Intel says the Ice Lake chips have increased board integration, allowing manufacturers like Apple to release notebooks with sleeker designs. The chips also feature Intel's all-new Gen11 graphics architecture for up to double the graphics performance, and integrated Thunderbolt 3 and Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax.
The lineup of 11 new processors includes six U-series chips and five Y-series chips:
Intel is also introducing a new processor number naming structure starting with this first set of 10th-generation Core processors, doing away with Y and U series identifiers and instead emphasizing graphics. The new structure is a bit confusing, but The Verge has a nice breakdown for deciphering them.
Intel expects the first notebooks with Ice Lake chips to be available in time for the holiday shopping season.
Saturday April 11, 2026 9:14 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly a year 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.
CarPlay Ultra...
As we wait for WWDC to kick off next Monday, Apple today announced the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards, recognizing apps and games for their innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement.
The 2025 Apple Design Award winners are listed below, with one app and one game selected per category:
Delight and Fun - CapWords (App) and Balatro (Game)
Innovation - Play (App) and PBJ -...
Saturday April 11, 2026 9:07 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the AirPods Max 2 received more attention, Apple also released a second pair of headphones last month: Nike Powerbeats Pro 2.
Nike Powerbeats Pro 2 are the same as the regular Powerbeats Pro 2, except they have a two-tone design consisting of black and Nike's signature Volt neon green-yellow color. The headphones were released on March 20 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and a ...
Wednesday April 8, 2026 6:40 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Launched in 2022, Apple's self-service repair program provides customers with access to genuine parts, tools, and manuals to repair select iPhones, iPads, Macs, Studio Displays, and Beats Pill speakers. Apple says the program is "intended for individuals who are experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices."
Apple today started selling parts and tools for seven new...
Tuesday March 31, 2026 10:36 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple today added the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) to its "vintage" products list, meaning the device is now only eligible for repairs at Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers if parts remain available.
The MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) was the final MacBook Air model released before Apple redesigned the laptop and gave it a Retina display in 2018.
Apple also added all iPad...
Saturday April 11, 2026 9:14 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly a year 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.
CarPlay Ultra...
This CPU line-up is probably as good a clue as any as to why the 12-inch MacBook was killed (for now). The 2015 MacBook launched with a 4.5W Y-series CPU. Last year's Y-series CPUs then went to 5-7W. Now we're at 9W. Apple designed a laptop based on the assumption — presumably promised as such by Intel — that Intel would keep iterating on a roughly 4.5W TDP CPU, and they failed to do so, even after this process shrink.
700MHz base clock. What [S]decade[/S] century is it again?
This is good, actually. Low clock rates means Intel has some breathing room for future generations at the same process size to offer more performance simply by cranking up the clock rate.
Which TDPs are MacBook pro compatible? All of them?
9W: probably the MacBook Air (which is currently at 7W, but presumably Apple has learnt the lesson not to trust Intel on that).
15W: low-end 13-inch MacBook Pro.
28W: possibly the higher-end 13-inch MacBook Pro, but Apple probably wants more options for that. Also, this CPU model won't ship for a while.
Critically, none of these are even remotely an option for the 15-inch (16-inch?) MacBook Pro, which likely won't see another CPU upgrade until Comet Lake-H in Q2 2020. It'll offer up to ten cores, but it will still be at 14nm and still use a revised Skylake architecture. Still no LPDDR4, even.
Can't come soon enough the day that Apple can engineer some A-series chip and release upgrades when the Mac, not Intel, are ready. I could see the MacBook line getting resuscitated as a canary for this
