Apple Bows New M4 iMac; Google Working on Tensor Chip for Pixel Watch; Meta Developing AI Search Engine; Police Shut Down Big Info Theft Operation

Last week, Apple teased an ‘exciting week of announcements,’ and they didn’t mess around…a new M4 iMac was unveiled this morning. 9to5mac.com reports that the freshened iMac not only runs the more powerful M4 chip, but it has new color choices, as well as a nano-texture display option. The base model has 16 gigs of ram, doubling the former model. It can have up to 4 Thunderbolt ports, and comes in new colors…new shades of green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue…and of course, silver. With the M4 chip, and the 16 gigs of ram, the all-in-one Mac will have no problem running Apple Intelligence. The base model starts at $1299 with 16 gigs of unified memory. Preorders are open now, with availability starting Friday, November 8th.  

Google is working on a new custom Tensor chip for the Pixel Watch. The present Watch has been running on off-the-shelf chips from Samsung and Qualcomm. According to 9to5google.com, the Watch 2 and Watch 3 have both been running Snapdragon W5+ chipsets. This chipset from Qualcomm has dramatically improved battery life over the outdated Exynos chip that ran the original Pixel Watch. The Tensor powered Watches could come in 2026. 

Meta is reportedly working on an AI search engine to cut reliance on Google and Microsoft. Theinformation.com says that Meta is designing the search engine and web crawler to return conversational answers about current events to folks using its Meta AI chatbot. Meta currently supplies news, sports and stock info to users that is provided by Google Search and Microsoft’s Bing. Meta may be concerned that either Google or Microsoft may want to pull out of these arrangements, and hopes the AI search engine/chatbot will be able to take their place. 

A coalition of international law enforcement agencies have managed to disrupt two very prolific information thieves that have stolen data from thousands. Techcrunch.com reports that the Dutch National Police, the lead agency, gained full access to the servers used by the Redline and Meta info stealers. Infostealers are a kind of malware designed to extract sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card data, search histories, and the contents of cryptocurrency wallets, from an infected system. Redline has been widely used by crooks, while Meta is a relatively new info stealer (not to be confused with the company of the same name that owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.