Apple's yesterday's press event gave us the first Mac silicon, namely the Apple M1. While announcing the chip was big news, the company also had already some M1-equipped devices to unveil as well. Here's a look at the most powerful of them, the new MacBook Pro.
According to Apple, the new MacBook Pro with M1 is much more powerful than the predecessor and outperforms competing Windows PCs in both processing power and battery life.
Apple likes to throw around numbers like 5x the performance, but at this point there weren't any exact benchmarks or the company didn't disclose exactly to what they were comparing the devices to. Needless to say, however, that according to them, the new devices offer much more performance and especially efficiency than competitors.
This is evident in battery life claims, which are perhaps the only good and accurate measures Apple revealed. MacBook Pro with M1 comes with up to 17 hours of wireless web browsing and an insane 20 hours of video playback.
Perhaps the biggest con of the new MacBooks with M1, especially this one geared towards professionals, is that you cannot change or upgrade the RAM because it is integrated into the SoC. It also means that getting 16GB instead of the default 8GB will cost you a very premium $200.
Apple first M1 product announcement yesterday was the most popular 13-inch laptop in the world, MacBook Air. MacBook Air is the perfect device for Apple's new Mac silicon, thanks to its size.
If you think about the Apple M1 like a amped-up version of the A1 found in iPhones and iPads, which is pretty much is, the first device you'd put it in is the lightest and least power-hungry of the Apple laptops, and that is exactly what Apple did.
According to Apple, the MacBoook Air with M1 offers 3 times the performance of a comparable Windows laptop – whatever that is – and only the top 2 percent of Windows laptops sold in the past year are faster than this ultra light from Apple.
The figures are even more impressive when compared to the previous generation MacBook Air. M1 gives the new one 5x the CPU performance and 3.5x the GPU performance, although all of these performance claims seem worth a very close revisit when the devices and benchmarks are out.
Apple had revealed earlier this year already that is going to start transitioning the Mac lineup from Intel chips to their own silicon. Now it is official as Apple announces their first chip, Apple M1.
Yesterday's official launch marks the introduction of Apple silicon into Mac computers. The company's first take at it is a ARM-based SoC (system-on-chip) that hosts many of the more important components underneath one cover.
It is basically a bigger and better version of smartphone SoC's like the Apple A chips found on iPhones and iPads.
The company said that M1 includes the world's fastest CPU and GPU, and ones that are far less power hungry than the Intel (and AMD) chips used in competing PCs.
In terms of spec you are looking at eight CPU cores, four of which are high performance and four low power cores, with 16 billion transistors. GPU is also an octa-core chip.
Netflix has ventured into a new business model where they partner up with and ISP for a bundled service. The first package like this comes from Finland where Netflix and one of the countries largest ISPs DNA have started offering a combined service.
This is indeed the first time Netflix has offered their service bundled into a internet service under the same invoice. With the deal in question you'll be offered a broadband connection and 4K Netflix subscription.
The bundled service, DNA Netti + Netflix Perhe (DNA Internet + Netflix Family), starts at 37.89 euros a month (saving you a few euros a month compared to non-bundled prices) for the first two years and offers a 200 MP connection and a four-device Family subscription of Netflix.
As the competition starts to really heat up around Netflix, thanks to fairly recent additions like Disney+, the company has more pressure to diversify and add options. Recent reports about the first linear content on Netflix (read: traditional TV channel) could also in the mix for Netflix.
As you might have noticed in the years that have passed, Apple is trying to create an all-encompassing ecosystem of both hardware and software.
One of the major milestones for the hardware have been getting chip production in-house, which means less dependency on companies like Intel. In terms of software, the latest expansions include Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade among others.
Now, according to Financial Times, Apple is developing a search engine to replace Google. This seems like an odd choice for a company like Apple, but it turns out it's more about necessity than what they'd like to do.
See, The US Department of Justice might soon make it impossible for Apple to sell their default search engine spot to Google. The deal is an important part of Apple's service structure and nets the company each year as much as $12 billion.
Now that the contract might become void, Apple is speeding up the development of some sort of a replacement for Google.
At this point it's unclear what type of solution Apple is looking at. Although Applebot has been roaming the web for years collecting website data, it's unlikely that Apple will take Google's approach.
Microsoft has released a new voluntary update for Windows 10 which removes the official bundled Flash exntension from Windows 10. For years now, Adobe Flash has predominantly been just a nuisance or a security vulnerability, but fortunately all participants are finally ready to move on.
Officially, the death of Flash on Windows 10 will have to wait until next year, but at this point you can be a first adopter of sorts. The update removes the bundled Flash, and doesn't allow the reinstallation of it, but it doesn't remove your standalone Flash applications, like browser extensions.
The rest of the removal will happen starting early 2021, as Microsoft will release a Flash removal tool via Windows Update and end the support for Flash on its Edge browser alongside legacy browsers.
Other parts of Flash, like the developer tools, might hang around for a little bit longer but will be terminated later in the year.
Six years ago in June Steve Jobs revealed the first Retina display in the form of iPhone 4. It wasn't necessarily anything mind boggling, although the concept they used was new.
According to Apple back then, 330 PPI display of the iPhone 4 was enough to outperform your retina from a standard viewing distance. In the coming years Apple's Retina displays and others have improved upon the pixel density and on some Android phones we're looking at nearly 600 PPI.
However, these are minor changes in technology compared to what Samsung and Stanford University researchers have been working on. Stanford has released a paper about an OLED display that could reach 10,000 PPI.
This would mean that the width of one pixel is 0.001 inches, or around 2540 nanometers, and you could create a Full HD resolution screen that measured just around 0.2 inches wide.
As mentioned, the display is based on OLED technology that Samsung is a pioneer in, but some of the insights came actually from science of nanoscale photonics the researchers were using developing in new type of solar panels.
Obviously creating a smartphone display, much less a PC screen or TV, with this sort of pixel density is currently not convenient. You would need much more processing power to run it at full resolution, but in smaller screens that need to be denser, like in VR, it could be revolutionary.
OnePlus has today announced that it will be adding two entirely new smartphone models to its catalog. The new Nord N100 and Nord N10 are the company's most affordable models designed based on the OnePlus Nord released earlier this year.
The original Nord didn't arrive to the U.S. but both of these should be available in the States at a later date. First they will be introduced in Europe.
The cheaper one, OnePlus Nord N100, features a Snapdragon 460 chip, a large 6.52 inch HD+ display, 4 GB RAM, and expandable 64 GB storage. Perhaps the most impressive feature is the 5000 milliamp hour battery. There's also a triple camera setup with 13 MP regular shooter, 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensor.
Finnish VPN and antivirus provider F-Secure scored a big win in courts this week. It sued Finnish law enforcement authority over a database raid that was conducted in January, 2019.
In the raid, Germany's top law enforcement agency had asked assistance from its Finnish counterpart, National Bureau of Investigation, to get its hands to F-Secure's Freedome VPN user logs. Germany's authorities wanted to get the data to get evidence for a "serious crime case" in Germany.
As per requested, Finnish NBI confiscated F-Secure's Freedome user records and list of IP addresses used by its users - all of them, not just the ones related to the German authorities criminal case.
F-Secure sued and wanted courts to rule the confiscation of its data illegal. Lower courts have previously agreed with F-Secure's argument and ruled the case in favor of F-Secure. Now, Finnish court of appeals ruled in line with the lower court, in favor of F-Secure.
According to the ruling, authorities can't have blanket access to VPN data, as F-Secure acts simply as a "messenger" for the transmitted data. If authorities would need information about specific user, they'd have to obtain a warrant from court first in order to get a (very specific) set of data, only related to the case in question.
Tesla has announced an update to their Model 3 lineup that wasn't necessarily expected. The company has refreshed the Model 3 with improvements in performance.
It isn't a major rehaul but there are some important improvements under the hood. The price won't be any different, and you won't necessarily even know about the changes unless you take a peak at the specs.
Of the three Model 3 variants the two more expensive ones got improved range as well as slight performance boost in terms of acceleration. The new Model 3 Performance now claims an EPA rating of 319 miles instead of the 299 previously.
Most of us probably know the annoying feeling when you have a melody of a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of the song or the artist who played it.
Well, luckily, there's a solution to that. Google has added a support for humming to its voice search and knows when you're looking for a song name.
Basically, the AI-powered feature tries to recognize the patterns of your humming and compare those to the database of songs it has stored. And it works, pretty darn well, as we quickly tested the feature.
You can activate the feature by tapping the small microphone symbol in Google's search bar. Then, you simply start humming. After few seconds, Google suggests that you might want be looking for a song:
After moving to the specific song search, continue humming and you'll see an audio wave resembling what you hum to the microphone:
Sony has today released a new video on the YouTube page revealing some new footage of the upcoming game console. For the first time, Sony offers an rather in-depth look at the UI of PlayStation 5.
In this 11 minute video they go through some of the most important UI elements found in the new console. It starts off from a mid-game state paused, as you would start you console from rest mode. The view is called Control Center and via it you can access controller settings, communications, and power options, as well new Cards that include news and game specific Activities.
The video also goes through multiplayer features like the improved Party system with voice chat and media sharing, and of course the Home Screen that hasn't changed a ton from previous generations, probably for a good reason.
One of the more impressive new features is the splitscreen and picture-in-picture viewing of game help content as well as shared screens of your friends.
The entire experience has been designed with 4K displays in mind, and that is what you want to have to get everything out of PS5. But without further ado, here's the video:
Chinese smartphone phenom OnePlus has announced new products yesterday. As the company had confirmed the new OnePlus 8T came as a solitary device this time around, without a Pro partner.
Thus, the current flagship among OnePlus devices remains the OnePlus 8 Pro.
That doesn't mean, however, that the OnePlus 8T release was any less exciting. The phone has a lot of new things to offer in a little more affordable price point.
The phone that replaces OnePlus 8 has quite a few advantages over its predecessor from earlier this year. OnePlus 8T has a new super-fast Warp Charge 65 technology as well as improved display.
The former is, as one can imagine from the name, a 65 watt fast charging technology that allows the OnePlus 8T to charge the 4500 milliamp hour battery from zero to full in 39 minutes. A day's charge is said to be attained in just 15 minutes.
To make this possible, the battery of the phone is divided into two separate batteries that are charged simultaneously. To make it reliable and durable, there's 12 sensors measuring temperature to make sure the heat doesn't pose a problem.
Warp Charge technology actually doesn't make the phone as hot as you might think since it divides the heat production between the wall brick and the phone.
Well over 50 percent of consumers watch YouTube product videos before making a purchase decision. And now, YouTube's owner, Google, wants to tap into this opportunity.
Google is testing a feature that would basically turn YouTube into a massive e-commerce site. Select YouTube channels have been participating with a test where channels are encouraged to tag the products they feature with their videos.
Eventually, the master plan for Google is to add "Buy now" buttons next to all unboxing and review videos. Instead of traditional outbound links, where clicking such link would take user to a selected e-commerce site, the purchase could be handled and completed fully within YouTube itself. Google is testing such feature with Canadian Shopify where transactions are handled inside YouTube, even tho the actual seller is Shopify. Google's plans were revealed by Bloomberg.
Monetization model of such plans is not quite clear yet, but probably Google plans to take a certain percent of all transactions' value. It is also unclear whether YouTube content creators get a cut or not.
Huawei has been pushed to corner with U.S. export restrictions, blocking the Chinese telecom giant from using Android operating system in its phones. Furthermore, United States has made it very hard for company to develop new chips for its phones, as U.S. suppliers aren't allowed to provide any technology for the company for now.
According to Reuters report, company is now "resetting its priorities" and considers selling its youth-oriented sub-brand, Honor.
While relatively unknown in United States, Honor has been extremely successful brand on its own in many Western European countries. According to Reuters' sources, the sale would include Honor brand, R&D capabilities and supply chain management business.
Possible bidders for Honor business include three Chinese companies: Digital China which is already the distributor of Honor phones, Chinese electronics company TCL and Huawei's phone rival Xiaomi.
If Honor sale goes through, Honor would be able to use Android and other U.S. technologies in its line of phones, as the entire Chinese electronics industry isn't in U.S. crosshairs, just Huawei and handful of other players.
Apple's yesterday's press event gave us the first Mac silicon, namely the Apple M1. While announcing the chip was big news, the company also had already some M1-equipped devices to unveil as well. Here's a look at the most powerful of them, the new MacBook Pro.
Apple first M1 product announcement yesterday was the most popular 13-inch laptop in the world, MacBook Air. MacBook Air is the perfect device for Apple's new Mac silicon, thanks to its size.
Apple had revealed earlier this year already that is going to start transitioning the Mac lineup from Intel chips to their own silicon. Now it is official as Apple announces their first chip, Apple M1.
