It's a brand new week of news, or what us newsies call brand news. In the news
biz, you got to save time as much as possible, so you never miss a hot scoop.
That's why we always, my friend Mark Gurman has given more details on Apple's
planned low-cost version of their upcoming Vision Pro headset. Don't
worry, it's still expensive enough for you to flex on the poor people who can't
afford it. While Gurman already claimed Apple would be using lower resolution
displays and replacing the M-series chip with an iPhone processor, he now also
says that the eye sight feature, the revolutionary feature that reveals
lifeless simulacra of your eyes on the external screen when you interact with
another human, or attempt to, will also be removed from the cheaper model.
Notice I didn't say cheap, because apparently the company is looking to
price the device somewhere between $1,500 and $2,500.
Speaking of extra months, Gurman has also adjusted his prediction for when
the new M3 MacBooks will launch from this month to early next year. The last
time Apple launched new MacBook chips so early in the year was 2015. Maybe they
should have delayed the iPhone 15 lineup, too, since yet another issue has
been found, this time affecting just the 15 Pro Max. Some new owners of the
flagship iPhone are reporting screen burn-in on its OLED display on social
media. know. I'm I'm starting to think that maybe focusing all that effort on
engineering a $3,500 headset might not have been the best idea. Did the Vision
Pro get burn-in? It burns onto your eyes.
I'll never forget this 3D holo memory. Intel has officially announced their
14th gen Raptor Lake refresh chips just
in time for them to be released on the 17th of October, or what us newsies call
tomorrow. The launch includes three refreshed chips with K and KF versions
of each that will all be releasing at the same price as their 13th gen
predecessors, despite predictions of a price increase. But I mean, can you
blame them in this economy? When the milk restock is rebranded as milk
premium? Unfortunately, price isn't the
only similarity here. Core counts are the same as last gen across the board,
save for the i7 14700K, but all the new
chips have higher boost frequencies while staying within the same power
envelopes as last gen. Let's get it. Intel also claims that the 14th gen
chips will have up to 23% better gaming
performance than AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D
series chips. Though, according to Tom's Hardware, Intel's own benchmarks show an
uplift of just 2% on average. For me, 2%
only really matters if we're talking milk, which is delicious. Homo or go
home. Homo or homo or go home. That doesn't make sense to Americans. I'm
sorry. That's 3.25%, but yeah, it's still good.
However, Intel also says their refreshed chips will have up to 54% faster creator
workflow versus the Ryzen 9 7950X, which
is basically a passing grade on an English exam. Intel also announced their
AI assist overclocking plugin for their extreme tuning utility that uses AI
algorithms to help you overclock your processor, which is helpful for people
like me who have no idea what they're doing and just enter different numbers
in to see what happens. It's like betting your computer on a hand of
poker, but if you win, it just gets
slightly faster. And if you lose, you smell burnt toast.
It's a bad value proposition. AMD is being blamed by gaming handheld company
GPD for the delay in shipping their new Win Max 2, because there's always a
reason crowdfunded projects are not on time, ever. GPD has gone as far as to
accuse Team Red of breach of contract because they didn't supply enough Ryzen
7 7840U APUs. Like all the best stories
involving delayed products, GPD posted an update on the Win Max 2's Indiegogo
page saying that AMD did not deliver enough of the chips to GPD's upstream
supplier, and therefore they didn't receive their expected second batch of
APUs to fulfill backer orders. According to GPD themselves, all configurations
with 32 gigs or 64 gigs of memory and 2
terabytes of storage are affected, and GPD seems to have no estimate for when
affected orders will be delivered. According to VideoCards, these sorts of
posts from board and OEM partners are rare, probably because most partners
know to fear the Android known as Dr. Lisa Su and the laser beams she shoots
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and use code techlink for 20% off. With the calming regality of Mufasa's spirit,
now it's time for quick bits. Is that okay?
NVIDIA is hell-bent on pushing the envelope regarding what level of chunk
is acceptable for graphics cards, but one intrepid modder has had enough. A
Redditor going by TechTaxi slapped the cooler of a two-slot Gainward RTX 4070
Ghost OC onto the PCB of a Gainward RTX
4080 Phoenix GS, resulting in,
astonishingly, a normal-size graphics
card. What? The smallest commercially
available RTX 4080 is the two and a half slot ASUS ProArt model, but hopefully
the extensive performance data TechTaxi included in his post proves to NVIDIA
that it is in fact still possible to make graphics cards that can fit in your
freezer. That's the part where you ask me, "Why the freezer?" And I say, "Nah."
I'm not telling you. That's where I keep my GPUs.
Google's VP of engineering for Android, Dave Burke, announced in a Reddit AMA
last week that the Pixel 8 and other OEMs will be able to support lossless
audio output over USB-C. According to Burke, while Android 14 supports the
feature in software, any Android phones need baked-in hardware support to make
the magic happen. Something Burke didn't mention is the Pixel 8's support for
display over USB-C, which it has, at
least if you root your phone to get around the block that Google put on it
for some reason. Why? Someone needs to organize an intervention for Google to
address their addiction to killing features and services. They're like
Dexter over here. It's not healthy. We're concerned.
Another interesting bit from Mark Gurmanson's recent revelations concerns
an Apple system that will allow retail store staff to wirelessly update sealed
iPhones. The system consists of a pad-like device that will turn on
iPhones even inside unopened boxes, run
an update, then turn the phone back off. It feels somehow perfectly Apple to know
that Tim Cook got his engineers to create groundbreaking new tech so your
mom won't have to update her new iPhone on Christmas, because that's like half
the morning gone. You can't keep your mom happy, Tim Cook
will. Come on, Barbara. We're going to
Denny's.
A brand new RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card has been killed by a
literal bug. You know, the kind with wings and six legs. You'd see more of
them if you went outside. In a senseless kamikaze attack, an insect somehow
crawled under this card's AD102 GPU
chip, like the actual GPU. Luckily, the card was brought back to life by the
removal of the bug and the repair of a minor component, but sadly, the bug did
not survive. Funnily enough, the first known computer bug was also an actual
insect. Back in 1946, the Harvard Computation Lab suffered a metaphorical
bug when a moth got trapped inside a relay. Relays were bigger back then.
What the heck was that? What is this, TechWiki? And telehealth platform SimplePractice is warning patients that
Apple's new video reactions in FaceTime might result in call participants
accidentally adding a heart emoji or virtual confetti during an awkward
moment. The reactions are enabled by default, and eight of them can be set
off just by hand gestures. It might be nice to get two thumbs up from your
therapist for managing to take a shower today, but a round of virtual fireworks
just makes it seem sarcastic. Great job. Nice. Oh god, WHERE'S MY NEXT
CLIENT? BUT I'M NOT BEING sarcastic when I say
you should come back on Wednesday for more tech news.
Shower or not. We don't care.