Plus: Xbox Gaming Pass vs Gaming PCs, and the latest from the streaming wars | What's Apple playing at? | Walmart and Paramount are taking on Amazon Prime
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Hey everyone! It's been a while, but I'm back to walk you through the most exciting and interesting tech stories of the past week, while Gareth is off doing holiday things like queuing at passport control, losing luggage and complaining to hotel staff about filthy shower curtains.
This week we’ve got some perplexing rumors about Apple’s iPhone plans, a tale of two companies teaming up to take down Amazon, and a headline so provocative towards PC gamers that I nearly spat RGB tea all over my RAM.
I hope you enjoy this Week in Review, and do send us an email (be sure to include 'NEWSLETTER' in the subject line) with your thoughts on the topics discussed, or just to wish Gareth a restful holiday. Maybe ask him why he never sends me a postcard.
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As we hurtle towards September (seriously, where has this year gone?!), rumors and hype around the iPhone 14 are reaching a fever pitch. It looks increasingly likely that Apple will showcase new iPhones at an event on September 7, but honestly, the latest rumor has put a bit of a damper on my excitement.
Do you remember the good old days when there was just one model of iPhone a year? Those were simpler times, when you could pick up the latest iPhone, choose the storage space you needed, and know that you’ve got the best, most powerful, iPhone.
These days, however, Apple has complicated things. Think the iPhone 14 will be the best iPhone to buy? Nope; there could be the iPhone 14 Pro, which will come with better features and specs. So, the iPhone 14 Pro is the best, right? Oh, my sweet summer child, no. There’s also likely to be the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Which will be more… uh… maximum.
The newest rumbling from the rumor mill has me even more concerned, however. It looks like the iPhone 14 won’t get a new design or a new chipset. Instead, the more expensive iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max will get new chipsets that come with improved performance and features, while the iPhone 14 will stick with older hardware found in the iPhone 13, making it a rather minor update.
However, the latest rumor suggests that this won’t be a one-off, but rather, the start of a new trend that will see only iPhone Pro and Pro Max models getting new chipsets in the future. So, the iPhone 15 may just be a twinkle in Tim Cook’s eye at the moment, but if you want the most powerful iPhone in 2023, it looks like you’ll need to shell out for the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max. Great. I never had this problem with the iPhone 4S.
Halo is one of the shows that Paramount Plus has to offer (Paramount Plus)
The streaming wars are certainly getting more heated, especially during this cost-of-living crisis that has led many people (including myself) to look at all the various streaming services they subscribe to and wonder if it’s worth subscribing to all of them.
While Netflix has been a notable victim of people cancelling their subscriptions after deeming it poor value for money, its big rival, Amazon Prime Video, seems to be weathering the storm better. Not only because it’s got the big-budget Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power coming on September 2, but also because it has a big built-in advantage of coming bundled with people’s Amazon Prime subscriptions. By coming with free one-day delivery from Amazon, as well as other benefits like Prime Reading, Prime Gaming and exclusive Prime Day deals, it certainly feels better value for money.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed by other rivals, and it looks like Walmart, the huge US retailer, is planning on taking on Amazon Prime by including the Paramount Plus streaming service with its Walmart Plus subscription.
It’s always good to see competitors squeeze Amazon and make sure it doesn’t get complacent, and it could give Paramount Plus a real boost as well (it’s a particularly good service for Star Trek fans). While it may not make a huge dent in Amazon Prime numbers, it will once again make Netflix look like poor value – and that’s something the beleaguered streaming service can’t afford right now. It’s just a shame Walmart Plus is only available in the US.
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Intel is a huge name in the world of computers, but it’s usually associated with processors. Of late, it has been eyeing up Nvidia and AMD’s graphics card fight and thought, ‘I want some of that’.
So, we’ve been eagerly waiting for Intel’s gaming Arc GPUs to appear… but it’s been a bit of a rocky start, with early benchmarks hinting that these graphics cards won’t be troubling AMD and Nvidia’s products when it comes to high-end gaming performance.
Since not everyone can afford ultra-powerful graphics cards, we were hoping that Intel would be a tempting alternative in the budget section of the market. Now we’re hearing rumors that Intel has been struggling in that department as well. It seems making GPUs is harder than it looks (and it looks really hard, anyway).
It does look like the first Intel Arc GPUs are finally going on sale in the US, at least, thanks to component maker ASRock. ASRock’s Challenger Arc A380 6GB desktop graphics card is available to order on newegg.com, with an expected launch date of August 22. Unlike most other GPUs, it didn’t sell out as soon as it went up for pre-order, which isn’t a great sign. It does undercut AMD and Nvidia’s budget rivals, at least, so hopefully the Arc A380 wins over PC gamers on a budget and improves Intel’s GPU fortunes. I’m looking forward to reading our review when we finally get hold of one.
Regular readers of this newsletter will likely be aware that I’m a bit of a Marvel fan, growing up reading the comics and watching the X-Men cartoon, then falling in love with the MCU movies, which managed to bring some of my favorite heroes to life.
Lately, though, I’ve found the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) a bit of a slog, with just so many films and TV shows to keep track of. It doesn’t help that when a new movie hits the theaters, instead of being excited, I start to worry about which bits of MCU media I need to watch in advance to fully understand the plot. It began to feel like homework.
However, my MCU passion could well be rekindled, as our very own Tom Power has reviewed the first episode of She-Hulk, and given it a rather glowing review, pointing out how funny it is, the talented cast and the excellent CGI.
It sounds fantastic, and with the first episode now up on Disney Plus (and new eps coming every week), I can’t wait to get stuck into it – a welcome feeling after a few years of being burnt-out.
Now, as managing editor of TechRadar’s Computing channel, it probably won’t surprise you to find out that you’d have to pry my gaming PC out of my cold, dead, hands before I ever give it up. Sure, at the moment it’s incapable of playing any games right now, as it’s currently in several pieces on my bedroom floor (an ill-fated GPU upgrade has led to a CPU, motherboard and RAM swap - I’ll be writing about that ‘experience’ next week), but I doubt Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will make me give up my PC any time soon, no matter how good it is.
So, already fuming at the headline, I read Callum’s piece with interest, and to be fair, it does sound good. Essentially, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate looks like it will soon allow you to stream games using Xbox Cloud Gaming that aren’t on Game Pass, such as Elden Ring and GTA 5, rather than just sticking to Game Pass titles.
The idea would be that all you need is a decent internet connection (and an Xbox Games Pass subscription), and you could stream graphically-intensive games to low-powered devices, like an old laptop. Callum’s take is that this means you don’t need a powerful gaming PC anymore.
I’ve tried various streaming services, including Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now, and while it’s undeniably impressive playing epic games on outdated tech, it still just can’t compare with playing a game natively on powerful hardware.
So no, I won’t be ditching my gaming PC any time soon, even if cloud streaming would ironically help me with my current PC-in-pieces predicament...
Thankfully, the asteroids passed by without incident and we weren’t all killed, which was nice. So, with a fair bit of trepidation I went back on to Live Science to see what good news I could find for this week, and was hit with “'Cannibal' coronal mass ejection from 'dark plasma plume' will slam into Earth.” Thanks, Live Science.
Now, admittedly, I don’t know what most of those words actually mean, but I don’t think anything that’s a cannibal is a good thing. Meanwhile, ‘Slamming into Earth’ is also a phrase that doesn’t really instil confidence.
Are we all doomed, then? Perhaps not. On actually reading the article, it seems like this dark plasma plume will cause a G3 geomagnetic storm, but while that may sound frightening, it’ll likely result in some pretty colorful auroras in the sky, similar to the Northern Lights. Extreme geomagnetic storms could also impact the internet, so if this newsletter is late getting into your inboxes, that might be why. It certainly won’t be because I’m running low on tea and typing really slowly.
Right, that’s me done for another week. I hope you enjoyed my selections! The weather is a bit more bearable this weekend here in the UK, so go out and enjoy yourselves, notwithstanding any cannibal coronal mass ejections that may be slamming into us and causing disruption to email newsletters around the world.
