This week, on a more focused episode of The TT Show, Jak and Kosta break down and go through the crazy Helldivers 2 controversy on PC. If you were offline for a few days (and this all played out throughout a single weekend), the decision to force the Helddivers 2's PC players to link their Steam Account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account caused a veritable backlash storm.

From the review bombing to developers being grilled to Sony and developer Arrowhead's damage control to the surprisingly swift happy ending, Jak and Kosta discuss the implications and consider what might happen in the aftermath.

This week's other big story comes from the world of Apple, with the company lifting the lid on its new iPad Pro lineup powered by the new AI-powered 3 nanometer M4 chip. The big thing here is that it represents Apple's first dip into the world of OLED displays, with a groundbreaking 1000-nit SDR and HDR screen that has two OLED panels in one!

Samsung has reportedly failed to pass specific stages of HBM3E memory verification standards from NVIDIA, which is surely going to cause a headache for the South Korean memory giant.

SK hynix has been pumping out HBM3 and now HBM3E while still preparing not just the next-generation HBM4 memory, but even HBM4E memory... while South Korean HBM rival, Samsung, can't get its act together with HBM3 memory for NVIDIA according to Korean news outlet AlphaBiz.

Samsung has reportedly failed qualification tests for its HBM3 8-layer memory, which is a serious situation to be in considering how bleeding-edge HBM is, and how Samsung has been acting in an emergency-style manner to get its HBM business flourishing... and now this gigantic roadblock, as NVIDIA prepares its beefed-up Hopper H200 AI GPU, and next-generation Blackwell B100, B200, and GB200 AI GPUs which all use HBM3E memory.

Arm is developing its own artificial intelligence (AI) chips, with the first AI chips made by the company expected to launch in 2025.

The UK-based company will spool up an AI chip division that will deliver a prototype AI chip by spring 2025 according to a report from Reuters. The mass production of Arm's new AI chip will be handled by contract manufacturers -- TSMC -- and is expected to start in autumn 2025.

Arm Holdings is a SoftBank Group subsidiary -- SoftBank owns a 90% share in Arm -- with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son preparing a huge $64 billion strategy to transform SoftBank into a powerhouse AI company. Negotiations are reportedly already happening with TSMC and others to secure production capacity.

Microsoft is ushering in fresh AI capabilities for its Edge browser, and this new work pertains to customizing the app.

Windows Latest was keen-eyed enough to spot that an incoming feature called the 'AI theme generator' for Edge is part of a Microsoft 365 roadmap.

It'll work pretty much as you'd expect: you tell the AI what kind of theme you want via a simple text prompt, and it'll knock up some concepts along those lines that you can peruse.

The Google Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and 9 Pro XL aren't expected to be released until later this year but that hasn't stopped them all from leaking ahead of time. Google has long had a problem with leaks, but this is early even by the company's standards - we don't expect Google to officially unveil these devices until October.

Regardless, new images shared by Rozetked appear to give us a full look at what these new phones will have to offer, huge Pixel 9 Pro XL and all. The new phones are set to replace the current Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, adding the XL to the lineup. And that big phone is clearly a big phone as the image below shows - that's an iPhone 15 Pro Max that it's making look small, there.

Questions will obviously now be asked about how these phones have leaked but if we ignore that for a moment, we can probably all agree that these devices look good. The camera bar around the back doesn't cover the full width of the device, which isn't necessarily anything more than a potential marketing problem.

Apple has historically come out on top in terms of the company that makes the most satisfied customers in terms of the phone that they bought. In 2023 Apple just about beat out Samsung according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) but things have changed in 2024.

The new report, shared by the ACSI, shows that Apple and Samsung are now both tied for the top spot with 82% customer satisfaction. Google is in third with Motorola (Lenovo) in fourth spot. Both companies have a score of 77%, while all other manufacturers combined were only able to manage a score of 72%.

The report came after ASCI interviewed almost 12,500 consumers who were chosen at random between April 2023 and March 2024. In terms of iPhone owners, customer satisfaction increased slightly from 81% to 82% while Samsung saw its score leap from 80% to 82% year over year. Overall, smartphone satisfaction increased by 3% while Google was the only company listed to suffer a fall - down to 77% from 78%.

When the European Union forced Apple to allow third-party app stores on the iPhone, Apple suggested that its own App Store was key to ensuring that the company could keep its users safe. It's the same argument that it's used whenever the topic of the App Store and its payment processing systems has come under fire by lawmakers, and now the company has shared details that it believes help back up that stance. According to Apple, the App Store prevented $7 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions across a four-year time span.

The time span in question ran from 202 to 2023, Apple's press release says, with the transactions including more than $1.8 billion worth in 2023 alone. In the same period, Apple says, the company blocked more than 14 million stolen credit cards and more than 3.3 million accounts from transacting again.

The press release goes on, saying that in 2023 it rejected more than 1.7 million app submissions that failed to stick to the App Store's standards for privacy, security, and content. Apple also terminated almost 374 million developer and customer accounts and removed close to 152 million ratings and reviews over concerns that they could potentially be fraudulent.

After weeks of beta testing, Apple released the iOS 17.5 software update to the world yesterday, bringing with it a couple of new features related to the Apple News app and support for early warnings related to potential item tracker stalking. But while the update might have been lacking in terms of the sheer number of new features, it certainly made up for that in terms of the number of security fixes it implemented.

Apple has now published a new support document that details the new fixes that have been applied as a result of iOS 17.5 and there's quite a lot of them. In fact, there are no fewer than 15 new security fixes that will be applied when people install iOS 17.5 on their iPhones at home.

We tend to suggest that people regularly update their iPhones and other devices to ensure that they are running the latest software for a variety of reasons. One of those is compatibility, ensuring that you and your apps can make use of the latest APIs and whatnot. Another is to make sure you're using the latest and greatest versions of the apps that Apple ships by default, including Safari, Mail, and others.

When Apple announced its new M4 iPad Pro and the revamped M2 iPad Air last week it detailed plenty of new features that buyers will be able to take advantage of, but it turns out that there was one change that the company didn't mention. According to a new report, Apple's new iPads will sport an exclusive battery health menu including a new option.

The report, coming from iCulture, says that an additional Battery Health Menu can be found under Settings, Battery on the new iPad Pro and iPad Air. The menu shows the current battery health, maximum battery capacity, cycle count, and the option to choose the 80% battery optimization option that prevents the iPad from being charged beyond the 80% mark.

These options are not available as part of the iPadOS 17.5 update on other iPads despite having been found in code in recent beta updates before iPadOS 17.5 was released to the public. At the time it was suggested that the new features may be exclusive to the new iPads, and that now appears to have been proven correct.

The brand-new M4 iPad Pro is quite the beast of a machine as early reviews have already attested to. But while the new OLED display is said to be as impressive as Apple claimed during its announcement event, that doesn't mean that it isn't without its issues. One issue in particular relates to the way it displays HDR content, and Apple is reportedly already aware of the issue.

The issue was first reported by iMore and it's difficult to explain. The way we understand it is that some HDR highlights are blown out when certain shades of blue are shown on-screen. Instead of being blue as you might expect, they appear almost white which creates a strange-looking effect and one that definitely isn't the iPad working as intended.

The report says that the same issue isn't available on an iPhone 15 Pro, a Samsung TV, or the M2 11-inch iPad Pro, suggesting that the problem is indeed specific to the hot new OLED display found in the M4 iPad Pro. If you have a new iPad Pro you can test the issue for yourself using the Dolby Vision stream of Strange Things Series 3 on Netflix. The example given is the 25-minute mark of the fifth episode in which you see characters making their way down a long corridor. Around the edge of a blue shirt is a clear white hue, something that definitely shouldn't be there.

If you're waiting for the Apple Store to open on May 15 so you can rush in and buy one of Apple's shiny new M2 iPad Airs, you probably aren't alone. But as excited as you might be and as impressive as the M2 chip is, there is always going to be something better - and according to a new leak, the M3 iPad Air is already something that we should all be considering.

That leak comes via a private X account that has a proven track record of sharing information about future Apple products and has been picked up by MacRumors. According to that report, the next iPad Air to come out of Apple Park will ditch the current M2 chip in favor of the M3, the same chip that powers the latest and best Macs right now.

That of course isn't all that surprising when you look at Apple's history of updating iPads and iterating the chip, but it does mean that the iPad Air won't skip the M3 and go straight to the M4. That's exactly what the new iPad Pro did of course, but it seems that the M3 iPad Air will be a thing - although we don't yet know when that will happen.