At a roundtable discussion held on Apple’s main campus, a surprising thing happened: Apple executives admitted their current strategy for Mac desktop hardware was flawed and promised an all-new lineup of Mac Pros and iMacs in the not-so-near future.
According to John Gruber, who attended the small roundtable discussion with some of Apple’s top executives, Apple not only has plans to revitalize the iMac lineup but is eager to illustrate that it has not forgotten about desktop Mac users.
At the roundtable, Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller, senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, and vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus were all on hand to discuss the company’s plans for the iMac lineup and don’t worry, the iMac isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“There’s still even further we can take iMac as a high-performance, pro system, and we think that form factor can address even more of the pro market,” Federighi said.
Apple reportedly has plans to revamp the iMac in the future but according to the execs present at the roundtable, it’s probably not going to happen this year. They were, however, eager to point out that desktop Mac sales make up about 20 percent of their overall computer sales and Apple has no plans to abandon the desktop space anytime soon.
Despite MacBooks making up the other 80 percent of its computer sales worldwide, desktop Mac sales make up about $25 billion dollars a year for Apple and the iMac is their most popular desktop system, so it’s not going anywhere.
It might be a while before we hear more from Apple about the future of the iMac, but this roundtable discussion served as a bit of a pre-announcement to reassure loyal customers who might be considering a jump to Windows.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.