Month: November 2023

Enlarge / Apple's 16-inch, M3 Max-powered MacBook Pro. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The next year or two will be a turning point for people who bought into the last few generations of Intel Macs. AppleCare+ subscriptions are going to expire, batteries will begin to lose a noticeable amount of capacity, software updates and security fixes will gradually dry up, and normal wear-and-tear will slowly take its toll.

Every new generation of Apple Silicon Mac is another opportunity for Apple to get those people to update. Which may or may not help to explain why Apple is introducing its new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max MacBook Pros less than 11 months after releasing the M2 versions.

Like the early 2023 MacBook Pros, these late 2023 models are iterative improvements to the 2021 redesigns. They keep the things that made those laptops such a big improvement over the late-model Intel MacBook Pros while adding just a little more performance and one or two other minor improvements to entice people who still haven't made the Apple Silicon switch.

Enlarge / Orion and the Running Man Nebula. (credit: David Beverly)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It is November 6, and we're looking toward one of the most prominent constellations in the Northern Hemisphere's night sky.

The Orion constellation likely needs no introduction, but for readers who are not astrophotographers, the Running Man Nebula may be less well-known. It can be found in the top-most part of Orion, in the "sword." This is a reflection nebula in that it consists largely of clouds of interstellar gas that reflect the light of nearby stars. The nebula is relatively close to Earth, as celestial objects go, at 1,500 light-years away.