PCWorld June 2018

Google always pulls out the stops for the keynote at its annual I/O developer conference, and this year was no exception. Google I/O 2018 lacked the flashy flagship hardware that defined previous keynotes—nary a new Chromebook, Pixel, or Google Home could be found—but it still managed to shine, thanks to some serious improvements to the software and services underlying the entire Google ecosystem. Hardware’s nothing without software that tells it what to do, after all. And at I/O 2018, Google’s software was focused squarely on making the Internet more about you through the power of machine learning. Let’s dig in. GMAIL SMART COMPOSE Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked things off with Smart Compose, which is basically Gmail’s Smart Reply cranked to 11. Whereas Smart Reply would scan your emails and intelligently offer buttons…

We leave Microsoft’s Build developer conference with more questions than answers about the state of Windows, and that’s not a good thing. We wrote rather optimistically about a March reorganization that erased Windows from the roles of senior management. Microsoft never answered the underlying questions that reshuffling posed: Is Microsoft Windows as important as it once was? Is the PC? What will it mean for developers and users, who’ve enjoyed a steady stream of new features over the past few years, and bought into Microsoft’s unified vision of Windows phones, tablets, and PCs? These are all valid, important questions that Microsoft could have answered at Build. If you talk to Microsoft representatives, they believe they did. Windows enthusiasts might feel differently. Instead, Microsoft made a fundamental mistake that experts sometimes do, which is…

Cortana can see you. Maybe. A mysterious, cone-shaped device, shown in a demo at Microsoft’s Build event in Seattle, hinted at a big leap in capability for the company’s digital assistant: the ability to see and identify people. In the ruthless war among Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s Assistant, this is a feature we haven’t yet seen from the competition. What we don’t know is what this prototype is, and whether it will ever come out. Microsoft’s official, overshadowed demonstration showed us the conference room of the future. Microsoft incorporated Cortana, the Surface Hub, and Skype’s translation and transcription features, together with PowerBI and Microsoft Teams, into a cohesive working environment. In a presentation led by Raanah Amjadi, a marketing manager for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft showed off how simply scheduling the meeting…

In case you missed it, LG recently introduced its latest flagship phone, the G7 ThinQ, which is packed with all of the things premium smartphones need in 2018: good looks, lots of screen, a Snapdragon 845 processor, Android Oreo, AI, wireless charging, IP68 water resistance, and a dual camera. On paper, the G7 checks off all the boxes, and even when you pick it up, it feels the part, with Gorilla Glass all around and a thin, comfortable frame. Yet, the G7 isn’t going to turn many heads in 2018, partly due to LG’s fading relevance as a smartphone maker, but mostly because smartphones have hit an innovation wall. AI is still waiting for a killer use, display tech hasn’t advanced to the folding stage yet, and cameras have gotten so…

Valve’s in-home streaming tech is proving to be its most forward-thinking development. First it helped kill off the company’s own short-lived Steam Machines, with the $50 Steam Link perfectly capable of putting PC gaming in your living room without the need for another high-end PC. And now it’s putting PC gaming…well, anywhere you’d like. But probably the bathroom, if I know people. In mid-May, Valve announced that it will be releasing a free Steam Link app for iOS and Android devices by the end of the month. Like the Steam Link proper, you’ll need a somewhat decent gaming PC to run the games themselves. Valve takes care of the rest, though, streaming low-latency video of said games to basically any phone, tablet, or TV-bound device in your house. Valve claims the Steam Link…

After weeks of rumors and a counterattack by AMD’s Radeon, Nvidia is ending its mysterious, controversial GeForce Partner Program. “A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program,” Nvidia’s John Teeple wrote. “The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.” So what is the GeForce Partner Program? Despite the strong words above, Nvidia never dived into details publicly, but additional reporting suggested it was intended to keep gaming brands from Nvidia’s graphics card partners (like Asus and Gigabyte) off of Radeon hardware. Nvidia introduced the GeForce Partner Program in a vague post at the beginning of March, stating that it was “designed to ensure that gamers have full transparency into the GPU platform and software they’re being…