Matt Weinberger

This week, Apple released its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-top-iphone-ipad-apps-2018-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="9666ffc4-5a80-3793-a129-ea5a7a47e071"> rankings of the best apps of the year </a> , with indie hit "Donut County" taking the prize as the top iPhone game of 2018.

If you've never played "Donut County," which <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/donut-county/id1292099839?mt=8" id="2f96f02f-7f63-3592-a123-32f83fa227e4"> costs $5 on the App Store </a> , I urge you to take a look: It's a stylish, funny game that casts you as the pilot of a remote-controlled hole in the ground that sucks in everything it touches, from snakes and lawn chairs all the way up to mountains and Ferris wheels.

The game isn't especially challenging — there are some light puzzle elements, sure, like sucking up live fireworks and using them to bust up obstacles into chunks that fit in your portable hole. But like previous award recipient "Monument Valley" before it, "Donut County" is more about the experience than it is about reflexes and skill.

And what an experience it is. The general idea is that BK, a raccoon, buys the town's beloved Donut County pastry shop and launches a donut-delivery app. When the unknowing townspeople order a donut, though, what they get delivered instead is your portable hole in the ground, which proceeds to swallow up the customer and everything they own. BK, oblivious to the damage he's caused, is just trying to do enough deliveries to earn a quadcopter drone.

It's a not-so-subtle commentary on what happens to a community when the tech industry moves in: The townspeople in the game thought they were just getting a donut, but accidentally invited disaster into their lives. It's a satire of companies like Uber of Airbnb, where a simple concept can lead to all kinds of headaches and ripple effects in other industries — just look at <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-reaches-tipping-point-new-york-city-hurts-taxi-business-2017-10?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="d331e4d4-80fd-35b8-a8f9-c540c3c7562a"> what happened to the New York City taxi business when Uber moved in, for an example. </a>

Tellingly, atone point, BK confesses that he doesn't even know what a donut is, other than that they have a hole, and thought he was just giving the people what they want. The story itself is about the townspeople convincing him that he was wrong, and that maybe the people didn't actually want to be at the bottom of a giant hole.

It's all complemented by creator Ben Esposito's striking art style, which is appropriately cartoon-y, keeping the mood light as you swallow everything and everyone into the gaping abyss.

So, yeah, it's silly, and it's short, and it's not especially challenging, but if you have a few hours to kill, "Donut County" is well worth your time. And if you don't have an iPhone, it's also available for PC, Mac, and PlayStation 4, too.

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This stylish, funny game about gentrification just won Apple's iPhone game of the year award (AAPL)

It's official: Microsoft Edge, the default web browser on Windows 10, will be moving over in the next year to support the Google-born Chromium web engine. Edge was introduced in 2015 as the successor to Internet Explorer.

According to a blog by Windows Corporate VP Joe Belfiore, Microsoft also plans to release versions of Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Apple's MacOS. This will be the first time Microsoft has supported an internet browser for Apple computers since Internet Explorer for Mac got its final update in 2003.

This strategic shift <a id="60156579-e309-3109-aaf2-33db3f6a4320" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-edge-google-chromium-browser-2018-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> away from Microsoft's own EdgeHTML standard and toward Chromium </a> was first reported earlier this week by <a id="239cd1dd-779f-3270-a895-d12d285a9c2e" href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium"> The Verge </a> and <a id="0e656543-2c31-305b-ac2c-1abf34a199fc" href="https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-building-chromium-powered-web-browser-windows-10"> Windows Central </a> . However, contrary to earlier reports, Microsoft doesn't appear to have plans to scrap Edge entirely, but rather make this technical change under the hood.

This move stands to fix one of the biggest annoyances with Microsoft Edge, namely the fact that some websites simply don't support the browser. It brings more subtle changes behind the scenes, as well, including paving the way for Google Chrome and other browsers to potentially come to the Windows Store in Windows 10.

For users, the switch to Chromium — which will take about a year to fully come to pass, Microsoft estimates, with a preview version ready in early 2019 — won't be super-noticeable for the average Edge user. The interface will stay the same, apart from the usual ways in which Microsoft adds more features and tweaks over time.

However, Chromium provides the open-source core for the mega-popular and market-leading Google Chrome browser, which <a id="71d50eb9-53dc-34aa-a279-d9b0a1ed92b9" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-internet-browsers-desktop/"> accounts for some 67% of the web browser market, to Edge's 4% or so </a> . The popularity of Chrome has led most web developers to prioritize support for Blink and V8, the core components of Chromium. By embracing Chromium, Microsoft Edge stands to reap the benefits of its general acceptance, too.

We've heard from Microsoft that this, in particular, solves a big headache for the company itself, too. The process of finding unsupported websites and making them work in Edge, one by one, was a tedious process that took engineering resources away from actually improving other aspects of the product.

First of all, this means that Microsoft will become an active contributor to Chromium, which was born at Google, but is an open-source software project. Under open source, programmers anywhere in the world can download the source code, tweak it to their liking, and contribute improvements back to the main software.

This means that Microsoft will be joining with Google, Samsung, Intel, and other big corporate Chromium contributors in making the engine better not only for its own products, but for everyone else using it, as well.

We've already gotten a taste of this in action: <a id="54401e01-e444-3c90-a0ca-6319d02e44e5" href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/microsoft-joining-qualcomm-and-google-to-bring-chrome-to-windows-on-arm/"> Microsoft, Google, and Qualcomm are working together </a> to bring Google Chrome to Windows PCs running Arm processors, a fast-growing rival to Intel's traditional x86 chips.

Going forward, we hear that you can expect Microsoft to contribute elements of Edge, like its smoother text scrolling, its laptop battery life optimizations, and some security innovations, back to the main Chromium project. In other words, some of the best parts of Microsoft Edge will make it to other browsers by way of Chromium.

This means that Microsoft Edge will have to compete with other browsers on the basis of some of its more proprietary innovations, like its deep hooks into Microsoft Office and the Cortana assistant. At the same time, going with the very mature Chromium platform could make Edge that much better, too, right off the bat.

The rethinking of Microsoft Edge could make life easier for IT managers and web developers, too.

Bringing Microsoft Edge to older versions of Windows stands to solve a frustration for IT managers, who might have to manage different teams or departments using different versions of the operating system — Microsoft Edge, to date, has only been available on Windows 10.

In fact, different versions of Windows 10 have different versions of Edge; each new semi-annual big update to the operating system also carries the latest version of the browser. That's yet another headache for the IT department, when some PCs are on one version of Windows 10 and some on another.

And so, Microsoft isalso going to start releasing new versions of Microsoft Edge separately from Windows 10 updates. At some point soon-ish, you'll start seeing Edge updates come via Windows Update, across all Windows platforms.

One more thing on this front: Bringing Microsoft Edge to Mac has professional implications, at least for the web designers who use Apple's computers to do their jobs. Edge might never be a huge hit with Mac users, but it could be a godsend for professionals who need to test how their sites and apps work in Microsoft's browser.

On a final note, the move toward Chromium could remove the long-standing barriers to bringing Google Chrome to the Windows Store, the app store in Windows 10. There's been some <a id="a87f95b7-6c79-3733-ab3e-d888ef20b117" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-installer-pulled-from-windows-store-2017-12/?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> friction between Microsoft and Google </a> in the past over the fact that Microsoft hasn't allowed Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers in its marketplace.

Microsoft's rules require that any web browser listed in the Windows Store use the same EdgeHTML web engine as Edge, ostensibly because they want to make sure it meets the company's standards for security and performance. Once Edge switches to Chromium, this seemingly means that those browsers meet the requirement.

Microsoft tells Business Insider that it's not as simple as all that — different browsers might use older, newer, or otherwise customized versions of Chromium as Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft needs to figure out how to account for that variance in its rules. However, we're told that the company is very open to the possibility.

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Microsoft Joe Belfiore Windows 10 Build 2017

Microsoft will release its first web browser for Apple's Mac computers in 15 years as it makes a major change to its Microsoft Edge strategy (MSFT)

Microsoft is slated to discontinue Edge, the browser that comes built into Windows 10, according to reports from <a id="239cd1dd-779f-3270-a895-d12d285a9c2e" href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/4/18125238/microsoft-chrome-browser-windows-10-edge-chromium"> The Verge </a> and <a id="0e656543-2c31-305b-ac2c-1abf34a199fc" href="https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-building-chromium-powered-web-browser-windows-10"> Windows Central </a> . Edge was introduced in 2015 as the successor to Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The idea, according to those reports, is that Microsoft is moving away from its own EdgeHTML rendering engine and towards Chromium, the web engine that powers Google Chrome. Chromium, first released by Google in 2008, has become the web's predominant standard, thanks to the wild success of the Chrome browser.

The success of Chromium has become something of a headache for Microsoft, both internally and externally — the Verge reports that employees and customers alike have been "frustrated" that the Microsoft Edge browser doesn't work properly with some websites and apps that were optimized for Chromium.

And so, it sounds like Microsoft is poised to release a new browser, based on Chromium, that would leave EdgeHTML in the past. Intriguingly, the Verge reports that this move would also open the door for a version of Google Chrome on the Windows app store — the main thing stopping that from happening, so far, is that <a id="3a2e6c17-cfe7-3cb4-a1ee-20a2b76756cf" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-installer-pulled-from-windows-store-2017-12?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> Microsoft has required all web browsers in the Windows Store to use EdgeHTML </a> . If EdgeHTML goes, so too will that barrier.

Read more: Microsoft removed a 'useless' Google app from its store for violating its policies

Of note is that this new browser couldrecycle the Edge name, and it could even take much of its interface. After all, Microsoft Edge may not have been as mature or fully-featured as Google Chrome, but it has a slick interface and pretty solid performance. However, the engine is the very heart of a web browser, and without EdgeHTML, it would really and truly be a whole new piece of software, whatever Microsoft ends up naming it.

Also of note is that such a web browser could play right into a new round of <a id="c8a9c73b-6585-339c-a95c-e825ee0232b9" href="https://www.techradar.com/news/goodbye-windows-microsoft-building-simplified-lite-os-to-take-on-chrome-os"> rumors that Microsoft is working on a so-called "Windows Lite." </a> That hypothetical version of Windows would be stripped down to be little more than a web browser, similar to Google ChromeOS, which is Microsoft's chief competitor in the classroom market.

In the same way that Google ChromeOS is based on a Chromium core, a new web browser could give Microsoft the foundation for that supposed "Windows Lite," a stripped-down version of the operating system that could take on Google on its own turf.

Microsoft declined to comment. The Verge reports that there could be more details as soon as this week.

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It sounds like Microsoft is killing the Edge browser built into Windows 10, and placing a big bet on Google's web technology instead (MSFT)

Last week, developer Niantic teased that Pokémon Go players will soon be able to battle their fellow Pokémon trainers — a feature that's been in hot demand since the game first launched in the summer of 2018.

On Tuesday, Niantic announced its first feature, including the key detail that trainers will take teams of three Pokémon into battle with them.

It's not immediately clear when, exactly, this feature will start rolling out, though Niantic says that it's slated for launch before the end of the year. In the past, it's rarely taken Niantic long after the announcement to begin the rollout of new features, though it often brings the new features to high-level players first, before fully rolling out the changes.

Whatisclear is that the addition of player-versus-player (PvP) battles is slated to completely change the game. And I mean that literally: Among many other things, the trainer battle update will add the ability for your Pokémon to learn a third attack, beyond the two that they already know. The game's battle system itself is getting tweaked slightly, such that you're rewarded for tapping rhythmically to charge up certain attacks in combat.

Much of it builds on the game's new social features, which were introduced a few months ago alongside the <a id="fffde4f3-065b-3699-a98e-f93046f8d26b" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pokemon-go-trading-how-it-works-2018-6?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> also-much-requested Pokémon trading feature </a> . While you can battle strangers, there are a few advantages to fighting your friends.

Here's how Pokémon Go trainer battles will work:

<h1> The first thing you gotta know is that Pokémon Go battling is sorted into leagues. When you challenge another trainer, you decide ahead of time which leagues rules youll fight under. </h1>

<h1> Different leagues have different caps on the strength of the Pokémon you can use to battle. The highest-level league, the Master League, takes off (almost) all the limits: You can use any Pokémon, at any level, including so-called Legendaries. </h1>

The one caveat are that you can't use Ditto or Shedinja, two weird cases in the larger Pokémon canon, in any kind of player-versus-player battles, including Master League.

<h1> If you want to battle another trainer, youll use your phones camera to scan their unique QR code. Youll only be able to battle remotely with your Ultra Friends and Best Friends, as a perk for IRL besties. </h1>

<h1> Niantic says this is to encourage face-to-face interactions: It envisions Pokémon Go players getting into rumbles in parks, malls, and anywhere else Pokémon trainers might gather. </h1>

<h1> Youll face off with the other trainer, giving you a chance to pick your team of three Pokémon (and show off your characters outfit). </h1>

<h1> Now, its time to throw down. Pokémon fight one-at-a-time, swapping on the fly to best match their Pokémons strengths to their opponents weakness. If all three of your Pokémon get knocked out, you lose. </h1>

Of note is that the original Pokémon games for Nintendo's video game consoles have always featured teams of six. Niantic says that this makes fights go faster and keep moving, which is better-suited for a smartphone game like Pokémon Go.

<h1> But you might notice that this looks a little different from the regular Pokémon Go battle screen. Thats because these battles work a little differently. Youll still tap the screen to do your basic attack, chipping away at your opponents health. </h1>

<h1> ...but now, every single Pokémon can learn a second charged move, in a first for the game. This little change could add a lot of strategy to the game. </h1>

Note that Salamence here can have both water and fire-type attacks in the tank now, making it that much more effective — and that much harder to defeat in combat. This, alone, stands to shake up the conventional wisdom in terms of Pokémon Go strategy.

<h1> Youll need to spend some Pokémon candy and a little Stardust to get the second charged move. Once you have it, though, youll be able to use it in other game modes. </h1>

Note that just like before, some attacks take longer to charge up than others.

<h1> Also new is that you can charge up your attacks further by tapping rhythmically on the screen. Keep tapping, and your attack will get stronger. </h1>

<h1> This leads to another new mechanic: Meet the "Protect Shield." When an opposing Pokémon launches a charged attack your way, you have the option to either absorb the hit, or put up one of your limited number of Protect Shields. </h1>

<h1> Its a guessing game. You can use a Protect Shield if youre worried your opponent has a super effective move that could finish you off. If youre wrong, though, and their attack was something you could have shrugged off, youre down a shield. </h1>

<h1> To the victor go the spoils. Niantic says that youll earn rewards for the first three times you battle in a given day, though you can battle indefinitely just for fun. The rewards include the hard-to-find Sinnoh Stone item, as well as the Stardust you need to make your Pokémon more powerful. </h1>

The availability of the Sinnoh Stone as a reward should come as a relief to frustrated players, who can currently get it only as a random prize for completing a seven-day streak of Field Research tasks.

Also of note is that winners and losers both get some prizes, as a way to make sure even lower-level players get something from the experience, Niantic says.

<h1> Finally, youll be able to fight Candela, Blanche, and Spark, the AI-controlled leaders of the games three teams. This is good practice for players who want to ease into fighting their fellow humans, and youll get some rewards, too. </h1>

This also comes with some very good news for Pokémon Go obsessives: Fighting the AI-controlled team leaders will earn you progress towards the Ace Trainer in-game achievement. This is notable because the last time Niantic updated the game's battle system, the changes frustrated many people by making it impossible to complete Ace Trainer.

<h1> Its not immediately clear when Niantic will start rolling out the trainer battle system, though its likely to be soon. Be advised, though, that it tends to roll new features out slowly, to certain players, just to make sure servers can handle the load. </h1>

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SEE ALSO: This is how Pokémon trading works in Pokémon Go

Here's how battling other players in Pokémon Go will work

There are those in the real-world Silicon Valley who think that HBO's "Silicon Valley," the network's long-running satire, is too critical of the tech industry.

But in a <a id="48970fab-051c-3d00-ace1-b6be767d8b9c" href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Silicon-Valley?WT.mc_id=20181119182826_SiliconHBO_BG-TW&amp;WT.tsrc=BGTW&amp;linkId=59864219"> new blog entry </a> , no less than Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has a message for those people: lighten up.

"I have friends in Silicon Valley who refuse to watch the show because they think it’s just making fun of them," writes Gates. "I always tell them: 'You really should watch it, because they don’t make any more fun of us than we deserve.'"

"Silicon Valley," which is going into its sixth season, details the adventures of Pied Piper, a data compression startup that can't quite seem to catch a break. It also follows Gavin Belson, the CEO of Google-esque mega-corp Hooli, who borrows attributes from real-life execs including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

In his blog entry, Gates says that he's one of the many tech execs who were consulted by the show's creators to ensure authenticity — creator Mike Judge and his production team have interviewed the likes of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and investor Marc Andreessen, even <a id="0fa44411-f4e3-3fd4-af72-d645bbd48f37" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hbos-silicon-valley-tapped-this-startup-for-maximum-authenticity-and-things-got-weird-2016-5?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> embedding at a hardware startup </a> to ensure that a running gag rang true.

Gates writes that all of that effort paid off, as the show is an accurate lampooning of the types of people and companies that he knows so well. He says that he identifies the most with Richard Hendricks, the founder of Pied Piper,"who is a great programmer but has to learn some hard lessons about managing people."

"The show is a parody, so it exaggerates things, but like all great parodies it captures a lot of truths," writes Gates.

Read more: <a id="a2beb5e6-778d-367c-a1ca-df93d1b17c20" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-characters-real-life-2016-6/?IR=T&amp;r=SG/?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest#richard-hendricks-is-the-classic-silicon-valley-wunderkind-who-codes-his-way-to-the-top-1"> The characters of HBO's 'Silicon Valley' are inspired by real people in the tech world — here they are </a>

Similarly, Gates likes the way that the show depicts entrepreneurs and startups.

"Even a huge believer in technology like me has to laugh when some character talks about how they’re going to change the world with an app that tells you whether what you’re eating is a hot dog or not," he writes. That's a reference to an infamous "Silicon Valley" gag where a character makes a cutting-edge AI-powered app that can tell you, indeed, if something is a hot dog or not. The show's creators even released it as a <a id="f78273ea-214a-3c1b-a955-e272172a996f" href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/not-hotdog/id1212457521?mt=8"> real iPhone app </a> .

He does have one bone to pick, though, with how the show depicts Hooli, the Goliath to Pied Piper's David, as bloated and inept.

"Although I’m obviously biased, my experience is that small companies can be just as inept, and the big ones have the resources to invest in deep research and take a long-term point of view that smaller ones can’t afford," writes Gates.

Of note is that while Gates may relate to the journey of Pied Piper, their stories are very different.

The fictional Pied Piper got off the ground after Hendricks and his friends quit Hooli to chase a novel new piece of technology; <a id="c981b5a0-4e83-3569-a873-9e4aa48dd153" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-first-business-card-microsoft-2018-7?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> Gates and his late cofounder Paul Allen started Microsoft after moving to New Mexico </a> to chase an opportunity with a then-revolutionary microcomputer. Gates and Allen definitely had their own problems, but they never had to fend off an angry ex-employer with an axe to grind.

Also of note is that not everybody in Silicon Valley seems to love the show as much as Gates. Astro Teller, best known as Google's moonshot boss, is said to have once huffed out of a meeting with the show's producers and <a id="9f42b1d1-6890-33c9-ab35-75d8e3c52c17" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-x-astro-teller-hbo-silicon-valley-2016-6?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest"> tried to make a dramatic exit — on Rollerblades </a> .

You can read Gates' <a id="fed69f78-df3d-37be-add6-f1dab16e0449" href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Silicon-Valley?WT.mc_id=20181119182826_SiliconHBO_BG-TW&amp;WT.tsrc=BGTW&amp;linkId=59864219"> full thoughts on HBO's "Silicon Valley" here </a> .

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Bill Gates says that HBO's 'Silicon Valley' is the best way to understand the real Silicon Valley: 'They don’t make any more fun of us than we deserve'

Way back in 2015, Microsoft greatly expanded its benefits for new moms and dads, such that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-expanded-parental-leave-401k-holidays-2015-8?utm_source=intl&amp;utm_medium=ingest" id="7f7f827e-efa0-3db3-a343-744dbdc0c819"> employees can get at least 12 weeks of fully-paid leave after the birth of their child. </a>

Fast forward to today, and a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6471215166146048000/" id="3e612946-3a9f-392d-a763-300304335abc"> popular LinkedIn post from David Ertel </a> , a services manager with Microsoft based in Ohio, shows that the $817 billion company isn't afraid to get a little cute when it lays out what it can do for new parents. In fact — the company addressed the letter directly to Ertel's newborn son.

"You represent the most important thing we’ve all been working toward—the future," reads the letter, in part, as seen in Ertel's post. Microsoft tells Business Insider that it sends the letter to all the new parents among its employees in the United States.

The letter also highlights Microsoft's partnership with <a href="https://atworkwa.org/" id="94bca65f-458f-30ea-a79b-7e0406a5b637"> AtWork! </a> , a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with disabilities. AtWork! assembles gift boxes for Microsoft employees, including a blanket made by <a href="https://www.nannyandwebster.com/_ie/blankets.html" id="6d483bf5-9efe-3c0b-a838-1b90fcd00dad"> Nanny and Webster </a> , which donates its profits to children's charities. Still, Ertel says that his favorite item was "the letter itself."

"I honestly had no idea that the box and letter were a thing that Microsoft did (I was more than happy to take my parental bonding time) and when we received it my wife, my mother and I were floored and could not stop smiling," Ertel tells Business Insider. "It is really amazing that the first piece of mail that my son received was from Microsoft."

He says that getting the letter made him feel like an individual among Microsoft's many thousands of employees, and that he was gratified to see the company take his family into consideration.

"It made me feel proud for my son that my company values him enough to recognize him coming into this world," says Ertel.

Microsoft says that the box is a much-loved employee perk.

"They get emails and even handwritten notes galore from grateful parents saying how impressed they were that Microsoft does this," says a spokesperson.

<h1> Microsoft shared the full letter template that it sends to new parents, which you can read below: </h1>

Dear Name, While you’ve been busy getting ready for the world, we’ve been busy doing our part to get the world ready for you.

You represent the most important thing we’ve all been working toward—the future.

Enclosed are some special gifts we selected just for you. The Welcome Baby Box is lovingly put together by AtWork!, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help people with disabilities be productive, integrated, and contributing members of their communities. One of our favorite gifts is the Nanny and Webster blanket. Not only will this blanket keep you warm, but also, all profits from Nanny and Webster blankets support children’s charities. Please besure to share these gifts with your parents.

Ask your parents to familiarize themselves with the great benefits that Microsoft offers, like Back-Up Care, subsidized child care, new mothers’ rooms, and family resources from the Microsoft CARES Employee Assistance Program. All can be found under Work &amp; Life – Children &amp; Family on benefits.me.microsoft.com.

We look forward to watching you grow and seeing what you’ll achieve.

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Read the sweet letter that Microsoft sends to the newborn children of its employees (MSFT)

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