The Morning After: Previewing macOS Ventura

Apple is trying to reshape the way people work on Macs. Stage Manager in macOS Ventura might seem like a quick visual way to swap between your recently used applications, but according to Devindra Hardawar, who’s been testing the first Ventura public beta over the past week, Apple may have solved the window management issues that have plagued Macs since OS X.

I’m particularly intrigued by Stage Manager’s ability to group apps together and, crucially, remember exactly where you position your windows. I’m sure Windows users are rolling their eyes as they read this.

And if you’re intrigued, Apple's iOS 16, macOS Ventura and watchOS 9 public betas are . The usual warning applies with OS betas: There may be some bugs Apple hasn't detected and resolved. Be sure to back up your data before installing, please! And let us know how you fare.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Even more taming of your group chats.

Nothing has helped WhatsApp feel more contemporary than emoji reactions to messages, ensuring your group chats don’t descend into barrages of heart or crying-laughing icons. Now, the messaging app is boosting that number to the entire emoji lexicon, an increase from six to 3,500.

Popular now

‘NextGen TV' Broadcasts Now on the Air in DC

Continue reading.

‘Need for Speed Heat,’ anyone?

Amazon's free Prime Gaming downloads for Prime Day include BioWare's Mass Effect Legendary Edition. The compilation bundles all the single-player base games of the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with improved 4K graphics and adjusted gameplay. It also comes with over 40 items of downloadable content, including some pretty substantial DLC story campaigns. Amazon’s barrage of free games also includes Need for Speed Heat, and three Star Wars games, namely Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Republic Commando.

Continue reading.

The tool could one day allow editors to correct footnotes at scale.

Meta has developed an AI model to automatically scan Wikipedia citations at scale to verify their accuracy. It can also suggest alternative citations when it finds a poorly sourced passage. When Wikipedia's human editors evaluate citations, they rely on common sense and experience. When an AI does the same work, it uses a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) transformation model that attempts to understand the various relationships of words and phrases in a sentence. Hopefully, such AI tools will help avoid problems like when a US teen wrote 27,000 Wikipedia entries .

Continue reading.

Our favorite machines for classes on campus, online and everywhere in between.

Whether you’re heading to a physical campus, taking classes online or a mix of both, a laptop is sure to be the control center for your studies. Getting a new machine can help you stay on top of your schedule and handle your furious multitasking with dozens of tabs devoted to research while you write your essays.

Given we’re still dealing with ongoing inflation and the global chip supply shortage, you might be concerned about rising prices or what might be in stock. The good news is companies are still making a ton of new laptops, and there are plenty of models for you to consider. We compiled this guide to help you make the right choice, alongside a list of this year’s best laptops.

Continue reading.