Rumors
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Apple Reportedly Built an Apple Pencil for the Foldable iPhone, Then Backed Away
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Rumors,
Apple built an Apple Pencil for its folding iPhone, and then appears to have talked itself out of it. That comes from Mark Gurman's Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, published Sunday. He describes a stubbier Pencil, sized for a phone rather than an iPad, that snaps magnetically onto the side of the device to sit and charge there. Apple tested it. Gurman says it probably will not be announced next month, and probably is not going on sale at all.
Apple has confirmed none of this, and none of it is a product. It is one reporter's account of an internal prototype, and killing prototypes is a normal part of how hardware gets made. The reasons he gives describe why a stylus on a folding phone is hard before anyone gets near the software.
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Chip Tariffs Could Reach Laptops and Game Consoles
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop, Rumors, Video Games,
Taxing a chip and taxing the laptop that chip lives inside are two very different policies. One duty falls on a component. The other falls on the whole machine, and the customs value of a machine is a lot bigger than the customs value of the silicon in it.
On August 27, Politico reported that the Trump administration is weighing the second version. Citing eight people familiar with the discussions, Politico said officials have been working on a round of semiconductor tariffs that would reach finished products built with chips: laptops, gaming consoles, and data center servers. CNBC and Reuters both picked the story up the same day, and Reuters noted it could not independently verify it. Nothing has been signed. No rate has been reported, and there is no effective date, because there is nothing yet to make effective.
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The Ceramic Apple Watch Might Be Coming Back
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Rumors,
Every year around this time, the Apple rumor mill produces one story that fans want to be true so badly that it spreads faster than its sourcing deserves. This year it is the ceramic Apple Watch.
The claim: Apple will bring back a ceramic case with the Apple Watch Series 12, expected at next month's September event. It would be the first ceramic Watch since the Series 5 Edition in 2019. It is a genuinely appealing idea. It is also, at the moment, one post on X.
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The Translucent Green Xbox Series X25 Will Be the Most Expensive Console Microsoft Has Ever Sold
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Rumors, Video Games,
The Xbox Series X25 is the best-looking console Microsoft has made in years. Translucent OG Green shell, green-lit power button, a straight callback to the 2001 Xbox that started all of this. When it was revealed at June's Xbox Games Showcase, the reaction was close to universally warm.
Then the price leaked. If the numbers hold, the 25th anniversary Xbox will be the most expensive home console Microsoft has ever sold, and it is not faster than the one below it.
The iPhone 18 Pro Might Start at $1,399, and Even the Optimists Are Giving Up
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Rumors,
Two months ago the case for staying calm went like this: yes, memory prices have gone insane, but Apple runs the best supply chain on earth and has a long history of quietly eating costs to protect a price point. Analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities was making exactly that argument in May, saying Apple could still price the iPhone 18 Pro aggressively. This week he changed his mind.
In a new research note, Pu now expects the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to land $250 to $300 above their predecessors. That works out to roughly $1,349 to $1,399 for the iPhone 18 Pro and $1,449 to $1,499 for the Pro Max. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 today. The 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199. Do that math on a Pro Max with any storage upgrade at all and you're staring at a phone that costs more than a decent laptop.
OpenAI’s First Gadget Is a $300 Donut with Moving Arms You Carry Around
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smart Home, Rumors, Artificial Intelligence,
Picture a metal doughnut roughly the size of a hockey puck sitting on your kitchen counter. No screen. Small moving parts that shift when it answers you, and lights that glow when it's listening. That is the first piece of hardware OpenAI wants to sell you, and Bloomberg says it will cost somewhere between $300 and $400.
Mark Gurman's report gives real shape to a device we've only heard described in fuzzy terms since July. It's a speaker with no display, built to be picked up in one hand and carried from the kitchen to the laundry room to the bedroom. It runs on a battery. It has speaker grilles, microphones, a camera system, and sensors that feed it information about whatever room it's in. Jony Ive is designing it.
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Apple Is Quietly Rebuilding Every Mac It Sells
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Rumors,
Look at Apple's Mac lineup today, then picture the whole thing swapped out. That is roughly the plan. According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is getting ready to refresh every single Mac it sells over the next two years, from the cheapest MacBook Air to the Mac Studio sitting under a video editor's desk. Not a spec bump here and a new color there. The entire family, top to bottom.
It is worth saying up front that this is a report, not an Apple announcement, so treat the dates and details as the best current read on Apple's plans rather than a promise. But the shape of it is easy to understand, and it tells you something about where Apple thinks the Mac is going. The short version: people are buying Macs again, a lot of them to run demanding AI work locally, and Apple wants a lineup that can meet that moment. Mac sales are reportedly on track to climb for a third year running.
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The Next Mac Mini Might Put a Newer Chip in the Cheaper Model
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Rumors,
Picture buying the entry-level Mac mini and walking out with a newer chip than the person next to you who paid more. That is the small, strange promise tucked inside the latest report about Apple's tiniest desktop.
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is testing a next-generation Mac mini that pairs two chips from two different families: a fresh M6 in the base model, and last year's M5 Pro in the step-up configuration. None of this is official. There's no price, no spec sheet, and no release date attached yet. But if it holds up, it means the cheaper mini would run Apple's newest silicon while the pricier one leans on a chip that's technically a generation behind.
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Apple’s Cheapest MacBook Is Getting Two Upgrades, and One of Them Actually Matters
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Rumors,
The cheapest Mac Apple makes is also the one worth watching. The MacBook Neo showed up earlier this year as a $599 laptop, an almost suspiciously low price for something with an Apple logo on the lid, and it quietly became the machine people started recommending to friends who just need a computer that works. Now, only a few months in, the rumor mill is already sketching out the sequel. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, it comes down to two upgrades.
Those two: a new A19 Pro chip in place of the current A18 Pro, and 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB. Gurman also expects a fresh set of colors to join the current Silver, Blush, Citrus, and Indigo. None of this is official yet, so hold it loosely. But it fits the pattern of a company that likes to firm up a good idea once it knows the idea actually works.
Apple’s Mac Pro Was Supposed to Bury the Mac Studio. It Blinked Instead.
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Rumors,
Here is the version of the Mac Pro you never got to buy: a tower with a chip so big it would have carried twice the processing cores and twice the graphics cores of the beefiest Ultra chip Apple sells. A machine built to make the Mac Studio look like a warm-up act. Apple designed it, plotted its launch, and then quietly walked away.
That is the picture painted by a new report from Bloomberg's Power On, and it lands with a little extra sting because Apple killed off the Mac Pro entirely back in March. So this is not a story about what is coming. It is a story about the monster desktop that got as far as the drawing board and then lost an argument to a smaller, cheaper box sitting right next to it.
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