Laptops News - Page 9

Apple has started to send out free gift boxes to some influencers with HomePods and sweet treats all designed to help build the excitement for the upcoming 'Scary Fast' event that will take place on Monday.

The event is set to kick off at 5 PM Pacific Time on Monday, October 30. And while Apple hasn't yet confirmed what it will announce at that event, the expectation is that there will be some new Macs shown off for the first time.

However, this care package sent to influencers including Lamarr Wilson includes AirPods Max with a note that suggests that the aim so to make their experience of the streamed event "more 'spatial'" which might suggest that there will be some sort of audio component to the event itself.

Apple has already confirmed that it will be holding its 'Scary Fast' event on Monday but it hasn't yet said exactly what it intends to show off. It's pretty clear that there is going to be at least one Mac given its debut after people found a stylized Finder icon on the event's webpage on the Apple website. But which Macs, and what else might Apple be ready to show off?

There have been a lot of rumors about Apple's plans but it's now clear that there will be some devices missing from the big unveiling next week. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman is normally very well connected with people familiar with Apple's plans. Now, he's had his say on what will be unveiled at Monday's event.

Writing on the Bloomberg website Gurman says that while Apple is working on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 chip inside, that machine is unlikely to make an appearance on Monday. the same can also be said for M3 versions of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs as well, leaving people to wait until 2024 for those machines.

If you've ever looked at Apple's laptop lineup and wished that there was something cheaper to choose from, you might be in luck. Rumors of Apple working on a more affordable laptop have bubbled up here and there of late, and now they're back once again.

This time it's the well-connected and well-known supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who has mentioned the unconfirmed laptop, with the suggestion being that Apple could choose to add it to the mix in an attempt to drive sales that have so far been disappointing.

There have previously been claims that Apple intends to introduce a cheaper MacBook that will go head-to-head with Chromebooks, especially in the educational market. However, that isn't the tact that Kup goes with, saying that Apple might instead choose the cheaper route in an attempt to simply drive sales. It's thought that Apple is still deciding on whether to move forward with the laptop, but if it does it will be part of a larger push to try and increase sales that will include the launch of new M3-powered machines.

Apple has already confirmed that it will be holding an online virtual keynote on October 30, with everything now very much expecting the company to announce a number of new Macs. Those Macs are expected to include both desktop and laptop machines, but you likely won't be able to buy them immediately. That's the norm, but when should you expect to be able to pick up the new hardware?

That's something that we would normally have to wait for the event to find out, but a new MacRumors report claims to have the answers ahead of time. That report doesn't say where the information came from, but ti does claim that the new hardware will go on sale on November 8.

That's a mid-week date, which is odd for Apple. Normally it would make new products available on the Friday, but it now seems that it is aiming for a Wednesday this time out for reasons unknown.

AMD has finally made its new Radeon RX 7900M 16GB laptop GPU official, and you can read all about it here. Dell is the first, and possibly the only one, with the new Radeon RX 7900M 16GB laptop GPU inside of its new Alienware m18 R1 gaming laptop.

The newly-refreshed Alienware m18 R1 gaming laptop features some of the highest-end CPU and GPU technology available for laptops, with an 18-inch display that can be configured with a 1440p @ 165Hz refresh or 1080p @ 480Hz refresh. Disappointing not to see 4K 120Hz as an option on the fasted Radeon RX series laptop GPU ever made.

Alienware lets you configure the m18 "AMD Advantage" laptop with up to 64GB of DDR5-4800 memory, up to 8.5TB of NVMe M.2 SSDs are available with 3 x NVMe M.2 SSD slots, and a huge 330W GaN power supply that keeps the power-hungry laptop running smoothly with its 97 Whr 6-cell battery.

Apple is expected to refresh a number of its laptops over the coming months with a new report noting that some of them are now entering the stage of development that leads to mass production. Those laptops are the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, with new M3 versions on the way.

That's according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, writing in the latest weekly Power On newsletter. Gurman says that the updated M3 versions of the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros have now entered the DVT (design validation test) stage of development which means that the laptops are nearing the mass production portion of their development.

Gurman believes that this progress means the new MacBook Pros are still on course for launch between early and spring 2024, which should match the previous release windows of these high-end laptops.

OLED displays are all the rage right now. It seems that we can't go more than a few minutes without another Apple rumor relating to a switch to the new display technology. We already expect the 2024 iPad Pro to switch to OLED, while the iPad mini and iPad Air are now also thought to be making the move over eventually, too. The latest is the MacBook Pro, but don't expect it to arrive any time soon.

That's according to a new report by the display supply chain expert Ross Young who was in conversation with Bloomberg Intelligence's Woo Jin Ho during a webinar. That webinar was first reported by MacRumors and saw Young say that it will take a few years before Apple's supply chain is ready to start producing OLED panels for laptops at the rate at which Apple would require.

According to Young, we shouldn't expect that Apple will launch OLED MacBook Pros until 2026 at the earliest and possibly not until 2027. That does match a similar timeline that Young had previously suggested, too.

Patents can be particularly problematic when you try to figure out what Apple's plans for the future are, but that doesn't make them any less fun to delve into. Like this new patent which has now been granted and appears to show a keyboard key being used as a pointing device.

The patent is for a so-called Deployable Key Mouse and Apple first applied for it back in 2021 but it took until now for it to be approved. It's always difficult to really read these kinds of patents because of the language that's used throughout, but the idea appears to be that a MacBook's keyboard could have a hidden and removable key that would then turn into a pointing device thanks to an equally-hidden sensor.

The patent suggests that the resulting pointing device would be comfortable to use, which seems unlikely given the size. However, the company seems convinced.

If you're reading this on a Google ChromeOS device, you're going to want to take a look at a new software update that might be waiting for you. ChromeOS 117 is now rolling out and it brings with it some pretty major changes and improvements.

The new update is of course free to download and we'd suggest that you do that as soon as possible. Not only are you going to get a brand new Material You redesign to look at but you can also look forward to a number of usability improvements that will make your Chromebook a different beast in use.

The biggest change is of course the new look which includes a number of changes throughout the system. The most noticeable one is probably the revamped Quick Settings, a change that makes everything easier to see and interact with. Gone are the circular buttons and in come new, rectangular ones that are easier to discern when looking at a glance. They're going to be easier to hit when making selections, too.

While all of the attention right now is on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro series' of devices, there have been plenty of rumors that claimed there would be something else on the horizon after the September 12 event. Those rumors claimed that there would be a Mac event in or around October, likely to launch new M3-series chips. But now, a new report claims that might not be the case after all.

That's after a tweet by the supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that it appears Apple will now no longer launch any M3 MacBooks before the end of 2023. That means that the rumored refresh of the 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro might not happen after all. Or at least, not this side of 2024.

That would be an interesting change of plan because so many precious reports have pointed to October as being the month that Apple's first M3 chips launch. That being said, Kuo does say that new MacBook models won't arrive - is it possible that we will still see new iMac and perhaps Mac mini hardware?