Hardware

Last week, Sony finally gave us our first look at the unique design of the PlayStation 5 hardware, leading to plenty of Internet mockery (the company also showed some PS5 games, I guess). For all the ethereal coolness of hardware shots shown on an amorphous white background, though, Sony's promo images didn't provide much external context for judging the actual size of the PlayStation 5 box (and Sony hasn't provided official measurements yet, either, in response to our queries).

This morning, Apple quietly added a third discrete GPU configuration option to the 16-inch MacBook Pro available in its store: the new AMD Radeon Pro 5600M. It's a pricy upgrade, but Apple and GPU-maker AMD claim it offers substantially improved performance over the existing options.

The 7nm GPU is designed for video editing, color grading, and game and app development, according to Apple and AMD. Apple claims this 5600M GPU will deliver up to 75-percent faster performance than the Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6. (There is also a 5500M configuration with 8GB of memory.)

The Game Boy lived a long life. From its launch in 1989 until its discontinuation in 2008, Nintendo's handheld gaming device sold hundreds of millions of units. It went through seven different design iterations, six of which were sold in the US. And because the system was propped up by Nintendo's thousands-deep library of titles, the Game Boy remains one of the top-selling videogame consoles of all time.

Apple may soon add keyboard shortcuts for the iPad that would perform some of the actions Mac and PC users use the function or media keys for, according to 9to5Mac. The claim is based on analysis of code within iPadOS 13.5.5 beta.

When we reviewed the iPad Pro's new Magic Keyboard peripheral, one of our main complaints was the lack of physical media keys. Some features like managing media playback or changing screen brightness are available in the Control Center, which is a simple swipe away.

Lamborghini chose last year's Frankfurt auto show to debut its Sián FKP 37 hypercar. Based on the Lamborghini Aventador, the Sián FKP 37 teaches that old dog a new trick through the addition of a supercapacitor hybrid system, adding an additional 34hp (25kW) to help out the 774hp (577kW) V12 engine. Only 63 Sian FKP 37s will be built, and even if you have the $3.7 million asking price, they're already sold out. But from June 1st, there's a cheaper way to get your own Sián FKP 37, as long as you don't mind it being 1:8 scale.

Believers of 5G conspiracy theories have apparently been buying a $350 anti-5G USB key that—not surprisingly—appears to just be a regular USB stick with only 128MB of storage.

We finally got our grubby paws on the flagship SKU of Intel's new Comet Lake desktop processors—the (sorta) 5.3GHz, (well over) 125W TDP i9-10900K. Intel's extremely lackluster performance marketing led us to believe the processor would probably be little if any improvement over last year's i9-9900K—but, happily, that's not the case.

Have you ever looked up at the Moon and thought "hmm, pretty good, but maybe our closest celestial companion could use some extra racing?" If so, your wish may well become a reality next year. That's thanks to a partnership between an STEM group called Moon Mark and the space company Intuitive Machines, which has a NASA contract to deliver a science payload to the Moon's surface in 2021. Part of that payload? A pair of small lunar rovers, which will conduct the Moon's first race. And if you're a high school student, you've got a chance to design one of those moon racers.

Apple has updated its 13-inch MacBook Pro workhorse with all the iterative tweaks and polishes you would expect from a surprise Monday morning laptop reveal. But the announcement's ultimate significance lies less in what the new laptop adds than what it subtracts: Apple has finally abandoned its uncomfortable, vexing, eminently breakable butterfly keyboard.

Standing desks are great, but even the add-on variety are normally far too big and heavy to travel with you. In the long, long ago—prior to COVID-19 isolation—I did a lot of traveling, a lot of working from hotel rooms, and a lot of grouching about hours of sitting on dubious chairs wrecking my back.