Apple streamed their ‘Scary Fast’ event last night, and it at least lived up to the latter part of its name…the event was over in about 30 minutes! New M3 chips powering new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros were revealed, including a new cheaper 14 inch MacBook Pro powered by the base (but still very powerful) M3 chip. The cheapie model starts at just $1599, BUT it only has 8 gigs of memory, and just two USB-C ports. Apple mercifully dropped the 13 inch MacBook Pro with the maligned Touch Bar. Actually, I have one as a backup yet…and never had an issue with the Touch Bar…the terrible ‘Butterfly Keyboard’ is a different story. Try typing fast with a deadline on that awful thing! Whew! Back to the new stuff…9to5mac.com reports that it’s 20% faster for the base chip than prior models, and the M3 Max will support 128 Gigs of RAM. Battery life 22 hours…wow! Apple claims same performance plugged in or on battery. Did we mention the new black color? Yeah, it looks really cool. The Pros will be available next week. 

Apple also showed off a new 24 inch iMac…well, with a new M3 chip anyway. The computer is basically the same, except about 30% faster. You can order today, and it ships November 7th. The entry level model is $1299. 

Microsoft has started blocking ‘unauthorized’ Xbox controllers and accessories. According to theverge.com, a warning was spotted last week…and now some users are seeing a ‘connected accessory is not authorized’ message pop up. The Verge points out that it’s unclear if Microsoft is trying to target cheat devices, or whether the Xbox maker is trying to push its official partner program. Apparently from the time you get the message, you have 2 weeks to use the so-called unauthorized accessory, then the Xbox will block its use. 

It was widely known at the time Elon Musk bought Twitter that it was worth a lot less than he paid. Now, the official word is X is worth less than half what he paid for it…down from $44 billion to $19 billion. On Monday, employees at X were awarded equity in the company at a valuation of $19 billion, or $45 per share, according to internal documents. The pricing was first seen and reported by Fortune. The $19 billion may be optimistic, too…one of his big investors, Fidelity, thinks X is worth 65 percent less than when he bought it. 

Boston Dynamics has done some amazing things with its robot dog, Spot…not to be confused with the critters West Coast car dealer Cal Worthington used to pass off as HIS dog spot! Now, the robotics company has been training Spot to talk using an AI model that incorporates ChatGPT and other AI models. Bgr.com says they are using a Spot robot as a talking tour guide to show off the Boston Dynamics campus. I wonder if they will license the voice of actor John Leeson, who gave voice to Doctor Who’s robot dog K-9. It would be fun to hear it say ‘Affirmative, Master!” If you ever watched Doctor Who, you may have heard that in Leeson’s voice instead of mine!

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