Microsoft is taking away storage from users this month, bringing free users down to five gigabytes. The previous free offering was 15GB. The changes are rolling out to users over time, but should be complete by July 27.
This isn’t a surprise: Microsoft has been sending out emails about the change all year, and even gave users the option to keep their extra storage back in January. If you did that, there’s nothing to worry about. Everyone else, however, will see their storage drop to 5GB.
Microsoft has fidgeted with the amount of free storage offered by OneDrive for years now. At launch, OneDrive offered 7GB of free storage with an additional 3GB for students. Later Microsoft increase their free offering to 15GB, which not (probably not coincidentally) is the exact amount of free storage Google Drive offers.
And now they’re rolling the free offering down to 5GB. It’s more than Dropbox’s free 2GB, sure, but far less than Google’s 15GB. Microsoft is no longer competing with Google on free storage space.
This might be, at least in part, because Microsoft has an advantage for growing their platform that Google and Dropbox can only dream of — owning the Windows platform. OneDrive is included by default on fresh Windows installations, and a stream of pop ups ensure that new users see it and possibly use it. Office saves all new files to OneDrive by default, and OneDrive constantly offers users to upload photos and screenshots to the cloud.
All of this synergy gives Microsoft plenty of built-in ways to turn Windows users into paid OneDrive users, meaning they don’t necessarily need to offer a bunch of free storage in order to attract new users.
But if you’ve been using OneDrive for a while now, it’s understandable if this decision leaves you disappointed. To which we respond — Google Drive gives you 15GB of free storage when you sign up.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.