A photo that was posted on Feng, a Chinese tech forum, suggests that Apple could be refreshing its MacBook Pro laptops as soon as tomorrow. The image was allegedly verified by MacG, a French site that appears to specialize in tech news and rumors specific to Apple.
Assuming that the upgrade rumor is legitimate, Apple will be beefing up two main areas of its MacBook Pro: the CPU and the memory count. The three units seen in the leaked image will have Intel Core i7 CPUs clocked at 2.2GHz, 2.5GHz, and 2.8GHz, along with 16GB of RAM.
The 2.2GHz version will sport a 256GB PCI-Express SSD, along with Intel Iris Pro Graphics. The 2.5GHz unit will see its storage doubled with a 512GB PCI-E SSD, and have GeForce GT 750M graphics supplemented with 2GB of RAM. Finally, there’s the 2.8GHz model, which will have a 1TB PCI-Express SSD along with the same Nvidia graphics card that the 2.5GHz flavor has.
It’s unclear to us why, if these specs are accurate, Apple refuses to upgrade to Nvidia’s 800M line of graphics card, which have been available for months now. Also, the RAM upgrade doesn’t mean much, since 8GB is more than enough for most people these days. Of the MacBook Pro with Retina laptops that Apple is selling as of this writing, only one comes with less than 8GB of RAM; the $1,299 base model.
Intel is slated to release 5th-generation Broadwell CPUs later this year. We expect a much larger Mac and MacBook refresh around that timeframe, along with a possible release of a 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina as well, which has been rumored for months.
If the information contained in the leaked photo turns out to be true, this would be the second MacBook refresh this year. Apple released updated models of its MacBook Air back in late April.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
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.