Maximum PC June 2019

new gear is coming thick and fast; pick your parts carefully

THE GRAPHICS CARD MARKET continues to be an odd beast: In the last few months, we’ve gone from having no affordable new cards to play with, to having almost too many options. And there are more on the way, meaning that the crowded landscape is going to get even more confusing. Knowing what hardware to focus on is where we come in, and whether you’re upgrading an existing machine or building one from scratch, you can rely on us to tell you what really matters. When it comes to affordable graphics cards, there are a few options for anyone not interested in the first generation of RTX cards: from last-gen AMD and Nvidia cards, to the new GeForce GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti. You’ll find a review of the 1660 on…

intel’s enterprise division’s big day

MANUFACTURERS LOVE events, and last month it was the turn of Intel’s Enterprise team to get o ut o f t he o ffice a t t he Data-Centric Innovation Day, and show off what’s new for big data, which also tends to highlight where tech is going. The big launch was Intel’s second generation of Scalable Xeon chips, Cascade Lake. A 48-core design was expected, but we got up to 56 cores. They are still based on Skylake, but get improved core counts, clock speeds, and memory support. These are the chips to run those cloud and big data services. AMD’s rival, Rome, is due later this year, with up to 64 Zen 2 cores, providing some healthy competition. Optane DC Persistent memory also got its proper launch, now supported by…

apple and qualcomm bury hatchet

APPLE AND QUALCOMM were at each other’s throats mere weeks ago, embroiled in a huge legal battle over royalty payments. Apple challenged Qualcomm’s right to charge what it did, and Qualcomm wanted Apple to pay a proportion of its iPhone revenue it owed, which it claimed had reached over $7 billion. At the start of April, pundits still claimed the chance of any deal was minimal, and it looked set to follow the pattern of Apple’s seven-year legal war with Samsung over smartphone patents. The case even got as far as the opening statements. Then, in a move that almost nobody saw coming, the two firms signed an agreement to drop all outstanding legal actions. Apple is to pay Qualcomm an undisclosed sum (rumored to be around $6 billion), and sign…

facebook has your contact list, possibly

FACEBOOK IS HAVING a hard time keeping out of the news for its data infringements. This time, it has been harvesting people’s email contact lists without permission, since May 2016. Until recently, it had been asking some new users to enter their email account passwords in order to verify their account. Facebook says this was when people signed in on systems that didn’t support the OAuth security protocol. It now seems this action prompted Facebook to download your email contact list to its servers, and use it to construct a map of your social circle. Facebook claims all this was “unintentional,” and it had removed the previous voluntary system prompts, but failed to remove the process. A recent poll of security professionals put trust in Facebook at about a quarter. Making…

samsung’s folding phones fail

SAMSUNG’S NEW Galaxy Fold has a problem. The first batch, sent to reviewers, have seen screens fail at an alarming rate. Reviewers can be hamfisted, and some had removed a polymer layer from the screen that you aren’t supposed to touch. It looks like a screen protector, but isn’t. However, it soon emerged that they were not alone in finding the Fold to be fragile, as reports worldwide emerged of screen failures after days of use. It seems the polymer layer removal is a separate issue, and something more serious was happening. After investigation, Samsung has delayed the phone’s launch. Something has gone wrong between the design, production, and testing, despite building a robot that opened and closed the phone 200,000 times to test the hinge. This is embarrassing, and has…

tech triumphs and tragedies

TRIUMPHS ✓ 5PB BLACK HOLE PIC The data used to generate the picture needed 1,000lb of HDDs, moved by airplane; the Internet would have been too slow. ✓ AMAZON/GOOGLE PEACE The settled spat means we can look forward to YouTube on Fire TV Sticks, and Amazon Prime Video on Chromecast devices. ✓ WIN 10 UPDATE CHOICE The upcoming Windows Update will finally enable you to choose when your machine updates. TRAGEDIES ✗ FTC LOOKS AT LOOT BOXES The Federal Trade Commission is to investigate the fairness of loot boxes, often seen as gambling. ✗ NATIONAL PARK NO-NO The maker of a drone landed in hot water after a promo video was revealed to have been filmed in Yellowstone, a no-drone territory. ✗ MICROSOFT EMAIL HACK A vulnerability in a customer support account has lead to hackers swiping people’s email details and personal profiles.…