Choosing a new Mac often involves consideration of the many Apple silicon chips now on offer, so our comprehensive guide covers their generations, variations, performance benchmarks, and future prospects to help you decide which is best for you. After iterating for over a decade in the iPhone and iPad, Apple in 2020 brought its custom silicon chip technology to the Mac, enabling major performance and power efficiency improvements. Since then, Apple silicon has expanded to every Mac model, spurring new designs and capabilities that were previously impossible. Understanding the distinctions between Apple silicon chips will help you make an informed decision when selecting the right Mac for your needs. There have been two generations of Apple silicon for the Mac,…

This week on Swagger, Jace and Ike’s latest victory is a short-lived affair. When Crystal comes to Jace with worrying possibilities for his future, he shuts down — leaving Phil, Drew and Musa to panic. Meanwhile, Jenna and Tonya start making plans. And Ike and Emery decide to hash out their differences the old-fashioned way. […] (via Cult of Mac - Tech and culture through an Apple lens)

Seven tech giants, including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, have said they meet the European Union’s new criteria for “gatekeepers,” which means they will be subject to stricter regulations. Reuters: Samsung and TikTok owner ByteDance also unexpectedly said they would meet the criteria, although TikTok disputed whether it should be included on the list. Booking.com said it expected to fall into the gatekeeper category next year. Under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) which came into force in November, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a 75-billion-euro ($82 billion) market capitalisation are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service. Companies labelled as such will be required to make their messaging apps interoperate with rivals…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge An important deadline just passed for the biggest tech platform companies in the world to notify the European Union (EU) that they are gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Seven companies have officially acknowledged they meet the criteria: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Microsoft, and Samsung. Companies on the list have a market capitalization of over €75 billion ($82 billion) and own a social platform or app that has at least 45 million monthly users or 10,000 active business users. The statement published by EU commissioner Thierry Breton says it “will now check their submissions and designate the gatekeepers for specific platform services by 6 September,” and after…

Macworld The Mac is an obvious candidate if you’re looking for a computer with which to make music. The choice can be overwhelming, though, with devices ranging from a few hundred dollars or pounds to thousands more than you might spend on a car. In this article we compare them all and explain which Mac is right for you. There was a time when music production required hiring a studio, but technology moves fast. During the 1980s, there was a revolution in analog home recording kit; then the 1990s saw home computers gradually take over. Today, you can do everything from recording pop songs to mastering movie soundtracks on a Mac. But which Mac? That’s the question we’re here to…

Macworld Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. The only way is upsell One of the quirkier stories we covered last week centered on a simple Velcro strap. Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro headset, you see, is rather heavy, and the company seems to have addressed possible issues with comfort by adding on an extra strap that goes over the top of the user’s head. But this strap is…