You’re out of luck if you were hoping for a larger, brawnier counterpart to the M1 iMac. Apple has discontinued the 27-inch iMac, leaving last year’s 24-inch M1 model as the only all-in-one in the lineup. If you want to buy a higher-end (but relatively compact) desktop, you’ll have to spring for the new Mac Studio and a monitor to match. We’ve asked Apple for comment on the move.
This might not come as a shock. Apple last updated the 27-inch iMac in August 2020, and the basic design hadn’t changed much since its most recent form factor debuted in 2012. Combine that with the Apple Silicon transition and the discontinuation of the iMac Pro and the company clearly lost interest in the iMac as a workstation, at least for now.
We wouldn’t completely rule out a comeback. At present, though, this represents Apple’s largest shift in desktop Mac strategy for a long time. The iMac has had to cater to a wide range of customers, from newcomers to creative pros, for well over a decade. Now, Apple appears happy to concentrate on a relatively mainstream audience and give pros more conventional and flexible options.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
Since you’ve been spending so much time at home these past two years, you could probably use a better tablet for when you’re kicking back on the couch or hanging out in the yard. And Apple’s new iPad Air might just be the screen you need in front of yo…
At some point, most of us have had to uninstall apps to free up space on our phones. And while it’s become less of an issue in recent years with the introduction of devices that start with 64GB and 128GB of internal space, not everyone can afford to upgrade the storage on their phone. But with some luck, deleting apps on your Android device to free up space may become a thing of the past.
Google announced today it’s working on a new feature it estimates will reduce the space some apps take up by approximately 60 percent. Best of all, your personal data won’t be affected. The feature is called app archiving and will arrive later this year. Rather than uninstalling an app completely, it instead temporarily removes some parts of it and generates a new type of Android Package known as an archived APK. That package preserves your data until the moment you restore the app to its former form.
“Once launched, archiving will deliver great benefits to both users and developers. Instead of uninstalling an app, users would be able to ‘archive’ it – free up space temporarily and be able to re-activate the app quickly and easily,” the company said. “Developers can benefit from fewer uninstalls and substantially lower friction to pick back up with their favorite apps.”
Google has started making archived APKs available to developers ahead of the feature’s consumer release later this year. If you own a relatively recent and high-end device like the Galaxy S22, you probably won’t get much use out of app archiving, but it’s a feature that could be a significant boon for those with low-end devices.
The past few years have seen the major phone manufacturers release handsets that were low on price but big on features — basically flagship phones at a mid-range price. Today Apple announced an update to its own offering, the iPhone SE. It packs in the powerful Apple A15 Bionic, 5G connectivity and a dedicated home button, while coming in at a nice affordable $429 to start.
But the SE isn’t the only stunning midrange phone; Samsung has offered up a slew of affordable handsets for years now, and Google continues its line of “a” phones with the 5a. And if you’re outside the US, you may even have the option of picking up a OnePlus Nord 2. We’ve taken all of these outstanding affordable phones and lined their specs up in the table below so you can get an idea of the power on offer, but make sure you check out our review of the new iPhone SE when it drops later this spring.
iPhone SE
Pixel 5a with 5G
Galaxy A52 5G
OnePlus Nord 2
Pricing
$429 / $479 / $579
$449
$500
£399 (no US release)
Dimensions
138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm (5.45 x 2.65 x 0.29 inches)
156.2 x 73.2 x 8.8 mm (6.1 x 2.9 x 0.3 inches)
159.9 x 75.1 x 8.4 mm (6.30 x 2.96 x 0.33 inches)
159.12 x 73.31 x 8.25 mm (6.26 x 2.89 x 0.32 inches)
Apple’s “peek performance” event today brought a bunch of new hardware across many of its product families. The new iPhone SE 5G brings long-awaited features to the small handset, including 5G support and an upgraded processor. The new iPad Air may look the same as the previous model, but it also has significant performance improvements thanks to the M1 chipset and 5G capabilities. On the Mac side, the new Mac Studio is powered by the most powerful M1 chip Apple’s made yet, and the Studio Display sports over 14.7M pixels. Here’s how to pre-order the iPhone SE 5G and everything else Apple announced today.
iPhone SE 5G
Apple
The new iPhone SE 5G will be available for pre-order starting at $429 on Apple’s website on Friday, March 11th. It’ll be widely available on March 18th.
As expected, Apple didn’t reinvent the wheel here. The latest iPhone SE looks much the same as the previous model, featuring a 4.7-inch inch display and a physical Home button with TouchID. The biggest changes are inside the small handset, where Apple put an A15 Bionic chipset and support for 5G. The new processor should make the smartphone feel much zippier than before, and 5G support is a much-needed addition.
iPad Air M1
Apple
The new iPad Air with the M1 chipset will be available for pre-order starting at $599 on Apple’s website on Friday, March 11th. It’ll be widely available starting March 18th.
Much like the iPhone SE, the new iPad Air will look familiar as all of the pertinent updates are inside the device. The updated tablet features the same 10.9-inch LCD display as the previous model, along with flat edges and a TouchID-toting power button. Inside, Apple upgraded the machine with its M1 chipset, a 16-core Neural Engine, 5G support and new front-facing cameras that support Center Stage. The M1 processor along with 5G will make this iPad even more viable as a productivity tool and laptop replacement, while Center Stage will keep you in frame during FaceTime calls.
Mac Studio & Studio Display
Apple
The new Mac Studio desktop and Studio Display are available to pre-order today starting at $1,999 and $1,599, respectively, from Apple’s website and both will be widely available on March 18th.
Apple’s latest desktop is designed for creative professionals and those that want a ton of power in their main computer. It looks like a taller Mac Mini, featuring an aluminum body with a rounded-square design. It’ll come powered by either Apple’s M1 Max or new M1 Ultra chipsets, with the latter being the most powerful M1 chip Apple has made yet.
In addition to the performance gains you’ll get from either chip, the Mac Studio has a variety of connectivity options. On its back edge are four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10GB Ethernet port, two USB-A connectors, an HDMI port and a pro audio slot. Apple also added a few connectors to the front edge, too — M1 Max machines have two USB-C ports on the front, while M1 Ultra devices have two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and both tote an SD card slot, too. On top of that, the Mac Studio supports WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5 and connecting to up to four Pro Display XDRs or a 4K TV.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s positioning the Studio Display as the ideal companion screen for the Mac Studio. The “all-screen” monitor has an aluminum enclosure and a 27-inch 5K Retina panel that has 14.7M pixels, a peak brightness of 600 nits and support for TrueTone. You’ll be able to tilt the standard model up to 30 degrees, but Apple’s also offering a tilt- and height-adjustable model as a $400 upgrade if you need more control over your screen. There will also be a VESA-mount option as well.
Inside the Studio Display are some powerful components, too. It runs on an A13 Bionic chip and it has the same 12MP ultra wide camera found in the latest iPads, so it supports Center Stage. There’s also a three-mic array, which should help keep your voice loud and clear during video conferences. The display also has a six speaker sound system that supports Dolby Atmos and spatial audio, along with three USB-C ports and one Thunderbolt port. While it’s designed to work with the Mac Studio, the Studio Display can be used with MacBooks as well — and you can connect up to three of the monitors to a MacBook Pro.
iPhone 13 (green)
Apple
Apple’s adding two green hues to its iPhone 13 lineup. The regular iPhone 13 will get a colorway simply known as “green,” while the Pro family will get the Alpine Green color. You’ll be able to pre-order both the iPhone 13 and 13 Pros in the new green colors this Friday, March 11th, and they’ll be widely available starting March 18th.
Spotify and Discord are down right now and inaccessible to users. It’s unclear what the source of the problem is, or if the two outages are related, but users began reporting issues with both services at about 1pm ET, according to reports on downdetector.com.
Spotify acknowledged the outage on Twitter, writing that “something’s not quite right,” but didn’t elaborate.
Something’s not quite right, and we’re looking into it. Thanks for your reports!
Likewise, Discord said it was “working on a fix.” The company wrote on its website that an “issue has occurred causing an major outage of the API” and that it was investigating the “root cause.” The latest outage apparent happened after an earlier issue was resolved Tuesday morning.
We’re aware of an issue causing message failures and are working on a fix.
We’ve reached out to both companies for more details. In the meantime, Discord is encouraging users to “go outside.”
Update 3/8 2:48pm ET: Spotify seems to have resolved the outage and the service is once again accessible. Discord is still experiencing some issues, but is starting to come back online as well. “While we continue to investigate the root cause, work has begun on restoring service by working around the issue,” the company wrote in its latest update. “Oncall Engineering will begin allowing more traffic through as we restore service.”
Update 3/8 3:15pm ET: Discord confirmed that messages, calls and streams are back up and running and that other features “should come back online soon.”
Spotify also confirmed in a statement that it should be “functioning normally for most users.” Neither company has elaborated on the source of the outage.
“Spotify and several other platforms experienced a brief service outage today beginning around 1:15pm EST,” a spokesperson told Engadget. “As of 2:40pm EST Spotify is back up and functioning normally for most users.”
As expected, Apple is adding a new display to its product lineup. On Tuesday, the company announced the Apple Studio Display during its Peek Performance event. The standalone monitor features a 5K retina panel with 14.7 million pixels, 600 nits of brightness and P3 wide color gamut coverage. It also includes Apple’s True Tone technology, allowing the display to match the color temperature of its panel to the ambient lighting in your workspace.
On the top of the display, you’ll find a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera with Apple’s Center Stage feature, a first for one of the company’s monitors. That tool will automatically keep you centered in the middle of the frame during FaceTime and Zoom calls, leading to a more natural video calling experience. Studio Display also comes with a six-speaker sound system that supports Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. Internally, the monitor includes Apple’s A13 Bionic processor. The chip is there to bolster the Studio Display’s camera and audio capabilities.
If you want to mount it to a monitor arm, Apple will offer a separate VESA adapter that will allow you to do just that. On the I/O front, the monitor comes with four USB-C ports, one of which offers Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. That connection can provide up to 96W of power to a Mac notebook, allowing you to fast charge the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
Before today, Apple’s most recently announced monitor was the 2019 Pro Display XDR. That’s a screen that famously starts at $5,000 before you even include an optional $1,000 stand. The last time the company offered a consumer-level monitor was 2016, the year it discontinued the 2011 Thunderbolt Display.
Apple Studio Display is available to pre-order today starting at $1,599. Like the Pro Display XDR, Apple will offer a Nano-texture glass option that is designed to reduce glare in brightly lit workspaces. That option adds an additional $300 to the price of the monitor. You also have multiple stand options. If you just want a tilt-adjustable one or the VESA adapter, those come at no extra cost, but a stand with height adjustment adds $400 to the price of the package. The Studio Display will ship March 18th.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
The rumors were true: Apple has introduced a high-powered headless desktop that sits between the Mac mini and Mac Pro. The company has launched the Mac Studio, a compact machine with up to a 20-core M1 Ultra chip, a 64-core GPU and more expansion than its mini counterpart. Not surprisingly, Apple is making bold performance claims — it believes the Studio is up to 60 percent faster than a 28-core Intel Mac Pro in CPU tasks, 80 percent faster than the fastest Mac graphics card and capable of handling up to 18 8K ProRes 4:2:2 video streams at once.
You’ll have plenty of choice for peripherals with four Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI and 10Gbps Ethernet on the back. And yes, Apple is aware you want front ports — two USB-C connectors and an SD card slot will spare you from reaching behind the system to upload photos. The computer is also power-efficient. Apple claims the Mac Studio uses about 100W less power than a 16-core Windows at similar performance levels. It’s not clear how performance stacks up in real life, of course, but it’s notable that Apple is even comparing a desktop Mac against high-end consumer PC towers.
The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with an M1 Max, 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, and will be available on March 18th. Pre-orders start today. A version with the M1 Ultra, 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD costs $3,999, and maxing out the system with 128GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD will cost a whopping $7,999. The complementing 27-inch Apple Studio Display is $1,599, and you can once again buy the Magic Keyboard (with Touch ID), Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse in silver and black at respective $199, $149 and $99 prices.
This isn’t the Apple Silicon-based Mac Pro some creatives want. That’s “for another day,” Apple said at its event. It also isn’t cheap, as you’re looking at a cool $3,600 (plus peripherals) if you want an all-Apple setup. Still, this might be appealing if you’ve craved a fast Mac desktop but didn’t want to tie yourself to a built-in display or the overkill of a full-size workstation. This might be a dream machine for Power Mac G4 Cube fans.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
Apple rocked the computing world with its M1 chip, the first “Apple Silicon” hardware that turned the MacBook Air, Mac Mini and other computers into portable powerhouses. Last year, the company followed that up with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which delivered even more performance for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Now, Apple is adding a new member to the family: the M1 Ultra.
Apple
The M1 Ultra is essentially two M1 Max chips put together, making it even better suited to intensive creative applications like video editing and 3D rendering. During its launch event today, Apple revealed that the M1 Max chips housed a secret feature: a die-to-die interconnect, dubbed “UltraFusion,” that allows it to connect multiple chips. Conceptually, it’s similar to AMD’s Infinity Fabric, which ensures speedy communication between the CPU, GPU and other components.
Apple
Apple says the UltraFusion interconnect can handle bandwidth up to 2.5 terabytes per second, so it shouldn’t lead to any performance slowdowns between the two M1 Max dies. Altogether, the M1 Ultra sports a whopping 114 billion transistors, and it supports up to 128GB of unified memory with 800 GB/s of bandwidth. As you’d expect, its specs are basically what happens when you sandwich two M1 Max chips: the Ultra features a 20-core CPU (16 high performance and 4 high efficiency cores), and a 64-core GPU. The company claims it offers up to 8 times faster graphics than the original M1 chip.
Apple
Given that the M1 Ultra will make its debut in Apple’s new Mac Studio mini-desktop, the company didn’t need to worry about battery life at all. Still, Apple says the Ultra is at least more efficient than the competition, as it uses up to 65 percent less power than a 10-core x86 chip. Naturally, Apple didn’t reveal which CPU it was comparing the M1 Ultra to, but the numbers make sense given what we’ve seen from the M1 Max so far.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
Apple is updating the iPhone 13 lineup with two new shades of green: an unnamed dark green color for the iPhone 13 and “alpine green” for the iPhone 13 Pro. CEO Tim Cook showed off the new colors at the company’s “Peek Performance” event. Both new colors go on sale March 18, with pre-orders opening on Friday.
While the two shades of green are similar, the “alpine green” finish is slightly metallic. According to Apple, it was made with “multiple layers of nanometer-scale metallic ceramics applied across the surface.” The new finishes add another pop of color to the iPhone 13 lineup, which has been available in gold, silver, graphite and “sierra blue.”
For now, it seems green colors will be exclusive to the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro. The newly-announced iPhone SE is available in just three finishes: red, “starlight” white and “midnight” black.
Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s Peek Performance event right here!
