An AAPL a day…
It’s going to be a banner year for Apple’s MacBook lineups — with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reporting that consumers could be inundated with as many as four MacBooks arriving in 2026. There are the upgrades everyone can see coming from a mile off, which will bring the MacBook Pro and Air lineups up to par with the arrival of M5 Pro and Max flavours designed for the power users and Apple’s biggest fans, hitting sometime in early 2026.
If you aren’t interested in a straight upgrade, then perhaps an M6-powered MacBook Pro toting a touchscreen OLED display might be enough to convince you. This one’s possibly targeting a late 2026, according to Gurman, and includes “a reinforced hinge and screen hardware.” Don’t worry. Apple isn’t ditching the Magic Keyboard.
With Apple’s typical customerbase already firmly under its thumb, the Fruit Company will attempt to breach the low-cost laptop market with something built to rival Windows’ budget hardware. It reportedly features a 13in LCD, a lightweight design, and the A18 Pro chipset, which got its start inside the iPhone 16 Pro. If Apple can get the price right, it might curry enough favour to hook in students and casual users for life.
Sony’s WF-1000XM6 buds are allegedly right around the corner
It’s about time Sony delivered the long-awaited upgrade to its WF-1000 series of in-ear ‘buds, and according to Dealabs leaker billbil-kun, it won’t be long before the XM6 breaks cover. While we still don’t have any firm idea of what the buds will look like or, more importantly, what they will sound like, it appears Sony is looking to put these on shelves by 12 February, a revision of the previously reported 23 February release date.
As for what it’ll cost when it does, billbil-kun mentions a price of $330 in the US and €300 across Europe. While the European pricing mimics that of the WF-1000XM5 launched in 2023, it’s a roughly 10% bump for American customers. What this will mean for South African audio aficionados looking to make the upgrade is still unclear, though we doubt it can be anything good. In other words, prep yourself for a roughly R8,500 price locally.
Sony’s working on an OLED PlayStation Portal Pro
The obvious first step for any new handheld gaming machine is to withhold the OLED display. How else could the company ‘innovate’ down the line? That’s especially true in the case of the PlayStation Portal, Sony’s half-baked attempt to capitalise on the handheld frenzy, the nature of which doesn’t leave much room for improvement.
A recent rumour from @Zuby_Tech on X suggests that Sony is working on a PlayStation Portal refresh — possibly named the PlayStation Portal Pro — that would see it add a high-refresh-rate OLED display and… not much else. The Portal doesn’t actually run games natively; instead, it relies on an internet connection to stream them.
While an OLED upgrade may not be enticing enough to existing Portal owners, it might be enough to convince the sceptics. If Sony hopes to see any Portal owners turn up to the party, it’ll need to offer more value — like an upgrade over the roughly three-to-four-hour battery life from the first handheld console.
No, your Instagram wasn’t hacked
If you experienced a mini freak-out over the weekend, believing your Instagram account to be exposed, you’re not alone. Thousands of Instagram users reported receiving unexpected emails that asked them to reset their passwords. Stuff, too, was hit with the warning, a fact that wasn’t helped by Malwarebytes claiming that the Meta-owned social media app had suffered a massive data breach that stole data from more than 17.5 million accounts.
It wasn’t long before Instagram refuted the claims in a post on X, noting that it has “fixed an issue that let an external party request password reset emails for some people,” and confirmed “there was no breach of our systems and your Instagram accounts are secure. You can ignore those emails — sorry for any confusion.”
As for who the “external party” was responsible for the mini heart attacks, Instagram didn’t say, nor how they sent out password reset requests en masse. Even if Instagram insists that your account is safe, you may get to sleep a little easier at night by just… resetting it anyway.
