The MacBook Pro’s new Touch Bar has been officially co-opted by video game fanatics, with a port of id Software’s classic first-person shooter Doom now playable within the tiny confines of Apple’s miniature touchscreen display.
Even when running at an ultra-widescreen resolution of 2170 x 60, Doom should be fully playable for fans familiar with the classic game’s initial selection of maps, though later levels and higher difficulty settings will prove to be a challenge even for veterans with decades of experience.
Porting Doom to unconventional and impractical hardware has become a tradition among longtime series fans, and over the past several years, enterprising hobbyist developers have gotten ports up and running on everything from inkjet printers to truck-mounted billboards to ATMs.
The MacBook Pro isn’t the first Apple product to get unofficial Doom support, as recent porting initiatives produced playable versions for the Apple Watch and the Apple TV.
Gaming consoles are another point of focus for the Doom hacking community, and odds are good that if you own any piece of technology with a screen, it can probably run Doom. The iconic game has appeared on platforms as recent as the Nintendo 3DS, and even Commodore 64 fans can get a taste of the action with a scaled-back 8-bit port.
Other recent Doom sightings are downright bizarre, if not entirely inappropriate. The kid-friendly Leapfrog educational handheld can transform into id’s bloody first-person shooter with a simple hack, and if you’ve ever wanted to play Doom while on a cross-country flight, certain forms of in-flight entertainment may have you covered.
A comprehensive list of all hardware and technology that has been modified to run Doom is chronicled at the fan-curated Tumblr It Runs Doom.
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.