Apple TV+ is getting For All Mankind season 5 plus a whole new spinoff series
Fans of the hugely popular Apple TV+ series For All Mankind will be pleased to learn that the streamer has announced that it is coming back for a fifth season, and that isn't all. Apple TV+ also confirmed in a press release that it will be launching a new Star City spinoff series as well.
For All Mankind has so far managed to hold a 100% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes throughout its first four seasons which should be enough to whet the appetite for anyone who is yet to take the show for a spin. It tells the story of an alternate timeline where Russia gets to the moon before the United States and follows how that changed history, including space travel throughout the coming decades.
As for the new Star City show, Apple TV Plus says that it is a robust expansion of the For All Mankind universe and will explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain for the first time. There is currently no published release window for when the new show, or indeed the fifth season of the main For All Mankind storyline will be made available for us to binge-watch, but it's already time to get excited.
Lenovo's tiny Chromebox PC that's the size of an iPhone 16 is now on sale
Lenovo has a supremely tiny PC box that runs ChromeOS and has just gone on sale in the US, pitched at the kiosk market.
The Chromebox Micro is available at Walmart, Notebookcheck.net noticed, although it'll set you back $361 from there, and the PC is cheaper elsewhere.
Indeed, you can pick it up for $250 at CDW, which is a massive difference - the catch being that it's not currently in stock. However, it's still possible to back-order the Chromebox Micro if you wish, although there's no timeframe provided for when the PC might come back into stock.
The AltStore PAL third-party iPhone app store is now available for download in the EU
If you're an iPhone owner in the European Union, there's a new alternative app store now available for download. The AltStore PAL store is a version of the popular AltStore and is now available for download.
AltStore PAL is an open source app that will give developers a way to allow users to download their apps without having to deal with Apple's App Store rules, although there will still be requirements. Apple was forced to allow third-party app marketplaces in the EU following the implementation of the Digital Markets Act in March, and this store is one that people have been waiting on for some time.
The new store is not like the App Store however, with no repository available which means that developers will need to promote their apps via their websites and then link to the relevant app page within AltStore PAL. Developers will also be able to monetize their apps using built-in Patreon support, too.
iOS 18 tipped to sport new Notes app improvements including audio and math features
You don't need to have been following along too closely to know that Apple regularly releases big new software updates for its many different product lineups. The iPhone is at the top of that list of course, with iOS 18 expected to be announced later this year - if it sticks to its usual release schedule we expect that to happen in September. We've been seeing reports of various new features coming to that iOS 18 update, and now we're starting to learn even more, too.
Apple is yet to officially confirm the new iOS 18 update of course, but a new leak suggests that the Notes app in particular will benefit from some new capabilities. According to the report, coming out of AppleInsider, the Notes app is going to get some new features that will take an already popular note-taking app and improve it with a couple of particular features; a new audio note feature, and upgrades to the way Notes deals with math.
According to the report, Apple's Notes app will support audio messages being embedded directly into a note, allowing them to be placed alongside other content including photos and text. AppleInsider gives an example of a student taking a class and adding a recording of the audio alongside their own notes and a photo of the whiteboard. That does sound like a feature that a ton of people will make use of including people in business meetings and beyond.
Your iPhone 17 Plus could have a smaller screen than previous Plus models, analyst claims
The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models might have only been on sale for a few months and the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro handsets are still months away, but some people are already starting to turn their attention to what comes next and one of those people is Ross Young. Young is a display analyst who has his finger on the pulse of the companies within Apple's supply chain. And according to him, Apple might have something of a surprise in store for the iPhone 17 Plus.
Young was writing in a paywalled post on the X social network, picked up by 9to5Mac when he said that he had heard suggestions that the iPhone 17 Plus will actually have a smaller display than previous Plus models. As a refresher, the iPhone 15 Plus has a 6.7-inch display and all of the rumors have so far suggested that the iPhone 16 Plus will also sport the same 6.7-inch display. But according to Young, things will change when the iPhone 17 Plus rolls into town.
Young says that the iPhone 17 Plus will shrink, although he didn't share specific details on what that will actually mean in terms of measurements. He did note that it will sit between the iPhone 17/iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max, so we can expect something between 6.3 inches and 6.9 inches or thereabouts.
AMD RX 6000 GPUs appear to be selling out - is this the last chance for a cheap RDNA 2 deal?
AMD's last-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards are becoming very thin on the ground, or at least that's what we're hearing from Europe.
3D Center has its finger on the pulse of the GPU market in Germany, crunching the sales figures from a major retailer in that country, MindFactory.
The upshot is that most of the RX 6000 family of graphics cards are pretty much on their last gasp in terms of the remaining stock out there, certainly with RX 6700 models and above - save for one notable exception.
PlayStation overlay, Friends lists, and even Trophies are coming to Sony's first-party PC games
Alongside releasing the PC hardware requirements for Ghost on Tsushima Director's Cut on PC, Sony has announced that it's bringing a PlayStation overlay to its PC games. The overlay will give players access to their PlayStation Profile, Friends list, Trophies, and Settings. Yes, PlayStation Trophies are coming to PC, starting with Ghost of Tsushima.
Sony recently announced that it would double down on multiplatform releases and bring more titles to PC. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki said, "Strong titles that achieve growth on PS5, PCs, and other platforms will widen our margins. We believe that we have opportunities for margin improvement and intend to pursue them aggressively."
Introducing a dedicated overlay that connects to the PlayStation Network that brings PSN Friends lists and Trophies to PC? That sounds aggressive to us.
Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut PC specs revealed, GeForce RTX 4080 required for 4K 60 FPS
PlayStation 4 classic (the game also got a PS5 update) Ghost of Tsushima is headed to PC on May 16, with the Director's Cut version hitting the platform with the Iki Island expansion and the co-op multiplayer Legends mode. In a fantastic move, we've got confirmation that the co-op will support cross-play with PlayStation gamers.
With the talented Nixxes Software handling the port (the studio's most recent effort was the excellent Horizon Forbidden West for PC), Ghost of Tsushima will feature a range of visual enhancements on PC, including support for ultrawide displays (up to 48:9 resolutions), an uncapped frame rate, and upscaling tech that includes NVIDIA DLSS, Intel XeSS, and AMD FSR 3.
Nixxes says it has been working hard to make the game "run well on older hardware." With the PC specs and hardware requirements released today, the good news is that you'll only need a GeForce GTX 960 with 4GB of VRAM to play the game on the lowest settings. The bad news? You'll need a beast of a rig to play the game in 4K 60 FPS.
Microcenter's trade-in system values the GeForce RTX 4090 with just $700 trade-in value
Thought about trading in your expensive GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card through Microcenter's trade-in program? Don't. The company only estimates that a used RTX 4090 is worth a $700 trade-in.
Wccftech is the source of this story, where one of their readers pointed out that Microcenter's Trade-in Value for a high-end MSI GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING TRIO graphics card was just $699.95, with the same graphics card costing $1939.99 on Microcenter's website. That's not nice at all.
Of course, you're trading in a used graphics card, so you're not going to get what you paid for it from a mega-retailer like Microcenter. However, the GeForce RTX 4090 is still worth a hefty $1500+ on second-hand markets, as the RTX 4090 is still retailing for around $2000 (and over) at e-tailers like Amazon, BestBuy, and Microcenter.
Microsoft accidentally installed Copilot AI app on a version of Windows it wasn't meant for
You may have noticed that recently, there's been a bit of a fuss about a Copilot application being installed quietly on some Windows PCs without the user's knowledge - and this has happened again.
However, this time around, it's an even stranger scenario as the Copilot app in question has been pushed onto Windows Server 2022 installations in some cases.
Windows Latest picked up on this development and has spoken to Microsoft about what has gone on here. The long and short of it is that the app getting onto Windows Server 2022 is a mistake.