Intel today announced the launch of its new 11th-generation Tiger Lake chips that are designed for use in laptops. The new chips included integrated Xe graphics, Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, PCIe Gen 4, and WiFi 6 support.
Intel is calling the Tiger Lake chips, which are built on a 10-nanometer "SuperFin" process, the world's best processor for thin and light laptops. Tiger Lake chips offer significant performance and efficiency gains over the prior-generation Ice Lake chips.
The new chips offer 20 percent better CPU performance than Ice Lake chips, according to Intel. The integrated Iris Xe graphics are better than 90 percent of all discrete notebook GPUs sold last year and offer up to twice the graphics performance along with 5x better artificial intelligence performance.
There are nine new SKUs across Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 with clock speeds up to 4.8GHz.
Intel says that the new Tiger Lake CPUs will be in more than 50 laptops coming this fall and named a number of partners such as Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, but Apple was not among them. Since the Tiger Lake chips are for lower power laptops and max out at 28W, it is unlikely Apple will ever use them.
Sunday February 1, 2026 10:08 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly nine months later, CarPlay Ultra is still limited to Aston Martin's latest luxury vehicles, but that should change fairly soon.
In May 2025, Apple said many other vehicle brands planned to offer CarPlay Ultra, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis.
In his Powe...
Thursday January 29, 2026 10:07 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today confirmed to Reuters that it has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup that is working on artificial intelligence technology for audio.
Apple paid close to $2 billion for Q.ai, according to sources cited by the Financial Times. That would make this Apple's second-biggest acquisition ever, after it paid $3 billion for the popular headphone and audio brand Beats in 2014.
Q.ai has...
Sunday February 1, 2026 12:31 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
The calendar has turned to February, and a new report indicates that Apple's next product launch is "imminent," in the form of new MacBook Pro models.
"All signs point to an imminent launch of next-generation MacBook Pros that retain the current form factor but deliver faster chips," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on Sunday. "I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated...
Saturday January 31, 2026 10:51 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple recently updated its online store with a new ordering process for Macs, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro.
There used to be a handful of standard configurations available for each Mac, but now you must configure a Mac entirely from scratch on a feature-by-feature basis. In other words, ordering a new Mac now works much like ordering an...
Sunday February 1, 2026 5:42 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips alongside macOS 26.3, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
"Apple's faster MacBook Pros are planned for the macOS 26.3 release cycle," wrote Gurman, in his Power On newsletter today.
"I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated for the macOS 26.3 software cycle, which runs from...
Boom, that's it, Apple Silicon is dead. Next step: Apple apologizes and prepares to put Tiger Lake 10nm with large cooling fans in next-gen iPads and iPhones.
It’s still very possible these chips make it into a future MacBook Pro. If Apple is planning on a two year transition, they won’t let the machines not ready for a Apple Silicon chip go stagnant.
That train has long left the station. And while Apple's ARM implementation may not be as good as Intel's marketing claims, the actual chips will be beating Intel..