Microsoft’s Next Xbox; Mac Pro Out in September; Amazon Stops Selling Blink XT2 Cam; Salesforce Buying Visualization Co. Tableau

Microsoft has revealed more about ‘Project Scarlett,’ the next gen Xbox. According to businessinsider.com, the console will launch ‘holiday 2020.’ It will rock 8K video, have SSD storage, and Microsoft says it will be 4 times more powerful than the Xbox One X. Look for frame rates of up to 120 fps. Microsoft will use the SSD not only as storage, but also as virtual RAM, boosting performance by 40x over the current Xbox…games should load much, much faster. Halo Infinite will also launch alongside the new console when it drops.

The über powerful Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR Apple showed off at WWDC a few days ago will be available for order this fall. Macrumors.com reports that the Apple website now indicates that it is coming in September, and there’s a ‘notify me’ button on the site. The outrage over the preposterous $999 stand has softened if only a little after some techies noted that most buyers of the $4999 monitor will probably just mount the things on their existing stands or arms and wouldn’t buy a stand anyway. The Mac Pro starts at $5999, and estimates of it plus the monitor fully tricked out could touch $50 grand!

Amazon has stopped sales of the new Blink XT2 smart camera it launched last month amid a slew of mixed reviews. Theverge.com says the cam is now listed as ‘currently unavailable,’ and Best Buy, which was also selling it shows it as ‘coming soon.’ The $89.99 XT2 had been panned for puny maximum WiFi range in trying to hit users’ routers, in addition to buggy software, and inconsistent motion detection. Some users have gotten email from the founder of Blink, saying they are working to correct the ‘unforeseen’ problems.

Last week, Google bought analytic startup Looker. Now, according to techcrunch.com, Salesforce has snapped up data visualization firm Tableau for $15.7 billion with an all-stock deal. Salesforce is angling to increase engagement with its present customers via the visualization tools. They believe they will be able to deliver ‘a truly unified and powerful view across all of a customer’s data’ after Tableau is fully integrated.