Apple Reportedly Plans To Launch Updated MacBook Pro Lineup In Early 2023

Apple is expected to launch several new MacBook Pros and other Mac products with updated internals next year, along with a few external monitors in the works. This comes as the company seems to be failing to meet its 2022 deadline of completely transitioning its lineup of products away from Intel to its in-house Apple Silicon.

Reliable Apple leaker, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, claims that Apple will launch updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros early next year, offering the highly-anticipated M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets. Reports from earlier this month also hint at the updated models getting faster LPDDR5X RAM that would provide more bandwidth and consume less power.

Apple still only sells an Intel-powered high-end version of the Mac mini but that will apparently change soon as the tech giant reportedly plans to replace it with an M2 Pro-powered offering. The Mac Pro is expected to receive its long-delayed Apple Silicon treatment with a high-powered chip that Gurman speculates will be the M2 Ultra.

The report claims that the M2 Ultra is set to be equipped with up to 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores, and will be able to be configured with up to a whopping 192GB of memory. A higher-end variant dubbed the M2 Extreme would have offered double the amount of CPU and GPU cores, but Gurman says that this was scrapped because of the cost and complexity of fusing four M2 Max chips together, which would have apparently priced the Mac Pro at a minimum of US$10000 (~RM44220).

In related news, the Cupertino-based company is purportedly working on several new external monitors as an update to the Pro Display XDR. Just like this year’s Studio Display, the new monitors will be powered by Apple Silicon to use fewer resources from the attached machine.

The US$2 trillion (~RM8.84 trillion) firm is predicted to shift its Mac Pro assembly from Texas to Vietnam. It was forced to do the assembly in the US after political pressure from the Trump administration but with the new government, Apple can move its production back to Asia.

Thailand Plans To Sell Only Electric Vehicles By 2035

Thailand has set a goal of selling only zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs) by the year 2035. The government also wants to have EVs account for half of all new car registrations by the end of this decade, up from 30% previously.

“We can see the world is heading in that direction so we have to move quickly,” Kawin Thangsupanich, who advises the Thai Energy Ministry’s national policy committee, told Bloomberg in an interview.

With a target date set for the phasing out of non-electric cars, Kawin said the government would now have to push the transition along. This means offering tax incentives, rolling out the necessary infrastructure, and writing regulations that promote EV production as well as incentivising people to buy the cars.

Kawin observed that letting EV adoption occur naturally could take too much time. He linked the country’s ambition to be a major EV production centre to its existing supply chains.

The automotive industry is vital to Thailand at large. According to Bloomberg, it represents about 10% of the economy, employs 850,000 workers, and supports industries like iron, steel, petrochemicals, and plastic. Roughly half of the cars made there are exported to countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Thailand’s probably taking notice of the fact that demand for electric vehicles has surged dramatically in Asia – especially in China. Inspired by Tesla’s success in the country, Chinese tech companies have been tripping over themselves to enter the EV market.

Maxis Fibre Now Comes with Wi-Fi 6 Certified Router; Available For 100Mbps Plans and Above

Maxis today announced that customers of its home fibre will now receive a brand-new Wi-Fi 6 Certified router. The telco has worked together with Huawei and Kaon to come out with the new router which has been customised specifically for Maxis Fibre customers.

At the moment, Maxis has yet to publish the technical specifications of the router although during the media briefing today, the telco did mention that it is able to support Wi-Fi Certified EasyMesh access points. The FAQ document for the router has also stated that customers can continue using their DECT phone with the new Maxis Fibre router.

In general, the Wi-Fi 6 technology is able to support up to 9.6Gbps of data throughput. Wi-Fi Certified 6 routers also come with a number of features as standard including dual-band operation, 1024-QAM modulation mode, downlink MU-MIMO, OFDMA, 160MHz channel bandwidth, and beamforming.

In terms of availability, Maxis Fibre’s Wi-Fi 6 router will be provided to new customers that signed up for 100Mbps and above starting from today onwards. As for existing customers with similar plans, they will receive the router for free as well if they choose to renew their contract with the telco.

Maxis will be contacting eligible customers in phases, so do lookout for the call if you are interested to switch over. For now, you can check out more details on Maxis’ official website right here.