Spotify and Discord are back online after outage

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. 

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’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.”

Apple announces the 27-inch 5K Studio Display for Mac Studio

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!

速報：最高速アップルシリコンM1 Ultra発表、内部でM1 Max 2個を接続し2倍性能

アップルが最上位となる新型Apple Siliconを、アップルのスペシャルイベントにて発表しました。といっても今回は、M2（仮）ではありません。M1系の最上位となる『M1 Ultra』です。

Apple’s Mac Studio is a tiny pro-level desktop powered by M1 Ultra

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 unveils the M1 Ultra, its most powerful chip yet

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 M1 Ultra recap
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 M1 Ultra performance comparison chart to x86
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 Mac Studio
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!