Pixel, Steam, and VAIO

Instruction Set, 2024/7/1

Welcome back to Multicore. This is Instruction Set for the week of Monday, July 1st.

Let’s catch up on the past week in tech hardware, which I would describe as a pleasant, breezy respite before the real summer heat kicks in.

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In other words, the summer tech calendar is starting to take shape, which is notable in itself because there usually kind of isn’t one. First up is Google, which announced its latest “Made by Google” — read: Pixel — event for August 13th. The launch is tagged “AI… meet IX”, hinting at the Pixel 9 lineup.

Every previous mainline Pixel event has been in October, so this is an intriguing shakeup. Google did once get ahead of its notorious propensity for leaking by pre-announcing the Pixel 5 in August, well ahead of its October launch.

True to form, the Pixel 9 lineup has already broken cover, and Google’s teaser confirms the leaked tweak to the camera design — it’s now a pill with rounded sides rather than an edge-to-edge bar.