Apple is reportedly working on a touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple is reportedly working on touchscreen MacBooks. Although the plans aren’t finalized, Bloomberg’s sources say that touch-friendly Apple laptops could arrive in 2025.

For a company that has made a point of saying that touch is better on a product like the iPad, a touchscreen MacBook would be a big change — but don’t expect a wild departure from traditional Apple laptop design. The alleged touchscreen MacBook Pro would “likely” still run macOS and include a standard trackpad and keyboard. But, similar to Windows laptops and 2-in-1s, it would incorporate display taps and gestures. The report says Apple may expand the touch input to include other Mac models over time, but it isn’t currently planning on combining macOS and iPadOS. (One can surmise that fear of cannibalizing iPad sales has been a factor in holding out this long.)

Additionally, the report reiterates that Apple is shifting its Mac displays to OLED as part of a broader MacBook Pro overhaul. Current Macs have LCDs, while iPhones (except for the iPhone SE) and Apple Watches use OLED displays.

Touch Bar and keyboard on the 2016 MacBook Pro

Apple launched the Touch Bar in 2016 as a half measure towards full touchscreen capabilities on MacBooks. The strip above the keyboard included system and in-app shortcuts, spelling suggestions and other touch-friendly inputs. But it was never embraced by developers or Apple’s most loyal customers, and it was removed from Apple’s 2021 MacBook Pro redesign.

Although much has been made of Steve Jobs’s insistence that touchscreens don’t belong on Macs, this wouldn’t be the first time the company has evolved in ways that go against “the gospel of Steve.” For example, he mocked big iPhones, small tablets and iPad styluses; today, Apple will happily sell you an iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPad mini and Apple Pencil. Although Jobs’s vision is very much instilled in the company’s DNA, the computing world has changed slightly since 2011.

PC shipments saw their largest decline ever last quarter

It’s no secret that the conditions were ripe for a steep drop in PC demand this holiday, but now it’s clear just how bad that plunge really was. Gartner and IDC estimate PC shipments fell by more than 28 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022. That’s the steepest quarterly decline Gartner has ever recorded — no mean feat when it began tracking the computer market in the 1990s. Both analyst groups also saw yearly shipments fall by more than 16 percent in 2022 compared to the year earlier.

Some manufacturers suffered more of a blow than others. The top three brands, Lenovo, HP and Dell, saw their shipments tumble between 29 percent and 37 percent in late 2022 compared to a year earlier. Acer took a staggering 41 percent hit, according to Gartner. Fourth-place Apple took a relatively light blow, although that still meant its shipments dropped by as much as 10 percent.

Gartner and IDC share the same explanation. PC sales soared in 2021 as people continued to work from home during the pandemic, but that interest tanked as people gradually returned to the office. Moreover, a worsening global economy left people with less money to spend on upgrades. Would-be customers either had a recent PC or had trouble affording a new one, to put it simply.

IDC is quick to put the seeming freefall into context. While the quarterly and yearly drops were sharp, shipments in 2022 were still “well above” pre-pandemic figures, according to researchers. While demand still looks grim, the market was still stronger than before.

Just don’t expect the PC’s heyday to return for a while. Neither analyst group expects the market to recover in earnest until 2024, and IDC only sees “pockets of opportunity” in 2023. Whether they like it or not, PC makers may have to brace themselves and hope that a combination of new designs and price cuts will sustain interest for the next year.

The Guardian says ransomware attack compromised staff’s personal data

The Guardian has confirmed that it was the victim of a ransomware attack, and that the damage is more serious than first thought. In an update to staff, Guardian group chief Anna Bateson and newspaper editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said the December attack was “highly sophisticated” and accessed the personal data of UK employees. There was no evidence of the data being exposed online, or that the intruders had breached data for readers or non-UK editions.

Bateson and Viner understood that this was a “criminal” ransomware campaign, and that the perpetrators hadn’t targeted The Guardian as a media outlet. The paper has alerted both police as well as the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. The leaders didn’t identify the suspected culprits.

The fallout from the cyberattack has worsened. While The Guardian now expects some vital systems to return within two weeks, workers now won’t return to the office until early February. That will give the IT team more time to restore infrastructure, the outlet said. Staff have largely been working from home since the attack was spotted on December 20th, but were originally told only to stay away from the office for the remainder of that week.

The company has continued to run its online and print publications in the weeks since. Even so, the confirmation still makes this one of the more serious online security incidents for the press in recent memory. Fast Company was knocked offline for eight days early last fall, while The New York Postfell prey to a rogue employee weeks later. The Guardian is still dealing with the consequences of the ransomware over three weeks later, and won’t return to normality for a while yet.

Twitter could launch in-app ‘coins’ to help creators make money

It seems Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on a new scheme to make money from the platform. The service appears to be experimenting with an in-app currency called “coins” meant to help creators earn money from the platform, according to screenshots shared by two app researchers.

The feature has been spotted in recent days by Jane Manchun Wong and Nima Owji, app researchers who often publish images of unreleased features. According to their posts, coins appear to be an extension of Twitter’s existing tipping feature. “Coins allow you to support creators who Tweet great content,” reads a screenshot shared by Wong and Owji. An image shared by Owji back in December showed a new “Coins” tab in the same section where users can keep track of their tips.

For now, it’s unclear exactly what Twitter’s plans are for coins or when the feature could launch. The company, which no longer employs communications staff, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the screenshots suggest Twitter is at least considering featuring coins prominently in its app as both Wong and Owji spotted it in the main sidebar.

But coins may not be just for tipping. Wong also spotted an “Awards” feature, which allows people to use coins to buy in-app gifts for others. According to the image shared by Wong, users would be able to buy gifts for as little as one coin (called “Mind Blown”) or as much as 5000 (called “Gold”). It’s not clear how much coins will cost, though Twitter would presumably get a cut of revenue generated from coin purchases.

So far, Elon Musk doesn’t seem to have publicly weighed in on coins or awards, but he has spoken broadly about wanting more ways for creators to be rewarded. He’s said that Twitter Blue revenue would potentially “give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators” and that “creator monetization for all forms of content” is also in the works.

It’s also worth noting that despite the “coins’ moniker, the feature doesn’t seem to have any cryptocurrency tie-ins, at least for now. “Twitter Coin is still under development and we don’t even have any evidence that it’s something related to crypto,” Owji noted. “Don’t let the scammers fool you.”

Ubisoft cancels three games and delays ‘Skull and Bones’ yet again

Things aren’t exactly going smoothly over at Ubisoft. The publisher has canceled another three games, following the four titles it killed last summer. Not only that, the company has announced yet another delay for Skull and Bones — a game we first tried all the way back at E3 2017. The pirate sim was supposed to finally emerge on March 9th, but Ubisoft has delayed it until the early part of its 2023-24 fiscal year, which starts in April. This is the sixth publicly announced delay of Skull and Bones.

“Players will be able to discover the beauty of Skull and Bones in the upcoming beta phase. The additional time has already paid off and brought impressive improvements to its quality, which has been confirmed by recent playtests,” Ubisoft said in a financial statement. “We believe players will be positively surprised by its evolution. We have decided to postpone its release in order to have more time to showcase a much more polished and balanced experience and to build awareness.”

Meanwhile, the company lowered its financial projections target for the October-December quarter from around €830 million ($891 million) to approximately €725 million ($779 million). Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Just Dance 2023 didn’t perform as well as the company expected. “We are facing contrasted market dynamics as the industry continues to shift towards mega-brands and everlasting live games, in the context of worsening economic conditions affecting consumer spending,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

Ubisoft expects its net bookings to fall by 10 percent for the year. Previously, the company expected that those revenues would increase by 10 percent. All told, Ubisoft has reduced its estimated operating income for this year by around $1 billion.

Going forward, Ubisoft is tightening its belt and will focus on fewer games. The company is depreciating €500 million ($538 million) in research and development on the canceled games, as well as its upcoming premium and free-to-play titles. It’s also aiming to reduce costs by over €200 million ($215 million) in the next two years through “targeted restructuring, divesting some non-core assets and usual natural attrition.” However, it plans to keep hiring “highly talented people” for its major projects.

Aside from Skull and Bones, perhaps the biggest title Ubisoft currently has on the docket for this year is Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is slated to arrive by the end of March 2024 as well. Other unannounced premium games are in the pipeline for the next fiscal year, including “a large one.” Free-to-play titles for some of Ubisoft’s biggest brands are in the works too. Given its current state of affairs, the company will need most, if not all of those, to be hits. 

The Webb Telescope’s first confirmed exoplanet is 99 percent the diameter of Earth

Having already returned visually stunning and scientifically spectacular results from its first six months in operation, the James Webb Space Telescope has recorded another inaugural milestone: its first exoplanet discovery confirmation. It peered 41 light years into the cosmos and found a planet in the Octans constellation with a diameter 99 percent that of Earth itself — say hello to LHS 475 b.

Specifically a team of astronomers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, led by Kevin Stevenson and Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, first spotted evidence of the candidate exoplanet while digging through data generated from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). However it was Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) that confirmed the planets existence by observing two transits in front of its parent star. “There is no question that the planet is there. Webb’s pristine data validate it,” Lustig-Yaeger declared in a NASA press release. 

As the space agency notes, among telescopes in operation today (both terrestrial and orbital), only the JWST possesses the resolving capabilities to accurately characterize the atmospheres of Earth-sized exoplanets. The research team is still working to determine what, if any, sort of atmosphere is sitting atop the rocky mass using by analyzing its transmission spectrum. 

There is a chance that the planet will be devoid of its critical gaseous insulation but at these distances, it could simply be hiding a very small atmo close to the surface. “Counterintuitively, a 100% carbon dioxide atmosphere is so much more compact that it becomes very challenging to detect,” said Lustig-Yaeger. 

They are confident that it does not possess an oppressive atmosphere similar to that of Saturn’s moon Titan, however. “There are some terrestrial-type atmospheres that we can rule out,” he said. “It can’t have a thick methane-dominated atmosphere.” 

That said, the surface of the planet does appear to be around 300 Celsius, several hundred degrees warmer than here on Earth. If cloud cover is discovered in subsequent studies, it could suggest a greenhouse world climate closer to Venus. The researchers have also confirmed that LHS 475 b maintains a tidal-locked orbit with its star of just two days — far too close to attempt with Sol but, because LHS circles a red dwarf that’s producing less than half of our sun’s energy, can theoretically maintain an atmosphere.