Author: Duncan Pike

It’s been a busy week for Apple. The Fruit Company’s recently updated Mac Studio follows updates to the iPad Air and MacBook Air. Except here, raw performance is the main focus. This time, that performance comes in two possible flavours – M4 Max and M3 Ultra. As is customary, Apple says that the M3 Ultra is the “highest-performing chip it has ever created.” Until the next one comes along, anyway. Size continues not to matter The exterior of the ‘new’ Mac Studio has no discernable changes. There’s no new Sky Blue colourway, and the I/O options and layout are visually…

It was only a few months ago in January that we said the first Wi-Fi-connected earbuds would probably launch before the end of the year at the latest, but likely sooner. Xiaomi announced its Buds 5 Pro alongside the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in China on Thursday, 27 February. Unsurprisingly, the latter stole the limelight with its impressive camera tech. But since visiting Xiaomi’s rather large MWC booth this week in Barcelona, we know that the Buds 5 Pro are also launching in Europe, so there’s a small glimmer of hope they might make their way to South Africa, although we’re…

It turns out that ‘something’ was a new iPad Air. When Tim Cook teased ‘something’s in the air’ earlier this week, most of the industry waited for his Fruit Company to announce new M4-powered MacBook Air models. It seemed like all signs were pointing in that direction, considering usually-correct Apple psychic Mark Gurman said so and the M3 MacBook Air launched around this time last year. Clearing the Air Well, Apple just proved it’s still got a trick or two up its sleeve and threw everyone a curveball by announcing the ‘new’ iPad Air. We say ‘new’ because it doesn’t…

During the Honor Alpha Plan keynote address at MWC in Barcelona, Spain, the company’s chief marketing officer, Dr Ray Guo, announced a slate of new devices coming to market soon. Four new devices were announced, namely the MagicBook Pro 14 laptop, Pad V9, Watch 5 Ultra, and Earbuds Open. Plenty to see It seems Honor is positioning the MagicBook Pro 14 to be its most performant 14in laptop, sticking either an Intel Core Ultra 5 225H or Intel Core Ultra 9 285H chipset inside and giving it an 80W high-performance mode. Combine that with either 16GB, 24GB, or 32GB of…

A little under three weeks ago, a high-ranking Apple employee leaked that the company would be launching the iPhone 16e. True to their word, we got it a week later. Now, the same employee has once again leaked the company’s next product launch, and we have every reason to believe them again. In both cases, the mentioned employee was the company’s CEO Tim ‘Big Apple’ Cook. He was right about the iPhone 16e launch, so it’s astronomically likely that he’ll retain his clean record. But what could the world’s largest Fruit Company launch next? There’s something in the air (and it’s…

Honor has revealed its ‘Alpha Plan’, the company’s new corporate strategy, at a launch event as part of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The new direction for Honor essentially amounts to its transition from a smartphone maker into an “AI device ecosystem company”. At least, that’s how Honor’s new CEO James Li tells it. “It is clear that the AI revolution will reshape the paradigm of the device industry – completely transforming our productivity, our society, and even our culture more than ever before,” said Li. Along with the new strategy and logo (pictured below), Honor announced it would…

It seems Meta isn’t happy with only having its AI chatbot baked into all of its existing apps. That’s much harder to monetise and limits its AI reach to people who use those apps. While that number is likely in the billions, that isn’t stopping The Zuck™ from launching his own standalone Meta AI app to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, according to a recent CNBC report. Speaking to ‘people familiar with the matter’, CNBC reports that Meta plans to launch the AI app sometime in Q2 of this year (between April and June). This probably doesn’t have anything…

It’s been six years since the Valve Index launched and set the standard for high-end VR gaming. New leaks have emerged recently that suggest we could see a successor, codenamed ‘Deckard’,  appear at some point later this year with an even larger price tag, upgraded (in some ways) controllers and, presumably, better hardware. The Valve Index, unlike most of its contemporaries, requires a tether to a PC before it can do anything. The still-to-be-confirmed Deckard, however, will be a wireless standalone headset, if the findings of Valve-focused data miner @gabefollower on Twitter/X are to be believed. Someone at Valve likes…

If you’re still holding your breath for a local launch of Starlink’s low Earth orbit satellite constellation for space-based internet, maybe it’s time you breathed out and started holding your breath for Project Kuiper instead. It’s been a while since there was any meaningful local news regarding Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite internet initiative – until now. A recent ITWeb report claims that Jeff Bezos’ competition to Elon Musk’s Starlink is one step closer to launching in South Africa through its partnership with Vodafone in Europe, and Vodacom locally. Project Kuiper beams internet from space Back in September 2023, Kuiper Systems…

Are you still using SMS-based two-factor authentication for your Gmail account? Firstly, why? And secondly, you’ll want to change that soon(ish) as Gmail is about to end support for the least secure of all the multi-factor authentication methods. The American email company seeks to “reduce the impact of rampant, global SMS abuse,” said Gmail spokesperson Ross Richendrfer speaking to Davey Winder for a new Forbes report. No more MFA SMS Instead of pushing for the wider and faster adoption of passkeys, Gmail is said to soon replace SMS authentication codes with a QR code you’ll need to scan with your…