Following the launch of Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 chip, it has been discovered that the $1,299 base model with 256GB of storage has significantly slower SSD read/write speeds compared to the equivalent previous-generation model. From a report: YouTube channels such as Max Tech and Created Tech tested the 256GB model with Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test app and found that the SSD's read and write speeds are both around 1,450 MB/s, which is around 50% slower reading and around 30% slower writing compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 chip and 256GB of storage.

Disk Speed Test app numbers shared by Vadim Yuryev of Max Tech:
13-inch MacBook Pro (M1/256GB) Read Speed: 2,900
13-inch MacBook Pro (M2/256GB) Read Speed: 1,446
13-inch MacBook Pro (M1/256GB) Write Speed: 2,215
13-inch MacBook Pro (M2/256GB) Write Speed: 1,463

Yuryev disassembled the new 13-inch MacBook Pro and discovered that the 256GB model is equipped with only a single NAND flash storage chip, whereas the previous model has two NAND chips that are likely 128GB each. This difference likely explains why the new model has a slower SSD, as multiple NAND chips allows for faster speeds in parallel.

Apple plans to expand the lineup of laptops using its new, speedier in-house chips next year, aiming to grab a bigger share of the market, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter said. From the report: The company is working on a larger MacBook Air with a 15-inch screen for release as early as next spring, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public. This would mark the first model of that size in the MacBook Air's 14-year history. Apple is also developing what would be its smallest new laptop in years. The new models underscore Apple's strategy to use homegrown processors to make gains in a market led by Lenovo and HP. The company began splitting from longtime partner Intel in 2020 and announced its latest chip, the M2, at a developers conference earlier this week. Better performance and new designs have helped spur a resurgence for the Mac lineup, which accounts for about 10% of Apple's sales.

Apple's WWDC isn't an event that traditionally packs in several hardware announcements, but nevertheless, a new MacBook Air took the stage during the keynote. From a report: The new 2022 model has been designed around the more powerful M2 processor, and its design comes closer to that of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, with a more squared-off look than the traditional wedge shape. It features MagSafe charging, two Thunderbolt ports, and a headphone jack. It's 11mm thick and comes in at 2.7 pounds. It will be available in silver, space grey, and new "starlight" gold and "midnight" blue colors. This MacBook Air will be available in July starting at $1,199. The M1-based Air will continue to be available for $999.

The 2022 MacBook Air features a larger 13.6-inch display with smaller bezels surrounding it. Apple says it has 500 nits of peak brightness. It features a silent, fan-less design, which is impressive given the performance gains that Apple is claiming to squeeze from the M2. Apple says that it's 40-percent faster than the previous model, but that performance boost likely varies depending on the app.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece, written by Macworld's Michael Simon: Apple killed its Touch Bar on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro last year, but PC makers seem determined to prove the company wrong. First Dell introduced the XPS 13 Plus which sports a "new capacitive touch experience that allows you to switch between media and function keys easily." The laptop is available for purchase but back-ordered for weeks, and there haven't been any reviews so we don't know for sure how it will be received, but Dell's touch bar concept seems even less useful than Apple's: the buttons are static, they merely float above the actual keyboard, and they don't appear to add any functionality. Then Dell added a touch bar to the trackpad on the Latitude 9330. [...]

Now there's a new PC touch bar, this time on the Voyager a1600, Corsair's first-ever gaming laptop. Corsair hasn't named or even officially announced the new feature -- it only appeared as a sneak peek -- but the company told The Verge that the strip features "10 easy-access customizable S-key shortcut buttons." [...] Corsair's Touch Bar doesn't replace the row of function keys but it is in an odd location -- on the hinge below the display. Even in pictures, it looks incredibly uncomfortable to reach. According to renders, you can still access the Touch Bar when the laptop is closed, which seems like an accident waiting to happen (not to mention a battery drain).

But the biggest question I have is: why? No one shed a tear for the Touch Bar when it was killed. While it has its merits, it was never a proper pro-level feature and the implementation didn't evolve past the original idea. It was too skinny, lacked tactile feedback, required constant scrolling, and didn't actually save time. It looked nice, but even Apple didn't seem to know what to do with it. The MacBook Pro Touch Bar was one of Apple's most polarizing features and it never really caught on with developers. Maybe a niche use like gaming or video conferencing will have better results, but ultimately the Touch Bar, Apple's or otherwise, is a failed concept that should stay in the past.

The head of the UK government's digital transformation unit recently announced a change to the nation's government services site gov.uk: they've "removed jQuery as a dependency for all frontend apps, meaning 32 KB of minified and compressed JavaScript was removed" for everything from selecting elements to attaching event listeners....

Nearly 84% of mobile pages used jQuery in 2021, points out a new essay at Gov.UK — before explaining why they decided not to: jQuery was an instrumental tool in a time when we really needed a way to script interactivity in a way that smoothed over the differing implementations of stuff like event handling, selecting elements, animating elements, and so on.

The web is better because of jQuery — not just because it has such incredible utility, but because its ubiquity led to making what it provided part of the web platform itself. Nowadays, we can do just about anything jQuery can do in vanilla JavaScript... It really begs the question: Do we really need jQuery today? That's a question that GOV.UK has answered with a resounding "no"....

This is a big deal when it comes to the user experience, because GOV.UK provides services and information online for The United Kingdom at scale. Not everyone is tapping away on their 2022 MacBook Pro on a rip-roarin' broadband connection. GOV.UK has to be accessible to everyone, and that means keepin' it lean.... dependencies matter when it comes to performance. Don't shortchange your users if the web platform can easily do the job a framework can.

This level of commitment to the user experience from a institution that works at the scale GOV.UK does is commendable. I can only hope others follow in their footsteps.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is already working on an M3 iMac, along with refreshed MacBooks and a Mac Mini running an M1 Pro chip. He also said the iMac Pro isn't dead, though it's not expected to arrive "anytime soon." From the report: Add an M3-based iMac to your list of future models. Last week, I detailed Apple's road map for the M2 chip and Mac. The plans include: An M2 chip for a new MacBook Air, entry-level MacBook Pro and Mac mini; M2 Pro and M2 Max chips for a new 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro; and A dual M2 Ultra chip for the Mac Pro.

Since then, I've heard that the M2 chips aren't the only ones in testing within Apple. And if you're waiting for a new iMac, I'm hearing an M3 version of that desktop is already in the works -- though I imagine it won't launch until the end of next year at the earliest. Also, for those asking, I still think an iMac Pro is coming. It just won't be anytime soon. Gurman also wrote about what we can expect to see with the iPhone 14. "First off, the overall design from the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 will stick around another year. [...] There will also be larger camera bumps to fit in new sensors."

"That notch will include a pill-shaped cutout for Face ID and a circular cutout for the camera," adds Gurman. "That will be Apple's solution until it's able to fully embed Face ID and the front-facing camera into the display itself. That's still at least three or four years away." There's also going to be a slight shake-up with the iPhone's screen sizes, with the non-Pro iPhone line getting a 6.7-inch screen option.

Interestingly, the company is "still working on bringing satellite connectivity to the iPhone" to gain the ability to make calls over satellite networks. "The company first aimed at adding the feature in last year's model, but now the capability could be ready this time around," wrote Gurman.

A headline at Hot Hardware calls it "a sexy Linux laptop with deep learning chops... being pitched as the world's most powerful laptop for machine learning workloads."

And here's how Ars Technica describes the Razer x Lambda Tensorbook (announced Tuesday): Made in collaboration with Lambda, the Linux-based clamshell focuses on deep-learning development. Lambda, which has been around since 2012, is a deep-learning infrastructure provider used by the US Department of Defense and "97 percent of the top research universities in the US," according to the company's announcement. Lambda's offerings include GPU clusters, servers, workstations, and cloud instances that train neural networks for various use cases, including self-driving cars, cancer detection, and drug discovery.

Dubbed "The Deep Learning Laptop," the Tensorbook has an Nvidia RTX 3080 Max-Q (16GB) and targets machine-learning engineers, especially those who lack a laptop with a discrete GPU and thus have to share a remote machine's resources, which negatively affects development.... "When you're stuck SSHing into a remote server, you don't have any of your local data or code and even have a hard time demoing your model to colleagues," Lambda co-founder and CEO Stephen Balaban said in a statement, noting that the laptop comes with PyTorch and TensorFlow for quickly training and demoing models from a local GUI interface without SSH. Lambda isn't a laptop maker, so it recruited Razer to build the machine....

While there are more powerful laptops available, the Tensorbook stands out because of its software package and Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS.
The Verge writes: While Razer currently offers faster CPU, GPU and screens in today's Blade lineup, it's not necessarily a bad deal if you love the design, considering how pricey Razer's laptops can be. But we've generally found that Razer's thin machines run quite hot in our reviews, and the Blade in question was no exception even with a quarter of the memory and a less powerful RTX 3060 GPU. Lambda's FAQ page does not address heat as of today.

Lambda is clearly aiming this one at prospective MacBook Pro buyers, and I don't just say that because of the silver tones. The primary hardware comparison the company touts is a 4x speedup over Apple's M1 Max in a 16-inch MacBook Pro when running TensorFlow.
Specifically, Lambda's web site claims the new laptop "delivers model training performance up to 4x faster than Apple's M1 Max, and up to 10x faster than Google Colab instances." And it credits this to the laptop's use of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q 16GB GPU, adding that NVIDIA GPUs "are the industry standard for parallel processing, ensuring leading performance and compatibility with all machine learning frameworks and tools."

"It looks like a fine package and machine, but pricing starts at $3,499," notes Hot Hardware, adding "There's a $500 up-charge to have it configured to dual-boot Windows 10."

The Verge speculates on what this might portend for the future. "Perhaps the recently renewed interest in Linux gaming, driven by the Steam Deck, will push Razer to consider Linux for its own core products as well."

Apple has started widespread internal testing of several new Mac models with next-generation M2 chips, according to developer logs, part of its push to make more powerful computers using homegrown processors. Bloomberg: The company is testing at least nine new Macs with four different M2-based chips -- the successors to the current M1 line -- with third-party apps in its App Store, according to the logs, which were corroborated by people familiar with the matter. The move is a key step in the development process, suggesting that the new machines may be nearing release in the coming months. The M2 chip is Apple's latest attempt to push the boundaries of computer processing after a split with Intel in recent years. Apple has gradually replaced Intel chips with its own silicon, and now looks to make further gains with a more advanced line. After years of slow growth, the Mac computer division enjoyed a resurgence the past two years, helped in part by home office workers buying new equipment. The business generated $35.2 billion in sales the past fiscal year, about 10% of Apple's total.

Apple today announced that its 33rd annual Worldwide Developers Conference is set to take place from Monday, June 6 to Friday, June 10. As with the last several WWDC events, the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference will be held digitally with no in-person gathering. MacRumors reports: There will be no cost associated with WWDC 2022, with all developers worldwide able to attend the virtual event. Apple plans to provide sessions and labs for developers to allow them to learn about the new features and software updates that will be introduced at the event, plus there will be a traditional Swift Student Challenge.

Apple says that this year's event will feature additional information sessions, more learning labs, more digital lounges to engage with attendees, and more localized content, with the aim of making WWDC22 "a truly global event." Though the event will be digital, Apple also plans to host a special day for developers and students at Apple Park on June 6 to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos together. Space will be limited, and Apple will take applications.

Apple is expected to hold an online keynote on the first day of WWDC to unveil new software, including iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, tvOS 16, and watchOS 9. It is also possible we could see new hardware at WWDC, as Apple is working on an updated Apple silicon Mac Pro, a new version of the MacBook Air, and more.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple's upcoming MacBook Air redesign has been extensively reported on, but new information suggests it may come in two sizes. According to Display Supply Chain Consultants' latest quarterly report, Apple is working on a 15-inch version of the laptop to sit alongside the 13-inch model, which may itself get a slightly larger screen as well. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo followed up on the report, saying that mass production is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023. Kuo also says that the laptop is being designed to use the same 30W adapter as the MacBook Air, which would put it well below the latest MacBook Pro machines in terms of power consumption. Finally, Kuo notes that this new laptop "might not be called MacBook Air," which is more of a question of branding than anything else and is likely to be in the realm of speculation for a product that's so far out from production.

Does Apple have a "Pro" problem? "[Y]ears of Apple and competitors slapping the name onto wireless earbuds and slightly fancier phones have made it hard to tell what 'Pro' even means," argues The Verge's Mitchell Clark. It could be the reason behind Apple's recently-launched Mac "Studio." From the report: From the jump, Apple made it clear who the Mac Studio and Studio Display were for. It showed them being used by musicians, 3D artists, and developers in its presentation, and the message was clear: these are products for creative professionals or people who aspire to be creative professionals. You know, the same exact crowd it's targeted with MacBook Pro commercials for years. "My first thought was, 'Oh, I wonder when the iPhone Studio comes out,'" says Jonathan Balck, co-founder and managing director of ad agency Colossus, in an interview with The Verge. "Pro was exclusive, and it was about one way of doing things, but the whole culture is moving toward creativity," he adds while musing whether we could see Apple's Pro branding shift to become Studio branding instead.

[T]o me, the Mac Studio line is a clear successor to Apple's iMac Pro. Both computers are powered by monstrous CPUs and come standard with 10Gb Ethernet and a healthy crop of Thunderbolt and USB ports. I'm convinced that, had Apple released the new Studio even two years ago, it would've put "Pro" in the name. (Though, to play devil's advocate, I'm not as sure it would've done so for the Studio Display.) Some marketing experts tell me that the word "Pro" is starting to get long in the tooth, and not just from overuse. "The previous term Pro is, in my opinion, outdated and dry," says Keith Dorsey, founder and CEO of the creative marketing group and management company YoungGuns Entertainment. Balck agrees; "If you look at the word Pro, that is in many ways restrictive," he says in an interview, explaining that when you say a product is "professional," it evokes ideas like job interviews, portfolios, and standoffishness. Pro products, he says, come across as just for those who use creativity to get a paycheck.

The reason Apple may need to, though, is because it led the industry in thoroughly overusing the word "Pro" to the point where it's lost all meaning. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly this started (though, in my mind, it was with the two-port MacBook Pro model), but now the word gets slapped on everything. Want to sell wireless earbuds for even more money? Those are Pro earbuds now. Want to have a regular and fancy version of your phone? No problem, call the nice one the Pro. [...] But Apple's new word, "studio," seems to come ready-made to excite the company's target audience.

Apple may be working on a device with a 20-inch foldable display, which Apple tracker Mark Gurman describes as an "iPad / MacBook hybrid" in Bloomberg's Power On newsletter. The Verge: Gurman says that Apple is, indeed, exploring the possibility of a folding device of the sort, backing up the claims of Ross Young, the CEO and analyst at Display Supply Chain Consultants. Gurman claims the device will feature a dual-screen display that omits a physical keyboard and trackpad -- navigating and typing on the device will be entirely touchscreen-based.

According to tech reporter and Apple leaker Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing to launch four M2 Macs throughout 2022. MacWorld reports: The first models will likely arrive later in the year, with the redesigned MacBook Air leading the way, followed by a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, 24-inch iMac, and entry-level Mac mini. A DigiTimes report on Tuesday said the 13-inch MacBook Pro may launch at Apple's spring event to usher in the new chip. Like 2021, Apple will be releasing Macs with several different chips in 2022. The M2 will be a successor to the M1, likely with the same 8-core design (four performance cores and four efficiency cores), and the M1 Pro and M1 Max will make their way into more high-end Macs. The first of those, the 27-inch iMac, could arrive at Apple's spring event, with a Mac mini coming later in the year. [...] There's also a new Mac Pro due in 2022 as the culmination of the Apple silicon transition. That would mean every Mac line is due for a refresh this year and nearly every model, with only the recently released 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro escaping without a refresh.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple hasn't stopped selling Intel Macs just yet, but it's safe to say that we'll never see a Mac with one of Intel's 12th-generation Core processors in it. But that minor detail isn't stopping the Hackintosh community from supporting new Intel and AMD processors and platforms. The developers behind OpenCore, the most powerful and actively maintained bootloader for loading macOS on standard PC hardware, improved its Alder Lake support in this month's release, version 0.7.7. In a blog post over the weekend, the developers also detailed their efforts to update OpenCore and its associated software to work with Intel's Z690 chipset.

The key to building a functional Hackintosh is normally to build a PC that's as close as possible to actual Intel Mac hardware -- most crucially, the CPU, GPU, and chipset. OpenCore's job is to bridge whatever gap is left between your PC and real Mac hardware so that macOS boots and works properly. It adds support for reading and booting macOS filesystems, loads kernel extensions to support additional hardware, tells macOS how to handle your system's audio outputs and USB ports, and spoofs hardware to take advantage of macOS's built-in support (if, for example, your PC has a GPU that is similar to but not quite identical to a GPU included in a real Intel Mac). As OpenCore has developed and matured, it has gotten better at bridging larger and larger gaps between PC hardware and "real" Macs. It can get old versions of macOS like Tiger (10.4) and Snow Leopard (10.6) up and running on old hardware, and it can even be used to run newer macOS versions on real Macs that Apple has dropped from the official support list. It can even run macOS on AMD processors, albeit with some caveats for software that relies on Intel-specific functionality. The still-active Hackintosh Reddit community is full of people running macOS on all kinds of different hardware.

It's that sort of flexibility that will keep macOS working on 12th-generation Intel CPUs and the Z690 chipset. All of that said, running macOS on newer hardware isn't for the faint of heart, and some things just aren't going to work. Trying to use 12th-gen processors' new efficiency cores (or E-cores) can also cause general slowdowns because macOS doesn't know how to best distribute work between the different types of cores -- macOS doesn't (and never will) support Intel's "Thread Director" technology, which needs to be baked into your operating system to get the best performance. The GPUs from 11th- and 12th-generation Intel processors also won't work in Hackintoshes because they were never supported in real Macs, so you would need to rely on a dedicated AMD GPU to handle display output and other tasks (in real Intel Macs, even iMacs and MacBook Pros with dedicated GPUs still use the integrated Intel GPUs for video and photo encoding and decoding). Apple is still adding support for newer AMD GPUs in macOS releases, presumably so those cards can work in the Mac Pro -- the Radeon RX 6900 series, 6800 series, and RX 6600 XT are all supported -- but Apple could easily decide to stop supporting newer GPUs whenever it wants. And Nvidia GPUs aren't supported at all.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC, written by Todd Haselton: Apple's decision to ditch Intel paid off this year. The pivot allowed Apple to completely rethink the Mac, which had started to grow stale with an aging design and iterative annual upgrades. Following the divorce from Intel, Apple has launched far more exciting computers which, paired with an ongoing pandemic that has forced people to work and learn from home, have sent Apple's Mac business soaring. It wasn't always a given. When Apple announced its move away from Intel in 2020, it was fair to question just how well Apple could power laptops and desktop computers. Apple has used in-house chips for iPhones and iPads but had been selling Intel-powered computers for 15 years. It wasn't clear how well its macOS desktop software would work with apps designed to run on Intel chips, or whether its processors would offer any consumer benefits and keep up with intensive tasks that people turned to MacBooks to run. Those fears were quickly quelled.

The first M1 Apple chip was launched in 2020 in a MacBook Air laptop. It was more powerful than Intel's chip while offering longer battery life and enabling a fanless design, which helped keep Apple's new MacBook Air even quieter. It proved to be an early success. In April 2021, CEO Tim Cook said during the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings call that the M1 chip helped fuel the 70.1% growth in Apple's Mac revenue, which hit $9.1 billion during that quarter. The growth continued in fiscal Q3, when Mac revenue was up 16% year over year. That quarter, it launched the all-new iMac, which offered a redesigned super-thin metal body that looks like a screen propped up on a stand. It's slimmer than the Intel models that came before it, while offering other benefits, like a much better webcam, great speakers and a much sharper display than the models it replaced. And Apple made the launch more exciting by offering an array of colors for the iMac, which it hadn't done since it shipped the 1999 iMac. There was a slowdown in fiscal Q4, when Mac revenue grew just 1.6%, as Apple, like all manufacturers, saw a slowdown from the burst of sales driven by the start of the pandemic and dealt with supply chain woes. But fiscal Q4 sales didn't include revenue from its most exciting new computer of the year.

Apple's fiscal Q1 earnings in January will give an indication of how well all its new computers are selling. But it's clear the move from Intel has allowed Apple to move full speed ahead with its own chip development, much like it does for iPhones and iPads, the latter of which has yet to be matched by any other tablet on the market. It's no longer beholden to delays that plagued Intel, which started to lag behind AMD with its new 7nm chips. And Apple has full control over its "stack," which means it can design new computer hardware and software together, instead of letting the power of another company's chips dictate what its computers can and can't do.

Qualcomm is looking to seriously beef up its PC processors, with the company announcing plans for a next-generation Arm-based SoC "designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs" that would be able to go head to head with Apple's M-series processors. From a report: Dr. James Thompson, Qualcomm's chief technology officer, announced the plans for the new chips at the company's 2021 investor day event, with the goal of getting samples to hardware customers in about nine months ahead of product launches with the new chip in 2023. The new chip will be designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm had bought earlier this year in a massive $1.4 billion acquisition. Nuvia, notably, was founded in 2019 by a trio of former Apple employees who had previously worked on the company's A-series chips. The company is making big promises, too: in addition to offering competition to Apple's stellar M-series chips (which power its latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops and iMac and Mac Mini desktops), Qualcomm is aiming to lead the field for "sustained performance and battery life," too.

The Information today shared alleged details about future Apple silicon chips that will succeed the first-generation M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, which are manufactured based on Apple chipmaking partner TSMC's 5nm process. MacRumors adds: The report claims that Apple and TSMC plan to manufacture second-generation Apple silicon chips using an enhanced version of TSMC's 5nm process, and the chips will apparently contain two dies, which can allow for more cores. These chips will likely be used in the next MacBook Pro models and other Mac desktops, the report says. Apple is planning a "much bigger leap" with its third-generation chips, some of which will be manufactured with TSMC's 3nm process and have up to four dies, which the report says could translate into the chips having up to 40 compute cores. For comparison, the M1 chip has an 8-core CPU and the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips have 10-core CPUs, while Apple's high-end Mac Pro tower can be configured with up to a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor.

Apple is in discussions with Samsung and LG over applying OLED displays with a two-stack tandem structure to future iPad and MacBook models, but the devices are likely several years away from launch, according to Korean website The Elec. MacRumors reports: The report indicates that a two-stack tandem structure would consist of two layers of red, green, and blue emission layers, allowing for the future iPad and MacBook models to have significantly brighter displays with up to double the luminance. Apple's current OLED devices like the iPhone have a single-stack structure, the report adds. Given that OLED technology is expensive, it's likely the displays will be used on future iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models specifically. The report claims the future iPads will come in 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes, which are indeed the current iPad Pro sizes.

The report claims the two-stack iPad displays will also be low-power LTPO panels, which could allow for a wider ProMotion refresh rate range between 10Hz and 120Hz, in line with the iPhone 13 Pro models. iPad Pro models have already supported ProMotion since 2017, but with a refresh rate between 24Hz and 120Hz. Timing remains a big question mark. While some earlier reports claimed the first iPad with an OLED display was slated for release in 2022, today's report claims the timeframe has been pushed back to late 2023 or 2024. The first MacBook with an OLED display might follow in 2025, but this plan could be postponed further, the report adds.

macOS Monterey, released last week as the latest version of macOS, is bricking older Mac computers, rendering them unusable and unable to even turn on, according to a number of reports from users across social media and online forums. From a report: If this sounds oddly familiar, it may be because last year, with the launch of macOS Big Sur, similar reports surfaced about that update bricking older MacBook Pro models. Less than a year later, similar issues are now seemingly taking place once again. At least ten separate posts on Apple Support Communities contain users complaining that as they were attempting to update their Mac to macOS Monterey, the Mac went completely black and they're unable to turn it on. One post in specific includes several comments from users also reporting similar issues. Reports on Twitter are also plentiful.

Apple this month unveiled an array of new gadgets: more powerful MacBook laptop computers, AirPod wireless headphones with longer battery life and HomePod Mini speakers in three more colors. But a different and unheralded Apple release is garnering so much interest that it has become the company's most back-ordered new product: a $19, 6.3-by-6.3-inch cloth to wipe smudges and fingerprints off screens. From a report: The cloth, imprinted with the Apple logo in the corner, is made with "soft, nonabrasive material" to clean the screens of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks "safely and effectively," according to the product page. The listing adds that the Polishing Cloth -- capital P, capital C -- is "compatible" with 88 different Apple products. For most U.S. shoppers, shipment is delayed until Jan. 11, at the earliest. Charging $19 for a piece of cloth about the size of two stacked dollar bills is bold even by Apple's standards, a company whose legions of loyal customers are conditioned to stomach steep prices. An Apple-branded set of four wheels to "improve mobility" for the Mac Pro, the company's most expensive desktop computer, is priced at $699, for instance.