Banana Pi has revealed a new board resembling the Raspberry Pi Computer Module 3. According to Tom's Hardware, it features a powerful eight-core processor, up to 8GB of RAM and 32GB eMMC. Additional features like ports will require you to connect it to a carrier board. From the report: At the core of the Banana Pi board is a Rockchip RK3588 SoC. This brings together four Arm Cortex-A76 cores at up to 2.6 GHz with four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz in Arm's new DynamIQ configuration - essentially big.LITTLE in a single fully integrated cluster. It uses an 8nm process. The board is accompanied by an Arm Mali-G610 MP4 Odin GPU with support for OpenGLES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.2, and Vulkan1.2. There's a 2D graphics engine supporting resolutions up to 8K too, with four separate displays catered for (one of which can be 8K 30FPS), and up to 8GB of RAM, though the SoC supports up to 32GB. Built-in storage is catered for by up to 128GB of eMMC flash. It offers 8K 30fps video encoding in the H.265, VP9, AVS2 and (at 30fps) H.264 codecs.

That carrier board is a monster, with ports along every edge. It looks to be about four times the area of the compute board, though no official measurements have been given. You get three HDMIs (the GPU supports version 2.1), two gigabit Ethernet, two SATA, three USB Type-A (two 2.0 and one 3) one USB Type-C, micro SD, 3.5mm headphones, ribbon connectors, and what looks very like a PCIe 3.0 x4 micro slot. The PCIe slot seems to breakout horizontally, an awkward angle if you are intending to house the board in a case. Software options include Android and Linux.

According to Chinese news outlet Sina, BOE has made breakthroughs in monitor technology and has built the world's first 500 Hz gaming monitor. Tom's Hardware reports: The monitor features a 27-inch, Full HD panel equipped with a high-mobility oxide backplane which is how BOE achieved the blisteringly high refresh rate, with a response time of just 1ms. BOE has ample experience with oxide semiconductor display technology. For example, the company's 500 Hz monitor is significantly faster than the fastest gaming monitors on the market today, from the likes of Asus, Alienware, and Acer, which "only" top out at 360 Hz. Other attributes include accurate 8-bit output and support for an 8-lane eDP signal. Remember that BOE's monitor is a prototype designed for demonstration purposes only. BOE has not stated if it will be making a 500 Hz gaming panel for the mass market anytime soon, so we could be waiting a long until an official monitor arrives in the hands of gamers.

Snap is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for rejecting its application to trademark the word "spectacles" for its digital eyewear camera device. But the USPTO has maintained that "spectacles" is a generic term for smart glasses and that Snap's version "has not acquired distinctiveness," as required for a trademark. The Verge reports: In its complaint filed Wednesday in US District Court in California, Snap claims that the Spectacles name "evokes an incongruity between an 18th century term for corrective eyewear and Snap's high-tech 21st century smart glasses. SPECTACLES also is suggestive of the camera's purpose, to capture and share unusual, notable, or entertaining scenes (i.e., "spectacles") and while also encouraging users to make 'spectacles' of themselves." Snap first introduced its camera-equipped Spectacles in 2016 ("a wearable digital video camera housed in a pair of fashionable sunglasses," according to its complaint), which can take photos and videos while the user wears them and connects with the Snap smartphone app. [...]

Snap's new complaint posits that there's been enough media coverage of Spectacles, bolstered by some industry awards and its own marketing including social media, to support its claim that consumers associate the word "spectacles" with the Snap brand. Snap first filed a trademark application for Spectacles in September 2016, "for use in connection with wearable computer hardware" and other related uses "among consumer electronics devices and displays." During several rounds of back-and-forth with the company since then, the USPTO has maintained that the word "spectacles" appeared to be "generic in connection with the identified goods," i.e. the camera glasses. Snap continued to appeal the agency's decision. In a November 2021 opinion, the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (pdf) upheld the decision, reiterating that the word "spectacles" was a generic term that applied to all smart glasses, not just Snap's version. Despite the publicity Snap claimed its Spectacles had received from its marketing and social media, the board noted in its opinion that Spectacles' "social media accounts have an underwhelming number of followers, and the number of followers is surprisingly small," which didn't support the company's argument that there had been a high enough level of consumer exposure to Snap's Spectacles to claim that consumers associated the word with Snap's brand.

In its Tuesday complaint, Snap's attorneys argued that "spectacles is an old-fashioned term popular in the 18th century," and that it "is not often used today in the United States," especially by Snapchat's young audience. "This indicates that modern-day usage of "spectacles" in the United States -- especially among a younger demographic of consumers who are the relevant consumers of Snap's SPECTACLES camera product -- is not commonly understood to mean eyeglasses, and certainly not a wireless-enabled video camera product." But the USPTO appeal board said in November that the evidence didn't support that argument, and that the word "spectacles" still retains its generic meaning and therefore can't be trademarked. The board noted that in its own marketing, Snap had demonstrated that its Spectacles "eyeglasses form is a feature, function and characteristic of the camera, not only functionally but aesthetically." Snap's lawsuit, which names acting USPTO director Drew Hirshfeld, seeks to have the appeal board's November decision reversed.

CNET News writes about Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 3. From the report: With the first two generations of the ThinkBook Plus, Lenovo put an E Ink display on the lid of a 13-inch laptop. The external display lets you read, take notes, get notifications and see your work calendar, all without opening the laptop. It's a cool idea but also kind of limiting. Aside from being a laptop with two displays, the third-gen model is nothing like its predecessors. For starters, it's an ultrawide 17.3-inch laptop with a 21:10 aspect ratio and a 3,072x1,440 resolution at 120Hz and with 100% P3 color gamut, which could be interesting if this were a gaming laptop. But it's not, it's made for doing work. The second display, an 8-inch color pen-enabled touchscreen with an 800x1,280-pixel resolution, is embedded in the laptop deck to the right of the keyboard and touchpad. It's like if you set down an 8-inch tablet on your laptop's keyboard and it just latched on and wouldn't let go.

Aside from the dual displays, though, the laptop isn't too unusual. It'll be powered by 12th-gen Intel Core H-series processors and have up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and an up-to-1TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 solid-state drive. It has security features you'd expect to find on a Lenovo business laptop in addition to a fingerprint reader in the power button and a full-HD webcam with an IR camera for face recognition and a privacy shutter. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 will be available in May starting at $1,399, which seems reasonable for what you're getting.

At CES 2022, BMW unveiled color-changing paint for its vehicles that relies on the E-ink electronic paper technology found in e-readers like the Kindle. Engadget reports: [N]o, this futuristic feature is nowhere near production ready despite appearing at the show on a live demonstration vehicle, dubbed the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink. The electrophoretic coloring material itself is applied as a vehicle body wrap but works just like it e-ink displays do in your Kindle. The wrap is embedded with millions of microcapsules each containing a negatively-charged white pigment and a positively charged-black pigment. Depending on the setting, applying an electrical charge to the material will cause either the white or black pigments to rise to the top of the microcapsule, changing the vehicle's color in moments.

While the current iteration can only swap between a pair of colors, the palette could eventually be expanded to display a rainbow's worth of differing shades. "This gives the driver the freedom to express different facets of their personality or even their enjoyment of change outwardly, and to redefine this each time they sit into their car," Stella Clarke, Head of Project for the BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink, said in a prepared statement. [...] E-ink exterior displays could also prove useful in more practical applications such as changing colors depending on the weather to increase a vehicle's battery life (and therefore, range) in cold climates or reduce the need for air conditioning in balmy weather.

Apple's mixed reality headset that's set to launch in 2022 will be equipped with three displays, according to a research report shared today by display analyst Ross Young. MacRumors reports: The display configuration will include two micro OLED displays along with one AMOLED panel, with Sony set to supply the micro OLED displays that Apple will use. The micro OLED displays will be the main displays for the headset, but it's not yet known just what the AMOLED display will be used for. Modern VR headsets don't use AMOLED technology because the pixel density is too low, so it's possible that Apple is going to add it for low-resolution peripheral vision.

Sony recently showed off a 4K display with 4000 pixels per inch designed for use with VR headsets, and the report suggests that it's possible Sony developed this display specifically for Apple. If Apple is indeed using this Sony technology, an assumed array of 4000 x 4000 pixels indicates the display for the headset will measure in at 1.4 inches diagonally. This kind of advanced display configuration will come at a "high price," and Young suggests that the headset will cost several thousand dollars, which is in line with previous reports that have indicated a price of around $3,000.

Sony is setting some pretty grand expectations with its 2022 TV lineup -- led by the introduction of the world's first consumer QD-OLED TV. From a report: The company's current and well-regarded OLED sets use panels from LG Display that are tuned with Sony's own processing. But the new flagship Bravia XR A95K TV will include a QD-OLED (quantum dot organic light emitting diode) panel manufactured by none other than Samsung Display. It'll come in 65-inch and 55-inch sizes, with both coming in at 4K resolution. It was rumored that Samsung Electronics might announce a QD-OLED 4K TV at CES 2022, but that hasn't panned out so far. So it's Sony that gets the prime spotlight instead. Samsung Display has been developing QD-OLED for a number of years, and the display technology could become something of a middle step between standard OLED and the MicroLED displays that only Samsung is selling right now -- for ungodly sums of money. QD-OLED is designed to combine the best traits of OLED (perfect blacks, infinite contrast, etc.) with benefits of quantum dot LED TVs like improved brightness and more vivid color reproduction at higher brightness levels. It's not a major new approach like Micro LED, but more of a progression from where things have stood for a few years.

Last night we asked what books you'd enjoyed reading this year.

Here's how Bill Gates had answered the same question on his personal blog Gates Notes: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with science fiction. Paul Allen and I would spend countless hours discussing Isaac Asimov's original Foundation trilogy. I read every book by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein. (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was a particular favorite.) There was something so thrilling to me about these stories that pushed the limits of what was possible.

As I got older, I started reading a lot more non-fiction. I was still interested in books that explored the implications of innovation, but it felt more important to learn something about our real world along the way. Lately, though, I've found myself drawn back to the kinds of books I would've loved as a kid.

My holiday reading list this year includes two terrific science fiction stories. One takes place nearly 12 light-years away from our sun, and the other is set right here in the United States — but both made me think about how people can use technology to respond to challenges. I've also included a pair of non-fiction books about cutting-edge science and a novel that made me look at one of history's most famous figures in a new light.

I read a lot of great books this year — including John Doerr's latest about climate change — but these were some of my favorites...
Gates' picks include a dystopian science fiction novel by nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro (Klara and the Sun) and Project Hail Mary. ("It requires a leap of faith, but it's got a lot of science in it...") The nonfiction titles included Walter Isaacson's book about CRISPR, The Code Breaker and Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains.

Gates reveals his recommendations in a fanciful video where Christmas-y window displays include icons from his recommended books — including William Shakespeare.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: As new year approaches, crowds around the world may be expecting whizzes and bangs to light up the sky. But the appeal of fireworks could fizzle out with the growing use of drones for light shows. One notable example was the opening ceremony of this year's Tokyo Olympics, while the Over the Top NYE event at Reunion Tower in Dallas is among those planning to combine fireworks and drones to welcome 2022. They are also being embraced at a local level: more than 1,000 people watched a drone display at Mercia Marina in Derbyshire to celebrate Bonfire Night this year.

Ollie Howitt, the creative coordinator at SkyMagic, which used a fleet of 300 drones to create a display for the mayor of London's new year celebration last year, said demand had increased substantially, something the pandemic has helped accelerate. She added that drones were increasingly able to fly in greater density and for longer. "We do think it's going to be something that's ever evolving, as opposed to it being a short-lived sort of fad that people have suddenly got interested in," she said.

Robert Neff, a partner and general manager at Mercia Marina, also believes drone displays will become more common. "There's a big movement against fireworks," he said. Neff said the decision to use a drone display at the marina was down to a number of factors, including the impact of fireworks on animals -- from wildlife and waterfowl to the cats and dogs of boat owners. "They've often commented on how much distress is caused to their pets by the fireworks," he said. Howitt said there were benefits to drones: "They're no emission, they're reusable, there's no fallout or any debris or that kind of thing. So in that sense they are a very good, sustainable option." "Suggestions are that drones have less of an impact on the environment, but we have grave concerns about electrical demand and use of lithium batteries which are known not to be all that 'green,'" said a spokesperson from the British Fireworks Association. "Firework use impact on the environment has been shown to be minor and very short-lived and recent studies have suggested that there is likely to be more pollution from a couple of cars driving to an event than caused by fireworks at an event."

Others suggest the use of fireworks and drones are not mutually exclusive. "We find fireworks work really well in tandem with drones. But we don't really see it as a one replacing the other at all. We sort of feel as if it's just another tool in the chest for how you sort of animate the sky and what you want to do with the show that you're putting on," said Howitt, noting that while fireworks give a loud, emotive, big performance, drones offer the chance to tell stories in the sky by using a series of images.

LG is having a busy CES 2022 and the show hasn't even started. The company already revealed two bizarre OLED concepts and a pair of odd TVs, but today it made its most significant announcement yet by debuting OLED EX, the next generation of its OLED display technology. From a report: OLED EX (the EX stands for Evolution and eXperience, unfortunately) promises to boost maximum brightness, enhance picture quality, and allow for smaller display bezels. The underlying technology -- millions of individual self-lit pixels -- hasn't changed, but the use of an isotope called deuterium combined with algorithmic image processing can increase brightness by up to 30% over conventional OLED displays, LG claims. As boring as that may sound, the science behind it is actually pretty fascinating. LG found a way to extract deuterium, a rather scarce isotope (there is one deuterium atom in 6,000 hydrogen atoms) that's twice as heavy as hydrogen from water, then applied it to its TV's OLED elements. LG says stabilized deuterium compounds let the display emit brighter light while improving efficiency over time. Moving to the second change, LG is using a "personalized" machine learning algorithm that predicts the usage of each light-emitting diode (on up to 8K TVs) based on your viewing habits, then "precisely controls the display's energy input to more accurately express the details and colors of the video content being played."

Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta's communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. The Verge reports: Schubert's LinkedIn page indicates that she's been working for Meta for nearly six years. "Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch," Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta's Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta's Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became the number one free app on the Google Play store today, a potential sign that a significant amount of people received the headset as a gift this holiday. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company's AR headset could launch sometime in 2022, featuring 8K displays and "Mac-level" computing power. It may also cost a whopping $3,000 and be geared largely for developers at launch.

"Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world," writes a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"But to see price hikes of as much as 675% being imposed in real time, automatically, by a hospital's computer system still takes your breath away."

Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes their report: I got to view this for myself after a former operating-room nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas shared with me screenshots of the facility's electronic health record system.... What they show are price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital's software. The eye-popping increases are so routine, apparently, the software even displays the formula it uses to convert reasonable medical costs to billed amounts that are much, much higher. For example, one screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps' system put the basic "cost per unit" at $19.30. But the system said the "computed charge per unit" was $149.58. This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.

The system helpfully included a formula for reaching this amount: "$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%)."

You read that right. Scripps' automated system took the actual cost of sutures, imposed an apparently preset 675% markup and produced a billed amount that was orders of magnitude higher than the true price. This is separate from any additional charges for the doctor, anesthesiologist, X-rays or hospital facilities.

Call it institutionalized price gouging. And it's apparently widespread because the same or similar software is used by other hospitals nationwide, including UCLA, and around the world... Healthcare providers routinely ignore the actual cost of treatment when calculating bills and instead cook up nonsensical figures to push reimbursement from insurers higher. For the millions of people without health insurance, those sky-high prices are what they're stuck with (although most hospitals, including Scripps, typically will offer discounts in such circumstances).

According to recently-submitted patent application spotted by LetsGoDigital, Samsung may be working on a rollable smartwatch equipped with a camera and two separate displays. PhoneArena reports: The device looks like a regular Galaxy Watch with a display that features two parts on the top and bottom of the screen that can be expanded both independently or simultaneously. The watch also is equipped with a camera located in the middle portion between the two "rollable" portions of the display that can take photos and record videos.Besides optional sensors that could be built into the watch, a flash also could be part of the watch's photography system.

A patent titled "Electronic device comprising rollable display and display method therefor" was submitted to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) on June 2, 2021. To expand the watch display, the user presses the crown on the side of the watch. When fully opened the screen is 40% larger than the size when closed. The screen can also be expanded or reduced by making a swiping gesture across the display. When fully opened, the rollable Galaxy smartwatch has an oval shape allowing for additional content to appear. The user can decide whether he wants one side extended or both sides. This can also depend on a particular app being used. The large portion of the display (the part extended) could show the app while the part that is not extended can show the app controls.

As Lets Go Digital points out, the timepiece depicted in the patent is not the first to offer a flexible screen. That honor goes to the Nubia Alpha which was worn on the wrist but featured a long bendable display. The device featured a camera that could allow users to take part in a video chat, and also could make or take phone calls, get the time, set alarms, and more.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A patent filed by Apple and published Thursday by the US Patent and Trademark Office details the tech giant's interest in creating "privacy eyewear" that blurs content on a device's screen unless someone is wearing special glasses to look at it. As spotted by Patently Apple, the patent, which focuses on creating different FaceID profiles for various visual impairments, explores a new type of privacy screen. The patent doesn't specify any Apple product by name. Instead, it refers to electronic devices in general, including smartphones, watches, laptops, TVs, and car displays. Drawings in the patent show the feature working on a smartphone-like device. The technology would use a face scan to determine if the user is wearing the required glasses. It could recognize the headgear by a specific graphic, such as a QR or bar code.

If you're worried about someone looking at your phone over your shoulder, you could activate the feature "to make the graphical output illegible." Your privacy eyewear, meanwhile, would "counteract the intentional blur." "The blurred graphical output may compensate for the distortion created by the privacy eyewear vision of the user by, for example, blurring a portion and/or the entirety of a standard graphical output; generating an overlay over the standard graphical output; and/or making elements of the standard graphical output larger, brighter, and/or more distinct," Apple's patent reads. "In some embodiments, the blurred graphical output may only replace certain graphical elements presented in the standard graphical output. The blurred graphical output may be a default graphical output designed to compensate for the privacy eyewear." Further reading: Apple Aiming To Announce Mixed-Reality Headset In 'Next Several Months'

Microsoft has announced a new edition of Windows 11 designed specifically for the K-8 education sector, dubbed "Windows 11 SE." This new edition of Windows 11 is designed to address fundamental challenges that schools are facing day to day with improved performance, optimized resources, and simple to deploy and manage. From a report: Microsoft says Windows 11 SE has been optimized for education focused low-cost PCs, most of which start at the affordable price of $249 and are powered by low-end Intel and AMD chips. Windows 11 SE was designed with feedback from teachers and school IT admins in mind. Unlike normal Windows 11, Windows 11 SE comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Office out of the box, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, and OneDrive, which can also be used offline as part of a Microsoft 365 license.

Microsoft has also limited some of the multitasking features, including reducing the amount of apps that can be snapped on screen at once to just two; side by side. The Microsoft Store app is also disabled. Windows 11 SE also automatically runs apps in full-screen, which makes sense considering most Windows 11 SE PCs will feature small 11-inch displays. It also removes access to the "This PC" area in File Explorer by default, as it's an area most students don't need to access when working on school work. Windows 11 SE is "cloud backed" meaning it will mirror all your saved documents stored locally to the cloud.

Apple is in discussions with Samsung and LG over applying OLED displays with a two-stack tandem structure to future iPad and MacBook models, but the devices are likely several years away from launch, according to Korean website The Elec. MacRumors reports: The report indicates that a two-stack tandem structure would consist of two layers of red, green, and blue emission layers, allowing for the future iPad and MacBook models to have significantly brighter displays with up to double the luminance. Apple's current OLED devices like the iPhone have a single-stack structure, the report adds. Given that OLED technology is expensive, it's likely the displays will be used on future iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models specifically. The report claims the future iPads will come in 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes, which are indeed the current iPad Pro sizes.

The report claims the two-stack iPad displays will also be low-power LTPO panels, which could allow for a wider ProMotion refresh rate range between 10Hz and 120Hz, in line with the iPhone 13 Pro models. iPad Pro models have already supported ProMotion since 2017, but with a refresh rate between 24Hz and 120Hz. Timing remains a big question mark. While some earlier reports claimed the first iPad with an OLED display was slated for release in 2022, today's report claims the timeframe has been pushed back to late 2023 or 2024. The first MacBook with an OLED display might follow in 2025, but this plan could be postponed further, the report adds.

Apple's long-rumored AR-VR headset may be arriving next year. According to a new report from notable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone-maker is aiming to put Wi-Fi 6 and 6E support into the device, which could arrive at some point towards the end of 2022. From a report: In a note to investors, spotted by MacRumors, Kuo writes that Meta (formerly Facebook), Sony and Apple will all have new virtual reality or augmented reality headsets of some kind next year, which will support the latest Wi-Fi standards. He expects that Meta's product will launch in the second half of the year, Apple's in the fourth quarter of 2022 and Sony's sometime in the second quarter. Last week during its Facebook Connect event Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased a new, higher-end headset dubbed Project Cambria that the company says will arrive next year. Sony, meanwhile, has been teasing a successor to its PlayStation VR headset that is designed for the PlayStation 5. It too is aiming to launch its VR product in 2022. Kuo writes that using Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E will be a "basic requirement for head-mounted displays to improve the wireless experience," adding that "Wi-Fi 6 is significantly better than Wi-Fi 5 in transmission speed and power consumption."

Bloomberg: There was a sense that, without the moderating influence of the late Steve Jobs, perhaps Jony Ive started to prioritize aesthetics a little too much. Since he stepped down as chief designer at the end of 2019, Apple seems to have reemphasized function. From the iPhone to Apple TV to the Macbook, gone are the days of "The user be damned, we think this looks cool." Monday's unveiling of a new Macbook Pro lineup of laptops provides evidence of the shift. Headline features released five years ago under Ive's aegis have been scrapped. Gone is the so-called "butterfly" keyboard, which rendered the device thinner but whose clunky mechanics made typing more difficult; farewell too to the Touch Bar, a touch sensitive strip display along the top of the keyboard which could show functions for the web browser one moment and mixing tools for music apps the next, but was almost impossible to use without looking; back are HDMI ports, which let you plug the computer into high-definition displays without using an adapter. Perhaps this would have happened under Ive, but Evans Hankey, who now heads the industrial design team, has overseen plenty of other tweaks that seem to indicate a change of philosophy.

[...] But there is merit in sometimes listening to your customers, particularly when the pendulum has swung too far away from function and towards form. After all, you're liable to lose professional customers -- architects, musicians, film-makers -- if they can't plug their laptops into external monitors. And professional users can afford to pay for the top-of-the-range devices that are more profitable to Apple. Dieter Rams, a significant influence on Ive, compiled 10 principles for "Good Design." Number three was "good design is aesthetic." Apple seems to have remembered numbers two and four: "good design makes a product useful" and "good design makes a product understandable."

Nvidia's new RTX 3080 plan for GeForce Now is probably the biggest upgrade for its cloud-streaming service since it turned on RTX ray tracing for subscribers over two years ago. From a report: The new plan is targeted at more traditional gamers for whom 60fps simply doesn't cut it, and it'll cost $100 for every six months you're signed up. In addition to the RTX ray tracing of the Priority plan, it offers 8-hour sessions, up to 1440p and 120fps gaming on PC and Mac (1600p on MacBooks), 4K HDR 60fps with 7.1 surround audio on Nvidia Shield (using DLSS) and up to 120fps on select Android devices. On iOS, GeForce Now has to use Safari rather than a dedicated app, which likely either can't handle or is too locked down to hit the higher frame rates.) According to the company, MacBooks are the second most popular device it sees used by the service, which isn't surprising given how poor the Mac's gaming is compared to PCs. The new MacBook Pro models, with their 120Hz displays, will be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and frame rates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The newly announced 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have HDMI ports, but they have a limitation that could be frustrating for many users over the long term, according to Apple's specs page for both machines and as noted by Paul Haddad on Twitter. The page says the HDMI port has "support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60 Hz." That means users with 4K displays at 120 Hz (or less likely, 8K displays at 60 Hz) won't be able to tap the full capability of those displays through this port. It implies limited throughput associated with an HDMI 2.0 port instead of the most recent HDMI 2.1 standard, though there are other possible explanations for the limitation besides the port itself, and we don't yet know which best describes the situation.