This week, Siri might finally get smarter, Valve finally gives up on Steam Machines and Verizon gives up a recently acquired brand.
Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.
Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.
When Apple bought Siri in 2010, they showed that they were interested in competing with Google on the search front, or at least in the way search looked. Google had recently purchased Aardvark to create their own mobile assistant, after all. The company nearly immediately discontinued the BlackBerry app for Siri and began building the technology directly into iOS. This move began a war for assistant supremacy, which today is hotter than it has ever been.
In 2012, rumors began about a "Steam Box" project. Gabe Newell confirmed the project, claiming that it was intended to compete with consoles while running like a computer. In 2013, the company officially unveiled SteamOS, the Linux-based system that would power Steam Machines, the final name of the product line. While the hardware was supposed to launch in early 2014, by the end of the year, Alienware gave up waiting, installing Windows on the computers and shipping them.
When Verizon purchased AOL and created their nostalgia unit, formally called Oath, the company was looking for content production. It was just one of many examples of "line owners" looking to get into the content production market. AT&T purchased DirecTV, intending to enhance their distribution, and wants Time Warner for the content.