TechCapsules

Xbox announced a further 268 layoffs, bringing the company to roughly three‑quarters of its planned 3,200‑job reduction through FY27. Chief content officer Matt Booty said the cuts target Halo Studios, other first‑party studios, and Xbox Game Studios (XGS) management and central functions. The move follows a July round that cut 1,600 roles after CEO Asha Sharma launched the “most significant restructure in Xbox history” to restore growth and profitability. Recent studio changes include the separation of Compulsion Games and [...]

California’s Civil Rights Department filed a lawsuit accusing Tesla of allowing pervasive race discrimination at its Fremont assembly plant, and the case began trial on Monday in Oakland before Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon, scheduled to run until Oct. 30. The complaint, filed in 2022, alleges continuous harassment, racial slurs, graffiti, segregation of Black workers into low‑pay, undesirable jobs, and systemic pay and promotion disparities. Plaintiffs say management ignored or dismissed complaints rather than intervening. The trial will [...]

Former Apple senior vice president of retail operations Ron Johnson has released a new book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, co‑written with Zander Nethercutt. The memoir recounts Johnson’s partnership with Steve Jobs from the 2000 hiring to launch the first Apple Store, defying the prevailing belief that the internet would render physical stores obsolete. Johnson details how he earned Jobs’s trust, crafted a service‑first store concept rooted in “love,” and built a retail network that became the most [...]

Apple’s newly appointed CEO John Ternus told France’s Canal+ arts program Clique TV that the Apple Vision Pro is “an absolutely amazing device” still in its infancy, likening its stage to the early days of personal computers. He highlighted that early adopters are embracing the mixed‑reality headset and that surgeons have begun using it as a superior alternative to traditional monitors. Ternus acknowledged criticism over recent layoffs in the Vision Pro division but expressed confidence that users are discovering additional applications, [...]

Microsoft spent 2026 adding developer‑friendly features to Windows 11, including faster WSL, built‑in Linux containers, Coreutils and a one‑command “Windows Developer Configurations” setup. Yet a recent poll by Gergely Oros​z of The Pragmatic Engineer, posted on X, received about 4,000 responses and showed macOS at 61.6%, Linux 24.2% and Windows only 12.8%. A similar LinkedIn poll of 6,000 voters produced comparable results. Orosz notes the sample reflects startup and Big‑Tech developers, not the broader community. By contrast, [...]

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has transferred development of the next mainline Halo title to Activision, the studio behind Call of Duty and a core asset of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition. The move follows a series of layoffs at Halo Studios—formerly 343 Industries, which was rebranded less than a year ago—and a history of uneven critical reception for Halo 4, 5 and Infinite, attributed by insiders to management inefficiencies and reliance on contractors. Activision secured regulatory approval after navigating antitrust scrutiny, positioning its multi‑studio pipeline [...]

Apple’s latest Mac mini models, the M6 and M5 Pro, have reverted to soldered internal SSDs, ending the aftermarket upgrade option that existed on the earlier M4 and M4 Pro units. Expand Mac mini confirmed the NAND chips are now permanently attached to the logic board, making removable storage modules impossible. The company, which previously sold 1 TB and 2 TB upgrade kits for the M4 line at $300 and $420 respectively, says support for the new models “looks unlikely.” Apple’s [...]

Apple’s hardware launch has encountered problems. Within hours of the September 18 release, owners of the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 reported reboots that display the Apple logo before returning to watchOS. Crash logs show a Neural Engine timeout, with a command exceeding the 2,000‑millisecond limit by 20 ms, triggering kernel panics. The failures occur during Siri AI use, watch‑face editing, app launches, calls, workouts, and when idle, and persist despite the watchOS 27.0 build and an update. A [...]