Okay, it may not be the most exciting form of time travel, but it’s definitely the most useful. Microsoft rolled out a new Windows Insider Update today, December 19, and its headline feature is something called “Timeline,” which allows you to resume past activities with just a couple of clicks.
“Timeline is here!” the Windows blog post reads. “We know that it can be difficult to get back to stuff you were working on in the past. If you’re like us, you might sometimes forget which site or app you were using or where you saved a file. Now you can finally close apps without worrying — with Timeline, you can get right back to where you left off.”
The whole thing works by storing a snapshot of your past activity, which you can view in the Timeline. Just scroll back through your last few apps till you find the one you want, and click on it to step right back in where you left off.
Naturally, the new Timeline feature has a few implications for privacy, but you can control which apps show up in the Timeline and which ones don’t. You can also disable it entirely by turning off “activity collection” under your Settings menu and the new Activity History panel.
Windows will also integrate Cortana into your Activity History, which means she’ll bark at you to keep you productive, or just gently suggest activities you might want to step back into. Plus, she’ll suggest activities from other Cortana-enabled devices for you to continue right at home on Windows 10.
To access your Timeline, all you’ll have to do is click the new Task View button, that will bring up your activities and recent Timeline.
That’s not all! What’s a Windows Insider Update without a few incremental Microsoft Edge improvements?
First among the changes coming to Edge is a bit of a new look. The Dark Mode is getting a slight update with darker blacks, and better contrast for colors, text, and icons.
Alongside the visual change to Edge, Microsoft is also rolling out a couple behind-the-scenes changes, first among them being improved support for touchpad gestures.
“You can now use gestures like pinch and zoom, or two-finger panning, to achieve the same interactions on web sites that you can do with a touch screen today,” the Windows blog reports.
There are a number of other, smaller changes coming to Edge which you can read all about here at the Windows Blog.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.