Apple Stock News: Apple will Announce the Mixed Reality Headset in January
Apple Stock News: Apple plans to announce its long-rumored mixed reality headset at an event planned for January 2023, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said. Apple will hold an event in January to show off the product, and tools for developers will ship “within 2-4 weeks after the event,” according to Kuo. Pre-orders for the headphones will begin in the second quarter of 2023, and customers will be able to purchase the headphones ahead of next year’s WWDC. Multiple reports have highlighted continuing problems in the headset’s development, delaying the release until next year. The headphones are expected to be a niche device that costs about $3000.
Apple Announces M2 Chip With Support for Up to 24GB Memory
Apple announced the launch of M2, the second generation of Apple silicon chips for the Mac that provide greater efficiency and performance and support up to 24GB of memory. M2 is manufactured using second-generation 5nm technology and has 20 billion transistors, 25 percent more than the M1 chip. M2 has an 18% increase in CPU speed, a 35% increase in GPU performance, and a 40% increase in neural engine speed compared to the M1 chip. M2 supports up to 24GB of LPDDR5 unified memory and has four performance and four efficiency cores. The chip supports uniform memory bandwidth of 100GB/s, 50% higher than “M1”. The M2 delivers an 18% performance boost at the same power and features GPUs with up to 10 cores, with two more cores available on the M1 chip. The M2 delivers 87% of the peak performance of a 12-core PC laptop chip while consuming only a quarter of the power.
The M2 also includes an improved media engine with a higher bandwidth video decoder that supports 8K H.264 and HEVC video, a ProRes video engine for playing multiple 4K and 8K video streams, Apple’s latest Secure Enclave for enhanced security, and a new image signal processor (ISP) to provide better image noise reduction.
Apple Store Back Up With Previews of New M2 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro
Introduced by the event, iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura, M2 MacBook Air features a redesigned case that eliminates the tapered design. It has silver, deep space gray, starlight, and midnight. Contrary to rumors, it doesn’t have a white bezel or white keyboard, and it has a notch. The new MacBook Air starts at $1199 for an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU, with a 10-core GPU option starting at $1499.
Apple Using In-House Lending for New Apple Pay Later Feature
Apple announced the upcoming launch of a new Apple Pay Later feature designed to allow customers to split Apple Pay purchases into multiple payments. With Apple PayLater, Apple Pay users can choose to pay in four installments over six weeks. The Apple PayLater feature does not include interest or fees, as long as the customer makes four payments within the allowed period.
Apple formed a subsidiary, Apple Financing LLC, which handles credit checks and makes decisions about loans for the service. Apple Financing LLC operates separately from Apple, and as Bloomberg points out, this is the first time Apple has chosen to handle Financing itself. However, Goldman Sachs still plays a role in the plan, as it issues MasterCard payment vouchers to complete subsequent purchases of Apple Pay, as Apple Financing does not have a bank charter.
Bloomberg said in March that Apple was working on a multi-year plan to bring its financial services in-house, eliminating the need for partners such as Goldman Sachs. Apple is developing payment processing technology and infrastructures, such as loan risk assessment, fraud analysis, credit checking, and dispute processing, and it is developing tools for calculating interest, awarding, approving transactions, reporting data to credit bureaus, and increasing credit limits, and more. Apple PayLater is its first attempt.
