Google appears to be exploring the world of big, massive, wall-mounted screens according to a patent filing published today. The patent aims to improve on an earlier patent granted to the Mountain View, California company, by eliminating bezels between tiled displays.
All right, so what will that mean in practice? As it stands, there are really three methods for creating a giant wall-mounted display. One, you can just buy a giant screen, or several giant screens and panel them together. Two, you can panel together smaller, cheaper screens, but you have unsightly seams where the bezels meet. Or three, you can just use a projector.
If you’ve ever seen a big multi-screen display, like they have at electronics stores, or at awards shows, you know that these displays look good from far away, but the closer you get the easier it is to discern the seams between each panel. This new patent application aims to alleviate that by using “bright-edge” displays that eliminate those seams entirely.
The displays, as described in the patent application, are essentially bezel-free. The display goes from edge to edge, so if you tile two or more such displays beside one another, it’s almost impossible to determine where one display ends and another begins.
Not everyone is in the market for a gigantic wall-mounted display made of tiled display panels, but this technology could be used to eliminate bezels on smaller, desktop displays. So a multi-screen setup doesn’t have those pesky seams in the middle. Instead, it would appear to have one continuous display surface.
Unlike some patents Google files, this one might actually become a reality in the near future. According to a similar patent from 2013, Google has been working on seamless tileable displays for a long time, so this isn’t like their eye-implant patent from last year. These things might actually make it to the market before long, or be used in a product that Google’s dreaming up. For more details, you can read the full patent here.
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.