Brian Krzanich, Intel’s CEO, confirmed today that Intel is shipping its 7th generation Core processors (codename Kaby Lake) to OEMs, and showed off the new processor’s video capabilities.
“We’re pleased to announce that we’re shipping already to our PC partners, and will launch with new devices to consumers this fall,” said Krzanich, during the keynote speech at the 2016 Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. “It’s the highest performance CPU Intel has ever built.”
The sprawling keynote address barely mentioned Intel’s flagship product, focusing on everything from virtual reality to cars. But there was a few minutes left for discussing the upcoming line of processors, and the focus was on the audio visual world.
“I am happy to report [7th generation processors] are meeting all my 4K needs beautifully,” an Intel rep at the presentation stated, adding the on-board acceleration can play “the highest quality Hollywood premium 4K content on the market today” without issues.
The point? Intel’s 7th generation Core new processor can play 4K footage without slowing down. The same was true for content creation: 4K footage was shown being edited in near real-time on a laptop.
“We can look at individual videos, put them together, add music, all from our backpack,” said the presenter.
The keynote also showed off the on-board graphics capability of the new processor generation. Blizzard’s popular new shooter Overwatch was played on a Dell XPS with a 7th-gen processor and on-board graphics. The game didn’t look like it was on its highest detail settings, but we’ve tried to play Overwatch on a 6th-generation Intel Core laptop before, with poor results. Handling Overwatch would be a nice improvement.
Kaby Lake has native USB 3.1 support, native HDCP 2.2 support, native Thunderbolt 3 support, and a thermal design power of up to 95 watts. It’s also built on a 14-nanometer production process, the same as Skylake and Broadwell (5th-gen and 6th-gen Core) before it.
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.