There’s a bizarre new tech trend gaining traction, and it involves ripping the screens off MacBooks. Well, “ripping” might be a strong word, but people are removing the displays from their MacBooks.
So, why on earth would you remove the display from your laptop? After all, the display is essential to what makes a laptop what it is. But with the guts of the computer in the bottom half, these headless MacBooks have become a cost effective way to make use of an old Mac.
https://twitter.com/nsampre/status/1500834814651510788
MacBooks can be expensive, so people are saving money by purchasing MacBooks with broken displays but have otherwise sound internal components. You can find an M1 MacBook Air with a broken display on eBay for around $400, and older models are even cheaper. Then you just pop off the screen and connect a display, and suddenly you have a new home Mac setup.
There are drawbacks, though. For one, you will void any kind of warranty by doing work like this, so you will want to either have some experience tinkering like this or carefully follow a guide. You also won’t be able to access recover mode since it only displays on the laptop display on MacBooks. Setting up a wireless display through AirPlay is also a pain, since you will have to connect it to an external display via cable to set it up anyway.
However, the final effect definitely has its appeal. If someone walks into your home office and sees a laptop with no display, they’ll probably take notice. There’s just a certain amount of cool factor to using a MacBook in a way it was never meant to be used. But mostly, it’s a cheap way to get a decent Mac computer — as long as you can supply the display yourself.
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.