Twenty-thirteen has been an eventful year marked by a changing landscape in the computing world, the usual product refreshes in the mobile scene, the birth of a new generation of consoles and Steam Machines, the rise of Bitcoin, and some crazy new projects like Google's global network of high-altitude balloons providing free Internet in remote areas and Glass' limited rollout. Also, the harsh realization that pretty much nothing you do online (and sometimes even offline) is private – in case you didn't know that already.

As the year comes to a close it's time to look back at some of the most relevant stories of 2013. We'll do a brief recount of tech happenings in eleven categories: CPUs and Graphics, Hardware Devices and Components, Software, Gaming, Mobile, Security and Privacy, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tech Culture and The Web.

We hope you enjoyed our daily dispatch of technology news and analysis as much as we've enjoyed bringing it to you. Keep coming back for more in 2014. Without further ado, here's our take on 2013.

Hardware Software CPU/Graphics The Web Gaming Mobile Apple Google Microsoft Tech Culture IT Security

Hardware

January

Asus, Acer kill off netbooks as Chromebook tops popularity chart on Amazon

Corsair's Obsidian 900D can house everything but the kitchen sink

7Gbps wireless on the way, WiGig (802.11ad) adopted by IEEE

Solid state drive pricing dropped 38% in 2012

Intel to exit desktop motherboard business after Haswell

February

HP's first Chromebook officially out, priced at $330

It's official: Dell going private in $24 billion deal

Monoprice: From underground following to legitimate electronics brand

Crowdfunded NCase M1 Mini-ITX enthusiast chassis inches toward reality

Google unveils Chromebook Pixel, expects you to pay $1,299

Leap Motion gesture controller arrives May 13, initial app lineup detailed

March

projectQ motherboard promises to boot any OS in under 10 seconds

Roku 3 arrives with faster CPU, new UI and private listening mode

Lenovo redesigns ThinkPad with the all-new T431s Ultrabook

What is false disk failure, and why is it a problem?

Intel: Haswell-based Ultrabooks starting at $599 by holiday season

Razer Edge Pro met with mixed opinions as reviews hit the web

April

Intel showcases 20Gbps-capable second-gen Thunderbolt technology

LG 29EA93 Review: Monitors Go Ultra-Wide

Netbooks to be nothing but an awkward piece of history by 2015

HP to embed Leap Motion's gesture control tech in select products

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed update to eliminate need for chargers

Mini PC market heats up with the launch of BeagleBone Black

May

Gigabyte teases customizable, high-res UEFI for Haswell motherboards

Seagate finally joins consumer SSD market, revamps enterprise lineup

PCIe flash: It solves lots of problems, but also makes a bunch - so what's its future?

Leap Motion shows off gesture controls in Windows

Lenovo sees huge increase in PC sales as rest of industry declines

Building a Thin Mini-ITX PC: Small and Silent Performance

Gigabyte's Brix mini PC packs a lot of power in a tiny box

June

Seagate and Western Digital now shipping uber thin hard drives

Intel makes Thunderbolt 2 official, entering production in late 2013

Understanding SSDs: the need for TRIM, overprovisioning, and more

MSI challenges Alienware with 14-inch gaming laptop

Intel secretly testing set-top box with more than 2,000 employees

July

Intel's 14nm Skylake platform to support DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA Express

Garmin HUD displays driving directions on your car's windshield

Battery technology has hit a wall according to Qualcomm boss

PC shipments continue downward trend with 11% drop in Q2

Acer ditches Intel's Thunderbolt, will favor USB 3.0 instead

SATA DevSleep: Getting us closer to instant-on laptops

Canary is the world's first smart home security device for everyone

Samsung's new SSD 840 EVO significantly improves write speeds

Leap Motion controller now shipping, coming to Best Buy on July 28

Building a Small Form Factor Gaming PC: Silverstone SG10, Haswell and More

August

10 Gbps USB specification finalized as USB 3.1

New Resistive RAM packs 1 TB of storage into a single chip

PC gamers fuel hardware sales in otherwise stagnant market

New particle paves way for 20 times denser hard drives

SATA 3.2 finalized, includes SATA Express for 2 GB/s of bandwidth

IDC says sales of touchscreen laptops were overestimated

Meet the CODE keyboard, designed and built by a programmer

September

Lenovo launches thinner ThinkPad X and T models

Intel Ivy Bridge-E Debuts: Core i7-4960X Review

HDMI 2.0 announced, brings 18 Gbps bandwidth for 60fps 4K video

Finding the Best CPU Cooler: 10 units reviewed and tested

Seagate's Shingled Magnetic Recording to bring 5 TB HDDs in 2014

PCs vs. Tablets: Tablet shipments to outpace PCs by 2015

Understanding SSDs: Why SSDs hate write amplification

World's first carbon nanotube computer emerges after years of work

Build a custom solid state drive using microSD cards

October

Nest Labs makes the boring smoke detector exciting with Protect

Nvidia bids adieu to V-Sync limitations with G-Sync monitor technology

Research team designs and builds a disk drive that stores data for a million years

Western Digital planning to launch efficient helium-filled hard drives by year's end

Building a Hackintosh The Easy Way

November

Gigabyte's Haswell-powered Brix barebones systems now available

Western Digital packs helium into new 6 TB hard drive

This camera records at one trillion FPS and can capture moving light

Western Digital hoping for 5x larger hard drives with HAMR

Quantum computers looking more realistic with major storage breakthrough

ASRock unveils a pair of motherboards designed specifically for Bitcoin mining

December

Dell intros 32 and 24-inch 4K Ultra HD resolution monitors

WD Black2 Dual Drive Review

New USB connector inbound, set to be smaller and reversible

Intel's 2014 solid state drive plans revealed in leaked slides

Piixl's Jetpack PC straps high-end gaming hardware to the back of your TV

Is Buying a Sound Card Worth The Money? An Enthusiast's Perspective

Google reportedly considering making custom ARM-based server chips

Asus monitor with Nvidia G-Sync now up for pre-order

Standards group wants one charger for all laptops

This robotic cube can balance on its edge, stand on a corner and even walk

Software

January

Hack to run traditional desktop apps on Windows RT detailed

Adobe offering Creative Suite 2 for free, but they didn't mean to

Scientists use DNA to store MP3, holds 2.2 petabytes per gram

BitTorrent introduces Dropbox-like file syncing without the cloud

WindowsAndroid lets you run Android natively within Windows

Office 2013 and Office 365 now available, subscriptions start at $9.99

February

Office 2013 EULA says the software is bound to one PC forever

Adobe releases original source code for Photoshop version 1.0

Internet Explorer 10 finally arrives on Windows 7

March

Microsoft reverses one-PC Office 2013 licensing restriction

Adobe discontinues boxed Creative Suite, Acrobat software

Dropbox acquires recently-launched Mailbox app

April

Extend your Office 365 free trial up to 180 days with this trick

May

Adobe Creative Suite becomes subscription-only, kills Fireworks

Viber launches messaging app for PC and Mac as competitors stick to mobile

Microsoft to Adobe: People not ready to give up on stand-alone software

Microsoft wants iTunes on Windows 8, but Apple is reluctant

Connectify Switchboard combines your internet connections to maximize speed

Chromium-based Opera browser now available on Windows, Mac

June

Best Of: Computer Tips & Tricks Everyone Should Know

Adobe Creative Cloud has already been cracked

July

Download Internet Explorer 11 Preview for Windows 7

August

Lenovo to preload Start menu replacement on Windows 8 machines

Parallels Access lets you remotely run Windows and OS X desktop software from an iPad, as if they were native apps

September

Apple launches iOS 7, iTunes 11.1 with iTunes Radio

Google makes Quickoffice free, gives you 10GB of extra Drive storage

VLC update adds new audio core, hardware decoding and more

October

Microsoft finally confirms Office for iPad is in the works

Chrome used more than Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer combined

November

Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 now available for download

Happy birthday: Mozilla's Firefox web browser turns nine today

Latest Google Chrome beta makes it easy to locate tabs playing annoying audio

End of an era: Winamp is shutting down after more than 16 years

A Software Challenge: Why Users Uninstall Apps

'Ok Google' voice activated search arrives on desktop Chrome

December

Time Saver: Download subtitles automatically with a simple script

Spotiamp is the lightweight Spotify player that uses Winamp's UI

PC makers to rebel against Microsoft Windows at CES

CPU and Graphics

January

Intel unveils new chips for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 800 and 600 promise huge performance gains

AMD Radeon HD 8000M now shipping, new APUs unveiled

Samsung shows 8-core Exynos 5 Octa processor during CES keynote

Intel Haswell integrated graphics are on par with GeForce GT 650M

Nvidia's GeForce Experience PC game optimizer enters open beta

February

Nvidia GeForce Titan: supercomputer GPU power for the 1%

Triple Monitor Gaming on a Budget: SLI vs. Crossfire vs. Single High-end GPU

March

Early Haswell processors will reportedly have a USB 3.0 bug

Testing Nvidia's $1,000 Graphics Card: GeForce GTX Titan Review

AMD launches "Richland" A-Series APUs: slight speed bump, better power management

Future Nvidia 'Volta' GPU has stacked DRAM, offers 1TB/s bandwidth

Happy birthday: Intel's Pentium processor turns 20 years old today

The History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 1

April

The History of the Modern GPU, Part 2: 3Dfx Voodoo, the game-changer

The History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 3: The Nvidia vs. ATI era begins

The History of the GPU, Part 4: The Coming of General Purpose GPUs

AMD unveils G-Series X, hints at future ARM-based chips for embedded market

AMD Radeon HD 7990 Review: Dual GPU Comeback

Intel "Haswell" CPUs to arrive June 3

May

AMD quad-core FX-4350 and six-core FX-6350 get official

Intel Iris: Haswell graphics get a name, 2x-3x performance of HD 4000

Intel Ivy Bridge-E slated for September 2013 launch

Intel announces Atom processor redesign, code-named Silvermont

GeForce GTX 780 Review: The Titan Descendant

June

Haswell Debuts: Intel Core i7-4770K Review

Where did Broadwell go? Leaked Intel roadmap shows 2014 Haswell refresh, but no Broadwell

AMD first to reach 5GHz with FX-9590 processor

Intel Haswell-E enthusiast chip to carry eight cores and support DDR4

Nvidia interested in licensing graphics technology to other chip makers

AMD details first ARM-based server chip, codenamed "Seattle"

AMD: We will have no problem supplying silicon for PS4, Xbox One

August

AMD next-gen Radeon 'Hawaii' graphics cards expected in October

Nvidia allegedly working on dual-GPU, GK110-based GTX 790

Xbox One system-on-chip packs more transistors than Tahiti GPU

September

Intel Ivy Bridge-E Debuts: Core i7-4960X Review

AMD reveals the Radeon R9 290X alongside new R7 and R9 GPU lines

AMD unveils revolutionary 'Mantle' API to optimize GPU performance

October

Pre-orders begin for AMD Radeon R9 290X, likely priced at $699

Origin PC no longer sells AMD GPUs due to overheating, other technical issues

Old Is New Again: Radeon R9 270X and R7 260X Review

Steam Machines to feature Nvidia, AMD and Intel GPUs

Integrated DSP coming in Intel Broadwell CPUs to facilitate low-power voice recognition

AMD's Mantle API not compatible with the Xbox One

Intel Broadwell chip production delayed until 2014

AMD Radeon R9 290X Review: Challenging the Titan at half the price

Intel to start manufacturing 64-bit quad-core ARM chips in 2014

November

Radeon R9 290 Review: Kick-ass value, same top notch performance

Overclock That GeForce! Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti OC & GTX 780 GHz Review

Nvidia looks to ease plummeting Tegra sales with LTE 4i devices in early 2014

AMD details Kaveri APU, will launch on January 14th

Intel Atom SoC roadmap updated, new chips and 64-bit Android tablets on the horizon

December

Demand for AMD's Radeon R9 cards has caused prices to skyrocket, but why?

ARM acquires graphics firm Geomerics to improve its mobile chips for gaming

AMD launches Radeon R7 260, coming in January

Future Intel 'Broadwell' chip could pack up to 18 cores



Hardware Software CPU/Graphics The Web Gaming Mobile Apple Google Microsoft Tech Culture IT Security


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