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Google released the first Android 11 beta version a few weeks ago, but that’s just the developer preview that usually precedes the formal introduction of a new Android version.

The official reveal typically happens in May, and then the first public beta rolls out a few months ahead of the final version. But 2020 has been anything but typical, as the novel coronavirus changed everything we took for granted. Google was forced to shut down its events, and this year’s I/O was canceled entirely. The Pixel 4a launch was pushed back as a result, and so was the Android 11 reveal and the release of the first public beta.

Google planned to announce Android 11 on June 3rd, nearly a month later than it normally would have, but that’s not happening either. This time around, it’s the recent wave of protests in Minneapolis and other places following the murder of George Floyd.

“We are excited to tell you more about Android 11, but now is not the time to celebrate,” Google wrote on the official Android Developers Twitter account a few hours ago. “We are postponing the June 3rd event and beta release. We’ll be back with more on Android 11, soon.”

Google doesn’t explicitly address uprisings, but the release delay is clearly related to the escalating events surrounding the death of Floyd and other unarmed black individuals killed by police in the past few months.

Protests against police brutality intensified in Minnesota this week, leading to an unexpected turn of events. In a matter of days, we saw police clashing with protestors and going as far as arresting CNN reporters who were covering the protests. The reporters were freed and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz apologized for the arrest of the journalists, saying that “it was totally unacceptable.”

As the protests in Minnesota were unfolding, Trump took to Twitter to address them but managed to get one of his messages flagged for the second time in a matter of days. This time around, the tweet that contained the remark “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” prompted Twitter to censor it for glorifying violence. It then applied the same flag to a White House tweet that quoted the same message.

Separately, federal officials were flying an unarmed Predator drone over Minneapolis on Friday for surveillance purposes.

Later on Friday,  police officer Derrick Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Chauvin was the arresting officer seen holding his knee on Floyd’s neck in a video that went viral. Floyd died on Monday. Protests over police brutality continued across the country, with some turning violent.

All of this is happening during an ongoing health crisis sparked by the novel coronavirus that’s able to spread with ease inside communities and crowds, such as the gatherings of people taking part in these protests. With all that in mind, celebrating Android is something that has to be postponed and it will be interesting to see if Sony follows suit with its June 4th PS5 event.

About a month and a half ago, Apple launched the long-awaited follow-up to the iPhone SE. While the design of the second-gen iPhone SE was virtually identical to that of the iPhone 8, the A13 Bionic chip inside the phone brought its performance in line with the flagship iPhone 11.

But the most compelling feature was its price, starting at just $399 for the 64GB model. But even with its upgraded hardware, not everyone likes massive bezels, so they will be pleased to learn that Apple has finally started selling refurbished iPhone XR models in the United States.

According to MacRumors, Apple began selling certified refurbished iPhone XR models this week in a variety of colors and storage capacities. Depending on which model you choose, you can shave between $100 and $120 off the retail price of the phone. At the time of writing, Black, White, Yellow, and Coral were all in stock.

As MacRumors notes, the 256GB model of the iPhone XR was discontinued in September 2019 when the iPhone 11 series arrived, but it has returned alongside the refurbished 64GB and 128GB models, though only in Black. Here are the prices for all of the refurbished iPhone XR models compared to their current prices:

Every refurbished iPhone comes unlocked and without a SIM card, so you can activate it on the carrier of your choice. Refurbished iPhone models also come with the same one-year as a brand new iPhone, all of the same manuals and accessories, a new battery and outer shell, and a new box. Apple notes that the refurbished supply “is usually very limited and we often run out of refurbished inventory,” so act soon if you want one.

With refurbished iPhone X models starting at $599, this is now the cheapest way to join the Face ID crowd and leave the bezels of the mid-2010s behind. That said, the iPhone XR uses an A12 Bionic CPU, which means that you’ll pay $100 more for a phone that is less powerful than the second-gen iPhone SE. For some people, the design is a deal-breaker, but if performance is a priority for you, the iPhone SE is simply a much faster phone. That’s not to say that the iPhone XR is a slouch, but depending on how you use your phone, you might notice the difference.

In a tweet that went viral earlier this week, Bloomberg Beta’s James Cham shared a video in which he compares the experience of drafting an email using voice-to-text on two unidentified iPhone and Pixel models. As you will see, the results are almost immediately apparent, and the iPhone doesn’t hold a candle to the Pixel:

In addition to being much, much faster on the Pixel, the dictation is far more accurate on the Pixel as well. By the time Cham finishes speaking, there are enough errors on the iPhone email that he might want to consider retyping it from scratch before sending it to anyone. Meanwhile, the email on the Pixel is virtually flawless.

“Speed has its own quality—the current model for speech is like a command line,” Cham explains in a follow-up to his first tweet. “You say something and wait for a response. Now that voice to text is fast and uses fewer resources than you would think, there’s a chance for truly interactive voice experiences.”

There are a number of explanations for the gulf between the quality of voice-to-text transcription between the two devices, including, as 9to5Google points out, the fact that Google lets Pixel owners download the entire English voice model directly to their phone, which allows it to handle real-time dictation just as quickly and as accurately as if it were being sent to Google’s servers. Regardless, it still significantly outclasses Apple’s solution.

Independent iOS developer Ben Harraway chimed in with a demo of his own, using the on-device speech recognition of the iPhone rather than server recognition. Although the Android phone still comes out on top, the results are much more similar than they were in the original test from Cham:

In terms of design and performance, the iPhone has few equals. But there’s no doubt that Apple still lags far behind the competition in certain areas, such as voice-to-text dictation and virtual AI functionality.

Microsoft on Wednesday released the spring feature upgrade for Windows 10, dubbed Windows 10 May 2020 Update, a.k.a. version 2004, and likely the only real refresh of the year.

“We are starting to make the May 2020 Update available,” said John Cable, director of program management in the Windows delivery and servicing team, in a May 27 post to a company blog.

Beginning Thursday, some customers with unmanaged PCs — those not maintained by an IT administrator or staff — could opt in by manually checking for updates and then clicking the “Download and install” link. (Windows 10 May 2020 won’t immediately show for everyone because Microsoft is taking its usual gradual approach to rolling out the upgrade, offering 2004 in stages to an increasing number of users beginning with those whose devices Microsoft believes are the most likely to successfully install the refresh.)

The launch of Windows 10 2004 also kicked off the version’s 18-month support lifecycle. All editions, including Enterprise and Education, will be supported on Windows 10 May 2020 until Dec. 14, 2021.

Seek and ye shall upgrade … perchance

In a normal world, Windows 10 2004 might have been released a month or more ago. (Its four-digit label was altered from the usual yy03 format not because of its intended debut date but because Microsoft worried that the traditional marker (2003) might be confused with the obsolete Windows Server 2003.) After all, this upgrade had been finished, more or less, as long ago as December 2019. Although Microsoft said nothing about 2004’s timing — it rarely acknowledges delays or their reasons — the COVID-19 pandemic may have convinced it to hold on to the refresh for a little longer.

Other than those who explicitly demand the upgrade — called “seekers” by many — and those whom Microsoft deems as owning the likeliest PCs to take the upgrade without issues, the other group that may see 2004 sooner rather than later are people now running Windows 10 1809.

That upgrade, released Nov. 13, 2018, was to exit support this month, on May 12 for owners of Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. However, because of the chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, last month Microsoft extended the support deadline to Nov. 10. That makes it the next version to meet its maker, beating 1903 by less than a month (1903’s end comes Dec. 8).

On Tuesday, Microsoft said that it would restart the forced upgrades of 1909 in June. (Remember: Last year when it ceded control to Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro users about when those devices would upgrade, Microsoft reserved the right to forcibly migrate machines which were nearing the end of their support.) “In June we will slowly restart initiating feature updates for devices running Windows 10, version 1809 (the October 2018 Update) Home and Pro editions, in advance of the delayed November 10, 2020, end of service date,” Microsoft said here, “to provide adequate time for a closely monitored and smooth update process, to keep those devices supported.”

It’s unclear what Microsoft will use to upgrade those still running Windows 10 1809. Prior to the April decision to extend 1809’s support and the accompanying pause in forced updates, the company was using Windows 10 1909 on the 1809 laggards. (Windows 10 1909’s support for Home and Pro runs until May 11, 2021.) In June, though, Microsoft will have a choice: either 1909 or the new 2004.

Microsoft could restart the forced 1809 upgrades with 1909, of course, and then switch at some point to 2004. Or simply serve 2004 to the PCs that met the reliability and stability criteria it’s already set for surfacing that version to systems when seekers look for it.

Microsoft’s perfunctory green light for business

Commercial customers may immediately deploy Windows 10 2004 using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or Windows Update for Business (WUfB), or from the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (a blend of System Center Configuration Manager and Intune) or another patch management platform. Microsoft, as is its habit, recommended that businesses and other organizations begin what it calls “targeted deployments,” or small-scale roll-outs for testing.

But because Windows 10 2004 operates under a limited support span — fall upgrades, identified as yy09, for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education come with 30 months of security and bug fixes — most larger organizations will do little more than test this version. Few will bother deploying it simply because of its shorter lifespan.

It was interesting that Cable — and Microsoft generally — continued to use the word “targeted” when talking to commercial customers about 2004. “Today’s release … marks the start of the 18-months servicing support lifecycle,” Cable wrote. “If you’re an IT administrator, we recommend that you begin targeted deployments to validate that the apps, devices and infrastructure used by your organization work as expected with the new release and features (emphasis added).”

In the first half of 2019, Microsoft retired the “Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)” (SAC-T) name for the opening months of each feature upgrade. (IT admins had marked the shift from SAC-T to the shorter “Semi-Annual Channel” (SAC) as Microsoft’s stamp that the upgrade had been thoroughly tested by millions of consumers and small businesses.) Continued use of the “targeted” label evokes that discarded moniker, reminding at least some customers of what Microsoft stopped providing.

After eliminating Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) — it was too confusing, Microsoft contended — the Redmond, Wash. developer simply made an announcement in lieu of an explicit turn from SAC-T to SAC. It did so for Windows 10 1903 in late September 2019, almost exactly four months after the upgrade’s debut.

Microsoft didn’t replicate that timing for Windows 10 1909, the refresh released in November 2019 and as the year’s only upgrade slated for 30 months of support, the obvious favorite of organizations. Instead, the company waited until Tuesday to mark 1909 as ready for business.

“We recommend commercial customers running earlier versions of Windows 10 nearing end of support begin broad deployments of Windows 10, version 1909 in their organizations,” Microsoft stated in a May 27 message posted to a support document for the upgrade. Thus, the span between 1909’s release and Microsoft’s call for “broad deployment” was a record six-and-a-half months, two months more than the previous longest.

The timing of the announcement — concurrent with the release of a new version of the OS — made it seem an unenthusiastic nod to habit, as if the company had simply forgotten to give corporate customers the green light that they had once expected. Microsoft has been inconsistent in its messaging on this — implying in February 2019 that no cues would be given but a month later saying it would “continue to communicate for future releases the transition from targeted to broad deployment status.”

Microsoft may have decided that most commercial customers no longer needed the hand-holding its notifications represented and so de-emphasized the milestone to the point of being meaningless by telling users to only trust the previous version once a successor arrives.

That’s not guidance, that’s simply a schedule.

Windows 10 2004 is also available from this page, which walks users through obtaining and using the media creation tool; from here, where disk images in .iso format can be downloaded; and from the Volume License Servicing Center (VLSC).

Microsoft has started rolling out the much-awaited Windows 10 May 2020 update for mainstream users. The update comes with a number of changes and features to give an all new experience to users on laptops and desktops.

According to a report by ZDNet, the Windows 10 May 2020 update comes a couple of weeks after Microsoft announced that it was being made available to developers. It is also known as the 20H1 update and version 2004.

A report by Windows Central mentions that it is the ninth feature update and is the first semi-annual update of 2020 available for supported devices.

Key features

Display: The update brings Specialized Display feature that enables the screen to be dedicated to a specific purpose.

Cortana: The digital assistant now comes with an improved chat-based interface. Users can speak or type to get a response from the assistant. Cortana will help you to connect with people, check your schedule, add tasks, set reminders and open apps.

Quick searches: Four new quick web searches have been added to Search Home weather, top news, today in history, and new movies.Notepad improvements: A number of significant improvements in Notepad have been introduced in the Windows 10 May 2020. It will now show an asterisk sign in the title bar before the document name to indicate that it has unsaved changes. It will also display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enable.

There is a menu that allows you to zoom text in notepad. To use, you will have to click on View and tap on Zoom.

Gaming: The update has also started to roll out an FPS counter and achievement overlay. Users will have to press WIN + G to start receiving Game Bar updates via the Xbox Insider Hub app from the Microsoft Store.

How to download Windows 10 May 2020 update

Step 1:Go to Settings and click on Update & Security

Step 2: Tap on Windows Update

Step3: Press on Check for updates

Step 4: Once the update appears, you can select Download and install

Some users may not get to see Download and install on their devices as Microsoft is rolling out this feature in a phased manner. It may also be because your device might have compatibility issue for which a safeguard hold is in place.