APCの May 2025 の目次

Windows is never perfect, or at least, perfect for you. From minor irritants with how things look and work, to the sadness that might come when a new Windows isn’t like the old Windows. We get that a lot. I feel it, I’m sure you do too, and coincidentally as I write this page one of my colleagues from Tom’s Guide is listing his grievances in Slack right at this moment, having just moved from Windows 10 to 11. It can all be tweaked, and I’m pretty sure most of you have done at least a little of that. In this issue of APC we’ve assembled what we reckon are the best tools and tricks to tidy up Windows. From little enhancements, perhaps adding the things you preferred from Windows…

HMD FUSION X1 Smartphone brands have previously tried to protect children by bolting controls and digital health features on top of their existing interfaces, but the HMD X1, a partnership between HMD and kid-friendly tech brand Xplora, is designed from the ground up to help young people grow into the smart device world. It give parents granular control over app permissions and approved contacts, direct access to the phone from a parent device, plus options for tracking and concentration modes. Meanwhile, a 108MP camera, 5,000mAh battery and a variety of case options may yet win over teenagers. Expected to launch this year, but the price and monthly subscription cost for services are yet to be confirmed. Richard Priday DELL PRO RUGGED 13 Besides the Dell’s Pro 13 Premium which we…

PRICE $999 WEB apple.com/au Originally released in 2016, the iPhone SE was an attractive alternative to Apple’s shiniest handsets – a low-cost option whose design and update schedule were decoupled from the main iPhone line. Now, though, it’s been discontinued, in favour of a new approach: as the name implies, the iPhone 16e is a close relative of the regular iPhone 16, and I suspect it will be updated annually along with the rest of the family. The 16e starts at $999 with 128GB of storage. There are also 256GB and 512GB options costing $1,199 and $1,549 respectively, pushing you well outside “budget” territory. The iPhone 16e may be pricier than the iPhone SE 2022, but it looks much nicer too. The matte aluminium frame is solidly constructed and not…

PROS Character generation tools • splicer for mixing images and styles • addictive generation tools • good text CONS More photorealistic images seen elsewhere • private image generation only available on paid plans From free to US$39 per month from artbreeder.com Artbreeder offers a range of prompt-based tools, supplemented by alternative image generators that could help visualise graphics for unrelated projects – for example, characters for a novel or background actors in video games. The Tuner tool is a case in point: input a regular prompt, such as “25-year-old woman in medieval England”, then drag sliders to change her hair colour, neatness, age, whether she’s happy or sad... the list goes on. If that doesn’t deliver what you need, try the Splicer, which combines objects and styles from two pictures…

PROS Good logo generation • very strong on cartoon-like artwork • flexible in-browser editing • prompts well understood CONS Text can sometimes be nonsensical • what you get for your money should be clearer Price From free to $16 per month as part of Copilot Pro designer.microsoft.com You may have come across Designer’s tools inside Microsoft 365 apps, where you can add images directly to your documents and presentations. For this Labs, we used it through the browser. Designer operates on a freemium basis. You’re awarded a certain number of free credits every month, which you can spend on generating images. If you’re using a free Microsoft account, you’ll start the month with 15 credits, of which one will be deducted for every interaction. You can’t top up your credits;…

PROS Free to use • option to install on your own hardware • good human image generation CONS Proved difficult to force some changes in a few models • challenging to use previous output within subsequent prompts Free | stablediffusion.com You can download and run Stable Diffusion on your own machine. A decent GPU will help it run more quickly, but it will work with onboard graphics if you’re prepared to wait. Or you can use the hosted service, as we did in our tests. There are several models to choose from, with more complex options generally taking longer to output an image. The wait is worth it. The quick web UI accurately produced a picture of a cat beside a Venetian canal, but the colours were oversaturated, and attempts…

PROMPT "Create a two-colour logo on a white background inspired by the French word ‘chaton’. That word must appear in the logo."…

ALL NEEDS COMPUTERS LANCOOL 215 $1,690tinyurl.com/APC545ANC Buying an entry-level gaming machine is a great way of getting into the PC gaming scene. This system does well to help get your foot in the door by using the venerable and cost-efficient 12400 CPU. Matched with an RTX 4060, it’s a perfect 1080p gaming combination, and the 32GB of RAM is roomy too and gives the system some longevity. It is unfortunately DDR4, so a tiny bit of raw performance will be lost as a result. Curiously, the motherboard is high-end Z790 based, so should you want to upgrade the CPU later, the board is more than capable of supporting it. Not a bad entry-level system with some room to grow, should you get the itch. CPU Intel Core i5 12400; Cooler…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Magnify a fixed part of your screen Docked View in Windows Magnifier zooms in on a fixed section of the screen while keeping the rest visible. In our screenshot below we’ve magnified the notification area on the taskbar 1 . This is different to Lens View, which follows your cursor and magnifies the area beneath it. Search for and open Magnifier, or press Windows key+plus sign. Now click the Settings cog 2 , then ‘Go to Settings’ and select Docked under ‘Choose a view’ 3 . You can also switch to Docked View when Magnifier is open using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+D. WINDOWS 10 & 11 Take multiple photos in the Camera app The ‘photo burst’ feature on phones takes multiple photos in rapid succession, letting…

PRICE Free PLATFORM browser WEB dukope.itch.io/moida-mansion SHOWS THE POWER, AND THE DANGER, OF WORDS. Free | PC, browser | goosestranger.itch.io/babelexe The Tower of Babel has been reinterpreted as an enormous server tower in Babel.exe. Different communities have been brought together, with a program translating what they are saying to each other in real-time. As a helpful person in a hat, it’s your job to fuel the big tower by collecting logs from the nearby woods, but also to help folks with their problems. Someone wants you to collect flowers, another some of those colourful berries. However, the woods are home to vicious snakes, spiders, frogs and, for some reason, big pits of spikes. Of course, you need instant death pits for a game to feel like a proper ZX Spectrum…

PRICE Free PLATFORM browser WEB twotinydice.itch.io/lowland-keepers LIKE MANA FROM HEAVEN. This deckbuilding roguelike peers into the guts of the genre and makes some big changes on a mechanical level. It’s still a case of playing your cards to defeat or delay enemies before they can hurt you, but you only have four cards to play with – and each card is actually a character. These characters adhere to basic archetypes in Lowland Keepers. One deals direct damage, one sets enemies alight, another steals enemy mana so you can buy a few extra goes during your turn. It’s difficult to decide who to play during a turn, as the resources you use to play them are all shared between them. Mana/energy is paramount here. It’s split up into three resources, and…

Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives ASCOMP PC INTERNALS COMPREHENSIVE PC ANALYSIS & MONITORING. Discover PC Internals, the powerful Windows software for analysing your entire PC hardware and system components. PC Internals gives you a detailed overview of your processor, RAM, drives, graphics cards, and many other system areas – ideal for tech enthusiasts, gamers, IT professionals, or anyone wanting to monitor their PC’s performance. A special highlight is the built-in drive monitoring. It shows SMART data, temperature, and SSD lifespan, helping you detect issues early and act in time. In the Professional Edition, PC Internals automatically notifies you of critical values via Windows notification or email. ASHAMPOO PHOTO CARD 3 PHOTO GREETINGS MADE EASY. With Ashampoo Photo Card 3, you can easily design your own greeting cards directly…

Last month OpenAI unveiled its 4o image generation, which users quickly discovered is immeasurably more powerful than its predecessor. It really is leaps and bounds better: many of the uncanny elements of older image gen – inconsistencies in printed words, phantom limbs, unaccountably blurred distances – are papered over with the new tech. Leaving aside the environmental consequences of unleashing tech like this on a population which has evidently long moved beyond climate anxiety (there must be more terrifying existential problems, nowadays), the rolling out of 4o resulted in a viral phenomenon so neatly representative of the brain rot accelerated by image gen that it’d feel a bit on-the-nose in a Black Mirror episode circa 2019. In the wake of 4o’s release, countless images in the style of legendary anime…

This month we dissect... ABOUT IFIXIT iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.com “The S25 Ultra packs a multi-lens setup, including an upgraded 50 MP ultrawide sensor that promises improved image quality.” GALAXY S25 ULTRA When Samsung announced the Galaxy S25 Ultra, most of us expected the usual routine: better specs, minor design tweaks, and a new coat of paint to justify the next upgrade cycle. Instead, Samsung has delivered one of its most unexpected and intriguing flagships in years – at least where the phone’s repairability is concerned. MAJOR TECH SPECS • 160 x 144 pixel 2.56-inch…

PRICE $649 WEB asus.com Asus, via its premium ROG brand, has always pushed to have this hero brand populated with gear that doesn’t hold back on any cutting-edge features. That extends to power supplies, and with the spotlight on these essential components lately thanks to ever more mountainous graphics cards thirsting for higher wattages, this new ROG Thor III is the sort of PSU that has strong appeal. That’s especially true given the somewhat embarrassing Nvidia 50 series power delivery failures, and this PSU does offer a unique semi-solution to this issue. This ‘Intelligent Voltage Stabiliser’ is a switch that alters the voltage sensing priority between the CPU and GPU, and that’s potentially useful because a GPU’s power fluctuations could be more aggressive under load than the CPU, so this…

PRICE $849 WEB au.nothing.tech Despite the “Pro” tag, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro is very much a value proposition. For $849 it comes with a generous 256GB of storage – twice as much as the Pixel 8a and iPhone 16e – a big screen and a powerful camera setup. The regular Phone 3a opposite is even cheaper, for reasons that will become clear. The design sticks with the see-through style of previous models. This combines a sleek feel with a helping of hi-tech futurism, providing a peek into the inside: micro-screws and cable ribbons are clearly visible through the sturdy glass casing. The distinctive “Glyph” rear LED display is here, too. This not only adds to the conversation-starting aesthetic, but has a functional element – you can make it light…

PROS Excellent photorealistic image generation • price • generally good text rendering CONS Difficulty generating UK landmarks outside London • not a collaborative workflow Free | tinyurl.com/APC545imagefx As a Google Labs product, ImageFX sits beside other “experiments” such as GenType for producing AI-generated alphabets, TextFX for playing with language components, and MusicFX, which uses prompts to generate music. The quality of the output is difficult to criticise, so the fact that it’s free to anyone with a Google Account is particularly impressive. It’s also fun. After running through our test prompts, we started to explore more esoteric options. “A badly framed holiday photo taken in the Algarve that just misses a woman proposing to her boyfriend because it was slightly out of the frame” delivered what could well have been…

PROS Flexible generation prompting with direct access to parameters • basic in-browser editing • impressive external editor if you qualify to use it • mood boards and profiles CONS Private image generation only available on Pro and Mega plans • some issues with text • external editor not available to all users From US$10 to US$120 per month midjourney.com Midjourney bills itself as an “open community”, by which it means that other users can see your output and remix it for their own purposes. To generate private images, you’ll need to subscribe to at least the Pro or Mega plans, at US$60 and US$120 per month respectively. Like all other plans, these rates are cut by 20% if you sign on for a year; whichever plan you’re on, committing to…

PROMPT "A pencil sketch of a woman waiting for a bus. It is raining and the bus is running late."…

“I remember when the Telegraph opened its photo library,” JAG Gillan, a pioneering digital artist who uses AI in his practice, told APC. “I would go to their office and look through hundreds of negatives and slides, and even that was seen as doing a photographer out of a job because we were using something that already existed.” We’d met to discuss his approach to Midjourney, which he uses in creating what he calls Organic Electronic Art: digital pieces that appear untouched by a computer. His work (jagart.co.uk) is defined by thick, expressive oil strokes, fluid watercolours and the subtle imperfections that give art a human touch. On countless layers, each created by hand in Rebelle, a digital painting studio, they surround and overlay the AI element that inspires each…

Budget. A perfect balance between price and performance. All quiet on the western front. The calm before the storm. Take your pick, but right now, as we write this, the US government’s tariffs have just come into effect. That’s big news for Blueprints and PC building in general, and particularly for us all moving forward. Chinese goods has been hit with a tariff on all exports to the US. That’ll extend to the majority of case manufacturing, along with peripherals, monitors, and tertiary PC componentry. There’s also the tariffs hitting Taiwan, predominantly aimed at crippling TSMC’s international supply chain. China, Mexico, and Canada have all announced retaliatory tariffs, and the current US government has promised escalatory tariffs if those are enacted. All this is bad news for us custom PC…

ANDROID Hide clutter from other apps in Google Photos Google Photos automatically stores and backs up pictures and videos you capture with your device’s camera. But it also shows media content from other apps, including screenshots you’ve taken and GIFs and memes you’ve received in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. All this extra stuff clutters your Photos feed, so Google has added new options to stop it appearing – without deleting the original files. Tap your profile icon in the top-right corner of the app and choose ‘Photos settings’, then Preferences. Tap ‘Photos view’ to access the new settings. You can either switch off ‘Show content from other apps’ to stop all images from other apps appearing in Google Photos, or choose what to include and exclude. Select ‘Only show backed-up…

Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture has landed with a bit of a wet splat. It’s not that the GPUs are bad; it’s that you simply can’t find any of them in stock at reasonable prices. There’s also the matter of the new cards offering relatively limited gen-on-gen performance improvements – unless you’re specifically using Multi Frame Generation (MFG) as a smoothing substitute for higher frame rates. AMD’s answer is RDNA 4, which walks back from the GPU chiplet architecture of the prior generation. Specifically, AMD has taken steps to make its ray tracing hardware viable, and beefed up the AI compute potential. After the RTX 20-series launched in 2018, this is what we wanted from AMD. Better late than never, I guess. To put things in perspective, the Navi 48 GPU at…

Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au Premium laptops Apple MacBook Pro M4 ONE OF THE BEST LAPTOPS THAT’S EVER BEEN MADE. This M4 update to the already brilliant MacBook Pro line is an easy recommendation, so the big question becomes do you choose the 14in version or 16in. But whatever you choose should last for years, and look great while it’s doing it. From $2,499, apple.com/au THE ALTERNATIVES ASUS ZENBOOK A14 This affordable and super-slim laptop with a 14in OLED panel has all the performance most people need at a very competitive price, and it boasts fantastic build quality. $1,999, asus.com NEW APPLE MACBOOK AIR M4 If you don’t need the all-out power of the Pro, this is a brilliant, cheaper alternative despite the unchanged chassis and…

PRICE $599 WEB au.nothing.tech We were impressed by the $849 Nothing Phone 3a Pro, as you can see opposite, but the standard Phone 3a squishes the price even further. You’ll pay $599 for the base model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which includes a telephoto camera and a spacious screen. Or for $80 more enjoy an extra 4GB of RAM and double the storage. The screen is just as good as on the Pro edition. It’s a 6.8in AMOLED panel, with a dynamic refresh rate that automatically ranges between 30Hz and 120Hz and a measured peak brightness of 1,370cd/m2. I never had a problem seeing the display, even when it was sunny, and videos looked vibrant from an assortment of viewing angles. Low-cost phones often cut corners…

PROS Conversational workflow • great logo response • expressive oil paintings • diversity in human depiction CONS Difficulty steering UK landmarks away from London • Venice pictures could have been better From free to $16.49 per month from firefly.adobe.com (credits also included with Creative Cloud subscriptions) If you’re already a Creative Cloud subscriber, what are you waiting for? On the All Apps plan, you get 1,000 Firefly generative credits a month, and 500 if you’re on a single app plan or have a paid subscription to Adobe Stock. Lightroom and Photography 20GB plan subscribers receive 100 credits apiece, and if you have multiple subscriptions, your credits are aggregated. Non-CC users needn’t feel left out. If you sign up for a free account then, per Adobe, you “may be provided with…

PROS Extremely fast • free tier quota resets daily • workflow balances prompts with traditional controls CONS No private image generation on free plan • inconsistent quality From free to US$60 per month | leonardo.ai When using Leonardo’s free plan, all of your creations are public, as they are with the lower-tier Midjourney plans. You’re also limited to 150 fast tokens daily. Although that sounds a lot, our prompt for a photorealistic cat ate up 40. You can’t generate anything larger than “medium”-sized images with a free plan, can’t generate images privately, and don’t get access to the most advanced features, so there are plenty of reasons to upgrade if you find it’s a platform you like. Some functions incur lower charges, such as unzooming – currently in beta –…

PROS Collaborative workflow • good text handling • smart when interpreting feedback CONS Limited free allowance • reluctance to take inspiration from pop culture references From free to US$200 per month | chatgpt.com D ALL-E is accessed through the same interface as ChatGPT. The exact number of images you can generate is ambiguous, with ChatGPT explaining that free account users “typically get a limited number” of generations per month according to OpenAI’s policies. The number isn’t always fixed, and “may reset monthly or be subject to tiers. Paid users... often get more generation”. We managed to generate three free images before we had to pay for an upgrade, which isn’t exactly generous. Moreover, it generated only a single image in response to each prompt, where Midjourney, Google ImageFX and Microsoft…

PROMPT "Generate an oil painting. The subject is a bowl of fruit in front of a half-drunk glass of wine. It is in a kitchen some time in the 16th century. On the same table as the bowl of fruit there is a plate with a little cheese on it. Use Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring as your inspiration. Make the picture portrait shaped in 3:2 ratio."…

PROMPT "Create some artwork for a podcast about classic cars. The audience will be entirely in the UK, so make sure the result includes a British landmark. The image should be exciting and glamorous, and give the impression of speed without encouraging dangerous driving. Include the podcast title, which is Bonnet Banter."…

From the front lines of the Australian PC market The new highly anticipated midrange GPUs from both major vendors have been out for a while now, and the evidence seems clear as to which has grabbed the consumers attention the most. The RTX 5070 and its Ti variant came out of the gate without issue, but supply levels soon found both versions out of stock almost immediately, causing both to increase asking prices to offset the demand. This, however, exacerbated their already rather terrible price to performance ratios compared to last generation, and seeing no improvement. This of course led to consumers being turned off, which didn’t matter as there weren’t any to buy anyway. AMD came to the rescue in a big way with the RX 9070 XT, offering…

CHROME Search your browsing history using AI It’s now over a year since Google introduced AI features in Chrome (tinyurl.com/APC545chromeai), but most are still only available to users in the US. One exception is the browser’s integration of Google Lens, which uses AI to search for content you select on web pages. Chrome 133, released in early February, finally adds another AI option, along with a new Experimental AI section in the browser’s Settings. It’s called ‘History search, powered by AI’ (see screenshot below) and lets you search for sites in your browsing history using “everyday language”. Rather than just find matching keywords in page titles and URLs, the AI feature searches the actual content of sites to provide more accurate results. For example, you can ask ‘What was that…

A good story is one that you can tell repeatedly for everyone’s amusement. It’s even better when you can tell the same story for different purposes. For instance, in a decade long ago, on a computer long since scrapped, he who shall not be named accidentally dd-ed an ISO image into a hard disk partition instead of a USB drive, resulting in the complete loss of data. This is a story that we’ve told repeatedly when talking about the risks of dd, but more importantly, to reiterate the benefit of backing up essential files and data. While there’s a number of backup solutions to choose from, most feature a graphical interface that might not be to everyone’s liking. For CLI enthusiasts, there’s a featureful alternative. Restic is a fast and…

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, browser WEB danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper TURNING MINESWEEPER INTO A DUNGEON CRAWLER. While similar to Minesweeper, Dragonsweeper is tough because it’s more cagy with its information. The numbers on the floor tell you how many mines are hidden in the eight grid spaces surrounding them, but they also inform you how many (and which) of the D&D-style monsters are lurking in there as well. Each monster or mine is assigned a number, and by comparing revealed monsters/mines against the white numbers painted on the floor, you can figure out where to click without getting yourself eaten or blown up. There are two things that up the challenge level, however. The first is that a lot of the floor is taken up by question marks, meaning you have no idea…