Technology

Apple’s big Arm-based M1 Mac announcements brought the company’s first Apple silicon-powered laptops in the form of the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. But the event also had a surprising guest star: actor John Hodgman reprising his role as the PC guy from Apple’s “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials that it ran in the mid-2000s. In the short video, Hodgman’s put-upon PC reacts to the announcement of Apple’s new M1-powered Macs, complaining about the improved performance and battery life that the new chip purportedly offers on the updated Macs, compared to what PCs can do. (Absent is Justin Long’s Mac character, who made up the other half of the ad spots.) [embedded content] The original ads — launched in 2006, just after Apple began its last major architecture transition to I...

Apple just wrapped up its “One More Thing” hardware live stream, where it announced new versions of the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini, each with its newly announced, promising M1 silicon. Apple first detailed its transition from Intel to its own processors earlier this year — but this event was all about diving deep into what that reality now looks like and when you’ll be able to get your hands on a computer featuring the just-announced M1 chip. If you missed out on the stream, I highly recommend taking the purist route of rewatching it alongside our live blog coverage to get the moment-to-moment commentary on each announcement. Otherwise, if you just want the headlines and major details, that’s what I’m here for! Here are all of the biggest announcements. Image: A...

Apple announced three brand-new Macs today powered by its new M1 Arm-based CPUs: a 13-inch MacBook Air, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a Mac mini. But now that the new Macs are here, Apple has started to remove some of its Intel-based Macs from its product lineup. Here’s what’s changed: The MacBook Air is now only available with Apple silicon chips. It’s no longer possible to buy a MacBook Air with an Intel CPU. The new MacBook Air has configurations that start at $999 and $1,249. You can still buy a 13-inch MacBook Pro with an Intel CPU, but those models are only available at the higher end of the price spectrum. The M1-based 13-inch MacBook Pro replaces the previous entry-level MacBook Pro with two Thunderbolt ports and starts at $1,299 and $1,499. Intel processors power the configurations t...

A graphically pedestrian Japanese roleplaying game is perhaps not what many Xbox Series X owners were hoping for as their premier next-generation-exclusive launch title, but here we are with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. While it might not be much of a technical workout for Microsoft’s most powerful console, it’s a revolution for the series and, by some distance, the most substantial console exclusive in the Series X and S launch lineup. This is the eighth mainline Yakuza game, with Sega presumably ditching the series numbering in an attempt to gain a wider audience. (It’s still called Ryu ga Gotoku 7 in Japan, “Like a Dragon” being a direct translation of the Yakuza series’s Japanese name.) This game is a canonical sequel, with occasional recurring characters and references that fans will apprec...

Cruise is partnering with Walmart to test out a delivery service using a fleet of autonomous and electric vehicles. The pilot project will kick off in early 2021 and take place in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cruise has yet to settle on a final number of cars it will use as part of the delivery service. The company has maintained a small fleet of five vehicles in Phoenix since 2016. It’s the latest in a series of announcements centered on the use of autonomous vehicles in last-mile delivery scenarios, underscoring a core truth about the technology: it’s risky to put human passengers in robot vehicles, but it’s much less risky to put groceries and Walmart purchases in them. It’s the latest sign that Cruise, which is a majority owned subsidiary of General Motors, is interested in expanding beyond ro...

Over a billion gallons of sewage pass through New York City’s wastewater treatment plants every day. Since the spring, the city has been one of the many places around the country to use that stream of excrement to track the spread of COVID-19. When people are infected with the coronavirus, some of the virus exits their bodies via their feces. It starts to show up reliably in their waste even before they start to display symptoms. Those virus-laden feces end up in wastewater, along with everything else we flush down the drain. Research shows that upticks in the levels of virus in sewage for a particular area come about a week before the number of people testing positive spikes. There are 14 wastewater treatment plants in New York City, and at each one, facility workers regularly siphon off ...

Samsung has slashed the cost of its previous-generation Galaxy Tab S6 Android tablet. The previous best price was $470 late last month, but today, it’s just $320 at Samsung’s site. It debuted for $650 last year, so it’s effectively 50 percent off today. This discount puts it around the same price of Apple’s latest-generation iPad, which is obviously a different tablet in many ways. But if you’re looking for a better value when it comes to specs, this deal should get your attention. The Tab S6 has considerably more space for apps and downloads than the base iPad, with 128GB of onboard storage and the ability to accept microSD cards to expand it even further. If that doesn’t do it for you, its gorgeous 10.5-inch OLED screen might do the trick. My colleague Dan Seifert reviewed this model, sa...

The EU is accusing Amazon of misusing the data it collects from third-party sellers on its platform, European commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced today. The European Commission says Amazon is “systematically” using non-public marketplace seller data to unfairly compete with sellers in France and Germany. The accusations are the result of an investigation that was announced last year which looked at how Amazon uses sales data to compete with the platform’s independent merchants. Here’s what the Commission is objecting to specifically: The Commission’s preliminary view, outlined in its Statement of Objections, is that the use of non-public marketplace seller data allows Amazon to avoid the normal risks of retail competition and to leverage its dominance in the market for the provision ...

Apple is hosting its last big hardware event of 2020 on November 10th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. The prompt for this one is “One More Thing,” the line that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously used to cap the company’s events with a special surprise announcement. So what’s in store for this event? We expect Apple to go deep on its Arm-based Mac computers, with the unveiling of a new MacBook Air and two MacBook Pro models, according to a report from Bloomberg. For the unaware, after several years of using Intel CPUs exclusively in its laptops and desktops, Apple is shifting to using its own silicon instead — like the company does for the iPhone and iPad. There will still be some Intel-based Mac computers available, but Apple is switching things up in a major way. What time is the Apple “One More ...

Today, Apple is unveiling new Macs that will be based not on Intel processors, but Apple’s own Arm-based chips. It’s a big deal and something we’ve been waiting a long time for. Depending on how you count, that wait has lasted either six months (since they were officially announced) or several years (since Intel’s roadmap detoured into a quagmire). Jay Peters has the summary of what exactly we’re expecting from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ event. If you’re looking to get a sense of what the stakes are today, Chaim Gartenberg has a nice overview about just how big a gamble this is and just how committed Apple is to it. And as I mentioned last week, I have already written a couple pieces on “why this transition could be tricky and how Microsoft’s rougher ride in a similar transition could provid...

Garmin is adding pregnancy tracking to its smartwatches and Connect app. The feature will let users track pregnancy-related symptoms like fatigue and monitor their progress toward their due date. It will also let them pause updates on their training status, which typically uses metrics like the amount someone exercises to classify their fitness level and progress. The feature will also let users adjust heart rate alerts (heart rate can increase during pregnancy) and change hydration goals. An additional app will let users monitor contractions during labor. Pregnant users have criticized smartwatch and wearable companies in the past for not including pregnancy modes on the devices. Apple Watches would continue to nudge people to close their activity rings, for example, even if doctors told ...

Conservative angst over President Trump’s loss has resulted in a surge of downloads for Parler, a conservative social network founded as an ideological alternative to Facebook and Twitter. According to data from SensorTower, Parler’s app saw 980,000 downloads in total between November 3rd (Election Day) and November 8th, with more than half of those downloads (636,000) coming on Sunday alone. (The totals represent both Google Play Store and iOS App Store downloads.) That surge in downloads has also pushed Parler to the top of the app store rankings. It is currently the #1 free app in the iOS App Store, up from #1,023 on November 2nd. It’s also #1 in the Google Play rankings, up from #486 the previous week. The app has been downloaded approximately 3.6 million times in the US so far, per Se...