Parallels, the company best know for its virtualization software that lets you run Windows and Linux directly on your Mac, has had a busy year. In addition to building a version of Parallels that can run on Chrome OS for the first time, the company also had to figure out how to quickly make its software work with the new, ARM-based M1 Macs that arrived last fall. Now, Parallels Desktop 17 is being released with improved performance on M1 Macs, as well as full support for the upcoming macOS Monterey and Windows 11 operating systems.
Before getting into these improvements, though, it's worth taking a moment to talk compatibility. Apple moving the Mac to ARM architecture means there are now two classes of Macs for Parallels to support. As of today, the only versions of Windows that Parallels can run on an M1 Mac are the Insider Previews for Windows 10 and Windows 11 — because those versions of the OS are able to run on ARM-based hardware. But, Parallels unequivocally says that when the full version of Windows 11 is released to the public, it'll run on Parallels 17.
On an Intel-baed Mac, however, users can still run a host of virtual machines, including Windows support all the way back to XP and Windows 2000, and macOS all the way back to 2011's OS X Lion. It can also run eight different Linux distros; M1 Macs can only virtualize four right now, including Ubuntu and Fedora.
So while Intel Macs still offer the broadest compatibility, Parallels has found that the raw power of the M1 chip means users likely aren't giving anything up running the Windows 10 or 11 Insider Previews. Microsoft's built-in emulation for Windows means that Windows 10 Insider Preview can run almost any 32-bit x86 app as well as "many" 64-bit x86 apps, and the M1's power helps to make up for speed lost due to emulation.
As for what's new, Parallels has speed improvements across the board, whether you're running Intel or M1. Regardless of which system you're using, Parallels 17 resumes Windows and Linux up to 38 percent faster, while OpenGL graphics run up to six times faster than the previous version. M1-specific speed improvements include 20 percent faster disk performance when using Windows 10 Insider preview, while DirectX graphics should perform up to 28 percent better. These tests are all run by Parallels, and we can't verify them yet, but improving performance has long been a focus for the company.
There are a handful of new features on board, as well. Parallels improved its "Coherence" mode, where you can run a Windows app without launching into the full Windows UI. Now, things like shutdowns, updates and sign-in screens are windowed as well, making them easier to pop into the background. The ability to drag and drop between Windows and Mac apps has been improved, as well — for example, you can now highlight and drop text and images between Mac and Windows apps, and it'll work with the new Quick Note feature coming to macOS Monterey.
Parallels 17 also contains a virtual TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip, which lets the system use BitLocker and Secure Boot when running Windows 10 and Windows 11. There's an added layer of intrigue to this feature: Microsoft originally said that a computer with a TPM chip was a requirement for Windows 11 before backtracking (at least for the testing period). It's not clear yet if the final version of Windows 11 will require a TPM chip, but this virtualization should let Parallels users get around this requirement.
As with most software these days, Parallels Desktop 17 is being sold as a subscription. The standard edition is $79.99 per year, and the pro edition costs $99.99 per year. If you're on a subscription, you'll get Parallels updates as long as the subscription is active. If you prefer, though, you can get a perpetual license of the standard edition Parallels 17 for $99.99; people who have purchased a past perpetual license can upgrade for $49.99.
Before Gamescom 2021 gets officially underway on August 25th, Microsoft will kick off the all-digital event with a livestream of its own. The company will share an update on its holiday Xbox lineup on August 24th at 1PM ET/10AM PT. We don't expect Microsoft to announce too many new titles. Instead, it sounds like we'll see more of the games it highlighted at its E3 2021 presentation, including Starfield and Halo Infinite.
"You'll get in-depth updates from some of our previously announced Xbox Game Studios titles alongside some of our third-party partners, including some of the incredible titles coming to Xbox this holiday, upcoming releases to our monthly subscription service, Xbox Game Pass and much more," the company said.
Microsoft will stream the presentation to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Gaming and Twitter. It also said today it would have more information to share about Xbox FanFest at a later date. As always, if you can't watch the livestream, we will have you covered after the event with coverage of all the biggest announcements.
Home chefs looking to experiment more should give sous vide cooking a try, but that's easier said than done if you're starting from scratch. Many sous vide machines cost hundreds of dollars, but those looking to give the method a go don't have to spend that much now thanks to a new sale on Anova's Precision Cooker Nano. Both Amazon and Best Buy have the device for $99, which is $30 off and a return to the best price we've seen all year.
A machine like the Nano is the most important piece of equipment you'll need for sous vide cooking that you probably don't already have in your kitchen. The method involves cooking food in a sealable bag that's submerged in heated water. The Precision Cooker Nano and other devices like it constantly circulate the water and keep it at the right temperature, ensuring your food is never over- or undercooked.
The Nano is the entry-level machine in Anova's lineup, making it the right pick for sous vide newbies. It uses 750 watts of power to heat up water and it'll run for up to 3,000 hours before it needs to be recharged. With that amount of power, you'll be able to easily cook meals for up to four people.
Aside from wattage and battery capacity, it differs from the more advanced devices in Anova's lineup in its clamp and connectivity. It has a fixed clamp, rather than a removable and adjustable one, that you'll use to secure the machine to your cooking pot. It also connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth rather than WiFi, but that still gives you access to the customizable controls in the Anova mobile app. You can set the cooking time and keep track of your cook while it's cooking in the app, plus the app gives you access to a bunch of recipes you can try, too. While it may be tempting to spring for the standard, $199 Precision Cooker for it extra power and battery life, the Nano is arguably the best choice for home cooks who want to give a new method a try without spending too much money upfront.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
While leaks somewhat spoiled their launch, Beats' Studio Buds impressed us with their comfortable new design, balanced sound and seamless pairing with both Android and iOS devices. They were priced right, too, coming in at $150. But now the buds are on sale for the first time since they came out in June, so you can grab them for only $130 from Amazon. All three colors have been discounted, so you can choose your favorite and save $20.
We gave the Beats Studio Buds a score of 84 and we consider them to be the best pair of Beats buds for most people. They have a smaller, more comfortable design that some past Beats earbuds and their IPX4 water-resistant housing will keep them safe even during your sweatiest workouts. The buds pump out good sound with punchy bass and they work with Apple's Spatial Audio feature, too. You're also getting noise-cancellation that uses adaptive gain control to adjust in real time, blocking out distracting noises like that from dishwashers, wind and more. As far as battery life goes, the Studio Buds should get five to eight hours on a single charge, depending on your ANC use.
You may think that because these are Beats earbuds that they're designed with Apple users in mind, first and foremost. However, Beats added a number of new features that make these buds better for Android users, too. They still have the H1 chip inside, so you'll get fast pairing and switching between Apple devices. But Android users also have a Fast Pair feature now, too, which allows Android devices to immediately recognize the buds during the initial setup. The Studio Buds work with Android's Find My Device feature, so you can use that to see the last known location of your buds.
There's a lot to like about the Beats Studio Buds, especially at this $130 sale price. However, they lack a few key features: wireless charging, onboard volume controls and sound customizations. We also weren't impressed with their call quality either. But if you're willing to sacrifice in those areas, the Studio Buds remain solid options for both Android and iOS users who want a reliable, comfortable pair of wireless earbuds that won't break the bank.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
If you're an Apple user and somehow haven't gotten your hands on a pair of AirPods yet, now's a good time to grab them. Amazon has the standard AirPods with their wireless charging case for $130, which is an all-time-low price that we haven't seen often in the past. However, shipping times are delayed (likely due to the rarity of this deal) so you'll have to wait until the beginning of September to receive them.
If you don't want to wait, you can skip the wireless charging case and get the regular model for $114 — not a record low, but $45 less than their normal price. It's also worth noting that the AirPods Pro remain $60 off, bringing them down to $190.
Even if you haven't used AirPods before, you're probably quite familiar with them, especially if you use a lot of Apple products. They're the company's true wireless earbuds that, thanks to the H1 chipset inside, pair and switch seamlessly between iPhone, iPad and other Apple devices. It makes the initial setup quick and easy, and it allows you to go from taking a call on your iPhone to listening to music from your Mac with little delay. The H1 chip also improved upon the AirPods' connection range, and it enables hands-free Siri access, too.
Convenience alone is reason enough for some to invest in AirPods, but they're also a solid pair of wireless earbuds as well. Sound quality is decent (we prefer the AirPods Pro if you want the best sound quality Apple earbuds can offer) and they'll last for about five hours on a single charge. And with the wireless charging case, you can set the AirPods on any Qi-compatible pad you have in your home when you need extra juice.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Facebook has today announced that it has added two new destinations for when you want to move your data from the social network. In a blog post, the company said that users will be able to move their images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar. Product Manager Hadi Michel said that the tool has been “completely rebuilt” to be “simpler and more intuitive,” giving people more clarity on what they can share to which platforms. In addition, users can now launch multiple transfers, with better fine-grain control on what they’re choosing to export in any one transfer.
This is yet another feature piled on to the Data Transfer Project, an open-source project developed by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Facebook users can already send their photos to Google’s own image-storage service, as well as Dropbox, Blogger, Google Documents and Wordpress. This is, in part, a way to address the long-in-progress ACCESS Act, which would enable users to transfer their data to any competing platform. Facebook says that it calls on government to “make clearer rules about who is responsible for protecting that data as it is transferred to different services.”
Acer and Apple aren't the only big PC brands reeling from ransomware attacks in recent times. Bleeping Computer and United Daily News report that Taiwan-based Gigabyte suffered a ransomware attack between August 3rd and August 4th. The company only confirmed that it shut down IT infrastructure and that a handful of servers were affected, but there are hints the attack might have been worse.
According to Bleeping Computer sources, the extortion gang RansomEXX claimed to have stolen 112GB of sensitive internal data as well as info from a code repository. This includes Intel and AMD chip information as well as a debug document. The breach is known to have affected both the Gigabyte support page and parts of the Taiwanese page.
Gigabyte said it contact law enforcement, but didn't say if it would pay the ransom.
RansomEXX started in 2018 under the Defray name, but rebranded in 2020 and has been targeting increasingly higher-profile organizations, including the Brazilian government, Texas' Department of Transportation and Ecuador's state-led telecom. It's not believed to be associated with the REvil group that attacked Acer as well as Apple supplier Quanta.
It's not surprising that PC companies would face these attacks. They not only have the money to pay ransoms, but a raft of technological secrets they're eager to protect. However, the string of attacks is still concerning. Apart from the short-term financial hit, there's also a concern these attacks could leak trade secrets that do long-term damage.
Now is a prime opportunity to get an Apple Watch Series 6 at a good price, provided you're not picky about the color. Woot is offering the 40mm Product Red edition with GPS (that is, no cellular) for just $300, or a clean $100 below the usual price. This isn't the absolute lowest price we've seen, but it's still a solid deal that delivers a high-end smartwatch at a reasonable price.
Series 6 is still a very capable smartwatch months after launch. It's ultimately a refinement of Series 5 with a blood oxygen monitor and slight boosts to performance and battery life, but that still leaves you with a great always-on display, useful health features and a rich app ecosystem. WatchOS 8 will expand that functionality, too, with improvements to everything from mindfulness to messages.
As before, the catch is simply the timing. Series 7 is likely close at hand, and might include a new design with updated performance and wireless technology. If you're more interested in having the latest hardware than saving money, you may want to wait a few weeks. You'll likely pay much less for Series 6, though, and it's a much better value at this price than the Apple Watch SE.
Just be aware that Woot's return policy is stricter than Amazon's. You have to return products within 30 days, and Woot reduces the refund amount by the cost of shipping. This Apple Watch is likely a safe bet, but you'll want to quickly determine whether or not you intend to keep it.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Visual media has come a long way since the first proto-human cave dwellers used the flickering of torch light to bring the hand-drawn art on their walls to life. Today, the pixel — despite its humble, low-resolution origins — sits as the current pinnacle of digital display technology. In his new book, Biography of the Pixel, Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith examines the fascinating history and development of picture elements (hence "pix"-"el") from their often-contested start in the labs of pioneering computer researchers like Alan Turing to their ubiquitous presence in modern life. In the excerpt below, Smith takes a look at the bad old days before digital displays to explain the science behind our brain's' ability to perceive motion through the rapid flashing of static images.
What did the inventors of cinema do (or not) to make the system they gave us so non-ideal? First, they didn’t give us instantaneous samples as required by sampling. Film frames are fat. They have duration. The camera shutter is open for a short exposure time. A moving object moves during that short interval, and so smears slightly across the frame during the film exposure time. It’s like what happens when you try to take a long-exposure still photo of your child throwing a ball and his arm is just a blur. This turns out to be a saving grace of cinema as it was actually practiced.
Second, they made it so each frame is projected twice (at least) by the projector. Ouch! That’s not sampling at all. Why did the inventors do that? Simple economics demanded it: 24 frames per second costs half as much film as 48 frames per second. But the eye needs to be refreshed about 50 times per second, or the retinal image fades between frames. Actually, 48 is close enough to 50 to work in a dark theater. How do you get 48 from 24? You show each frame twice! If you show just 24 frames per second, the screen appears to flicker. Hence the “flicks” from the early days of cinema before higher frame rates were adopted.
The third thing the original inventors did was to shut off the light between projected frames. This meant that 48 times per second, nothing (blackness) was projected into the eye — inside the pupil, onto the retina. It’s convenient for movie machines — both the camera and projector part — to “shutter” to blackness like this between frames. It allows time for the mechanical advancement of the next film frame into position. In a camera, it keeps the film from recording the real world during the physical advancement of the film. In a projector, it keeps the moving film out of eyesight as it’s physically advanced.
When you ask how a movie projector works, some people say something like this: There’s a top reel of film which is the source of film, and a bottom take-up reel. The film moves from reel to reel and passes between the light source of the projector and its lens, which magnifies the frame-size image up to screen size. In other words, the film moves continuously past the light source. But that doesn’t work. The eye sees exactly what’s there, and with this scheme the eye would see one frame sliding away as the next frame slides in from the opposite side. It would see the sliding. And that won’t work.
What a projector actually does is exactly this: It brings each frame into fixed position with the light source blocked. That’s the function of the shutter. Then the shutter opens and the illuminated frame projects onto the screen. Then the shutter closes. Then it opens again, and the illuminated frame is projected a second time onto the screen. Then the shutter closes and the next frame slides into position, and so forth.
We’ve just described the discrete, or intermittent, movement of film through a projector, as opposed to unworkable continuous movement. The same idea holds for a camera. The physical device that implements this action is called, in fact, an intermittent movement. This is the key notion in cinema history that is comparable to the conditional branch instruction in computer history. The mad rush to the movie machine turned on who first got a projector to work correctly, and that hinged on who got an intermittent movement working properly. It’s a defining notion.
To recap: An actual film-based movie projector doesn’t reconstruct a continuous visual flow from the frame samples and present this to the eye. Instead, it sends “fat samples” — thick with time duration and smeared motion — directly to the eye’s retina. It sends each frame twice, and it sends blackness between. It’s up to the brain to reconstruct motion from these inputs. How does that work?
Somehow the eye-brain system “reconstructs the visual flow” that’s represented by the fat visual samples it receives. Of course, it really does no such thing. Light intensities come in through the pupil as input. But the output from the eye to the brain, through the optic nerve, is an electrochemical pulse train. Neuronal pulse trains aren’t visual flows. It could be that the retina actually does reconstruct a visual flow and then converts it to pulse trains for brain consumption. The responses of some of the neurons in the eye certainly suggest the spreader function, complete with a high positive hump and negative lobes. But brain activity is beyond the scope of this book. Let’s concentrate instead on the customary explanations of the perception of motion from sequences of still snapshots.
Perception of Motion
The classic explanation is hoary old persistence of vision. It’s a real characteristic of human vision: once an image stimulus to the retina ceases, we continue to perceive the image there for a short while. But persistence of vision explains only why you don’t see the blackness between frames in the case of film-based movies. If an actor or an animated character moves to a new position between frames then — by persistence of vision — you should see him in both positions: two Humphrey Bogarts, two Buzz Lightyears. In fact, your retinas do see both, one fading out as the other comes in—each frame is projected long enough to ensure this. That’s persistence of vision. But it doesn’t explain why you perceive one moving object, not two objects at different positions. What your brain does with the information from the retinas determines whether you perceive two Bogarts in two different positions or one Bogart moving between them.
Psychophysicists have performed experiments to determine the characteristics of another real brain phenomenon, called apparent motion. The experiments don’t explain how the brain perceives motion, but they do describe the limitations of the phenomenon. A small white dot on a black background is presented to a subject’s retina. Then that dot is removed, and another dot is presented in a different position. The experimenters can vary two things, the spatial separation of the two dots and the time delay between position change. The brain perceives one dot here and another dot there, but only if the distance and delays are long enough. If the distance and delays are short, the brain perceives that the dot moves from one position to the other. It’s apparent motion because no actual motion is presented to the eye. The brain perceives what it doesn’t see.
Motion Blur
Persistence of vision is such that we still perceive the first image when the second one arrives. That sounds a lot like frame spreading. A frame of short duration spreads out in time and adds to the next frame also spread out in time. It’s as if the retina does the image spreading and the adding of successive spread frames. Something like this must be going on because we perceive a continuous visual field although the film projector doesn’t present one. You can think of the shape of the persistence function of the eye as the shape of the frame spreader that’s built into us human perceivers. Another reason we can assume that the eye-brain system must be doing a reconstruction, one that implicitly uses the Sampling Theorem, is because we perceive exactly the errors we would expect if that were the actual mechanism—such as wagon wheels spinning backward.
Classic cel animation — of the old ink-on-celluloid variety — relies on the apparent-motion phenomenon. The old animators knew intuitively how to keep the successive frames of a movement inside its “not too far, not too slow” boundaries. If they needed to exceed those limits, they had tricks to help us perceive the motion. They drew actual speed lines, which showed the brain the direction of motion and implied that it was fast, like a blur. Or they provided a POOF of dust to mark the rapid descent of Wile E. Coyote as he stepped unexpectedly off a mesa in hot pursuit of that truly wily Road Runner. They provided a visual language that the brain could interpret.
Exceed the apparent motion limits — without those animators’ tricks — and the results are ugly. You may have seen old school stop-motion animations — such as Ray Harryhausen’s classic sword-fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) — that are plagued by an unpleasant jerking motion of the characters. You’re seeing double, at least — several edges of a skeleton at the same time — and correctly interpret it as motion, but painfully so. The edges stutter, or “judder,” or “strobe” across the screen. Those words reflect the pain inflicted by staccato motion.
Live-action movies are sequences of discrete frames just like animations. Why don’t these movies stutter? (Imagine directing Uma Thurman to stay within “not too far, not too slow” limits.) There’s a general explanation that works. It’s called motion blur, and it’s simple and pretty. A frame that’s recorded by a real movie camera is fat with duration. It’s not a sample at a single instant like a Road Runner or a Harryhausen frame. Motion blur is what you see in a still photograph when the subject moves and the shutter isn’t fast enough to stop the motion. In still photographs, it’s often an unintended result, but it turns out to be a feature in movies. Without the blur all movies would look as jerky as Harryhausen’s skeletons—unless Uma miraculously stayed within limits. The motion blur of moving objects in a fat frame gives clues to the brain about what is moving and what is not. The direction of a blur gives the direction of motion, and its length indicates the speed. Somehow, mysteriously, the brain converts that spatial information — the blurs — into temporal information and then perceives motion with the help of the apparent motion phenomenon.
One day after Apple confirmed plans for new software that will allow it to detect images of child abuse on users’ iCloud photos, Facebook’s head of WhatsApp says he is “concerned” by the plans.
In a thread on Twitter, Will Cathcart called it an “Apple built and operated surveillance system that could very easily be used to scan private content for anything they or a government decides it wants to control.” He also raised questions about how such a system may be exploited in China or other countries, or abused by spyware companies.
A spokesperson for Apple disputed Cathcart's characterization of the software, noting that users can choose to disable iCloud Photos. Apple has also said that the system is only trained on a database of “known” images provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other organizations, and that it wouldn’t be possible to make it work in a regionally-specific way since it’s baked into iOS.
This is an Apple built and operated surveillance system that could very easily be used to scan private content for anything they or a government decides it wants to control. Countries where iPhones are sold will have different definitions on what is acceptable.
Can this scanning software running on your phone be error proof? Researchers have not been allowed to find out. Why not? How will we know how often mistakes are violating people’s privacy?
It’s not surprising that Facebook would take issue with Apple’s plans. Apple has spent years bashing Facebook over its record on privacy, even as the social network has embraced end-to-end encryption. More recently, the companies have clashed over privacy updates that have hindered Facebook’s ability to track its users, an update the company has said will hurt its advertising revenue.
