Technology - Google News

New Pixel 3 XL leaks show off the deeper notch and all-white color scheme
Apple's Tuesday earnings call all about 2019 iPhone demand, analyst says
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2018) review:

New Pixel 3 XL leaks show off the deeper notch and all-white color scheme

Posted: 30 Jul 2018 07:17 AM PDT

New images of the Pixel 3 XL have appeared on XDA Forums, courtesy of member dr.guru, and this time, they show off an all-white color scheme for Google's larger Android smartphone. They also seemingly confirm the deep notch revealed in the first set of Pixel 3 XL leaks in June.

The new white model leaked by dr.guru seems to be almost identical to the black version that leaked earlier. There's the same prototype logo on the back instead of Google's usual "G" and with the same notch, chin, stereo speakers, single rear camera, and dual-front facing lenses. The two-tone black-and-white color scheme from last year's model has been replaced with a totally white back, similar to the original Pixel XL.

According to dr.guru, the phone seems to be about the same size as last year's Pixel 2 XL, which would imply that Google is taking advantage of the newly notched design to increase screen surface area without making the physical phone dramatically bigger. In a later post in the thread, dr.guru also confirmed that the Pixel 3 XL prototype does feature a glass back, and the split glossy / matte style that has become an iconic part of the Pixel lineup's design is still preserved under a single sheet of glass (presumably to facilitate wireless charging).

The similarities between the June leak and these latest images mean it's starting to look likely that this is the Pixel 3 XL's design (for better or for worse), even if Google does tweak a few things on the design between now and the fall, but we'll likely have to wait until October to find out for sure.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Apple's Tuesday earnings call all about 2019 iPhone demand, analyst says

Posted: 30 Jul 2018 07:52 AM PDT

Ahead of earnings, GBH Insights' Daniel Ives sees 42 million iPhones sold, and no big surprises —but predicts the real story is what Apple forecasts for 2019 demand.

In a note published Monday and seen by AppleInsider, Ives predicts that Apple will announced that it sold 42 million iPhones in the third quarter, and predicted "no major surprises" in regards to sales numbers or gross margins. Ives sees Apple's forecasts about the 2019 iPhone demand, as well services numbers, the "main event" of Apple's earnings announcement on Tuesday.

Reiterating a note of his from May, Ives continues to see the "window of opportunity" to upgrade over the next 12 to 18 months at 350 million, with Apple needing to capture the majority of those in order to ensure a successful cycle, which will in turn prop up services demand.

For that cycle, Ives is with the consensus of most analysts, who see Apple introducing three iPhones this fall- two 5.8 inch to 6.5 inch OLED Plus models, plus a less expensive LCD iPhone. Ives sees their releases as staggered between three and six months.

"In terms of the quarter, we believe there could be some upside on the all-important services/software front along with ASPs potentially another bright spot and top-line catalyst," Ives wrote in the note. "In a nutshell, the Street is all focused on the demand trajectory for the September quarter and most importantly into 2019 with the trifecta of next generation iPhones on the horizon and the Street modeling iPhone shipments of roughly 220 million units, which could ultimately prove to be conservative in our opinion given the underlying demand drivers."

The analyst maintains a $200 price target and the rating of "highly attractive" for Apple's stock.

Heading into Apple's earnings announcement, recent surveys of analyst projections published last week see Apple announcing that it sold around 42 million iPhones in the third quarter, and will announce EPS growth of about 37 percent. Gene Munster, for one, predicted 42 million iPhones sold and said that the iPhone is "becoming a stable business."

Various analysts, as they often due in the third quarter, have labeled the quarter boring or insignificant, as it is the last quarter before the arrival of new iPhones.

This earnings announcement has been very different from the runup to earnings in the second quarter, when many analysts predicted a disappointing quarter plagued by soft iPhone demand. Apple went on to quiet doubters by beating those estimates. </span>

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2018) review:

Posted: 30 Jul 2018 08:19 AM PDT

On paper, it looked like an impressive, if predictable, set of internal component upgrades. Apple's 13-inch and 15-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro models would get new eighth-gen Intel processors, more storage and RAM options, a color-temperature-sensing True Tone screen and other tweaks -- all nice improvements over a ho-hum 2017 update. At the same time, the slim unibody aluminum design would remain unchanged since its last design overhaul in late 2016, keeping features both loved (the giant track pad) and not-so-loved (the slim-travel keyboard, the USB-C-only connections).

If anything, the expensive add-on option for one of Intel's new six-core Core i9 processors would appeal to pro-level users, such as video editors and 3D artists, who may be starting to feel that Apple isn't keeping up with their ever-expanding needs for high-end gear.

To say things got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. First, there was confusion over that keyboard: Apple maintained that the new third-gen butterfly keyboard was quieter but otherwise unchanged -- but a teardown at repair site iFixit revealed a totally new membrane that may well address the issue of sticky and dust-afflicted keys on earlier models that have prompted class action lawsuits against Apple.

Secondly, there was the speed throttling issue that emerged just days after the July 12 announcement: Some of the most gung-ho early adopters who ran out and got Core i9 MacBook Pros as soon as they were released found mysteriously throttled performance. YouTube tech personality Dave Lee first brought the issue to public attention with a video in which he demonstrated the heat and throttling issues. These results were soon replicated by others, including our own CNET Labs testing.

To its credit, Apple quickly investigated the issue and determined that a simple software bug was to blame. A software update to the MacOS operating system seemed to solve the issue, and you can read more about our pre and post-patch experience here.

If you're one of those early adopters, instructions for how to install the MacOS 10.13.6 update are available here. The issue affected all of Apple's new MacBook Pro models, both 13- and 15-inch. The entry level 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar isn't affected, as it has not been updated this year.

And now that the hype around this software bug is dying down, we're left to consider just how much is actually new inside the MacBook Pro, and if it meets the needs of a creative class increasingly moving towards 4K-and-higher video, and other power-hungry tasks. A more in-depth analysis of the new features and performance of the Core i9 15-inch MacBook Pro follows, but first we'll break down the key takeaways:

MacBook Go!

Post-patch, the Core i9 version is much faster than last year's high-end Core i7 model
The True Tone screen works well in a variety of lighting conditions
Options for up to 32GB of RAM and 4TB of flash storage can greatly help with video production
The "stealth" keyboard update makes it less prone to stuck keys, a major issue for some in the 2016 and 2017 models

MacBook No!

Only the more expensive Touch Bar models have been updated, leaving the entry level 13-inch Pro and the more affordable non-Pro MacBooks out in the cold (for now)
You're still locked into only USB-C connectivity
The super flat keyboard, while possibly more reliable, is still not particularly comfortable
The Touch Bar sill feels like a technology in search of a purpose

High end, high prices

Get ready for some serious sticker shock if you want the new MacBook Pro's most-buzzed-about new components and features. The model I unboxed for testing and reviewing is a 15-inch MacBook Pro, which already sets the price floor at $2,399 (£2,349 or AU$3,499). But, this high-end configuration included one of Intel's new six-core Core i9 CPUs, a whopping 32GB of RAM and a hefty 2TB flash storage drive. (2TB used to be the upper limit, now a 4TB drive is available for anyone who wants to drop an extra $2,000.)

All those upgrades take this specific laptop up to $4,699 (£4,409 or AU$7,139). That's expensive, even for the type of creative or technical professional who would be in the market for a machine like this. But, wow, software patch issues aside, it's some powerhouse. When you pull out almost all the stops, you're going to get a laptop that screams, and this one does.

This new 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 13-inch model with Apple's Touch Bar are the only new Mac laptops of 2018 to date, though the rest of the line is rumored to be getting a refresh before the end of the year. As for the Touch Bar itself, its fingerprint reader works with a new separate security chip called the T2 that adds a few extras, like a secure boot path to make sure no tricky malware sneaks into your bootup process. But the Touch Bar itself gains no new killer features, and remains as vexing as ever.

15-apple-macbook-pro-15-inch-2018 — Sarah Tew/CNET

The specs

Here's a rundown of all of the new and improved 13-inch and 15-inch specs:

New eighth-gen quad-core Intel CPU (i7 or i9).
Support for twice as much RAM (now up to 32GB).
Twice as much SSD storage capacity available (now up to 4TB).
New display support for True Tone, which optimizes colors to ambient light conditions.
New T2 subprocessor for Touch ID security and encryption.
Hands-free Siri (say "Hey, Siri" to activate).
Modest tweaks to the super-flat butterfly keyboard. Apple says the changes are only intended to quiet key clack, but they may (or may not) affect reliability, too.

To the nines

This has been my first chance to test a laptop with Intel's eighth-gen, six-core Core i9 CPU. Previously, the 15-inch Pro topped out at a seventh-gen quad-core Core i7, itself no slouch, after the last line update in spring 2017.

Compared to a 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro with a quad-core Core i7, the new six-core Core i9 was significantly faster in the standard benchmark tests we ran, even before Apple patched the CPU throttling issue.

But -- before Apple released the patch -- when setting up an intensive workload to deliberately push the system, we were able to easily cause the Core i9 CPU in our 2018 MacBook Pro to ping-pong its internal temperature and CPU clock speed up and down rapidly, in both video encoding and 3D gaming.

Once Apple released the update, we installed it on our Core i9 15-inch MacBook Pro and repeated some of the same tests. The CPU throttling stopped, and the clock frequency of the CPU and internal system temperature both remained fairly stable, even when running a 4K video encode or a game set to maximum detail settings. In our standard benchmarks, which don't run long enough to have triggered the throttling issue, the pre and post-patch performance was essentially identical.

Do you need that kind of power? Most mere mortals don't, which is why more affordable 12-inch MacBooks ($1,289 at Amazon.com) and MacBook Air ($859 at Amazon Marketplace) models are still perfectly fine for the websurfing masses. But this the MacBook Pro, and the pro audience does a lot more than websurfing.

For example, when Apple briefed me on the new Pros, the company offered in-person testimonials and demos from several power users, including Carlos Perez, director of the record-breaking Despacito music video, who talked about how the larger storage and faster processor in the MacBook Pro could let him preview and color correct 5K footage in real time, cutting out intermediary steps from his workflow.

180711-macbookpro-newyorkcity-bk-41066 — Carlos Perez, director of the Despacito music video.
Brooks Kraft

Consider the graphics power under the hood, too: While the AMD Radeon Pro 560 inside isn't necessarily a gaming GPU, photo, video and design professionals who are editing 4K video or rendering giant 3D models will find it to be a decent step up from the baseline Intel integrated graphics on the 13-inch model. But for video pros really looking to amp up the power, Apple is also promoting a new $700 external GPU box made by a company called Blackmagic -- albeit sealed with non-upgradeable Radeon video cards.

Let's block ads! (Why?)