An anonymous reader shares a report: It would be perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon's digital assistant Alexa to decline to state opinions about the 2024 presidential race, but up until recently, that assumption would have been incorrect. When asked to give reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump, Alexa demurred, according to a video from Fox Business. "I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader," Alexa responded. When asked the same about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Amazon AI was more than willing to endorse the Democratic candidate.

"There are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris," Alexa said. Among the reasons given was that Harris has a "comprehensive plan to address racial injustice," that she promises a "tough on crime approach," and that her record on criminal justice and immigration reform make her a "compelling candidate." Harris has been dividing Silicon Valley since she took up the Democratic nomination from President Joe Biden, with some leaders in the tech industry touting her potential as a pro-tech president, and others diving head-first into the misinformation circus that's being driven by new tools like AI. An Amazon spokesperson said this "was an error that was quickly fixed."

Verizon is in advanced talks to acquire Frontier Communications in a deal that would bolster the company's fiber network to compete with rivals including AT&T, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: An announcement could come this week, granted the talks don't hit any last-minute snags, the people said. A deal would be sizable, given Frontier's market value of over $7 billion. The company, cobbled together by several deals over the years, provides broadband connections to about three million locations across 25 states.

Verizon, the top cellphone carrier by subscribers, has faced increased pressure from competitors and from cable-TV companies that offer discounted wireless service backed by Verizon's own cellular network. Verizon has its Fios-branded fiber network, and AT&T has focused on expanding its fiber network since shedding its WarnerMedia assets in 2022. Fiber M&A has heated up as telecom companies and financial firms pour capital into neighborhoods that lack high-speed broadband or offer only one internet provider, usually from a cable-TV company.

After an initial euphoric rush to the cloud, admins are questioning the value and promise of the tech giant's services. The Register: According to a report published by UK cloud outfit Civo, more than a third of organizations surveyed reckoned that their move to the cloud had failed to live up to promises of cost-effectiveness. Over half reported a rise in their cloud bill. Although the survey, unsurprisingly, paints Civo in a flattering light, some of its figures may make uncomfortable reading for customers sold on the promises from hyperscalers. Like-for-like comparisons for a simple three-node cluster with 200 GB of persistent storage and a 5 TB data transfer showed prices going from $1,278.58 in 2022 to $1,458.68 in 2024 on Microsoft Azure.

For Google, the price went from $1,107.61 to $1,250.35. According to Civo's figures, the cost at AWS increased from $1,142.46 to $1,234.59. "The Kubernetes prices were taken from the hyperscalers' very own pricing calculators," a Civo spokesperson told The Register. In the IT world, there is an expectation that bang for buck increases as time goes by, but in this example, prices are rising faster than the rate of inflation, and what customers receive for their money remains unchanged.

A pair of devices launching Wednesday highlight a growing trend in consumer hardware: doing one thing well, Axios writes. From the report: The smartphone rendered many formerly standalone devices obsolete, but now some tech with a single purpose can offer an experience that a digital Swiss Army knife can't. GoPro announced its latest cameras on Wednesday. The $199 GoPro Hero is a smaller, simpler camera that presents fewer controls, while this year's flagship -- the $399 Hero 13 Black -- supports a series of add-on lenses without losing its core as a rugged, waterproof action camera.

Meanwhile, the reMarkable tablet company is adding its first color model. ReMarkable's tablets allow creators to write and sketch without the distractions of more full-featured devices. ReMarkable's paper tablets are similar to Amazon's Kindle Scribe, but with a focus on creating and editing documents rather than reading digital books. In addition to adding color -- the most requested feature -- the Paper Pro has built-in illumination, a larger eInk display and an active digital pen, which allows digital ink to appear on the display within an imperceptible 12 milliseconds. The new Paper Pro ($579 or $629, depending on which pen is bundled) is still aimed at those who want to avoid notifications rather than those who want to multitask.

Internet Archive's "controlled digital lending" system and removal of controls during the pandemic don't qualify as fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed Wednesday. Bloomberg Law: Four major book publishers again thwarted the online repository's defense that its one-to-one lending practices mirrored those of traditional libraries, this time at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Copying books in their entirety isn't transformative, and lending them for free competes with the publishers own book and ebook offerings, the unanimous panel said. Internet Archive said in a statement: We are disappointed in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court's opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. Further reading: Full-text of court opinion [PDF].

Snapchat will soon start "experimenting" with placing sponsored messages next to chat threads from friends, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. From a report: These "Sponsored Snaps" from brands will appear as unread messages in Snapchat's main Chat tab, implying that they'll sit above messages from a person's contacts until they're acted on. This is the first time Snap will show ads in the most used part of its app. In an employee memo also posted on the company's website, Spiegel says that Sponsored Snaps will appear âoewithout a push notification, and opening the message is optional." It's unclear how easy it will be to get rid of a Sponsored Snap without opening it, or if doing so will even be possible.

"Sponsored Snaps empower advertisers to communicate visually with the Snapchat community, making the core functionality of Snapchat accessible to advertisers," writes Spiegel, who goes on to note that, "As always, your conversations with friends are private and are not used for advertising purposes."

US job openings fell in July to the lowest since the start of 2021 and layoffs rose, consistent with other signs of slowing demand for workers. From a report: Available positions decreased to 7.67 million from a downwardly revised 7.91 million reading in the prior month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The figure was lower than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The decline in openings coincides with recent data that show the labor market is softening, which has raised concern among Federal Reserve officials. Job growth has been slowing, unemployment is rising and jobseekers are having greater difficulty finding work, fueling fears about a potential recession.

Policymakers have made it clear they don't want to see further cooling in the labor market and are widely expected to start lowering interest rates at their next meeting in two weeks. After July's disappointing jobs figures and a large downward revision to payrolls in the past year, Fed officials and market participants are paying close attention to the August employment data due Friday -- especially if another weak report could prompt an outsize rate cut.

Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, published on Tuesday, indicates that professional economic forecasters tend to overestimate their accuracy in long-term predictions while underestimating their short-term precision.

The study, which analyzed data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters from 1982 to 2022, revealed that for forecasts two to four quarters ahead, actual errors were two to four times greater than the forecasters' estimated uncertainty ranges for both GDP growth and inflation. In contrast, for predictions less than three months out, forecasters typically overestimated potential errors.

The study's author, Marco Del Negro, highlighted significant differences in uncertainty estimates among individual forecasters, suggesting that these findings challenge the rational expectations theory. Del Negro proposed that these discrepancies might stem from an over-reliance on varying models or priors in making longer-term forecasts.

Europe's food and farming lobbies have recognized the need to eat less meat after hammering out a shared vision for the future of agriculture with green groups and other stakeholders. From a report: The wide-ranging report calls for "urgent, ambitious and feasible" change in farm and food systems and acknowledges that Europeans eat more animal protein than scientists recommend. It says support is needed to rebalance diets toward plant-based proteins such as better education, stricter marketing and voluntary buyouts of farms in regions that intensively rear livestock. The stakeholders also agreed on the need for a major rethink of subsidies, calling for a "just transition fund" to help farmers adopt sustainable practices, and targeted financial support to those who need it most.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who commissioned the report to quell furious farmer protests at the start of the year, said the results would feed into a planned vision for agriculture that she will present in the first 100 days of her new mandate. "We share the same goal," said Von der Leyen. "Only if farmers can live off their land will they invest in more sustainable practices. And only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue making a living." Animal agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of climate breakdown and the destruction of natural habitats, but European leaders have made little effort to steer diets heavy in meat and milk to whole grains and plant-based sources of protein. The report did not set targets for meat production, such as culling herds, but called for support to help shift dietary habits, such as free school meals, more detailed labels, and tax reductions on healthy and sustainable food products.

The Biden-Harris administration's big bet on Intel to lead a US chipmaking renaissance is in grave trouble as a result of the company's mounting financial struggles, creating a potentially damaging setback for the country's most ambitious industrial policy in decades. From a report: Five months after the president traveled to Arizona to unveil a potential $20 billion package of incentives alongside Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, there are growing questions around when -- or if -- Intel will get its hands on that money. Intel's woes also may jeopardize the government's ability to reach its policy goals, which include establishing a secure supply of cutting-edge chips for the Pentagon and making a fifth of the world's advanced processors by 2030.

Intel is mired in a sales slump worse than anticipated and hemorrhaging cash, forcing its board to consider increasingly drastic actions -- including possibly splitting off its manufacturing division or paring back global factory plans, Bloomberg reported last week. That threatens to further complicate its quest for government funding, at a time when Intel desperately needs the help. The Silicon Valley company is supposed to receive $8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in loans from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, but only if the chipmaker meets key milestones -- and after significant due diligence. That process, which applies to all Chips Act winners, has been clear from the outset, and aims to ensure that companies only get taxpayer dollars once they've actually delivered on their promises. Intel, like other potential recipients, hasn't received any money yet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The German company says it may close plants in its home country amid what CEO Oliver Blume reportedly called "a very demanding and serious situation" for the European automotive industry. That would mark the first-ever German plant closures in the company's nearly nine-decade history. VW is facing a pair of competition-related challenges -- one outside its control, and the other of its own making. Chinese automakers are wresting market share away from VW in China, where it once held the highest share of any automaker. The company's China sales have fallen from 4 million in 2017 to an estimated 2.5 million in 2024, according to Dunne Insights analyst Michael Dunne. And its Chinese competitors are bringing cheap electric vehicles to VW's other critical market: Europe. Another part of the problem is that VW is a bloated company compared with its competitors, meaning it has less margin for error.

The company had some 684,000 employees in 2023. That's about 309,000 more than the ever-efficient Toyota, which sold about 2 million more vehicles than VW worldwide last year. The VW brand's profit margin fell from 3.8% in 2023 to 2.3% in the first half of 2024, moving in the wrong direction from the company's long-term target of 6.5%, according to Evercore ISI analyst Chris McNally. Hence the "drastic attempt to cut costs" as the company's bottom line suffers, McNally writes. But VW isn't just facing operational issues and increased competition in key markets -- it's also falling behind on technology. The company recently agreed to invest in Rivian to get help from the American startup on EV development despite having 40 times more employees than its new partner. And VW's long-awaited ID. Buzz -- its EV revival of its famed microbus -- recently disappointed enthusiasts with underwhelming battery range of 234 miles and a starting price of about $60,000.

During a 2023 deployment, senior enlisted leaders aboard the Navy ship USS Manchester secretly installed a Starlink Wi-Fi network, allowing them exclusive internet access in violation of Navy regulations. "Unauthorized Wi-Fi systems like the one [then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero] set up are a massive no-no for a deployed Navy ship, and Marrero's crime occurred as the ship was deploying to the West Pacific, where such security concerns become even more paramount among heightened tensions with the Chinese," reports Navy Times. From the report: As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship's chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them. So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed "STINKY" to check sports scores, text home and stream movies. The enjoyment of those wireless creature comforts by enlisted leaders aboard the ship carried serious repercussions for the security of the ship and its crew. "The danger such systems pose to the crew, the ship and the Navy cannot be understated," the investigation notes.

Led by the senior enlisted leader of the ship's gold crew, then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero, the effort roped in the entire chiefs mess by the time it was uncovered a few months later. Marrero was relieved in late 2023 after repeatedly misleading and lying to her ship's command about the Wi-Fi network, and she was convicted at court-martial this spring in connection to the scheme. She was sentenced to a reduction in rank to E-7 after the trial and did not respond to requests for comment for this report. The Navy has yet to release the entirety of the Manchester investigation file to Navy Times, including supplemental enclosures. Such records generally include statements or interview transcripts with the accused.

But records released so far show the probe, which wrapped in November, found that the entire chiefs mess knew about the secret system, and those who didn't buy into it were nonetheless culpable for not reporting the misconduct. Those chiefs and senior chiefs who used, paid for, helped hide or knew about the system were given administrative nonjudicial punishment at commodore's mast, according to the investigation. All told, more than 15 Manchester chiefs were in cahoots with Marrero to purchase, install and use the Starlink system aboard the ship. "This agreement was a criminal conspiracy, supported by the overt act of bringing the purchased Starlink onboard USS MANCHESTER," the investigation said. "Any new member of the CPO Mess which then paid into the services joined that conspiracy following the system's operational status."

Records obtained by Navy Times via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal a months-long effort by Marrero to obtain, install and then conceal the chiefs Wi-Fi network from superiors, including the covert installation of a Starlink satellite dish on the outside of the Manchester. When superiors became suspicious about the existence of the network and confronted her about it, Marrero failed to come clean on multiple occasions and provided falsified documents to further mislead Manchester's commanding officer, the investigation states. "The installation and usage of Starlink, without the approval of higher headquarters, poses a serious risk to mission, operational security, and information security," the investigation states.

Firefox 130 introduces several enhancements, including improved local translation handling, better Android page load performance, and the WebCodecs API for low-level audio/video processing on desktop platforms. Notably, it also supports third-party AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini via the new Firefox Labs feature. Phoronix reports: The WebCodecs API is particularly useful for web-based apps like video/audio editors and video conferencing that may want control over individual frames of a video stream or audio chunks. For any web software interested in that low-level audio/video encode/decode handling there is now WebCodecs API working on the Firefox desktop builds. As for the third-party AI chatbots, here's what Mozilla's Ian Carmichael said back in June: "If you want to use AI, we think you should have the freedom to use (or not use) the tools that best suit your needs. Instead of juggling between tabs or apps for assistance, those who opt-in will have the option to access their preferred AI service from the Firefox sidebar to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge, all without leaving their current web page."

You can learn more about Firefox 130 via developer.mozilla.org. Binaries for Linux can be found at Mozilla.org.

Sweden's Enerpoly has opened the world's first zinc-ion battery megafactory near Stockholm, aiming for a 100 MWh annual capacity by 2026. "According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe's needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot," reports New Atlas. From the report: If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:

- They use a water-based electrolyte, which makes them non-flammable, and reduces the risk of fires and explosions.
- They're less expensive, because zinc is far more abundant than lithium (which is difficult and expensive to extract), and easier to handle. They can also operate across a wider temperature range and require less maintenance, making them cheaper than lithium-ion options.
- They're more eco-friendly for the same reason. In contrast, extracting lithium currently requires extensive mining as well as the use of massive evaporation ponds before processing even begins.
- They're said to last a whole lot longer. According to the International Zinc Association, a nonprofit trade association which counts Enerpoly as a member, zinc-based batteries can last up to 20 years, while lithium batteries manage about 12 years. The downside? They have a lower energy density than something like a Tesla 4680 battery, making them ideal for applications like load shifting and grid resilience.

An anonymous reader quotes a Bloomberg article, written by Jason Leopold: The aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a colorful display in the night sky that comes from geomagnetic storms in space. When charged particles from the sun smash into the Earth's upper atmosphere, they create bright, kaleidoscopic ribbons of light, typically in polar regions. Really big solar action can interfere with GPS systems and power grids. That's exactly what happened on May 10, when there were three "coronal mass ejections" (my future metal band name) that produced one of the most powerful solar storms in 500 years, hence the dazzling, polychromatic sky visible even from South America. Turns out, the extreme space weather also disrupted life on Earth.

Six days after the northern lights, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with NOAA. I was curious how the agency reacted to the atmospheric event and whether the public deserved to be concerned. I asked NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center and National Weather Service for a wide range of records, including emails, photographs, satellite images and threat assessments. A couple of weeks ago, NOAA turned over some interesting documents. The short version is, while we marveled at the light show, scientists were concerned. According to one internal memo, the geomagnetic storm was an "extreme," rare event and if NOAA scientists hadn't been on their game it could have been catastrophic.

A May 14, three-page after action memo disseminated by Clinton Wallace, the director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, described the storm's impact and explained the celestial phenomenon. He said "Solar Cycle 25," a phase of solar sunspot activity that began in December 2019 and continues through 2030, "has been more active than anticipated, with an intense surge in solar activity marking the beginning of May." "A large group of unstable sunspots on the Sun's surface unleashed several powerful solar flares, immediately affecting the Earth's outer atmosphere and causing disruptions in high-frequency (HF) radio communications," he wrote. "This had significant implications for trans-oceanic aviation, which relies heavily on HF radio for communication over long distances."

On May 9, a day before the northern lights extravaganza, staff at the Space Weather Prediction Center "activated" the North American Electric Reliability Corp. hotline to make sure the regulator was prepared. Wallace's memo said NERC gave about 3,000 electric utility companies a six-hour head start to get ready. The space weather officials also advised the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on preparedness. Wallace wrote in his memo that the storm caused "significant disruptions across multiple sectors, including navigation, power grids, aviation, and satellite operations." He also noted that the severity of the geomagnetic storm "underscored the interconnectedness and vulnerability of modern infrastructure to space weather." Although Wallace said the space weather scientists took steps to mitigate any potential disaster, their work "highlighted areas for improvement in preparedness and response." He didn't elaborate.

The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reports: The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist." On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing. "We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege," NaNoWriMo said, arguing that "not all brains" have the "same abilities" and that AI tools can reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistants.

NaNoWriMo's annual creative writing event is the organization's flagship program that challenges participants to create a 50,000-word manuscript every November. Last year, the organization said that it accepts novels written with the help of AI apps like ChatGPT but noted that doing so for the entire submission "would defeat the purpose of the challenge." This year's post goes further. "We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine," said NaNoWriMo in its latest post advocating for AI tools. "As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions."

The post has since been lambasted by writers across platforms like X and Reddit, who, like many creatives, believe that generative AI tools are exploitive and devalue human art. Many disabled writers also criticized the statement for inferring that they need generative AI tools to write effectively. Meanwhile, Daniel Jose Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, announced that he was resigning from the NaNoWriMo Writers Board due to the statement. "Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry," Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo's stance. "It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story."

Intel's slumping share price could cost it a spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Reuters reports: Analysts and investors said Intel was likely to be removed from the Dow, pointing to a near 60% decline in the company's shares this year that has made it the worst performer on the index and left it with the lowest stock price on the price-weighted Dow. The chipmaker's shares slid about 7% on Tuesday amid a broader market selloff, with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index (.SOX) down nearly 6%, following reports of lower chip sales globally in July.

A removal from the index will hurt Intel's already bruised reputation. The company has missed out on the artificial intelligence boom after passing on an OpenAI investment and losses are mounting at the contract manufacturing unit that the chipmaker has been building out in hopes of challenging TSMC. To fund a turnaround, Intel suspended dividend and announced layoffs affecting 15% of its workforce during its earnings report last month. But some analysts and a former board member believe the moves might be too little, too late for the chipmaker.

In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the app to No. 1 in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta's X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky's total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.

In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.

As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special." The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI's impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...] Critics of generative AI ... question the utility of the technology, its perceived environmental impact, and what they see as blatant copyright infringement.

"Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst," tweeted author Brian Merchant, who frequently criticizes generative AI technology in op-eds, social media, and through his "Blood in the Machine" AI newsletter. "The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such what a train wreck," replied artist Karla Ortiz, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against several AI companies. "There's still PLENTY of time to get actual experts and have a better discussion on this because yikes." On Friday, Ortiz created a lengthy viral thread on X that detailed her potential issues with the program, writing, "This event will be the first time many people will get info on Generative AI. However it is shaping up to be a misinformed marketing event starring vested interests (some who are under a litany of lawsuits) who ignore the harms GenAi inflicts on communities NOW." The AI TV special will feature "some of the most important and powerful people in AI," said ABC. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and author Marilynne Robinson.

The show will air on September 12 on ABC (and a day later on Hulu) in the U.S.

According to Mark Gurman, Apple's upcoming M4 Mac mini will undergo a major redesign, dropping USB-A ports entirely in favor of five USB-C ports. The new design will also feature front ports for the first time, an internal power supply, and retain Ethernet, HDMI, and the headphone jack.

"As I've been reporting for several months now, the Mac is in for a big transition to M4 chips -- starting around the end of this year and extending into the first half or so of 2025," writes Gurman in a newsletter for Bloomberg. "Apple plans to kick things off soon with a new Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro. Of those models, the Mac mini will get the most dramatic new design, its first major overhaul since 2010. Just to put that in perspective: The last time there was a Mac mini redesign, preorders of the iPhone 4 had just began."