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Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator

29 October 2026 at 14:21

For more than 15 years, Apple has had a pretty simple answer to the idea of a touchscreen MacBook: no. Yesterday, Apple finally decided to think different and announce one anyway. "You've gotta touch it to believe it," says Apple CEO John Ternus. He might be right: I haven't yet touched it, and I still can't quite believe it.

Steve Jobs first called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible" in 2010, arguing that "touch surfaces don't want to be vertical" and that using one for an extended period of time makes "your arm want to fall off." He wasn't wrong about the fatigue aspect of using a touchscreen laptop for long periods of time, but …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Anduril now says its BlueChip laptop will meet Buy American standards at launch

29 October 2026 at 03:22
A brown cover on a laptop with a rifle-style strap, partly covered with dirt.

On Tuesday, defense contractor Anduril and chipmaker Qualcomm announced a partnership to build laptops entirely in the United States, starting with a single model in 2027. They also announced a "long-term goal" of pushing the computer industry to create "a fully domestic supply chain."

Even a single Made-in-USA laptop would be a surprise, because no major US computer company builds its laptops here - not Apple, not Dell, not HP, not Microsoft. We're not aware of any company that does.

But we are aware of companies that have briefly and strategically assembled computers here seemingly to appease President Donald Trump. We're also aware of …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple charges $14,549 for a fully specced touchscreen MacBook Pro

28 October 2026 at 21:12
The new Apple touchscreen MacBook pro laptop on a display stand surrounded by other laptops.

With an OLED display and touchscreen capabilities, it's no surprise that the new MacBook Pro Apple announced today is more expensive than the MBP announced earlier this year. But upgrading the base models that start at $2,899 for the 14-inch, and $3,399 for the 16-inch, with every premium hardware option that Apple offers pushes those prices to an eye-watering $14,249 and $14,549, respectively.

Both of those premium configurations include the M5 Max chip with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, $150 worth of nano-texture glass, 128GB of memory that adds an extra $2,000, and 16TB of storage which is the real budget breaker here thanks to the ong …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Here’s where to preorder the new MacBook Pros

28 October 2026 at 19:10
A person is seated at a table in front of an opened MacBook laptop while working alongside a colleague.

As expected, Apple finally showed off its 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros at its recent "Pro and tell" event. The long-awaited laptops feature a Tandem OLED display with full touch capabilities, while also cutting some weight and bringing back the glowing Apple logo. While less exciting, there's also an updated 14-inch MacBook Pro that features Apple's M6 chip, along with improved wireless connectivity. It's a small, somewhat iterative update of the prior generation, with no substantial new features beyond performance gains.

Alongside the MacBook updates, Apple also announced an M6-equipped iMac that starts at $1,499, with the same color varia …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Watch Apple’s reveal video for the touchscreen MacBook Pro

28 October 2026 at 18:19
A screenshot from Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro launch video

Apple just announced its first touchscreen MacBook at its "Pro and tell" event on Wednesday. It showed off the long-awaited touchscreen in a video of the new MacBook Pro during the event that you can watch right here to see the new display in action.

The new MacBook Pro's PROLED XDR touch display is a tandem OLED panel with up to 2,000 nits of brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate. It features a hole punch for the webcam, rather than a notch. Apple says the new laptop weighs as little as 3 pounds. It also brings back the glowing Apple logo on its lid, which Apple CEO John Ternus teased in a video on X.

Preorders for the touchscreen MacBook …

Read the full story at The Verge.

We’ve had touchscreen laptops for years. Can Apple make them better?

27 October 2026 at 15:00
Apple MacBook Pro 16 2023
Seeing the light on touchscreen laptops. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A fridge is about to be merged with a toaster. Dogs and cats are soon to be living together. But it's not mass hysteria; Apple is expected to finally announce a touchscreen MacBook tomorrow at its "Pro and Tell" event.

A laptop with a touchscreen should be no big deal - we've had them for ages. But Apple took a hardline stance against them. In addition to Tim Cook's infamous 2012 quote equating it to combining kitchen appliances, Steve Jobs emphatically dismissed touchscreen laptops as "ergonomically terrible" back in 2010, saying, "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical."

The closest Apple got was the MacBook Pro Touch Bar, from 2016 t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple updates the MacBook Pro with M6 chips

27 October 2026 at 14:04
The Apple MacBook Pro with an M6 chip.

Apple is giving its entry-level MacBook Pro a spec bump. After upgrading the entry-level MacBook Pro with its M5 chip a year ago, Apple is refreshing the laptop today with the M6 chip, which the company launched in August as part of recent upgrades to the new Mac Mini.

Last year's entry-level MacBook Pro update brought minimal changes from the M4 model that debuted a year prior, including the same design, port layout, webcam, and speakers. The most notable updates, aside from the then-new M5 processor, was faster storage and the option to upgrade its capacity to a hefty 4TB for an extra $1,200.

Close-ups of the left and right sides of the new MacBook Pro showing its various ports.

It's a similar story for 2026. Announced this …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is getting into laptops β€” and claims they’ll be American-made

27 October 2026 at 14:00
A person dressed in military fatigues using a rugged BlueChip laptop placed on a hard case.
BlueChip will be an Arm-based laptop from an arms dealer. | Image: Anduril

Anduril and Qualcomm are partnering on a new line of laptops called BlueChip, launching in early 2027. The first prototype is a ruggedized model using Arm-based Snapdragon X series chips and aimed at the US military, but the ultimate focus of the joint venture is to make laptops entirely in the US. Eventually.

The global supply chain of computers and laptops normally involves China, Taiwan, and many other countries, so the first BlueChip laptops will only be "designed and assembled in the United States," per Anduril's official press release. Assembly is planned to be done at Anduril's Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio.

Anduril and Qualcomm aren't …

Read the full story at The Verge.

I hope Apple’s touchscreen MacBook takes some lessons from this Lenovo laptop

24 October 2026 at 16:00
A 2-in-1 Lenovo Yoga 9n laptop folded over into tent mode.
The Lenovo Yoga 9n is a pricey workstation laptop, but being a 2-in-1 also makes it fun. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

It looks like the long-rumored touchscreen MacBook might actually get announced next week, and after using the Lenovo Yoga 9n for our testing of Nvidia's RTX Spark platform, it got me thinking: this is a lot of what I want from a touchscreen MacBook.

Like the Apple silicon in modern MacBook Pros, RTX Spark is an Arm-based processor with a beefy integrated GPU and lots of unified memory. And the Yoga is the most fun RTX Spark laptop so far because it's a 16-inch 2-in-1 convertible with a stylus. Its Nvidia-powered compatriots also have touchscreens, like most Windows laptops, but they're conventional clamshell designs.

The Lenovo Yoga d …

Read the full story at The Verge.

PC shipments dropped over 20 percent in Q3 due to RAM price hikes

22 October 2026 at 23:30
Ram piece with red arrow pointing up.

Demand for new PCs took a hit after months of price hikes, with Counterpoint Research reporting global PC shipments fell 21 percent year-over-year in Q3 2026. That's in line with earlier reports from IDC and Omdia. It's not just PCs, either - that same quarter, smartphone shipments also hit a 14-year low.

Counterpoint linked the decline in PC shipments to higher component prices. Up until Q2 2026, PC shipments had been growing for over two years straight. But over the last several months, RAM, SSDs, and chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm have all gotten more expensive, leading to price hikes on everything from MacBooks to Raspberry Pis. C …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A week with RTX Spark: everything we’ve learned using Nvidia’s new laptops

RTX Spark versions of the HP OmniBook Ultra (left), an Asus ProArt P16 (center), and a Lenovo Yoga 9n (right) on a dark gray table against a green-illuminated backdrop.
Nvidia’s new SoC is available in Windows laptops from six different manufacturers. We’ve collectively tested four of them so far. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X processor is finally here, and we've been collectively testing a small fortune's worth of powerful laptops sporting this new "superchip." RTX Spark is designed to be a high-performing Arm-based SoC for laptops and small desktop computers, rivaling the best from Apple, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. It has loads of cores, Nvidia RTX Blackwell graphics, and enough power and unified memory to run sizable local AI models.

The flagship placement is inside Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra with a staggering 128GB of unified memory, which our own Tom Warren fully reviewed. Sean Hollister has been testing a 64GB version of the Asus …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Surface Laptop Ultra review: a different kind of MacBook Pro

16 October 2026 at 14:00
This MacBook Pro lookalike is designed for developers.

After setting up Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra, I spent five minutes just staring at it. I wasn't surprised by its MacBook Pro-like design or blown away by its bright display. I was trying to work out what I'd actually do with a $5,900 laptop.

This isn't just any regular Windows laptop. Microsoft has teamed up with Nvidia to build a high-end laptop to showcase Nvidia's new Arm-based RTX Spark chips. It's a big moment for Windows on Arm, as these chips can run demanding AI models locally, alongside the latest AAA games and creative apps. The promise is compelling, but the reality of local AI is much messier.

Getting the most out of the S …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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