Apple just held its special ‘Unleashed’ event, a follow-up to its iPhone 13 event, to announce even more products. Apple’s Unleashed event was a virtual one, like many press events during the pandemic, and featured a preproduced video for everyone to get all of the details.
Unleashed was filmed at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. You can watch a full event replay, which comes in at nearly an hour, using the the video player above.
Apple had two topics for its big October event: Music and Macs. Starting off, Apple announced a new $5Voice Only plan for Apple Music. The company followed this up with three new color options for the HomePod Mini and the redesigned AirPods 3.
Moving over to the Mac, Apple announced the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. These are the two new Apple Silicon chips that will be powering the next-generation MacBook Pros, which also got announced. The M1 Pro features a 16-core GPU, while the M1 Max features a 32-core GPU.
As for the devices, the new MacBook Pro comes in two sizes: A 14-inch and 16-inch model. They have been redesigned in nearly every aspect, featuring a new chassis, the removal of the Touch Bar, the reintroduction of much-asked-for ports like HDMI, MagSafe charging, a new 120Hz Liquid Retina XDR display, and of course, the new chips inside. And it has a notch in the display, too.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.