Laptops News - Page 1

Following months of reports that suggested Apple has had a significant fall from grace in China, new smartphone sales figures suggest that there is no sign of a resurgence. Not yet, at least. In fact, things have gotten so bad that Apple now finds itself in fifth place in the Chinese smartphone market.

That will be particularly galling for Apple considering the company was once the number one smartphone company in China, and it's a problem that it will want to arrest as soon as possible.

The news comes via analytics company Canalys whose latest report covers the first quarter of 2024. The figures have Apple sitting in fifth spot behind other companies that are competing for sales in China, a vitally important part of the world for Apple.

When you buy a new iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and the entry-level MacBook Pro, all of those computers will have one thing in common. That thing isn't the Apple logo, and it isn't the fact that they're all powered by Apple silicon, either. The common trait is that they all have just 8GB of RAM as standard, although you can of course choose to pay extra and upgrade to 16GB or more, depending on the machine in question.

Now, it seems that the decision to stick to 8GB of RAM at the low-end is once again making headlines. Apple had previously justified the decision by saying that more simply isn't needed for what most people use these Macs for. It also noted that the M-series chips that are used in modern Macs mean that the computers are performant enough to be perfectly fine with just 8GB of RAM. But whether or not you go along with that assertion, it seems that we might be able to blame CEO Tim Cook for the lack of RAM as well.

A chart put together by Mastodon user David Schaub, reported by the Accidental Tech Podcast recently, and now shared by MacRumors, charts the base RAM in Apple's computers from 1984 onwards. The graphs show that Apple often increased the base RAM every two years or so but that all changed when Steve Jobs left and was replaced by current CEO Tim Cook. Since Cook took over from Jobs there has only been a single base RAM increase.

Lenovo has just unveiled its latest ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 ultraportable high-performance AI mobile workstation, which is the first laptop with an Intel Core Ultra vPro "Meteor Lake" CPU and new LPCAMM2 memory. Check it out:

The new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptops feature up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor with 16 cores and 22 threads clocking in at up to 5.1GHz, with 24MB of smart cache. There's an integrated Intel Arc "Xe-LPG" GPU with up to 8 Xe-Cores, but being an AI-ready mobile workstation, Lenovo bakes in up to an NVIDIA RTX 3000 workstation GPU with 4608 CUDA core and 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

Lenovo uses a 16-inch screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 92% screen-to-body ratio, which looks great as the panel takes up most of the display area (which is what you want, huge bezels SUCK). The top cover itself is made from recycled aluminum which doesn't just make the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 roll out with an eco-friendly design, but also makes the laptop lighter and inside of a very durable body.

HP has just unveiled its latest OMEN 17 gaming laptop, a new member of the ever-growing AI PC family of laptops on the market. It features AMD's new Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" APU, which features an NPU for AI workloads.

The new HP OMEN 17 gaming laptop AMD Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" APUs in three different SKUs: Ryzen 9 8945HS, Ryzen 7 8845HS, and the Ryzen 5 8645HS APUs. Each of the Ryzen 8040 APUs has a dedicated Ryzen AI-based NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for AI workloads.

HP includes a trio of GPU options for its new OMEN 17 gaming laptop, all from NVIDIA's family of GeForce RTX 40 series Laptop GPUs. We've got the option of the flagship OMEN 17 rolling out with the GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, the GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, and finally, the GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU.

Mechrevo has just announced a couple of new gaming laptops today: the new Kuangshi 16 Super and the Yanshi 16 Super Supreme, both launched in China.

The new gaming laptops feature external water-cooling that keeps the flagship Intel Core i9-14900HX processor -- with 24 cores, and 32 threads sat up to 5.8GHz -- nice and cool. Speaking of keeping super-fast laptop chips cool, you can opt for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 or GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards inside of Mechrevo's new gaming laptops.

Upon purchase, gamers can choose between an external radiator for water cooling or an integrated dual-fan cooler. The big differences between the Kuangshi 16 Super and the Yanshi 16 Super Supreme gaming laptops are the decision between the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 and whether you want external water cooling or not.

Microsoft is preparing to release a new family of Arm-based laptops that insiders are saying will be more powerful than Apple's current line of M3-powered MacBooks.

A new report from The Verge has detailed that Microsoft is preparing to fully unveil its goals with AI PCs at an event scheduled to take place next month. The company is said to be very confident in the performance of these new AI laptops as insider sources speaking to The Verge have said these laptops will beat Apple's line of M3-powered MacBooks. These new Windows laptops will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors, which Microsoft is extremely confident in when it comes to taking the crown from Apple in terms of raw CPU performance.

The publication reports these new processors from Qualcomm will be faster than Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in CPU tasks and will arrive with "faster app-emulation than Rosetta 2," which is the software layer Apple uses to bring over apps designed for Intel processors to new Apple silicone such as the M3 chip. The same process applies to Windows laptops, with The Verge writing that native Arm applications are integral to increasing performance across this new line of laptops.

Apple has long been rumored to be planning a big new push into the world of artificial intelligence with CEO Tim Cook having already teased that something is coming in 2024. Now, a new report suggests that the AI focus could have received a boost from someone who has been integral to the success of the Apple Watch.

Kevin Lynch has long been a driving force behind the Apple Watch, reporting directly to Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams. And while he will continue to oversee Apple Watch progress, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that he has been moved over to work on the Apple AI problem as well. What's more, he's now reporting directly to John Giannandrea, Apple's AI chief.

The reason for that move wasn't clear, but Gurman, writing in the weekly Power On newsletter, now says that people close to the matter believe that Lynch's move is designed to bring some order to the Apple Ai project, a project that has long proven to be problematic for Apple.

The Razer Blade 18 has been announced and is available now. It's a portable gaming monster. It will arrive with two impressive display options: the world's first 18-inch 4K+ 200Hz display (3840x2400) or an 18-inch QHD+ (2560x1600) 300Hz Mini-LED display. Both feature low response times and DCI-P3 100% color gamut accuracy.

The 4K option is also touted as the world's first Thunderbolt 5-equipped laptop. It offers up to 120Gbps of bandwidth - tripling what's currently available. CPU-wise, it uses the top Intel Core 14th Gen i9-14900HX processor with a fully unlocked 175W NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU variant.

It's also thin, at just 21.99mm or 0.86 inches, and includes the latest Razer Blade advanced cooling system. The Razer Blade 18 (2024) also ships with DDR5 5600MHz Memory and Windows 11 Home.

We keep hearing about AI PCs, and some more info just dripped through on the topic - namely that such a device will have a hard requirement in terms of a dedicated key for Copilot on the keyboard.

The concept of the Copilot key was introduced by Microsoft back at in January 24, with the idea being that it's a dedicated key in the same vein as the Windows key, except obviously in this case tapping it summons the AI assistant.

Apparently having a Copilot key on the keyboard deck of your AI PC will be mandatory going by details Intel just shared as spotted by The Verge.

Apple has today released the macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 software update to the public, bringing with it no new features but a number of important bug fixes that are likely to be a big deal for those who suffered from those issues. One of those issues related to a bug that caused some USB hubs not to function correctly when connected to an external display.

Apple's new update is now available for download for free via the System Settings app on your Mac and it's currently rolling out to Apple's servers across the world. If you aren't yet able to download the new update it's important to try again later, with Apple's servers sometimes slow to update.

In terms of fixes, Apple says that the new macOS Sonoma software fixes an issue that caused some USB hubs to misbehave, with users having reported that they could no longer get their external display to work when it was connected to a Mac running macOS 14.4 via a USB hub.