies on Microsoft's Prism emulation layer to run x86 apps that haven't been built natively for Windows on Arm yet. That's basically most video games and a number of obscure or less popular Windows apps, and in my hands-on time, I simply couldn't tell the difference.

 

Many of the games I was shown were running under emulation, but they were all running incredibly well with smooth framerates. NVIDIA and Microsoft weren't willing to show me FPS stats or any nitty-gritty details, but in my demo time, the games ran as if they were native, and that's no small feat for Windows on Arm. NVIDIA is essentially brute-forcing a native-feeling experience through its powerful chip.

 

Many of the games and apps that NVIDIA showcased were running in under Windows 11's Prism emulation

layer... I couldn't tell.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

Blender running emulated with lighting enabled with no faults.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

Neither Microsoft nor NVIDIA, nor any other Windows OEMs for that matter, are marketing this first wave of RTX Spark devices as gaming machines, but it's very clear that they can game, should the user want to. That's not something you've really been able to say about Windows on Arm PCs up until now.

 

I was not allowed to run any benchmarks, likely for obvious reasons. All of the devices I was shown are running pre-release software, drivers, and firmware, in pre-production chassis and thermal envelopes. There's likely a lot of fine-tuning that still needs to take place before Microsoft or NVIDIA are ready to let us benchmark these properly.

 

App developers will also be able to make specific changes to their software to make them run better on RTX Spark. Adobe is one such company that is working to rearchitect its Premiere Pro and Photoshop apps for RTX Spark, and I was shown a demo that compared standard Premiere Pro and Premiere Pro enhanced for RTX Spark, which was able to render a scene much faster as a result.

 

Certain apps can be optimized specifically for RTX Spark for faster performance. Premiere Pro is one of them.

(Image credit: Windows Central / Zac Bowden)

 

Microsoft had already confirmed that Surface Laptop Ultra ships with 128GB of unified memory, but I was able to confirm that there will be more configurations available at various prices. That means you'll likely be able to get it with less RAM and storage, for those that do or do not need it.

 

Of course, Microsoft was not able to comment on pricing for those different configurations or battery life. No Windows OEMs are sharing that information currently, but all of them are targeting a fall 2026 release window, including Microsoft and Surface Laptop Ultra. That means we should hear more about specs, pricing, and availability in the next few months.

 

Surface Laptop Ultra is the best Surface PC that Microsoft has ever made, but that doesn't mean it's the best Surface PC for everyone. This is clearly a device designed for developers, creators, and professionals, utilizing on-device AI models, video or photo creation and editing, and data crunching. For the majority of us who only need a PC for light computing or productivity tasks, you'd be better served with a Surface Laptop 8 or equivalent PC.

 

Obviously, we haven't yet had a chance to live with Surface Laptop Ultra, so this isn't an endorsement just yet. But first impressions are incredibly strong. Hopefully, Microsoft can deliver with the final product later this year.

 

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Posted Wednesday 3 June 2026 at 7:52 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft claimed last year that it had made a key breakthrough in quantum computing with Majorana 1, the company’s first quantum processor. While physicists were immediately skeptical of Microsoft’s claims, the software giant is announcing Majorana 2 today, the next generation of its topological quantum chip.

Majorana 2 contains qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today, that are 1,000 times more reliable, according to Microsoft. It’s a milestone that helps make quantum computing more reliable, thanks to the use of a new material stack and some help from Microsoft Discovery’s agentic AI.

Majorana 2 should help cut the time to useful quantum computing.

Image: Microsoft

 

“To create Majorana 2, the Microsoft Quantum team improved Majorana 1’s material stack to create a more stable topological phase,” explains Chetan Nayak, Microsoft technical fellow and corporate vice president of quantum hardware. “Majorana 2 replaces Majorana 1’s superconductor, aluminum, with lead, and also updates the semiconductor active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide.”

The improved materials mean better performance of qubits, according to Microsoft. “In the aluminum-based Majorana 1, qubit lifetimes were between one and 12 milliseconds, whereas in Majorana 2, the lifetimes exceed 20 seconds, representing more than 1,000x improvement in stability,” says Nayak. Some qubit lifetimes now exceed a minute, enough to convince Microsoft that it has made enough significant progress to promise useful quantum computing much sooner.

“Based on this rapid progress, we are accelerating our roadmap to a scalable, practical quantum computer,” says Nayak. “We have cut our timeline in half and now aim to reach this target by 2029.” Microsoft is working toward building a fault-tolerant prototype quantum computer based on topological qubits, with an aim of quantum computing solving some of the world’s most difficult problems.

Microsoft is now releasing Discovery, the platform that helped improve its Majorana chips, to its customers today. Microsoft Discovery is designed to help apply agentic workflows to research and development programs. A local app version of Microsoft Discovery is now available on GitHub, and researchers can use a GitHub Copilot account to access it.

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Posted Wednesday 3 June 2026 at 7:51 am AEST (my time).

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Google’s new “24/7” AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I’m not sure it’s worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs.

The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them in the background — even tasks that have multiple steps — allowing you to put your phone down or walk away from your computer. It also advertises at the very top of the Spark website that it’s “always under your direction,” that “you choose to turn it on,” and that “it’s designed to check with you before taking major actions.” Given the mounting skepticism toward AI, it’s very much “my ‘not involved in rogue AI’ T-shirt has people asking questions already answered by my shirt.”

I didn’t know where to start, so I took a page from my colleague Antonio’s book: I decided to use Spark to tackle tasks like what Google demonstrated onstage at I/O. Would it work as well in my home office as it did on the big stage?

Google’s Josh Woodward demoing Spark.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

At I/O, Google VP Josh Woodward showed off a few different examples. The first was asking Spark to draft an email to a team at Google, compile everything about the Gemini Live launches and “wins from last week,” and use a special AI skill to make the email sound like him. Google asking Google to do things for Google should be the easiest lift in the world, so I tried to push it further.

I asked Gemini to draft an email to my wife that compiles our total monthly average grocery spending in 2026. I figured this test would tell me a few things: Could Spark figure out who my wife was (without me giving Spark her name), could it determine where our budget spreadsheet is in Drive (which does not have “budget” in the file name), and could it actually draft an email in Gmail?

When I got the result from Spark shortly after, I really said: “Wow, that’s actually nuts.” Spark found my wife’s email address, pulled the right information from our 2026 budget spreadsheet, grabbed the monthly grocery totals including the incomplete data from May (which still wasn’t over when I ran the test), averaged the totals, and put it all in a draft email in my Gmail. The text of the email addressed my wife by her first name, even though her email address does not contain her first name. It even included a sign-off that we use just for each other.

In his next example, Woodward asked for some help planning a block party. I’m not planning a block party, but I asked Spark for help using the same questions he asked. It didn’t go well. It created a table of friends and family as a “highly realistic reference for who is bringing what,” drafted an email in my Gmail mentioning a shared sign-up sheet that doesn’t exist, and created an ugly deck with slides detailing information about city permits.

To push Spark, I asked it to create that missing sign-up sheet and add a link to the email that was already drafted. While Spark took a few minutes to figure it out, that task did work; it created a spreadsheet and went back to the draft email text and dropped in the link.

Woodward’s last demo was arguably the most impressive. He talked at Spark to ask it to do a bunch of things: make his meetings with CEO Sundar Pichai hot pink on his calendar, write a note to a new neighbor to invite him to his block party, and create a document to help with to-dos for his kids for the end of the school year. For my own version, I asked it to make a calendar event each month ahead of my wife’s birthday and make it hot pink, draft an email to my family about sending them the first episode of the latest season of Taskmaster, and create a document with the top things my wife and I need to know about getting our toddler ready for preschool.

I started this request at 3:35PM PT on Friday. During I/O, Woodward made a bit of a show about putting his phone down and promising to check the results later in the keynote, which he did. But after addressing one hiccup — Spark wanted to access my contacts, which I declined — my task was done about four minutes later.

Once again, I was a little floored by the results, though they were imperfect:

• My Google calendar now has events from 9–10AM on the correct day of each month leading up to my wife’s birthday. The reminders are in what Google calls “flamingo,” which isn’t exactly “hot pink,” but close enough.
• Spark grabbed the emails of my immediate family and put them in a draft email. (Strangely, it didn’t include my wife’s.) The text of the email got the name of the first episode of the latest season of Taskmaster correct, but linked to a trailer instead of the actual episode. The email also included the term “loool,” which is something I write in casual written conversation.
• Spark made a Google Doc in my Drive with a preschool preparation checklist. However, it’s only available to me; I asked Spark if it could give access to my wife, but it said it isn’t currently able to do that.

Spark could be a powerful tool. But there are a few caveats I should mention. Like all AI tools, you still have to check its output to make sure it’s accurate, which could have higher stakes when it’s pulling from personal information to prepare things you share with people you know. Although Google pitches Spark as something that can operate on its own, I found myself constantly watching it or checking the notifications it sent to my phone. What good is an assistant if you have to micromanage their every move instead of trusting them? And why should something I feel so unsure about drain power from a resource-hungry data center for relatively inconsequential tasks?

Currently, Spark is only available to subscribers of Google’s AI Ultra plan, which starts at $99.99 per month, and only to users in the US and only in English. Google gave me free access to test Spark, and I don’t think it’s good enough to be the sole reason to spring for those expensive plans. Especially when I could do all of the tasks I asked Spark to do on my own — they would just take more time.

Spark also works best if you’re already deep in the Google ecosystem and have Personal Intelligence on. I’ve had a Google account for around two decades, so Spark has a lot of data it can use to inform its answers. But while Google promises that Gemini “doesn’t train directly” on your Gmail inbox with Personal Intelligence turned on, you’ll still have to put your faith in Google that it will be a good steward of your data. For now, I’m not sure if that’s worth the cost or the risk.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 5:22 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of May) 2,092

RIP Matrix

AMD reached out to us asking if we were interested in testing the Radeon RX 9070 GRE. It originally launched just over a year ago as a China-exclusive, but now AMD is releasing it globally to compete against NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti.

We will be pitching it against the data we already have for the RX 9070, and RX 9070 XT, but also the NVIDIA 5070 FE, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 VENTUS 2X 12G, and Gigabyte Radeon RX 7800 XT GAMING OC 16G as they are in a similar price class, but also because we do not have a comparable 5060 Ti card lying around here that we can compare it against.

Before we get underway, this is a collaboration between Steven Parker and Sayan Sen, who provided the benchmark graphics and input on the data points I collected during benchmarking.

First up, the specs of the RX 9070, 9070 XT, and 9070 GRE, which were given to us by AMD:

As you can see from the specs above, it is less than the standard RX 9070 in every way that counts, except for slightly higher Boost and Game clock speed.

AMD Pricing hell

The list price according to AMD is $549, which is the same MSRP announced for the standard 9070, but as we saw, card manufacturers immediately inflated pricing for both the 9070 and 9070 XT cards. However, considering the 9070 can be found for around $530 online, there may not be that much wiggle room for manufacturers to inflate the GRE at the point of sale.

Design

Moving on, the RX 9070 GRE we were given is an XFX Swift triple-fan, dual-slot design with two 8-pin connectors. At 30cm (self-measured) it will fit in most systems easily. There is no RGB on our RX 9070 either.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE by XFX from all angles.

As you may remember from our 9070 XT review, our 9070 GRE is pretty similar to the Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 XT, other than being dual-slot versus triple-slot on the XT variant, which significantly reduces its overall size in the case.

Test system

Our test system consists of the following:

• Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2 Flow (Amazon|Newegg)
• ASUS Z890 ProArt Creator WiFi (Amazon|Newegg)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (Amazon|Newegg)

• Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet - 44x37 (Amazon|Newegg)

   

• 2x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB (7200 MT/s in XMP) (Amazon|Newegg)
• Sabrent Rocket4 Plus 2TB SSD (Amazon)
• Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8246)

AMD shared a press driver based on the recently released Adrenaline 26.5.2 that we were required to use.

Benchmarks

For our benchmarks, hwinfo.com provided a commercial license of HWiNFO, and UL Solutions provided us with Professional (commercial use) licenses for 3DMark, VRMark, and Procyon.

We start our gaming performance testing using 3DMark synthetic benchmarks to give a rough idea of how the cards stack up against each other. In these results, we have also added the scores for the $1999+ GeForce RTX 5090 and the $250+ Intel Arc B580 since they are the highest-end and one of the lowest-end GPUs, respectively, of the current generation.

On 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, which measures DirectX 11 performance at 4K, the 9070 GRE was neck and neck with the RX 7800 XT, both scoring in the 12-13,000 points zone. The former easily outpaces Nvidia's last-gen 4070.

On Time Spy Extreme, which is a DirectX 12-based 4K benchmark, the RX 9070 GRE gets ahead of the 7800 XT and is trading blows with the 5070, which is supposed to be a higher-tier card.

Up next, we have Steel Nomad, which is also based on DirectX 12 but is more intense than Time Spy Extreme as it aims to measure modern rasterization workload performance. Once more, the 9070 GRE does quite well here and actually manages to get ahead of the 5070.

We then move on to ray tracing performance testing using 3Dmark's Speed Way. A bit of a disappointing result here for sure, as the GRE is only shoulder to shoulder with the last-gen Nvidia RTX 4070. This means the RTX 5070, RX 9070, and 9070 XT are all significantly better.

Our LIAN LI O11D MINI V2 Flow test system with the XFX Swift RX 9070 GRE.

With that, we wrap up our synthetic testing and move on to real games. The RX 9070 GRE is advertised as being built for 1440p gaming, and as such, we tested our GPU at 2560x1440.

We start with 2016's Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, powered by the Dawn Engine. This is one of the first major AAA titles sporting DirectX 12. The Radeon 9070 GRE sort of ties with the RTX 4070 here. The two other 9070 series GPUs are substantially ahead.

The Dawn Engine makes an appearance again later, so we shall see if things have changed for the better with newer games.

Following that, we have another 2016 title in the form of Final Fantasy XV (FFXV), based on Luminous Engine, though running DX11. This game, even with Nvidia's GameWorks features disabled, sees the Nvidia GPUs generally easily beat the Radeon cards.

Up next, in 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey running on AnvilNext 2.0, another DX 11 title, the RX 9070 is on par with the Nvidia 5070. This is definitely a win in our book for the GRE. The minimum FPS is substantially better, so gamers may expect a smoother experience if they have a Radeon 9000 series GPU.

We are back to DX 12 with 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider, based on the Foundation Engine. Here, the 9070 GRE and 4070 are essentially tied. In fact, the 7800 XT is also essentially in the same league.

We tested our only Vulkan API title with 2019's World War Z, which is based on the Swarm Engine. It has to be said that Nvidia completely outdid AMD here, as both 5070 and 4070 beat the 9070 and 9060 GRE, respectively.

We wanted to test ray-tracing performance too, and 2020's Cyberpunk 2077 was our game of choice for that. We also enabled upscaling in this title. We stuck to FSR quality on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs since we wanted to make it an apples-to-apples comparison. Very surprisingly, the 9070 GRE was at the top of the charts both in average and minimum framerates.

Next up, with path tracing also enabled, the 9070 GRE slides back down; it looks like the memory subsystem on the GPU is also getting overwhelmed as these are quite VRAM and bandwidth-heavy.

We also looked at another ray-traced test in the form of Bright Memory Infinite. This title is built on Unreal Engine 4 and does not feature as heavy a ray tracing as Cyberpunk, making it representative of slightly lighter ray-traced situations. Here, the 9070 GRE was significantly better than the last-gen 7800 XT and managed to edge out the 4070.

Released in 2021 and based on the Glacier 2 engine, Hitman 3 sees a huge divide between the AMD and Nvidia cards. The GRE is able to match the 5070 here, though the 7800 XT too is no slouch either, despite being a previous generation product..

We find that in 2021's Far Cry 6, built on the Dunia Engine, the new Radeon 9070 GRE was ever so slightly ahead of the 7800 XT. This game is known to be single-thread heavy, though it did not seem to favour either AMD or Nvidia, at least in this test case.

Dawn engine is back again next in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and for some reason, the 9070 GRE performed spectacularly here. Not only was it better than the 7800 XT and 4070, but it also beat the RX 9070, RTX 5070, and tied with the RX 9070 XT.

In The Callisto Protocol, which is another Unreal Engine-based game, the RX 9070 GRE put up a poor showing for rasterization. However, you are still getting over 150 FPS, so gameplay should be smooth, barring perhaps shader compilation hiccups that could happen in such titles.

Speaking of Unreal Engine (UE), Black Myth Wukong is next and our final game for today. This one runs on the newer UE 5; the heavy "cinematic" setting, even with FSR frame generation and 75 super-resolution, overwhelms the 9070 GRE and 7800 XT. There is a clear divide here, and it seems again that the 12GB VRAM and the lower bandwidth of the 9070 GRE are probably affecting it more than on the other 9070 series GPUs.

VRAM usage

We now highlight the VRAM usage of the cards in our arena. Keep in mind, these are the actual used ("dedicated") VRAM amounts, not the total allocated by a game. To make sense of the data, we have a look at the percentage of the dedicated memory against the fully available VRAM capacity. The RTX 4070, 5070, and 9070 GRE are all equipped with 12GB, while the 9070, 9070 XT, and 7800 XT pack 16GB.

The 9070 GRE alongside the RTX 5070 gets close to 100% usage in some cases, like Cyberpunk 2077, both with path tracing and ray tracing. Black Myth Wukong also sees around 85% VRAM consumption on both the GPUs. Thankfully, though these were the highest memory usages at a certain point, and not the average constant consumption. Still overflowing the available buffer, even momentarily, can lead to stutters and judders.

On the positive side, in the three instances that we see the high usages, the performance isn't exactly what you'd call very playable. So chances are high that a user is going to turn settings down anyway, and in that case, the VRAM consumption will be lowered. Hence, it is fair to say that the 9070 GRE and all other GPUs in this comparison have sufficient memory buffer for gaming.

Power Efficiency

In terms of power efficiency, the 9070 GRE seems to be limited to around 220 watts of usage, similar to the RX 9070. As such, the latter wins this round easily, as in most cases, it was substantially faster than the new GRE.

So who wins among them all? The Nvidia RTX 5070 overall victor thanks to its 200-watt maximum power draw.

We also ran HWiNFO64 and observed the following Hot Spot core temps (Max) for each card with an ambient temperature of 21.5 °C:

• RTX 4070: 91°C
• RX 7800 XT: 92°C
• RX 9070: 74°C (Max memory temp.: 84°C)
• RX 9070 XT: 85°C (Max memory temp.: 92°C)
• RX 9070 GRE: 83°C (Max memory temp.: 69°C)

You will notice that we have not included the hotspot temp for the 5070, and that is because Nvidia has removed that sensor on its 50-series cards.

So it looks like the XFX Swift model we received is doing a fantastic job at cooling this thing down, especially the memory chips, in spite of being in the very small Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2 Flow. Let us also add here that the fan speed under load was hovering around 1700-2000 RPM, and it was not loud at all.

Value for Money

We finally come to the value-for-money category that we measure by average performance per dollar. Sadly, in the current state of affairs, it is very difficult to have a proper gauge of this metric as pricing varies quite widely.

AMD is launching the 9070 GRE at $549, which is equivalent to 9070 and 5070's SEP (suggested e-tail price), and hence on paper the GRE is a terrible value card, right? Well, not so fast, as the actual typical market price of the 9070 is much higher, generally selling for around $650 to 750, outside of flash sales or discounts. The same is the case for the 5070, too, often selling at well over $600.

So if the $549 SEP of this truly holds, then the Radeon RX 9070 GRE can surely be a great value for money product. Only time will tell.

Conclusion

The concluding remarks for the RX 9070 GRE depend entirely, as alluded to above, on the actual aftermarket pricing following its release.

Interestingly AMD has pitched this against the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16GB which is typically sold at around this price range; sadly we didn't have it in our test bed today but seeing how the GRE managed to do quite well against both the 7800 XT and the 4070, often beating them, we are confident that clash will go most often in favor of the new AMD 9000 GPU, aside from power efficiency.

The 9070 GRE has done pretty fine overall and shows no major or glaring weakness, aside from maybe ray tracing, though, as noted previously, users are unlikely to run into problems with it under normal gaming scenarios.

One area where we hoped it would have been better is its overall power efficiency. While the card itself is not super power hungry or anything, at just around 222 watts max consumption, it would have been nice to see it closer to the RX 9070, as both of them are 220-watt TBP products.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 2:25 pm AEST (my time).

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Dell, Asus, Lenovo, HP, MSI, Acer, and Gigabyte are among the PC makers that are designing systems around Nvidia’s RTX Spark, Nvidia’s new Arm-based chip for Windows PCs. But the flagship RTX Spark PC may be from the same company that makes Windows: the new Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is a high-end RTX Spark system that will offer up to 128GB of unified memory for “creators, developers, and AI builders.”

Microsoft says the Laptop Ultra will be available “later this year” but didn’t discuss any specific pricing or configuration options.

The Laptop Ultra will slot in above the regular Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Surface Laptops in Microsoft’s lineup. Microsoft has made high-end Surface devices with more powerful CPUs and GPUs before, but to date, they’ve also come with convertible designs that may have limited their appeal. The first was the old Surface Book, with its fully detachable screen and bendy-straw hinge that didn’t close all the way; the second was the Surface Laptop Studio, with its chunky design and sliding screen. The Laptop Ultra is Microsoft’s first attempt to follow the MacBook Pro formula: it’s like the other Surface Laptops, just with more power.

Microsoft says the Laptop Ultra will include USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI ports, as well as an SD card slot and headphone jack. It’s said to include a haptic trackpad that’s “the largest we’ve ever put on a Surface.” A 15-inch PixelSense display offers up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness.

Unlike some older Surface Laptops, the Laptop Ultra is just a more powerful laptop, not a more powerful one

that also comes with some weird convertible mechanism.

Credit: Microsoft

As for the internal specs, Nvidia’s RTX Spark includes up to 20 Arm CPU cores (10 large high-performance cores, and 10 mid-sized cores with better efficiency) and up to 6,144 Blackwell-based GPU cores. This gives the high-end RTX Spark roughly the same computing resources as a desktop GeForce RTX 5070, though in a lower 80 W power envelope and attached to slower LPDDR5x RAM rather than GDDR7.

But the chip’s biggest advantage for AI developers and some gamers may be the system’s pool of unified memory. A typical RTX 5070 can access only 8GB or 12GB of memory; the RTX Spark’s built-in GPU will likely be able to access nearly all of the system’s built-in memory. Even a laptop with 32GB of RAM could devote more of that memory to the GPU than a GeForce RTX 4090 or 5090 could.

Gaming is still a relatively weak point for the Arm version of Windows, but Nvidia and Microsoft have said that they’re working with the developers of popular online games that rely on kernel-level anti-cheat software to make those titles run on Arm systems. Microsoft’s Prism x86-to-Arm code translation technology and an increasing number of Arm-native third-party apps have made Arm-powered Windows PCs feel a lot more like regular Windows devices than they used to.

Microsoft has used Nvidia’s chips in Surface PCs before, if you count the first Surface RT models. These ran an Arm-native version of Windows 8 that was limited mostly to apps downloaded from the Microsoft Store and offered no x86-to-Arm code translation. While the work done on Windows RT was no doubt the foundation that the Arm versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 were built on, Windows RT quickly failed and vanished, along with Nvidia Tegra-based PCs.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 2:24 pm AEST (my time).

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Nvidia’s announcement that it’s getting into the consumer laptop chip space with RTX Spark is huge. Apple has proved for years that Arm-based chips can perform incredibly well while also delivering great battery life — at least on the Mac. In the Windows world, performance hasn’t fully matched up under Qualcomm chips, mostly in the graphics department. There’s clearly still untapped potential, and Nvidia seems to be promising to deliver it.

This could be Windows’ moment to blow us away with a new generation of supremely capable chips, much like Apple’s back in 2020, with the introduction of the M1. But why does this launch feel simultaneously exciting and fraught in 2026?

The Nvidia RTX Spark sounds like a monster of a laptop chip: 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU CUDA cores, and 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory. Its integrated graphics are said to be equivalent to an RTX 5070 Laptop GPU — though Nvidia notably has shown nothing of performance metrics or actual benchmarks. As my colleague Sean Hollister pointed out, it’s basically a GB10 chip from Nvidia’s DGX Spark mini-PC. Nvidia calls it a “superchip” and “the most efficient PC chip ever built,” while Microsoft is billing its Spark-equipped Surface Laptop Ultra as “the most powerful thing we’ve ever made.”

The initial batch of RTX Spark laptops expected for the fall.

Image: Nvidia

 

It should surprise no one that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spent most of his time introducing RTX Spark laptops talking about AI and agents. The majority of the two-hour Nvidia keynote was about agents and “CPUs for agents,” which Huang said is Nvidia’s “new major growth driver.” But beyond the local AI compute that RTX Spark laptops will be capable of, they’re also being aimed at creators. Adobe is even onboard with optimized versions of Photoshop and Premiere.

This is Nvidia, Microsoft, and Windows laptop makers aiming squarely at Apple’s MacBook Pros. It’s not clear yet which MacBook Pro (the M5, M5 Pro, or M5 Max), but these laptops are looking like they’re going to be expensive. The lineups announced so far for the fall includes the Surface Laptop Ultra, Dell XPS 16, Asus ProArt P14 and P16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n, MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI Plus, HP OmniBook Ultra and OmniBook X 14, and unnamed models from Acer and Gigabyte. Existing or similar models from this lineup typically start at $2,000 to $2,500 and up (aside from some more modest configs of the OmniBook X).

This isn’t surprising considering the RTX Spark’s 128GB of RAM. If you look at AMD’s Strix Halo APU with 128GB of RAM — the closest analog to the RTX Spark but built on x86 — you have options like Asus’ ROG Flow Z13 for an MSRP of $3,300 and ProArt PX13 GoPro Edition for $3,000. That Nvidia DGX Spark desktop with the GB10 chip the RTX Spark is based on? One of those costs about $4,700. So how much do you think a Spark laptop with 128GB of memory will cost when you also add things like a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and a 15-inch Mini LED touchscreen?

How much do you think Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra will cost with 128GB of unified memory? For reference,

a fully-loaded 15-inch Surface Laptop for Business with Intel Panther Lake and 64GB of RAM costs $4,500.

Image: Microsoft

Nvidia said there will be RTX Spark chips with lower amounts of RAM, but thanks to RAMageddon many laptops with 16GB or 32GB of memory are getting pricier, too — especially as new models come out.

Nvidia could blow the doors off everything else in the performance department when these laptops hit in the fall, but the difference between this and Apple’s M1 moment was that Apple started with the more affordable Mac Mini and MacBook Air, along with the cheapest MacBook Pro. That meant the average buyer was able to feel the benefits right away, and a lot of early sales also meant a lot of early incentive for developers to prioritize adding support for the new chips. It took nearly another year for Apple to scale things up to the M1 Pro and M1 Max with revitalized MacBook Pros.

Nvidia isn’t aiming for an M1 moment as much as it’s trying to skip to an M1 Max or even M1 Ultra moment. And it’s doing so while computers are getting increasingly costly and consumer spending power takes a nosedive. There’s a reason the MacBook Neo rocked the tech world at $599. Does the same happen at $2,499?

Let’s keep in mind which feature Nvidia lists first on its website for the RTX Spark, and which is last.

Image: Nvidia

When these new laptops come out in the fall, there will be four viable chip options across a range of Windows laptops: Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. It’s already been nice having three choices: AMD options typically offer great performance at the cost of some battery life, Qualcomm offers the absolute best battery life and standby time but sadly poor games support, and Intel is often a balanced option that maintains full x86 compatibility.

With Nvidia in the mix on Arm, we could get another option with strong battery life and much more graphics power. There’s also at least a chance that gaming on Arm will grow closer to parity with the wide compatibility that x86 Windows gamers are accustomed to. Microsoft and Nvidia getting Riot Games to port their anti-cheat software to Arm for games like Valorant and League of Legends and working with other developers using Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo is a big win for Windows on Arm.

I love seeing more competition, as it’s nice to have all this choice. The latest chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are each great in their own ways. I welcome an Nvidia option that performs well and has exceptional battery life but doesn’t lack games like Macs do. But even if the RTX Spark ushers in sea change, the rising tide of prices is bound to leave many adrift.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 7:30 am AEST (my time).

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On the back of NVIDIA's groundbreaking RTX Spark announcement, Qualcomm SVP of Computing Kedar Kondap has shared his thoughts on the Windows on Arm space heating up in a Q&A session with media hosted at Computex 2026 in Taipei earlier today.

When asked directly what Qualcomm thinks of NVIDIA entering the PC space, Kondap said the following:

"Welcome to the family. We are, you know, we're excited. When you think about the investments that we've made over the last several years, it's a good endorsement of the fact that there is an ecosystem that's growing outside of x86. We invested many years ago, driving the ecosystem and driving the entire platform story, whether it is getting the printers to work, whether it's getting the software apps to be compatible, whether it is getting the docks and peripherals to work, whether it's getting more than 2,500 games to be compatible with Snapdragon. We led the way in driving that ecosystem, and I think this is positive tailwinds for the entire ecosystem. It will tell us how we're all taking the ball forward in the trajectory that we started."

It's clear that Qualcomm views NVIDIA's entry into the PC space as good for the entire industry. While the company is eager to remind people that Snapdragon is the reason Windows on Arm is in a good place today, it's clear that both companies will benefit from each other pushing the Windows on Arm platform forward.

If anything, it's the x86 chipmakers that should be the most concerned. Windows on Arm is no longer an afterthought for the Windows ecosystem, with hundreds of devices now shipping with an Arm SoC thanks to Snapdragon, and with more on the way from NVIDIA, the platform is only getting stronger with each year.

Kondap was also asked about NVIDIA's claims that their Arm SoC won't have any Windows app compatibility concerns, but it's obvious that Qualcomm was caught off guard by this announcement. "Our partnership with Microsoft has gone on for several years. We launched the first Copilot+ PCs together. We launched the first platforms where the Microsoft OS supported the NPU and supported how this distributed computing work across the different cores ... I'm sure the engagement with Microsoft is strong enough where we've worked with them to build this entire ecosystem to make sure that it's compatible with Snapdragon and the architecture."

It's currently unclear how NVIDIA has solved this app compatibility problem. Windows on Arm PCs powered by Snapdragon chips have been relied on Windows 11's Prism emulation layer to run x86 apps, which works most of the time, except for in a few instances where an older app or newer game may be too complex to run optimally. Time will tell if NVIDIA's chips really are immune to x86 app compatibility issues, or if Qualcomm has some catching up to do.

We're back with another issue of our "Apple Rewind" monthly roundup series on Apple Inc., talking about new launches, speculations, and cool rumors you are waiting to hear. In May, Apple improved security in RCS, announced finalists for Apple Design Awards 2026, and shot an entire live sports event on an iPhone 17 Pro. Let's get started.

You can check out our previous issues of the 'Apple Rewind' monthly roundup.

Designed by former Apple designers

The dream of the Apple Car may have faded, but its soul still exists in some form. Ferrari unveiled its first electric vehicle, Luce, whose interior and exterior were designed by LoveFrom. It's a firm founded by former Apple design chief Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson. Ive reportedly played a major role in Apple Car development before it was scrapped.

Control a wheelchair with Vision Pro

One way Apple is making Vision Pro useful is by enabling users to control power wheelchairs with their eyes. The feature will launch with Tolt and LUCI alternative drive systems in the U.S. and will later expand to additional wheelchair drive systems. It's part of the newly announced accessibility features, including detailed descriptions and natural-language navigation, coming to VoiceOver, Magnifier, Voice Control, and Accessibility Reader.

Intel x Apple

Apple may have abandoned Intel for its chips, but things are turning around in a different way. It was reported early last month that Apple is planning to diversify its manufacturing and is knocking on the doors of Intel and Samsung. It was later reported that Apple's talks with Intel had reached a "preliminary chio-making agreement." It's also said that Intel could start its journey with "base A21 for base iPhone 19/19e or M7/M8 base chip."

Super secure RCS

Apple's latest perk for RCS on iPhone is end-to-end encryption, which arrived in beta in iOS 26.5. A new lock icon will appear on encrypted RCS chats when using supported carriers and Android users on the latest version of Google Messages.

Apple Design Awards 2026

Every year, Apple recognizes apps and games that stand out from the crowd for their design. The company released a list of 36 apps and games it picked as finalists for 2026, and the winners will be announced soon, around the WWDC. Speaking of which, Apple shared the official lineup for WWDC 2026 and said the keynote will stream on June 8 at 10 am PT.

Shot on iPhone

If clicking photos in the space wasn't enough, the iPhone hit a new production milestone. Apple TV streamed the first major live sporting event shot entirely on iPhone 17 Pro. It was an MLS match featuring the LA Galaxy vs. the Houston Dynamo FC. Apple previously used the iPhone 17 Pro to capture select moments from the game and cinematic in-stadium footage during a September 2025 “Friday Night Baseball” matchup.

iPhone rumors

Same Same but different: There are multiple arrows pointing towards the possibility that the upcoming iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e will be similar in multiple ways. The two devices are expected to share several components to reduce manufacturing costs, including the display and processor.

Bigger hole in your pocket: iPhone 18 Pro is expected to arrive in September with an inflated price tag. Part of the blame falls on the variable aperture lens, which reportedly costs 50% more than the lens currently used in the iPhone 17 Pro.

New standout color: For 2026, Dark Cherry is expected to become the flagship color for the Pro models, alongside Black, Silver, and Light Blue.

iPhone Fold can't fold: Apple's first foldable was expected to launch this year, but it seems to have hit a roadblock. A leaker with a reliable past record said that Apple is still struggling with the iPhone Fold’s hinge design. The device reportedly entered trial production, but its reliability and long-term durability consistently fail to meet Apple’s quality control standards.

Vocal for local: Apple wants to run its AI locally on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or even Apple Watch. And for that purpose, a report said the company is using a large version of Google's Gemini model to train a smaller, distilled version that can run locally. While it could help Apple save on data center bills, it remains to be seen how a capacity-constrained model will actually perform in the real world.

OpenAI is exploring legal options

It's widely known that Apple has been struggling to make a mark in the AI world. It partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with Siri, but things didn't go as planned. It was reported that OpenAI expected the integration to drive subscriptions and profits, but now believes that Apple’s implementation of ChatGPT in Siri confused users and made the features harder to use. OpenAI is reportedly exploring legal options against the iPhone-maker.

Cheaper Apple Music

Apple doesn't offer a free version of Apple Music. However, evidence suggests it might relax things a bit. Several strings (such as "Can't skip any more tracks" and "Premium access required") found in the Apple Music Android beta code hint that Apple is working on a low-cost tier for Apple Music.

Touch ID on Apple Watch

If you're waiting to get Touch ID support on your Apple Watch, you may have to wait longer. A Chinese leaker stated that biometric authentication is not a priority for Apple at the moment because the limited space can be used for other things. The company is focusing on improving battery life and adding more advanced health sensors to upcoming models.

Trip to China

Apple CEO Tim Cook was amongst a large group of businessmen and executives who accompanied President Donald Trump on his visit to China. Apple has a strong presence in China but has recently faced increasing competition from local companies, and it is managing its manufacturing relationships in both countries.

Cool app ideas

Apple showcased the app playgrounds made by four winners at this year's Swift Students Challenge. These Distinguished Winners tried to solve real-world problems while keeping accessibility in mind. Apple previously said it would invite 50 Distinguished Winners to a three-day in-person experience at Apple Park during WWDC 2026.

Billions saved

Apple shared its annual report on App Store safety data, stating that it helped prevent over $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025, bringing the total over the last six years to $11.2 billion. Among other numbers, it also prevented the misuse of over 5.4 million stolen credit cards and banned nearly 2 million user accounts from future transactions.

You aren't a robot, but are you a student?

You might have proved that you're not a robot, but Apple now wants you to prove whether you're a student or educator if you want to claim discounts through the Education Store online. Already available for in-store verifications, Apple has expanded its partnership with Unidays to process the documents. Most verification requests will be approved instantly, while manual reviews may take up to 24 hours.

Massive Bluey crossover

The Emmy-winning series Bluey (which your furry friends can also watch) had a massive crossover on Apple Arcade, which was spread across five games: Crossy Road Castle, stitch., puffies., Suika Game+, and Disney Coloring World+. Apple also announced that several new titles are coming to Apple Arcade on June 4.

PowerShell for macOS

Microsoft is finally fixing several longstanding issues with PowerShell on macOS. It will say goodbye to the unidentified developer notifications by getting the PowerShell package and tarball for macOS properly notarized by Apple. Microsoft admitted that it has been sitting on user feedback for a long time.

Catch the game

Apple Sports got a massive expansion last when 90 new countries were added to its supported markets list, bringing the total to 170 countries. The updated app now comes with a clean, scrollable view of matchups and results for each round, allowing fans to easily track a team’s progression. There are improved game cards with visual formations for each team’s starting lineup.

So, these were some of the biggest updates around Apple from the month of May. There will be more issues of the Apple Rewind series in the following months. You can check out other tech updates in our 7 Days and Microsoft Weekly roundups.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 7:28 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of May) 2,092

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We're at the start of a major week for Windows and PCs that will shape the rest of the year and echo into 2027 and beyond. Computex is in full swing and Microsoft Build is about to start.

Microsoft Build may be for developers, but it will showcase some of the most exciting advances of the year for Windows and AI. Microsoft and NVIDIA just unveiled the NVIDIA RTX Spark platform, which centers around the N1x chip and promises to usher in "a new era of PC."

RTX Spark will bring workstation-class performance to Windows on ARM. Creators, gamers, and developers will all benefit from the new platform. At Build 2026, Microsoft will discuss Windows agents (AI assistants that can perform actions on your behalf).

Microsoft will also demonstrate how agents can be used to build modern Windows applications and how AI can help port Windows apps to run natively on ARM. Microsoft is in the middle of a push to make more native applications and to swap several parts of Windows 11 to native code. The tech giant will share lessons learned from that process during Build.

You can watch Nadella's keynote live without having to signing up anywhere. If you want to see more of Microsoft Build, you'll need to register through Microsoft's website.

Tickets to Microsoft Build 2026 are sold out, and they cost $1,099 when they were available. While you can no longer get tickets to attend in person, you can watch the event's keynote and several sessions online.

The session catalog for this year's Build conference includes hundreds of sessions, but many of those are limited to in-person attendees.

Luckily for you, we'll cover all the biggest stories from Build. So make sure to check in throughout the week.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 7:26 am AEST (my time).

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Nvidia already had a big announcement at Computex 2026, revealing its new RTX Spark ARM processors alongside Microsoft. However, it also had something new for gamers that are using its RTX hardware and DLSS tech, and it's spelling good news for those enjoying raytracing in games.

Today, the company unveiled DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, bringing an updated version of its transformer model that promises to deliver even better image quality than before in ray-traced and path-traced games.

"Replacing traditional hand-tuned denoisers, it uses an NVIDIA supercomputer-trained AI network to generate higher-quality pixels in the noisy parts of a ray traced frame where rays were not sampled," says Nvidia about this Ray Reconstruction implementation. "The model unifies denoising and Super Resolution into a single model, intelligently analyzing temporal and spatial engine data to reconstruct sharper, more stable, and higher-fidelity high-resolution images."

While touting a 35% and 20% better compute capability and parameters, respectively, Nvidia says the new tech will have similar performance to the last-generation model. Players should see better lighting and stability in their ray-traced games using this model without using the detail from the original image.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction will be available sometime in August 2026. The update will be available across all RTX hardware generations, including the 20, 30, 40, and the latest 50-series Nvidia RTX graphics cards. It's unclear if the performance claims will apply to previous-generation cards too, however.

As for supported titles, at launch, 27 games, including Alan Wake 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Cyberpunk 2077, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and PRAGMATA, will be available for using the new Ray Reconstruction model. Outside of games, Nvidia announced that Blender Cycles will be integrating Ray Reconstruction as a new denoiser too, which should improve the interactive viewport's functionality. As Nvidia expands its DLSS tech further at Computex, at the same event, AMD also showed off how far its own upscaling solution, FSR, has come in recent months.

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Posted Tuesday 2 June 2026 at 7:25 am AEST (my time).

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Fourteen years after launching its first Windows on ARM Surface with an NVIDIA chip, a device that quickly turned out to be a big failure, Microsoft is trying once again. Today, at Computex 2026, Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, its most powerful Surface to date, powered by NVIDIA's new RTX Spark, the newly announced ARM processor for Windows on ARM.

Microsoft is still keeping the full details under wraps. Still, it says that the Surface Laptop Ultra is the most powerful laptop with an NVIDIA Blackwell RTX graphics and up to 128GB of unified memory, similar to modern MacBooks with their M Series processors. Performance-wise, Microsoft promises up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and RTX 5070-level of GPU performance with up to 20 CPU cores and 6,144 GPU cores. Additionally, Microsoft and NVIDIA boast high CPU efficiency for all-day battery life.

We designed Surface Laptop Ultra from the inside out. Mechanical, electrical, thermal, acoustic, materials, industrial design and software engineers at the table from day one. The internal architecture and the external form built as one system. Our engineers designed it with the same discipline we know you bring to your craft, where every micron matters and every choice is deliberate.

Specs also include a 15-inch mini-LED display with a pixel density of 262 ppi and a maximum brightness of 2,000 nits. You also get a decent set of ports, including one HDMI, USB Type-C, USB Type-A, an SD card reader, a headphone jack, and a big haptic trackpad similar to the recently announced Surface Laptop for Business with Intel's Core Ultra 300 processors. Finally, you will get to choose from two color options: Platinum and Nightfall.

Microsoft is not revealing the Surface Laptop Ultra price or the rest of the specs, including available configurations, storage, and more. The device is launching later this year, alongside other RTX Spark-powered computers from ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and MSI.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 5:07 pm AEST (my time).

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This fall, Nvidia will officially become a consumer PC chipmaker like Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, putting a complete computing chip — not just graphics — into the very heart of laptops and mini-PCs. After many months of leaks, it’s finally announcing the RTX Spark, the first in a family of chips that will meet or beat the most powerful thin-and-light Windows machines ever, it claims.

Nvidia’s CEO holds up two RTX Spark laptops at Computex.

Image: Nvidia

 

“This is the most efficient PC chip ever built,” says Nvidia senior director of product management Mark Aevermann — without sharing so much as a single statistic or chart to back that up.

The RTX Spark is effectively the same GB10 chip that’s in the DGX Spark, the tiny “personal AI supercomputer” that Nvidia released last year, only now it’s a family of chips instead of just one. The flagship version appears to be spec-to-spec identical with 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU cores and 128GB of LPDDR5X memory.

If these specs sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same as the DGX Spark AI mini-PC.

Image: Nvidia

 

But Nvidia says there’ll be lesser versions later, targeting lower prices, and with as little as 16GB of RAM.

Like Apple and Qualcomm’s chips, this Nvidia chip is Arm-based silicon, meaning legacy Windows software made for Intel and AMD’s x86 processors needs to run through an emulation layer to work. That can mean lower performance. But Microsoft has now spent years getting Windows and its Prism emulator ready for Qualcomm and now Nvidia chips, and Nvidia claims its own graphics and AI chops will take the idea further than ever before.

With the power of the RTX Spark, Nvidia boasts, you can render a 90GB 3D scene, edit 12K resolution video, or play the graphically intensive Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at a smooth 100fps at 1440p resolution — all in a 14mm thick laptop without a power cord plugged in.

Nvidia says RTX Spark laptops should have these features.

Image: Nvidia

 

And with up to 128GB of unified memory, tied with AMD’s previous gen Strix Halo parts, an RTX Spark laptop or desktop can also host 120-billion-parameter AI agents, something that Microsoft is seemingly excited about for Windows. At Microsoft’s Build conference this week, it’ll be showing off “new Windows security and containment primitives” that, along with Nvidia’s OpenShell runtime, “allows personal agents to run safely and under full user control.”

Nvidia claims this adds up to “a new personal computing paradigm where AI is the UX” and “users no longer need to master complicated app UIs” because you’ll just talk to your PC instead of needing to use mouse and keyboard.

“Personal AI” for Windows.

Image: Nvidia

 

Nvidia suggested that, for example, a esports streamer could get their PC to automatically turn off their lights, mute their microphone, and change their broadcasting mode when they want to step away and grab dinner. A designer could use Adobe to automatically turn a sketch into a full image, render a 3D model of it, then create a AI video just by asking. A software developer can automatically monitor their GitHub project and autonomously fix QA issues, with the AI agent taking over the laptop’s keyboard and mouse cursor to do “repetitive and boring” tasks.

Nvidia says that with the RTX Spark’s local AI chops, your data stays private and you won’t be burning through tokens to do AI things.

I’m not convinced Nvidia has pieced together the Star Trek computer just yet, but it does seem like the company has a lot of partners on board. Almost every major laptop vendor is accounted for, with eight specific laptops already confirmed for this fall:

Asus ProArt P14 and P16, Dell XPS 16, HP OmniBook X14 and Ultra 16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9N, Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI.

Image: Nvidia

 

One of those is from Microsoft, which is putting the Nvidia RTX Spark in a new laptop that Surface boss Andrew Hill tells us is “the most powerful thing we’ve ever made.” It’s called the Surface Laptop Ultra:

Image: Microsoft

 

Those machines are apparently just the start. Aevermann says Nvidia’s partners are already working on over 30 laptops and over 10 desktops, with Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Lenovo all on board for the latter.

“RTX Spark is going to be a family of products that are going to attack a lot of different price points,” Aevermann promises. “The overall market opportunity that we see is quite large.”

Image: Nvidia

 

And between Microsoft and Nvidia’s wrangling efforts, lots of Windows developers are also on board with Arm.

The company points out that “Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Maxon Cinema4D, Maxon Redshift, Topaz Photo, CapCut, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, Affinity by Canva and more all run natively on Arm today, as do the audio, video, MIDI, and control peripherals they require.“

Adobe is on board, with special optimizations for Premiere and Photoshop that take advantage of Nvidia’s new chip.

Even games with anti-cheat that thumbed their nose at Linux and the Steam Deck are now supporting Windows on Arm, too. Microsoft writes that Riot Games is now bringing both League of Legends and Valorant to Windows on Arm. Krafton is bringing PUBG, and Nvidia tells us it’s working with more developers who use Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye and Denuvo. (Epic’s Fortnite already came to Windows on Arm last November after an announcement last March.)

Aevermann says “all the top games will run on RTX Spark and provide a great experience.” That’s a pretty high bar to meet!

Here are some more developers Nvidia says it’s working with:

Image: Nvidia

 

There are still many open questions, of course. Neither Nvidia nor Microsoft gave us a clear idea of how much these computers might cost, save that the first batch this fall is “targeting the more premium price points in the market.”

On “all-day battery life,” Aevermann would only say that we should “expect it to be much better than anything you’ve seen before on RTX laptops” and that “you won’t need a charger” if you’re not pushing heavy workloads. The chip scales down to “low, low single-digit” wattage and goes as high as 80 watts, he says. The latter means they could theoretically drain bigger laptop batteries in around an hour at full bore.

On performance, Nvidia didn’t have a single statistic or chart to share, and Aevermann wouldn’t answer questions about how the RTX Spark family stacks up to chips from Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, saying Nvidia will have more to share closer to launch. But he does say that depending on the application, it has roughly the graphical power of an RTX 5070 mobile GPU, and that we should expect the CPU portion to be “competitive with anything else out there in the Windows space.”

Nvidia also wouldn’t say whether these chips, made on the TSMC 3 process in partnership with MediaTek, are being manufactured in the US or abroad. That got a no comment.

Nvidia also wouldn’t comment on whether it plans to offer Linux driver support for the RTX Spark, as it’s currently focused on Windows. It wouldn’t comment on putting the Spark in gaming handhelds, like AMD did with its powerful Strix Halo.

But it did answer a question that no, the RTX Spark won’t be paired with additional discrete GPUs — which may limit its potential in desktops beyond the miniature ones, the same way Apple’s Mac Pro became limited when its Arm-based chips broke compatibility with discrete GPUs.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that Nvidia isn’t sharing proof to back up its claims. Back in 2020, Apple didn’t share any proof when it announced Apple Silicon. But when the M1 arrived, it upended our concept of laptop performance overnight.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 5:06 pm AEST (my time).

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Paul's Hardware (1.55m subscribers)

Video length: 10m 41s

AMD warmed us up some leftovers - Computex 2026

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 12:31 pm AEST (my time).

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The MacBook Neo was like throwing a giant boulder into a still, peaceful pond—and we’re still feeling the ripple effects. Thanks to its dramatic $599 price, it tossed Apple into a brand-new laptop demographic. The response from the Windows side has been soft—until now.

Cheaper laptops with only 8 GB of RAM are coming—most notably, the new Dell XPS 13 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 8. Following suit with the MacBook Neo, Dell is making its brand more accessible than ever, using many of the same tricks as Apple. Microsoft? Not so much.

Going Backward

The MacBook Neo was rightly criticized for having only 8 GB of RAM in the base model, as it limits what this otherwise great laptop could do. Then again, this is a $599 laptop. It’s not meant for demanding workloads, and even though I think 16 GB should be the new established baseline, I don’t want laptops to get more expensive than they already are. The memory shortage that’s swept through the entire industry’s supply chain is taking effect—and not even Apple has been able to move forward without making some necessary changes.

Either way, there should be room in the market for a device for people who don’t have heavy computing needs but want something that looks and feels premium. That’s the MacBook Neo to a T. The new Dell XPS 13 takes a nearly identical approach. It's made entirely of aluminum; it's half an inch thick and every bit as premium-looking as XPS laptops always have. It even uses a high-end IPS screen with a higher resolution (2560 x 1600) and refresh rate (120 Hz). Dell even says it goes up to 500 nits of brightness. This is deliberate. It matches the Neo's sharpness and max brightness exactly, and has a faster refresh rate to boot.

Yet it's only $699 (or $599 for students). The XPS 13 makes similar trade-offs as the MacBook Neo. First, it starts with only 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It also starts with a slower Intel Core 5 processor (note: not Intel Core Ultra). I'll be interested to find how the performance and battery life stack up against the MacBook Neo, but Dell is clearly taking notes from Apple, which used a slower iPhone chip in the Neo instead of an M-series laptop-grade processor.

What's nice about the Dell XPS 13, though, is that you can scale it up appropriately. The MacBook Neo is capped in both storage and memory, but the XPS 13 can be configured up to 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

I've been testing a lot of $500 to $600 laptops recently from companies like Acer, Lenovo, and HP, many of which take a more conventional Windows approach to rivaling the MacBook Neo by offering better specs at lower prices. They all have 16 GB of RAM and use more powerful chips, too. But none challenge the MacBook Neo in display quality and chassis materials. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for something like the HP OmniBook 3, but it doesn't play for the same audience as the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Neo.

The Wrong Direction

Inevitably there would be a company that thinks it can ride on the success of the MacBook Neo without understanding what makes it tick. Last week, Microsoft announced two versions of its Surface Laptop for Business PCs: a higher-end 13.8-inch model and a cheaper 13-inch device. The 13.8-inch model is a more standard refresh, implementing Intel’s new Core Ultra X7 368H Panther Lake chip—and most notably, it still starts with 16 GB of RAM.

The smaller 13-inch model is where things get problematic. Despite its starting price of $1,200, that configuration only comes with 8 GB of RAM. Don’t get too caught up in the price, since business PCs always come with an up charge. The starting RAM is the eyebrow-raising spec. Unlike the new Dell XPS 13, Microsoft isn't tricking this out with a thinner chassis and an upgraded screen—it's just giving you less computing power and calling it good.

And to be fair, this “optional” 8 GB model is coming later this year, separate from the 16 GB and 24 GB versions. But it's hard to imagine Microsoft being willing to sell an 8 GB laptop in 2026 if Apple hadn't paved the way. While there’s no 2025 Surface Laptop 13 for Business for direct comparison, the consumer version of the Surface Laptop 13 started with 16 GB of RAM. This feels like a straight generational downgrade.

We’ll know for sure once Microsoft announces its new consumer Surface Laptop 8th Edition—possibly sometime in June, around its Build developers conference. If the company announces a Surface Laptop 13 with only 8 GB of RAM, that’ll be the final proof that Microsoft is taking the wrong cues from Apple. Even if Microsoft lowers the price to $600 to match Apple, it will be gleefully taking the bait of dropping to 8 GB without realizing what makes the MacBook Neo work.

You can still buy the 2024 Surface Laptop 7th Edition with 16 GB of RAM for under $800, and that remains a really good deal. I really like this laptop and still find myself recommending it. Unfortunately, Microsoft will almost certainly not be selling its next-gen refresh at prices that low. We've already seen many Snapdragon X2 laptops being sold at a premium, while keeping the previous-gen model available at retailers on discount, such as the Asus Zenbook A16.

All of these companies will have to deal with the memory shortage and the challenge of Apple's attack in their own ways. Some companies will be forced to pivot and follow Apple's lead, like the Dell XPS 13, while others will be able to slash prices and stick to their guns. Either way, diversity is one of the greatest strengths of the Windows ecosystem, and the range of responses will give laptop buyers lots more options at this price. And this is only the beginning. On Thursday, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon C, an even lower-priced chip designed for Windows laptops starting at $300. Strap in, because the competition is really about to heat up.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 12:29 pm AEST (my time).

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Following years of algorithmic processing-based upscaling, AMD's FSR technology graduated to the machine learning (ML) phase in January 2025. Using ML-trained AMD EPYC and Instinct accelerators, this version, dubbed FSR 4, launched with support for just 30 games in the beginning.

Today, AMD revealed during Computex 2026 that this latest generation of FSR tech has now reached over 300 officially supported games, marking a significant growth trajectory since its initial launch. Titles like Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V, Mafia: The Old Country, Black Myth: Wukong, and many more have received updates with support for FSR 4 during that time.

AMD has been delivering major upgrades for FSR 4 in recent months too. The March-released FSR 4.1 update brought along Ray Regeneration for upgrading raytraced effects, as well as sharper upscaling, better Ultra Performance FPS boosts, and more.

However, one downside of the fourth-generation FSR release has been its exclusivity for AMD's latest Radeon hardware, the RX 9000 series. While this is useful for anyone jumping into AMD's Radeon camp to use its latest and greatest hardware, like the newly announced RX 9070 GRE global launch, AMD leaving behind previous-generation graphics cards hasn't been a very popular decision among fans.

However, AMD recently announced this is soon changing. AMD's RDNA 3 Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards are getting the FSR 4.1 tech later this year, followed by RDNA 2 RX 6000-series cards in 2027.

With FSR 4's growth accelerating amongst gamers, AMD is now looking into implementing it into its professional-focused hardware too. At Computex, the company also announced today that a version of the tech dubbed Radeon AI FSR PRO is incoming. Not many details about this venture have been revealed yet. AMD has only said that it will arrive with a driver update for professional applications with Ray Regeneration and Radeon AI Pro R97000 certifications.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 11:58 am AEST (my time).

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At Computex 2026 today, alongside new X3D desktop processors and Radeon RX 9070 GRE, AMD has introduced a new memory overclocking tech as it is expanding its EXPO feature. For those who may not be familiar, EXPO (short for EXtended Profiles for Overclocking) is essentially AMD's version of Intel XMP which allows easier memory overclocking by loading pre-set stable overclocking profiles. Previously Team Red relied on tweaked XMP versions called AMP or A-XMP, but in 2022, EXPO made an entry.

The new EXPO technology is called EXPO ULL, which stands for "Ultra Low Latency." As the name suggests, this new feature will enable support for even lower CL (CAS Latency) DDR5. Obviously there will be some performance benefits, and AMD suggests it is going to be significant. Compared to a stock (JEDEC spec) speed module (DDR5-5600 CL40), the company claims a 13% average FPS improvement with the new EXPO ULL 6000 MT/s kit running at CL28, which is an additional 4 percentage point gain over normal EXPO.

The 1% lows or the 99%-ile frame rate, which is often a more crucial metric that's meant to capture smoothness of gameplay, is said to see an even bigger improvement of 15% over JEDEC speed using ULL, which is again a 4 percentage point advantage over EXPO alone.

These tests were done on AMD's Zen 5-based octa-core Ryzen 9700X. Speaking of the CPU, perhaps a bit ironically, the new 7700X3D, which AMD today launched alongside EXPO ULL, won't really benefit much from this, as 3D V-cache CPUs already have an on-board low-latency chunk of L3 cache.

This is also something AMD highlighted as one of the two major benefits for purchasing X3D SKUs, considering the high RAM prices in the current market.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 11:56 am AEST (my time).

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Last year, mid-2025, AMD expanded its desktop RX 9000 series graphics card lineup with the launch of the 9060 series with Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB and 16GB. However, this meant there was a gap in its lineup wherein the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti could squeeze in between the 9060 series and the higher 9070 series. Interestingly, AMD already had an answer for this in the form of the 9070 GRE, at least in some parts of the world like China.

In terms of how it stacked up, we had estimated that the RX 9070 GRE would land somewhere between the 9060 XT and the 9070, leaning more so towards the latter. As such, it would have been able to easily take on the GeForce 5060 Ti and could have been especially dominant in rasterization scenarios and would be trading blows during ray tracing.

Today at Computex 2026, alongside new X3D processors, AMD has finally brought the 9070 GRE to the USA as well as several other parts of the world. The company has shared performance numbers for it versus the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti. In normal rasterization, which AMD has labeled simply as gaming, at 1440p, the company claims up to 40% better showing. Big advantages are expected in titles like Monster Hunter Wilds and Resident Evil Requiem. The closest results are in games like Arc Raiders and Overwatch 2. These are relatively lighter compared to other AAA titles.

In ray-tracing next, AMD actually touts close to similar gains as it promises up to 30% better performance. This is in Assassins' Creed Shadows. Other titles like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 could also see an impressive split between the Red team and the Green team's cards.

Overall, AMD says the new RX 9070 GRE delivers 22% better performance on average against the 5060 Ti, and aside from that, the company is also promising 26% better value than Nvidia's GPU. In order to calculate this value, AMD considered a $569 price point for the 5060 Ti 16GB, whereas it has priced its own 9070 GRE at $549. The company has used the lowest available pricing data based on Newegg.

Here are the specifications of the new AMD RX 9070 GRE compared to the other 9000 series cards

To know how it stacks up against the competition as well as the other AMD cards, check out our full review that comes out tomorrow.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 11:53 am AEST (my time).

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Following the release of its 3D V-cache CPUs for professional users in the form of the new 9965X3D and 9755X3D, AMD is once again back to releasing X3D chips for gamers. At its Computex 2026 keynote today alongside the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, Team Red also unveiled a couple of desktop processors for both sockets AM4 and AM5.

First up, we have the Ryzen 7 7700X3D for socket AM5. This is part of the Ryzen 7000 series (Raphael) lineup that's based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture. This part slots under the already popular Ryzen 7 7800X3D, known for its gaming prowess despite not belonging to the latest 9000 series.

As expected, spec-wise it is quite similar to the 7800X3D barring the core clocks. While the 7800X3D can boost up to 5 GHz from its nominal base of 4.2 GHz, the 7700X3D can reach 4.5 GHz from its base clock of 4 GHz. In the real world though, this may not mean much unless you set out to track FPS or data using performance tools.

If you notice in the above spec table, we have also listed the default memory speeds supported by the chips across various DIMM configurations. While fast, low-latency memory is generally recommended for AMD's CPUs, which is also why the company unveiled the new EXPO ULL feature, it's not a necessity in the case of X3D processors, thanks to the blob of L3 that's already on board.

Aside from the 7700X3D, AMD also unveiled the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition. While the 5800X3D itself is not a decade old (it was launched back in 2022), the company is celebrating 10 years of AM4 socket life with this new chip. Whether you like AMD or not, this is a very impressive feat, considering its main rival Intel has typically only stuck to one socket for just a couple of generations (around two to four years).

As such, from time to time, AMD has released new chips like the Ryzen 7 5700X3D and the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. Perhaps a little surprisingly, the specifications of this new 5800X3D have remained unaltered from the original SKU. As such, performance should match it.

Regardless, AMD has provided numbers against the Ryzen 7 2700X (Zen+), 3700X (Zen 2), and 5800X (Zen 3 without 3D V-cache). Data versus Intel's 14900K has also been provided with both running DDR4-3600. It has to be said here that the Intel 14900K Raptor Lake chips also support faster DDR5 memory.

A rather interesting bit here is the pricing, as the more capable and newer 7700X3D AM5 part has been pegged lower than the 5800X3D, with the former coming in with an SEP (suggested etail price) of $329, while the latter carries a price tag of $349. While the AM4 part will be available from June 25, 2026, the AM5 CPU will be on shelves from July 16, 2026.

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 11:50 am AEST (my time).

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Earlier this week Microsoft teased that a "new era of PC" was going to be upon us very soon. The company quickly ended any speculation regarding a possible next gen OS like "Windows 12" though we soon started to get an idea of what it was when Nvidia also put up the same teaser post on its social media handles.

Following this, we began getting more concrete evidence of new Windows on Arm laptops that would be powered by Nvidia CPU, specifically the company's new N1X and N1 processors. These would include new Surface devices as well as traditional Windows laptops from the likes of OEMs like Dell, Lenovo and more.

Although we had a rough idea about the might of the Nvidia N1X series, a new report from VideoCardz has revealed the purported detailed specifications of the SKUs right ahead of the launch.

According to the leak, the flagship N1X configuration will feature a 10+10 core CPU setup based on Arm's Cortex-X925 and Cortex-A725 designs, paired with a 48 SM (Steaming Multiprocessor) Blackwell GPU packing 6144 CUDA cores. Nvidia is also said to be preparing a slightly cut-down 9+9 core variant with 40 SMs, bringing the CUDA core count down to 5120.

Simply by SM/CUDA core count, the full N1X is about equivalent to the RTX 5070 while the cut-down SKU is faster than the 5060 Ti. What could be the limiting factor though is the memory bandwidth.

Interestingly, both N1X models are reportedly designed for a 45W to 80W power envelope, putting them firmly in premium performance laptop territory. The chips are also said to support up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory through a 16-channel memory interface, alongside 12 PCIe 5.0 lanes and five PCIe 4.0 lanes for storage and expansion.

The standard N1 lineup appears to be aimed at more mainstream devices. One variant is tipped to feature a 12-core CPU paired with a 20 SM GPU containing 2560 CUDA cores, while another could ship with a 10-core CPU and a 16 SM graphics configuration for 2048 CUDA cores. These chips are reportedly configured for lower power operation between 18W and 45W, while supporting between 8GB and 64GB of LPDDR5X memory.

Storage support is also said to differ between the two families. While N1X systems are expected to accommodate up to three M.2 SSDs, the more affordable N1 platform may be limited to two drives. If accurate, the specifications suggest Nvidia is targeting everything from thin-and-light AI PCs to high-performance creator and gaming laptops with its first major Windows-on-Arm push.

The report further claims that the full-fat N1X configuration mirrors the GB10 Superchip found inside Nvidia's DGX Spark platform, something that aligns with previous rumors surrounding the company's Arm-based PC ambitions. With the official announcement expected imminently, it remains to be seen which of these configurations will actually make it to retail devices and how they will stack up against offerings from Qualcomm, AMD and Intel.

Source: VideoCardz

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 7:38 am AEST (my time).

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JayzTwoCents (4.32m subscribers)

June 1, 2026

Video length: 29m 15s

This week in news we cover more AI but this time, large corporations say its too expensive to buy the Tokens! NVIDIA's Jensen Huang finally acknowledges that GPU smuggling is real and it should be stopped.... You seriously cant make this up!

00:00 News Show Episode 2!

01:27 NVIDIA Doesn't Need Gamers Anymore

09:27 Chinese RAM and GPUs

14:29 AI Too Expensive for MSFT and Uber

21:27 Unreal Engine 6 Revealed With Rocket League Update

22:30 Witcher 3 Gets New Expansion After 12 Years

23:12 Destiny 2 Updates End In June

26:06 007 Last-Minute Denuvo Drop

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Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 7:33 am AEST (my time).

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