Today is World Password Day, and how is Intel celebrating it? By telling people to abandon passwords and adopt a more secure authentication method, of course. It might seem a little rude to blast passwords on a day dedicated to them, but the company has hard data to support its stance.
Intel recently conducted a study that dipped into the way that consumers think about passwords. According to their findings, the average person has 27 different logins for various accounts spanning both personal and work use — and 37 percent of respondents forget at least one of those passwords every week.
This can be a very frustrating experience; 21 percent of the people polled stated that forgetting a password was just as annoying as getting a paper cut. What’s more, they would go to great lengths to avoid this scenario, as 6.5 percent of respondents claimed they would even give up pizza so long as they would never have to remember a password ever again.
Passwords are our primary method of defense against unauthorized access, but the more complex and varied they are made, the more difficult it is for the user to retain them all. Fortunately, Intel isn’t just looking to find fault for no reason — the company feels that it has a better solution waiting in the wings.
True Key is an app that performs all the functions of a standard password manager, alongside some useful extras. It’s a quick and easy way to use two-factor authentication on your important accounts, and it also lets you confirm your identity via facial recognition or a fingerprint scanner, depending on the capabilities of your device.
For now, True Key acts as a handy way of gaining convenient access to all your accounts while your login credentials are kept safe and secure, but Intel hopes that in time it will help retire passwords altogether. For more information on the project, head to the Intel website.
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.