Laurent Giret

Microsoft has released this week the commercial preview of Office LTSC 2024, which is now available on both Windows and macOS. This allows organizations that need to keep their Office apps on-premises to test the next perpetual version of the productivity suite coming later this year.

Microsoft’s Research arm has just detailed its ongoing work on VASA-1, a new AI framework that can create realistic-looking “talking faces” using just a picture and a voice clip. The AI tool can also synchronize lip movements with the audio with impressive accuracy, and the virtual characters are capable of showing various facial expressions that make them look very human-like.

Meta announced another permanent price cut for its Quest 2 VR headset, with the 128GB model now being available for just $199. Meta had previously dropped the price of this model from $299 to $249 on January 2.

The Windows Insider team is back today with two new Windows 11 preview builds for the Canary and Beta Channels. And the Canary channel is finally moving back to more unstable flights with today’s build 26200. This also means that Canary testers will no longer be able to switch to the Dev Channel after installing this build.

After Microsoft launched its new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 for Business earlier this month, the company is expected to follow up with ARM-powered consumer versions in May. And while we already know that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip will be powering these devices, a new Geekbench listing spotted by Windows Latest revealed a new Surface Pro 10 with a Snapdragon X Plus chip.

Microsoft is once again teaming up with the gaming media outlet IGN to hold a second IGN x ID@Xbox Showcase on April 29. The first showcase, which aired on July 11, 2023, put the spotlight on some great indie games such as the old-school RPG Sea of Stars. This second edition will focus on “another batch of hotly anticipated indies” coming soon to Xbox and PC.

Meta dropped some pretty big news today that may well shake up the VR market. The company said that it will allow Lenovo, Asus, and other partners to use its Meta Horizon OS to create new mixed reality devices that will compete with the company’s own Quest headsets.

Adobe has announced today a beta version of Photoshop with new image generation capabilities powered by the company’s Firefly Image 3 model. The latter is also available in beta the standalone Firefly web application, as well as in Adobe InDesign.

Apple has just announced a special event on May 7 where the company is expected to announce new iPads. The tagline for the event is “Let Loose”, with an artistic version of the Apple logo showing a hand holding an Apple spencil over a splash of color.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has teased the upcoming launch of a new TV app on “most smart TVs.” Twitter already had apps for tvOS and Android, and those are still available as of this writing, but the new X TV app may be quite different.