Brad LinderLilbits: GOG brings old games to new PCs, VMWare goes free(er), Apple smart screen leaked, and more
Game Platform GOG no longer goes by the name Good Old Games, since GOG now offers new titles as well. But GOG hasn’t exactly given up on its roots. Today the company announced the GOG Preservation Program, an initiative that helps ensure old games are compatible with current and future PCs.
In other tech news from around the web, VMWare Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro are now free for commercial use (they went free for personal use earlier this year), there’s a new build of Ubuntu Touch available, a Chinese company claims its ePaper display has a much higher refresh rate than E Ink color screens, Apple is said to be working on a six inch smart display designed to be wall mounted, an Xbox handheld may be in the works… and Amazon’s Fire TV 4K Max is on sale for its lowest price to date.
The GOG Preservation Program Makes Games Live Forever [GOG]
Game platform GOG has announced a program where the company will “commit our own resources to maintaining” compatibility of classic games with “modern and future systems.” In other words, games with a GOG preserved program that were designed for older hardware and operating systems should not only run on a recent PC, but will also be updated to work with “future popular PC configurations.” Like all games available from GOG, preserved titles will be offered DRM-free, and there are offline installers so that you can install and run games even if GOG goes out of business. About 100 “preserved” games are available so far.
After announcing earlier this year that VMWare Fusion Pro and Workstation Pro virtualization apps were free for personal use, Broadcomm has now made those applications free for commercial use as well. Existing customers will continue to get enterprise support until their commercial contract expires, but moving forward it looks like the company will offer these apps are a free alternative to its premium, subscription-based cloud services that have seen recent price hikes.
Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 Focal Release [UBPorts]
Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-6 is now rolling out for supported phones and tablets with wireless display improvements, Fairphone 5 support, and more. But the anticipated VoLTE support has been postponed.
Guangzhou Aoyi launches ultra-fast color e-paper display [ITHome]
A Chinese company called Aoyi is showing off a color ePaper display that it says delivers higher refresh rates and better color gradient representation than E Ink. But a demo video shows that video still looks shaky, so it’s not quite an LCD/OLED replacement.
Apple’s Next Device Is an AI Wall Tablet for Home Control, Siri and Video Calls [Bloomberg]
Apple is apparently making another play for the smart home/smart speaker market with a new device that’s code-named J490. It’s expected to be a small display with an integrated camera, speakers, and battery. It supports touchscreen controls, but also voice interaction handled by Siri and Apple Intelligence.
An Xbox handheld is still at least a few years away [Bloomberg]
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spenser says the Xbox team is looking at developing a handheld, but it’s at least a few years away. Based on this article, I think it’s more reasonable to say Microsoft is in the exploratory phase than to say that the company is actively building an Xbox handheld though.
Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $33 [Amazon]
This is the lowest price to date for Amazon’s most powerful media streaming stick to date. While the entire Fire TV lineup is on sale right now, this is the only model in a stick form factor to support WiFi 6E.
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Brad Linder
Tom's Hardware Italia
