Month: September 2022

Enlarge / iPhone 14. (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Today at its first indoor, in-person product launch event since the pandemic began, Apple announced the new iPhone 14 lineup.

Like its predecessor, the basic iPhone 14 has a 6.1-inch OLED screen. But missing is the iPhone mini, the smaller one-handed model that was present in Apple's lineup for the previous two years. That phone didn't sell all that well, so the majority of consumers have spoken: big phones are the way to go.

Thus, Apple has replaced the mini with the iPhone 14 Plus, with a 6.7-inch screen—the same size as the recent iPhone 12 Max and iPhone 13 Max. Apart from that, though, the specs and features are the same across the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus.

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CUPERTINO, Calif.—The first major update to Apple's AirPods Pro in-ear headphones are on the way, and they'll bring better noise canceling, personalized sound-staging, and 33 percent longer battery life, the company says.

The earbuds look exactly the same as their predecessors, but they offer some improvements nonetheless. The new H2 chip facilitates enhanced noise cancellation that Apple says is twice as powerful as the previous AirPods Pro. A new adaptive transparency mode can also offer more dynamic tuning with what it allows in. Personalized spatial audio will also help listeners tune the sound to their ears.

Things should also sound cleaner across the range of pitches with a new "low-distortion" driver. Lastly, on the audio front, voices should be clearer in calls and through transparency modes thanks to Conversation Boost. There will also be smaller silicone tips to fit a wider range of people.

Enlarge / Apple Watch Ultra. (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—The third and final new Apple Watch introduced at Apple's hardware-reveal event today is the company's first stab at a premium, trail-ready piece for your wrist: the Apple Watch Ultra.

Apple COO Jeff Williams described the new model, which starts at $799 and can be ordered starting today, as an option for "exploration, adventure, and endurance," and its features seem designed for the highest hikes and deepest dives. The Apple Watch Ultra includes deep water resistance (it's EN13319 certified), a siren that can be heard up to 600 feet away, and high-end physical materials. The 49 mm case is composed of "aerospace titanium," while the new "alpine loop" wristband combines titanium with woven fabric.

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  The new action button.

Apple says that in regular use, the Watch Ultra will last for "up to 36 hours" on a single charge, thanks to the "biggest battery yet" on an Apple Watch. That battery life could grow to as much as 60 hours via a "battery optimization setting coming later this fall." The lower-power mode will be achieved via "reduced frequency of GPS and heart rate readings." The Ultra's display is also the brightest yet for an Apple Watch, reaching up to 2,000 nits of brightness—though we're still waiting to hear how battery life will be affected by constant use of max brightness.

Enlarge / Apple Watch Series 8's new features focus on health and safety, including women's health and crash safety. (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Today at its annual September iPhone event, Apple revealed an overhaul of its Apple Watch lineup, including three watches for three types of users.

First up is the Apple Watch Series 8, the direct successor to Apple's previous flagship wearable. Notably new is a temperature sensor designed to improve women's health tracking. Sensors on both the underside of the watch and just underneath the display can track changes as small as 0.1° Celsius, Apple claims. Users can be notified of cycle deviations and other aberrations tracked by temperature, heart rate, and cycle logging.

Apple, likely sensing the current US climate, noted that all of that data is end-to-end encrypted.

Enlarge / AMD's new naming scheme for Ryzen 7000 laptop CPUs, broken down. (credit: AMD)

Even for someone who pays a lot of attention to them, processor model numbers can be hard to parse. Ideally, each model number would communicate information about the chip's underlying technology and capabilities, making it easy to quickly tell the difference between a new chip and an old chip or a fast chip and a slow chip. But these model numbers also serve a marketing purpose, both for AMD and for PC makers who want to advertise that their systems are using the latest and greatest chips.

AMD is making an effort to resolve this tension with a revamp of its laptop CPU model numbers, which will go into effect in 2023, when Ryzen 7000-branded laptop processors begin shipping. Here's how AMD breaks it down:

•  The first digit now indicates the year in which the CPU was launched, with Ryzen 7000 CPUs coming in 2023, Ryzen 8000 in 2024, and Ryzen 9000 in 2025.
• A higher second digit indicates better performance. It will no longer have anything to do with the underlying CPU architecture, as it sometimes does for older chips (Ryzen 5 5500U is Zen 2-based, for example, while Ryzen 5 5600U is Zen 3-based).
• The third digit will now indicate the CPU architecture being used. A "1" means either the original Zen or Zen+, a "2" denotes Zen 2, a "3" denotes either Zen 3 or Zen 3+, a "4" denotes Zen 4, and a "5" will refer to the as-yet-unannounced Zen 5.
• The fourth digit is another loose performance indicator. CPUs ending in "0" will be slower, and CPUs ending in "5" will be faster (as of this writing, those are the only two numbers in use).
• The suffix will denote the TDP of the chip, as it currently does. HX-series chips start at 55 W TDPs, Hs-series chips start at 35 W, U-series chips range from 15 to 28 W, e-series chips are 9 W parts targeted at fanless systems, and C-series chips are just U-series chips in Chromebooks instead of Windows PCs.

AMD also provided this slide, showing how the new model numbers will work in practice for the Ryzen 7000 series (which will encompass at least four distinct CPU architectures, from Zen 2 to Zen 4).