What's old is new again, and what's new is old. Apple has just released a new version of the old MacBook Air, a beloved laptop that hasn't received any real love in years. I've been using it for the past four days—traveling with it, typing on it, editing photos, wearing its battery down. Staring at its gorgeous new Retina display, which is not unlike the display on my own personal MacBook Pro.
AMD today charted out its plans for the next few years of product development, with an array of new CPUs and GPUs in the development pipeline.
On the GPU front are two new datacenter-oriented GPUs: the Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50. Based on the Vega architecture and built on TSMC's 7nm process, the cards are aimed not primarily at graphics (despite what one might think given that they're called GPUs) but rather at machine learning, high-performance computing, and rendering applications.
Steve Jobs famously believed the devices his company produced would bring technology to the masses, but he was rarely willing to make the compromises necessary to bring that vision to fruition. Apple has only sometimes released products that were priced for everyone.
Like a college graduate ready to head off into the workforce and start a career, Apple has graduated the iPad from tablet school. As he prepared to lift the curtain on the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro last week, CEO Tim Cook explained that Apple sees the iPad as a personal computer now. Apple says that new designation makes iPad the top-selling line of PCs in the world.
Ultra-wide monitors are overwhelming yet impressive to behold, and Dell thinks it has made one that will appeal to all types of professionals. The new U4919DW UltraSharp 49-inch curved monitor nods to the massive gaming monitors made by Samsung, MSI, and others, but it adds a workplace spin while upping the resolution to QHD.
Microsoft’s big event may make relatively small changes this week in New York City, with its Surface refresh tipped to play it safe – or even disappointing – as it heads into holiday sales season. The software giant has summoned the media to NYC on Tuesday, October 2nd to reveal the latest fruits of its Surface computing team. However, some early leaks have spoiled the surprise a little.
Google's major Wear OS revamp is out today, and soon it will arrive on most devices released in the past year and a half (although Ars has already spent a week with a pre-release version of the OS). In the face of relentless competition from the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google's most obvious change in the new Wear OS is a new UI for most of the main screens. There's not much in the way of new functionality or features, but everything is laid out better.
Okay, we probably wouldn't be responsible adults if we didn't mention that you can give your old iPhone to your kids or a charity. We definitely wouldn't be fiscally sensible if we failed to point out that you can get a little trade-in value on your old device. Now that's out of the way, though, here's how you can make that phone do a brand new job just for you.
Actually, make that many, many new jobs. Each of which is free, comes with a subscription you use elsewhere, or is extremely low cost.
The fourth iteration of the Apple Watch still looks like a tiny iPhone on your wrist, but for many, it was the most exciting device announced at Apple's event earlier this month. A larger screen, faster performance with improved sensors, fall detection, and ECG readings are just a few of the features that inspired quick interest in the Apple Watch Series 4. The steps forward in health monitoring alone point to a new era for Apple's wearable, and users who could benefit most from them have a compelling reason to shell out $399 or more for the Series 4.
Like any piece of expensive technology, a top-of-the-line graphics card comes with all manner of lingo and abbreviation. You'll need a glossary to wade through the stuff inside (processors, CUDA cores, ROPs), the speeds measured (memory bandwidth, boost clocks, TeraFLOPS), and the results you want from a good card (anti-aliasing, frame rates, higher resolutions).
Thanks to Nvidia's newest products, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti, that required glossary is only getting bigger.
