We’ve had touchscreen laptops for years. Can Apple make them better?
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 …
Apple is adding an AI chatbot to Pages, Keynote, and Numbers
Apple is bringing an AI assistant to its suite of productivity apps, including Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. The assistant, which is built on AI models from Apple and OpenAI, can understand a document's context to perform tasks like designing, animating, and refining slides in Keynote.
In Pages, Apple says the AI assistant can draft, restructure, and tweak written content. It can also calculate, visualize, and organize data in Numbers, while suggesting chart types and building custom tables.
Keynote, Pages, and Numbers now support the Model Context Protocol on macOS 27 or later, allowing third-party AI agents to plug into the apps. The AI …
Apple refreshes the iMac with M6 chips
Apple is updating the iMac with M6 chips. The new iMac generation was introduced today, giving Apple's all-in-one desktop computer a performance boost via the same chipset Apple launched with the Mac Mini in August. Prices start from $1,499, and the design otherwise appears largely unchanged. The update was announced ahead of Apple's "Pro and Tell" event that's scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
This refresh comes two years after Apple gave the iMac an overhaul with M4 chips, meaning we're skipping the M5 series entirely on this hardware. That should make this upgrade more meaningful. The M6 is Apple's first 2nm chip and includes a dual …
Apple updates the MacBook Pro with M6 chips
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.
It's a similar story for 2026. Announced this …
AirFly’s wireless headphone dongle adds a screen to guide you through the pairing process
Twelve South has announced a new version of its Airfly dongle that simplifies the pairing process when connecting wireless headphones to devices that don't natively support Bluetooth. Instead of having to decode flashing or color-changing LEDs, the new Airfly View adds a built-in screen that displays instructions for each step of the pairing process in one of 24 different languages including Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, and Polish.
The Airfly View is available starting today for $79.99 and includes a carrying case and an adapter for connecting the dongle's short 3.5mm headphone cable to an airplane's split headphone jack. That makes it one …
Ford’s sub-$30K electric truck puts the home backup inverter right inside the vehicle
We're still a few months away from the official reveal of the Ford Fathom, the automaker's first next-generation electric vehicle. While we wait, Ford has been whetting our appetite with news about the sub-$30,000 pickup - including today's announcement about the Fathom's bidirectional charging capabilities.
With an increasing number of EVs coming out with bidirectional vehicle-to-home (V2H) or vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging capabilities, Ford is trying to position the Fathom as a key entrant - and one that simplifies the system by making it an everyday reality rather than a $10,000 luxury perk. Unlike the discontinued F-150 Lightning, wh …
Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is getting into laptops — and claims they’ll be American-made
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 …
Fujifilm’s Instax Mini Evo 2 adds a touchscreen and video recording
Fujifilm is trying to find the right balance of fun and photography with its latest hybrid instant camera. Like its predecessor, the Instax Mini Evo 2 feels less like a retro gimmick, and more like a basic digital camera that just happens to have a built-in printer. It also enjoys some key upgrades: a larger 1/2.77-inch sensor compared to the 1/5-inch sensor on the first Mini Evo, a bigger 4.5-inch rear display with touchscreen controls, and basic video recording too - though only the few seconds leading up to a photo.
Video is limited in other ways compared to modern standards - the MP4 clips can only be saved to a microSD card (though the …
Sterling Anderson doesn’t think humanoid robots should be building cars
At a splashy event in New York City last week, General Motors unveiled its new tech roadmap centered on AI-driven vehicle development, advanced battery tech, high-powered car computers, and autonomous driving.
Some of this was old news: We already knew the automaker was developing hands-free, eyes-off driving automation and had been prototyping new battery chemistries. In a sense, the real purpose of the event was to showcase how all these pieces fit together. With its new "intelligence-defined vehicle" paradigm, GM is banking on artificial intelligence, centralized computing, and virtualized engineering to cut vehicle development timelines …
Data center backlash is uniting America
If there's one issue that seems to activate all kinds of voters in 2026, it's data centers. The rapid buildout of these massive server storage facilities - and the infrastructure construction and expenses that come with them - has sparked local opposition in communities across the country and become a major issue in many congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.
At the same time, tech money has been pouring into many of these races. Leading the Future, a super PAC backed by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, has already spent $45 million in a year. And Public First Action, an Anthropic-backed group that …