Even MacBook Neo can't save Apple from repairability complaints
Despite advances in user repair and the improvements in the MacBook Neo, Apple just can't get away from being rated poorly for repairability.Repairing a MacBook - Image Credit: AppleRepairability is a long-time problem for Apple, after being repeatedly shamed for having hard-to-repair products. In recent years, it has tried to make its products easier to fix, which should eventually improve its image.That initiative was put to good use with the MacBook Neo, with the traditional teardown resulting in the notebook being called the most repairable MacBook since 2012. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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Apple TV film ‘Outcome’ captures Keanu Reeves’ character at center of image crisis
In Apple TV's dark comedy film “Outcome,” Keanu Reeves stars as Reef Hawk, a beloved Hollywood movie star whose meticulously… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.

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Mac Script Editor becomes new entry point for ClickFix malware
ClickFix attacks targeting Mac users now use Script Editor instead of Terminal, a shift that sidesteps Apple's latest protections and streamlines the attack.ClickFix tricks the userApple introduced command scanning for pasted input in macOS 26.4, which added friction to earlier versions of the attack. Attackers now avoid that step by replacing copy-and-paste instructions with a guided workflow that launches Script Editor directly.Jamf says the campaign delivers a payload identified as a variant of Atomic Stealer through a fake system cleanup process. ClickFix attacks have traditionally relied on persuading users to copy and paste malicious commands into Terminal. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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Apple very cautious about iPhone Ultra sales, as Samsung wins major concession
A new report suggests Apple is being extremely cautious in its expectations of demand for its most expensive ever smartphone, the iPhone Fold (or iPhone Ultra). The company is said to have told manufacturing partners to plan for significantly lower orders than initially expected. The report also says that Samsung has taken advantage of its technological lead in advanced folding displays to win a major concession from Apple … more…

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FBI says cyber fraud cost Americans $21B last year – here’s what you need to know
The FBI says that a sharp rise in scams saw cybersecurity crime cost US victims a total of almost $21 billion last year. The most common example was investment scams, with cryptocurrency fraud responsible for the largest losses. The report includes AI-related scams for the first time. The agency says that the use of voice cloning, forged documents, and deepfake videos were responsible for £893m in losses … more…

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Malware Threats Accelerate Across Critical Infrastructure
Malware targeting industrial control systems is raising new concerns as legacy infrastructure connects to modern networks, increasing exposure across energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors. The post appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

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Apple gets bottom ranking for repairability of iPhones and MacBooks – with one exception
Repairability ratings based on official government criteria in Europe have found that Apple gets the worst ratings for the repairability of both iPhones and MacBooks. However, in the laptop rankings the MacBook Neo was found to be very much an exception, so perhaps there’s hope for the future … more…

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iPhone Fold screens will be made exclusively by Samsung because Apple has no choice
A new report claims that Apple has had to agree to a three-year Samsung Display contract because no other firm can make the screens needed for the iPhone Fold.Render of a possible iPhone Fold design - image credit: AppleInsiderApple likes having multiple suppliers, both to avoid over-reliance on any one source, and to play them off against each other in order to lower prices. Now a year ago rumor about Samsung Display producing iPhone Fold screens is reportedly confirmed, and the deal favors the supplier.According to The Elec, Samsung Display proposed a three-year exclusive deal to supply the foldable OLED panels for the iPhone Fold. Reportedly, at present BOE's foldable panels as used by Huawei are considered inadequate, and Apple's other main supplier, LG Display, doesn't yet make folding screens for smartphones. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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Why the MacBook Neo 2 may arrive sooner than expected
Macworld It’s been barely a month since Apple introduced the MacBook Neo, its most affordable laptop ever, and it’s already being hailed as a breakout hit. Starting at $599 in the U.S. with even bigger discounts for students, it’s still hard to find some models in stock at an Apple Store, and depending on the color you want, it might take several weeks to get one. But according to a new Bloomberg report, the enormous success of the MacBook Neo seems to be presenting Apple with a major dilemma right now. With so many people wanting a Neo, Apple may run out of chips to build its cheaper laptop sooner than expected. As a result, the MacBook Neo 2 may arrive sooner than later. What makes the MacBook Neo so affordable The MacBook Neo has certainly broken new ground when it comes to the price of a new Apple laptop. Students can buy one for just $499,half the price of a new Air. Before the Neo, Apple’s most affordable new laptop was the M4 MacBook Air, which started at $899 for students, and for the first time, Apple is really making a push in the entry-level laptop market. Of course, the Neo has a few trade-offs to keep the price down. It lacks a backlit keyboard and a Force Touch trackpad, and although it has a Retina display, it doesn’t feature more advanced technologies like a Mini-LED panel or wide color gamut. These all help to keep costs down, but there’s another key component that helps Apple sell the MacBook Neo at a lower price: the chip inside it. The MacBook Neo is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip.Foundry Until now, Macs have been powered by M-series chips, which are designed specifically for computers and iPads. As we all know, these chips are extremely powerful and efficient, but they’re also more expensive to make. For the Neo, Apple took a different approach. Instead of using one of its most expensive and powerful chips, the company opted for a “binned” version of the A18 Pro chip with one less GPU core. Essentially, it’s a recycled version of the chip found in the iPhone 16 Pro. Not only was the A18 Pro chip cheaper to manufacture than an M-series chip, but Apple also had a lot of them sitting around. After all, it was the chip used in the 2024 flagship iPhone, which is no longer in production. This means that Apple was able to reuse these chips without any additional fabrication costs. When success becomes a problem According to analysts, Apple had expected to build 5-6 million units of the first-generation MacBook Neo before launching a new model next year. However, as reported by former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan, demand has been so high that Apple is no longer sure it will have enough inventory to keep the Neo on the market until next year. Apple no longer manufactures the A18 Pro chip, and as the analyst explained, resuming production at this point would be very costly for Apple because the semiconductor node used to make this chip (known as N3E) is “hugely popular and effectively sold out.” The MacBook Neo is selling so well that Apple might run out of chips.Foundry Culpan points out a few options Apple has to get around the problem. For example, the company could raise prices or discontinue the cheaper 256GB model without Touch ID, both of which seem highly unlikely. Apple has been very aggressive in promoting the starting price of the MacBook Neo, so it would be disastrous to suddenly change that strategy. But that doesn’t mean Apple is out of options. A new generation could be the perfect solution According to the report, Apple already has plans to launch a new generation of the MacBook Neo sometime next year, featuring the A19 Pro chip. That follows a logical path that Apple’s other devices, including the iPhone, also follow. The A19 Pro is the same chip found in the iPhone 17 Pro and features 12GB of RAM. By the time Apple launches the iPhone 18, there will already be a sufficient stockpile of A19 Pro chips on hand. If MacBook Neo sales continue to grow, the solution could be moving up the launch of a new MacBook Neo with the A19 Pro chip. The MacBook Neo 2 with a faster processor and more RAM could arrive sooner than expected.Eugen Wegmann Restarting production of the A18 Pro at this point would cost Apple a lot of money, but ramping up production of the current A19 Pro, which would be shared between the remaining production of the iPhone 17 Pro and the MacBook Neo 2, could be an option. That could give Apple enough supply to ship MacBook Neo for 15 or so months. Perhaps instead of a launch in March 2027, about a year after the first Neo, we might see a new model a bit sooner, perhaps later this fall or in January 2027. Either way, it’s impressive to see just how successful the MacBook Neo has been, and Apple is certainly on the right track with this product. We’ll learn a little more at Apple’s second-quarter earnings call on April 30, but Tim Cook has already said the Neo had “the best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” So the numbers are very good. And if a new model arrives sooner rather than later, they could get even better.

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Apple’s chip ‘binning’ explained: What is it and why does it matter?
Macworld Over the past several weeks, you’ve probably heard the term “binned” when referring to the chips inside the iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo. But what does it mean? In simple terms, “binning” is the process of taking one whole group of something and separating it out by characteristics to be sold or used differently. Its origins trace back to agriculture, where a single crop yield would be separated into bins. The best pieces would be ideal for individual sale, and go in a bin destined for the market. Pieces that were not as visually appealing would go in a bin that would sell in bulk at a discount, for processed food products. The food that was worst in quality and appearance would go in yet another bin to sell for animal feed or fertilizer. Today, “binning” is used in nearly every mining, harvesting, or manufacturing industry, from gemstones to clothing and, of course, semiconductors. If a RAM chip is tested and fails when run at a clock speed of 3000 MHz, it is binned and sold as a 2800 MHz chip, for example. Every major chip manufacturer has employed “binning” tactics for years, including Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. But Apple has made the term more popular by using “binned” chips in popular products. Here’s how the process works and how Apple is using binned chips to its advantage. The binning process explained Processors, including Apple’s, are typically binned in two ways: Clock speed and design flaws. Chips are tested at frequencies and voltages, and separated out into those that pass validation at the desired speeds and others that operate at lower speeds. Chip makers can then sell the fastest chips at a premium, or in Apple’s case, put them in higher-end products where top-tier performance is expected. Apple doesn’t disclose the frequencies of most of its chips, and the final speed at which the chip can run is very much reliant on the heat dissipation of the targeted device. The more obvious method of “binning” is when some parts of a chip are disabled in order to rescue products that would otherwise have failed in manufacturing. The iPhone 17e uses a “binned” version of the A19 chip with one fewer GPU core.David Price / Foundry Modern processors have tens of billions of transistors, etched onto a silicon sheet by shining high-frequency ultraviolet light through a “mask” of the circuit pattern. This is repeated layer after layer, and the precision required is incredible. A typical silicon wafer—a big, round, flat crystal about a foot across—will produce around 500 chips like an A18, but a large percentage of them will have a flaw that prevents them from operating correctly. If Apple had to throw them in the trash, they’d get maybe 200 usable chips per wafer (or less). The percentage of usable chips is the “yield” of a silicon wafer. You pay for chip manufacturing by the wafer, so the higher the yield, the more usable chips you get out of it, and the lower the cost per chip. Modern chips are designed with many areas that are repeated and functionally identical. If there are six GPU cores, each GPU core is exactly the same. This repetition can be used for redundancy in the manufacturing process, allowing manufacturers to make defective chips usable in other products.. With the right design, a chip could be made so that any GPU core with a manufacturing flaw in it can be “fused off” and ignored when running software. This can turn your broken chip with a 6-core GPU into a functioning 5-core chip. This technique can be used anywhere that large parts of the chip are repeated: CPU and GPU cores, cache memory, memory interface circuitry, and so on. What Apple products have binned chips? Binned chips have been used to power Apple products for about a decade. Back in 2018, the 3rd-gen iPad Pro arrived, which had a version of the A12 called the A12X. Where the A12 had a 6-core CPU and a 4-core GPU, the A12X chip featured an 8-core CPU and a 7-core GPU. As we would soon learn, the A12X chip was actually designed with 8 GPU cores. Yields were bad enough that Apple had to disable one GPU core per chip to get enough usable chips per wafer to bring the costs in line. In early 2020, the fourth-generation iPad Pro featured the A12Z processor. It was the exact same chip as the A12X, but with that eighth GPU core enabled. Manufacturing yields had improved enough to make that possible. The entry-level MacBook Air has used a “binned” version of the chip with one or two fewer GPU cores.Ida Blix When the M1 debuted in the MacBook Air, the chip featured 8 GPU cores. But the entry-level model had one GPU core disabled, giving Apple a lot more usable chips per wafer and bringing down the cost of the M1. Today, Apple sells lots of products with binned chips. The iPhone Air uses the A19 Pro, just as the iPhone 17 Pro does, but one of its 6 GPU cores is disabled. The iPhone 17e uses a binned version of the A19—you get 4 GPU cores in the 17e while the regular iPhone 17 gets 5. The entry-level MacBook Air has an M5 with two GPU cores disabled (8 instead of 10). And the MacBook Neo uses an A18 Pro with one GPU core disabled. Binned chips let Apple improve yields and lower chip costs. It also lets them produce less expensive products with lower-performance chips without having to design a totally new chip just for them. And as one of the only companies that make their own chips and their own hardware designs, it gives them a huge advantage. How does binning impact performance? If you’re using a product with a “binned” version of a chip, are you really missing out on the full experience? As so often is the case with the performance of computing products, the answer is: It depends. All things being equal, a binned version of a chip suffers a hit to peak performance right in line with the change to the chip. If you go from 5 GPU cores to 4, that’s a 20 percent reduction in GPU cores, and you generally see a 20 percent reduction in peak GPU performance. The iPhone 17e, for example, delivers GPU results roughly 20 percent lower than the iPhone 17, because it has 20 percent fewer GPU cores. The iPhone Air, with 17 percent fewer GPU cores than the iPhone 17 Pro, delivers graphics benchmark results around 17 percent slower.

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Running out of time to file your taxes? This $30 H&R Block software makes it way easier
Macworld TL;DR: File your taxes confidently this season with H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2025 for $29.99 (MSRP $59.99), including AI Tax Assist and step-by-step guidance. Tax season is almost here, and the thought of juggling forms, deductions, and deadlines can make anyone break a sweat. Enter H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2025. For just $29.99 (MSRP $59.99), this software makes filing both federal and state taxes straightforward, efficient, and less stressful. With AI Tax Assist, you get expert-backed guidance anytime, step-by-step walkthroughs for over 350 credits and deductions, and real-time refund updates so you’re never left guessing. Import your W-2s, 1099s, and even last year’s TurboTax or Quicken returns in seconds. Maximize mortgage, investment, and home-related deductions without the headache. H&R Block even offers free in-person audit support if things go sideways, plus instant access to 13,000+ articles and FAQs. All your work stays secure and ready to save or re-download at any time — no CDs or extra software required. Whether you’re a first-time filer or a seasoned pro, H&R Block keeps things simple, accurate, and surprisingly fast. Beat the clock and make sure you get every deduction you deserve this tax season. Grab your code for H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2025 today for $29.99 and file with confidence before the deadline hits. H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2025 for Windows/Mac [Online Code]See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.

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13-inch M5 MacBook Air 24GB/1TB is $84 off
The MacBook Air features the new M5 chip for strong speeds and performance with the GPU featuring Neural Accelerators for strong AI performance. It features 1TB of storage, perfect for storing documents, photos, videos, movies, games, and more. The device features a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display, making videos, photos, and graphics look vibrant with rich […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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Refurbished M4 iPad Pro Available For Purchase
A refurbished version of the M4 iPad Pro is being sold by Apple in its refurbished products online stores, enabling customers to buy the device with a discount. Both the 13 and 11-inch models are available in different specifications. Prices on the 11-inch M4 iPad Pro are down to $759 from $999, while 13-inch models […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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Revised Beta for iPadOS 26.5 and iOS 26.5 Released
The first betas that are revised for iPadOS 26.5 and iOS 26.5 have been released for developers to try out. The software will be released four days after the initial betas were seeded by Apple. Developers who are registered can install the beta. You can download the beta by going to iPad or iPhone settings, […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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Teardown Video Provided by iFixit for AirPods Max 2
iFixit, a repair site, has uploaded a teardown video of the next-generation AirPods Max 2. A few changes were seen on the new device, as the site says that the AirPods Max 2 are about the same as the previous model. We get a view of the internal parts of the AirPods Max 2, showing […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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AirPods Max 2 is $20 off
The next generation AirPods Max 2 feature the H2 chip to give deep bass, crisp highs, and expansive mids for a great listening experience. Further immerse yourself with 1.5x more ANC so you can focus more on your workout, movie, or game. The AirPods Max 2 places sound all over you with personalized spatial audio […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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WWDC Invite Winners Notified
Developers and students who won the lottery to go to this year’s WWDC will start getting invites. WWDC will start on June 8 and will be hosted at Apple Park. Apple will hold a keynote WWDC viewing in Apple Park, but the space is exclusive to invites done with lottery. The accepted submissions will receive […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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Unofficial WWDC Pins Made
Clément Sauvage, an App developer, made some enamel pins for Apple consumers who want to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary and this year’s WWDC. The pins are being offered on Kickstarter with shipping starting ahead of WWDC in May. The pins feature an Apple Intelligence Icon, Rainbow of Apple Park at the campus, an Apple […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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Little Finder Guy Found In New Videos
Apple is still uploading short videos that feature the new mascot, Little Finder Guy, on platforms like YouTube Shorts and TikTok, making the most out of the fame that the icon has received. The shorts promote the MacBook Neo with various tips for the Mac, like Journaling features, passwords, and more, featuring Little Finder Guy. […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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13-inch M5 MacBook Air 512GB is $66 off
The refreshed MacBook Air features the M5 chip, bringing next-generation speed and power, allowing you to speed through work and handle graphics-heavy games. The GPU features Neural Accelerators for strong AI performance. The device supports Apple Intelligence, the personal AI system that helps keep things organized and get things done easily. You get groundbreaking privacy […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

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