During its Scary Fast product event last night, Apple officially debuted its new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. The company is positioning the M3 chips as major upgrades over its M1 hardware — if you bought an M2 system, you're probably not itching for a replacement just yet.
The M3's GPU is the biggest leap forward, delivering new features, like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, enabling more realistic lighting and better geometry handling. If you're into chip architecture and other fun endeavors, the M3 chips are also notable for being the first PC chips built on a three-nanometer process — both the M1 and M2 families are based on a 5nm process. This means more transistors packed into the same space, which helps with power efficiency, as well as providing better overall performance. The M3 series will feature in the revamped MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch (more on those below), as well as the 24-inch iMac.
That new chip will make the new iMac up to twice as fast as its predecessor, but there aren't too many upgrades elsewhere in the latest Mac. Apple is sticking with a 4.5K Retina display, for instance. There are some handy changes on the connectivity front, now with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 The new iMac starts at $1,299 and ships on November 7.
— Mat Smith
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The 14-inch MBP with a base M3 processor will cost $1,599 — the first time the 14-inch laptop has hit that low of a price. The M3 Pro iteration will still cost you $1,999, and prices go up from there for M3 Max options. Meanwhile, a base 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip will have the same $2,499 starting price as its M2 Pro predecessor. Alas, the 13-inch version is no more. Farewell, Touch Bar.
In the last few years, we've seen Amazon get into e-ink scribes, while startups like ReMarkable have carved out their own niche with capable hardware for a reasonable price. Lenovo, having dabbled with e-ink on devices like the Yoga Book, has joined the fray with a dedicated device, the Smart Paper. While the product hasn't yet launched in the US, the Smart Paper has launched elsewhere, including the UK. At around $400 (or £500 in the UK), it's expensive. The hardware is impressive (and useful), but it's all tainted by a subscription service that demands even more money.
The 'slight change' is the latest attempt to address misinformation.
X will no longer pay creators for tweets promoting misinformation. Elon Musk said the company is making a "slight change" to its monetization program, and tweets fact-checked via community notes will no longer be eligible for payouts.
The latest change comes as researchers, fact-checkers and journalists have raised the alarm about the amount of viral misinformation spreading on X amid the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. Recent analysis from NewsGuard, a nonprofit that tracks the spread of misinformation, found 74 percent of "the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel–Hamas war are being pushed by 'verified' X accounts."
Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip 5 Retro, a limited-edition foldable that pays homage to the SGH-E700 (AKA the SGH-E715 in the US), which came out 20 years ago in 2003. It has the same indigo blue and silver color combo as the original and a few special widgets, but it's otherwise the same foldable flip phone from earlier this year. This special edition will go on sale in Korea and several countries in Europe, but not the US.
The SGH-E700 was Samsung's first mobile phone with an integrated antenna and became a certified hit, selling more than 10 million units. Weirdly, this isn't even the first time Samsung has tugged at nostalgia strings with this phone: in 2007, Samsung effectively reissued the same phone with new radios as a nostalgia play, even though it was only four years old at the time.
— Mat Smith
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Exactly one year has passed since Elon Musk, fresh off a months-long legal battle that forced him to buy the company, strolled into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink. We weren't entirely sure what to expect. But there was no shortage of predictions about just how messy and chaotic Twitter might become under Musk's leadership. The biggest twist, however, might be Meta making its Twitter rival, Threads, into a viable (if flawed) alternative. Karissa Bell walks through what did (and didn't) happen when Musk took charge.
Threads aims to be the place for public conversations online.
Threads was missing a lot of features users would expect from a service similar to Twitter (now X) when it launched. But over the past few months, it has added more new features, but as it still doesn't have an API, third-party developers can't create features with hooks into their services. For example, local transport agencies can't automatically post service alerts when a train is delayed.
According to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, though, Threads is working on an API for developers — he just has some reservations. He's concerned the API's launch could mean "a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content." Mosseri may be hinting at the early days of Threads, where people's feeds were dominated by brands and accounts with (presumably) social media staffers posting up a storm.
The figure was revealed in the DOJ's antitrust trial against the search giant.
Google VP Prabhakar Raghavan testified the company paid $26.3 billion in 2021 for maintaining default search engine status and acquiring traffic. Most of that likely went to Apple, in order to remain the default search option on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Raghavan, who was testifying as part of the DOJ's ongoing antitrust suit against the company, said Google's search advertising made $146.4 billion in revenue in 2021, which puts the $26 billion it paid for default status in perspective. The executive added that default status made up the lion's share of what it pays to acquire traffic.
The night time is the right time for new iMacs and laptops.
Apple's holding another streaming event today, Monday October 30, at 8PM ET. Yes, that's in the dead of night, and you can watch the stream on YouTube, on Apple's website and on Apple TV devices. Here's what you can expect to see.
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