Version 6.14.0 of Framework
Mono has been announced.
This is the first release of Framework Mono from its new home at
WineHQ. It includes work from the past 5 years that was never included
in a stable release because no stable branch had been created in that
time. Highlights are native support for ARM64 on macOS and many
improvements to windows forms for X11.
See the release
notes for a full list of new features and plans for future
releases.
Every once in a while, you come across a beautiful app that makes you smile whenever you use it. Tinker is one of those apps for me. It allows you to create beautiful analog clock widgets for your iPhone, and its attention to detail is remarkable. It has a few curated designs to get you started, but you can also bring in your own clock faces and customize every aspect of the widget. The best part—it works with StandBy mode.
In addition to your calendar, the iPhone’s StandBy mode lets you view photos, live activities, or a clock when the iPhone is charging in landscape mode, essentially turning it into a convincing substitute for a real alarm clock. Tinker adds far more options for the analog clock widget, and for me, the result is a lot nicer than the clock widgets Apple supplies.
I quite like the design language of Tinker, too, which reminds me of the skeuomorphic designs that iOS had embraced until 2014, when iOS 7 moved in a different direction. Tinker’s app icons mimic the gears in a watch, and the buttons have a neat brushed metal look. All of this will appeal to the kind of person who enjoys analog watches in this digital age. Once you start creating your own watch face in the app, you’ll be able to customize four aspects of it—the background, the hour hand, the minute hand, and the center piece. While you’re doing that, you’ll notice another neat detail—the watch face accurately shows you the current time even while you’re customizing the widget.
There are a few templates available to get you started, and the app directs you to a Discord server if you want even more assets. You’re also free to download assets from the internet and add them on your own. This gives you a lot of customizability. Once you’ve found or created a watch face, you can easily add it as a widget on your iPhone’s home screen. Press and hold an empty part of the home screen and tap the Edit button in the top-left corner. Select Add Widget and search for Tinker. You’ll be able to select any of your saved watch faces and add it to the home screen.
Similarly, once you’re in StandBy mode, you can tap and hold the clock widget and replace it with one of Tinker’s watch faces instead. The app is free for up to two watch faces, and has a one-time $4 unlock to remove that limit.
I really don’t know why Apple still stubbornly refuses to let you use your own watch faces on the Apple Watch, but if it ever decides to change its mind, Tinker is exactly the kind of app that I’d use to customize mine. I don’t care too much about adding complications to my watch face, but I do care a lot about how the watch face looks. With Tinker, I’ve already found a few designs that I’d like to use on the Apple Watch over the included options. Here’s hoping Apple caves and lets you use your own watch faces with Tinker some day.
I’ve gotten all the…
ZA/UM Studio, the entity which at one point released Disco Elysium, a critically acclaimed detective RPG about navigating the ruins of capitalism and solving a murder, has finally revealed its next game nearly six years later. Instead of Disco Elysium 2, it’s a spy RPG still mostly shrouded in secrecy called Project[…
“As a leader in AI, NVIDIA continues to push the boundaries of innovation in accelerated computing, physical AI, agentic AI, and scientific discovery—turning yesterday’s…
When it comes to your important data, you should always have a backup. And then a backup of that backup. Cloud storage services shouldn’t be your whole strategy here, but they can help with that. Sometimes, you just don’t have enough physical space to store all the photos you’ve taken over your life, or all your ebooks and work documents. Plus, there is the convenience factor of syncing your files between all the devices that you use, so that a document you drafted up on your iPad can instantly show up on your Mac or your Windows PC.
That said, picking a cloud storage service isn’t as easy as it used to be. Now that so much of our cloud usage is tied to platforms and ecosystems, your cloud service will really depend on the devices you use.
If you’re all in on the Android or Google ecosystem, Google One would be the best plan for you. With every Google account, you get 15GB storage for free that’s distributed between services like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. But you can add more storage at just $.99 a month for 100GB and $2.99 for 200GB.
With Google One, your Photos are backed up to Google automatically, you’re able to upload and share large files on Google Drive, and you won’t have to worry about running out of storage in Gmail. Google Drive’s web app is solid, and there are desktop app options too. Plus, the per TB rates are quite competitive, and even cheaper than Microsoft’s.
The 2 TB Premium plan might be best for most users. It’s $10 per month, or $100 per year, and supports family sharing (as do the cheaper plans). Plus, you get 10% back on purchases from the Google Store and Google Workspace Premium. If 2TB isn’t enough, you can add additional storage all the way up to 30TB, though at a cost of up to $150/year.
Microsoft’s policy of stuffing every possible value-added service into a single plan is still going strong. This is why Microsoft 365 is so popular with businesses. A single plan provides you with access to the entire Office suite and Microsoft Teams for Enterprise, shared with multiple users. Every user gets 5GB OneDrive storage for free, and a Microsoft 365 subscription boosts that up to 1TB. Sadly, unlike with Google One, there are no plans in between these options.
While 365’s enterprise offerings are popular, the Microsoft 365 Family plan offers a similar package for individuals. This plan supports all the paid Office apps, Copilot AI, and 6TB of storage space, split across 6 accounts, making it a great deal for family users, or for splitting with your friends. It costs $12.99 per month, or $129.99 per year.
If you don’t want to use multiple accounts, the per TB value for a single account at $9.99/month doesn’t make the most sense. In that case, it’s better to look at alternatives.
iDrive is a popular choice when it comes to data backups, or storing copies of whole drives on the cloud. But while it’s not a pure storage solution, its file sharing and collaboration features make it competitive with the other choices on this list. The service provides a generous 10GB plan for free.
A downside is there’s no productivity suite built-in here, since individual files aren’t really the focus with this service, but a benefit to the backup mindset is that iDrive does provide end-to-end encryption, although it needs to be enabled by the user. And if you forget your encryption key, you’ll lose access to all your files.
Still, you can use iDrive to upload data from your computer, and you can share it with others. The 5TB plan will cost you $69.96 for the first year. There’s also a 10TB plan for $105 for the first year.
If what you’re looking for is security, and you don’t need a lot of features, Proton might be for you. The Proton Unlimited plan gives you access to Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Docs, and gives you 500GB of storage space for either $12.99 per month or $120 per year. The 1TB Proton Duo plan will cost you $15 per month instead. When it comes to free storage, Proton only offers 1GB space for free users.
That’s more expensive than established cloud syncing services, but what Proton offers you is extra peace of mind. You get encrypted storage, and no one, including Proton, has access to your files. Plus, the company is based in Switzerland, so strict Swiss privacy rules and laws apply here.
Sync offers a dependable cloud storage alternative to the big companies. It keeps things extremely simple. It’s just about storing and syncing files between devices and between different platforms. There are on add-ons, no mail accounts, no document apps, nothing. Like the good-old days of Dropbox.
The free plan gives you 5GB space, and you get 2TB storage for $96/year, which is around the same price as iCloud+ or Google Drive. Here, you get client-side encryption, so Sync can’t access your data. Sync offers simple and lightweight apps for Mac and Windows and there are mobile clients, too. Anything you transfer to the Sync folder on your device will show up in your Sync account instantly. There are no file limits here, too. Now that Dropbox has become so bloated (more on that later), Sync offers a simpler alternative that is easy to use.
pCloud is another secure cloud backup provider that has two things going for it. The first is that it offers 10GB of storage space for free—this is way more than most of its competitors. Second is that it offers lifetime cloud storage for a one-time fee. This is a good choice for users who don’t like paying a monthly fee.
At time of writing, you can get 500GB space for $199 and 2TB storage space for $399. pCloud also has annual plans, but at $99 per year for 2TB storage space, it’s not something I would recommend (you can get a Google One or iCloud+ plans for the same rate).
iCloud+ is designed for users in the Apple ecosystem, which is where it makes the most sense. iCloud+ is useful not just as a storage service, but it’s where users’ settings and device data are backed up, too. If you’re all-in on the Apple ecosystem, it might make sense to use iCloud+ as your default cloud storage provider, as it makes it easy to sync photos, videos, and documents from your Mac. iCloud+ is another service that focuses highly on privacy, offering end-to-end encryption.
A free iCloud account gets you 5GB storage, and Cloud+ offers flexible plans, too, starting at $0.99 for 50GB storage. The 2TB plan for $9.99 per month or $99 per year might be the sweet spot for most users, as it comes with family sharing (the 200GB plan can be shared with family as well). Though, I wouldn’t recommend iCloud+ if you’re even slightly cross-platform, or you want to frequently access files from the web browser, as the Windows app and the iCloud+ website are not great, especially when compared to the rivals on this list.
One name that’s missing from this list is Dropbox. In the previous decade, Dropbox became the go-to option for simple, cross-platform storage that didn’t cost a king’s ransom, or even anything at all. Now, a free Dropbox account can only run on three devices, is limited to 2GB data, and has lower transfer speeds compared to their paid plans.
The app has also pivoted to being more business focused, with lots of support for third-party integration. Its storage plans are no longer the cheapest or the most varied. The 2TB plan costs $11.99/month while both iCloud and Google One are cheaper.
The simple-to-use aspect is gone as well. The Mac app, for example, has faced so many issues with reliability that we recommend you use a third-party app instead. Combine all these issues, and it no longer makes sense to use Dropbox in a personal capacity.
SpaceX’s Starlink has secured its first agreement in India, partnering with telecommunications leader Bharti Airtel to bring high-speed satellite internet to the world’s most populous country, the companies announced Tuesday [PDF].
The landmark deal will enable Starlink to tap into Airtel’s extensive retail network and ground infrastructure while expanding its global reach into previously underserved regions across India, pending regulatory authorizations.
“We are excited to work with Airtel and unlock the transformative impact Starlink can bring to the people of India,” said Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. “The team at Airtel has played a pivotal role in India’s telecom story, so working with them to complement our direct offering makes great sense for our business.”
The collaboration will explore selling Starlink equipment through Airtel’s retail stores and offering services to business customers while connecting communities in rural areas with limited connectivity.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple is reportedly changing everything for iOS 19, aiming to make your iPhone Home screen look more like the Vision Pro.
This is a video of the fun-loving Aussies of Youtube channel How Ridiculous living my dream and overinflating a variety of different objects until they explode. Objects include hot water bottles (this guy: hold my beer), 5 gallon buckets, a variety of different sports balls, and an exercise ball. The crew bets on each explosion as well, and betting makes everything better. I mean, unless you have a gambling problem. Thankfully, that seems to be the ONE problem I’ve managed to avoid in life. Wanna bet on how long it lasts?
Elon Musk is now claiming that bad actors in Ukraine are behind an alleged cyberattack that caused outages on his social media platform X on Monday.
In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”
Musk admitted that “we don’t know exactly what happened”—nodding as his comments were characterized as a suspicion and discussing no evidence—but alleged that the attackers were trying to take down the entire X platform.
The launch of a brand-new Monster Hunter is always a chance to dive into a fantastical world, with exciting characters and gameplay mechanics. But it also leaves plenty of questions. For example, how long does it take to finish Monster Hunter Wilds? Well, it’s something of a trick question, as the story mode is more…
Microsoft’s VP of ‘Next Generation’ says changes are coming in 2025.
by Tom Warren and Sean Hollister…
A year ago, we called the M3 version of the MacBook Air “just about as good as laptops get.”
The “as good as laptops get” part was about the qualitative experience of using the laptop, which was (and is) good-enough-to-great at just about everything a general-purpose laptop needs to be able to do. The “just about” part was mainly about the cost because to be happy with it long-term, it was a good idea for just about everybody to spend an extra $200 upgrading it from 8GB to 16GB of RAM. Apple also kept the M2 version of the Air in the lineup to hit its $999 entry-level price point; the M3 cost $100 extra.
Apple fixed the RAM problem last fall when it increased the minimum amount of RAM across the entire Mac lineup from 8GB to 16GB without increasing prices. Though Apple probably did it to help enable additional Apple Intelligence features down the line, nearly anything you do with your Mac will eventually benefit from extra memory, whether you’re trying to use Photoshop or Logic Pro or even if you’re just opening more than a couple of dozen browser tabs at once.
Even three years later, AMD’s high-end X3D-series processors still aren’t a thing that most people need to spend extra money on—under all but a handful of circumstances, your GPU will be the limiting factor when you’re running games, and few non-game apps benefit from the extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache that is the processors’ calling card. They’ve been a reasonably popular way for people with old AM4 motherboards to extend the life of their gaming PCs, but for AM5 builds, a regular Zen 4 or Zen 5 CPU will not bottleneck modern graphics cards most of the time.
But high-end PC building isn’t always about what’s rational, and people spending $2,000 or more to stick a GeForce RTX 5090 into their systems probably won’t worry that much about spending a couple hundred extra dollars to get the fastest CPU they can get. That’s the audience for the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D, a 16-core, Zen 5-based, $699 monster of a processor that AMD begins selling tomorrow.
If you’re only worried about game performance (and if you can find one), the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the superior choice, for reasons that will become apparent once we start looking at charts. But if you want fast game performance and you need as many CPU cores as you can get for other streaming or video production or rendering work, the 9950X3D is there for you. (It’s a little funny to me that this a chip made almost precisely for the workload of the PC building tech YouTubers who will be reviewing it.) It’s also a processor that Intel doesn’t have any kind of answer to.
The Apple MacBook Air M4 is a fast, quality productivity machine and it now starts at its lowest base price. I just wish it were more blue.
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