Apple’s former head of Apple retail, Ron Johnson, has a book “Shop Different” and joins William on the latest AppleInsider Podcast for a guest interview. Also, your hosts discuss new Macs, perceived Apple failures, and more.

Ron Johnson was brought in to Apple by Steve Jobs to create the Apple Stores in what is now seen as a brilliant move, but back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was believed to be Apple’s folly. Hear from the man himself, though, on why he believes Apple had to do stores — and would not be here today if it hadn’t.

Outside of Apple retail, things are busy. RAM prices aren’t going to get any better anytime soon, and Apple has solidified the price it will be paying at least through early 2027.

If you purchased an iPhone that was meant to get the initial run of Apple Intelligence features, you might be entitled to a $25 payout from a class action lawsuit. Of course, you’ll need proof of purchase and have made that purchase in the US during the period designated by the lawsuit.

Apple’s size means it never escapes the headlines, for better or for worse. A tiny change at Apple Fitness+ is being pitched as the beginning of big changes in the service, for some reason.

Speaking of headlines, new CEO John Ternus has been on an interview tour, and the world appears to be hanging on his every word. He managed to evoke Steve Jobs while talking iPhone Duo and even kind of complimented Apple Vision Pro.

BONUS: Subscribe via Patreon or Apple Podcasts to hear AppleInsider+, the extended edition. This time, your hosts discuss choosing to order Apple products online versus at a physical Apple Store.

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Long-term readers will know that I have something of a love affair with the original HiFiMAN HE-6. Not one of the later revisions carrying the same name, but the original version that arrived 16 years ago and, to my ears, remains one of the finest headphones HiFiMAN has ever produced.

That distinction has become increasingly important because the HE-6 name has been used across several versions over the years, and they do not all sound the same. Depending on which HE-6 you audition, it can be remarkably easy to wonder what all the fuss was about. Those who have only heard the later iterations have not necessarily heard the headphone that created the legend in the first place.

The original HE-6 was expensive, technologically ambitious, brutally difficult to drive, and produced in relatively limited numbers. It was also capable of a level of dynamics, transparency, speed, and sheer physicality that helped establish HiFiMAN as a serious force in planar magnetic headphones. Finding one today—particularly an early 6-screw HE-6 in excellent working condition is neither easy nor cheap. Clean examples can command $1,500 or more, making the original HE-6 one of the relatively few high-end headphones that has actually appreciated in value.

Sixteen years later, the HiFiMAN HE600 arrives carrying more than a little historical baggage.

Calling it another HE-6 would be too simplistic. The HE600 is better understood as a modern reimagining of the concept, built around HiFiMAN’s current driver technology and engineering rather than an attempt to recreate the original component by component. Almost everything has changed. The drivers are lighter and faster, amplification requirements are considerably less punishing, durability has been addressed, and the industrial design retains enough of the circular HE-6 aesthetic to make the family resemblance obvious.

That creates a much harder question than whether the HiFiMAN HE600 sounds good.

Can HiFiMAN take everything it has learned over the past 16 years and create a modern planar magnetic headphone that captures some of what made the original HE-6 so extraordinary without simply trying to resurrect it?

For those of us who never thought the original needed replacing, the answer carries considerably more weight.

Related Reading:

Build, Fit, and a Much-Needed Diet

The HE600 is no doubt a HiFiMAN product. The resemblance to the HE400 series and HE-560 is immediately evident. The large-diameter circular earcups, divided front to back between a brushed-metal outer section and black leather inner layer, remain true to the company’s earlier models before the teardrop shape became its signature.

The honeycomb grille also harkens back to some of those earlier designs, although the HE600 uses larger openings to improve airflow and reduce interference. The overall aesthetic is understated, much like the original HE-6, but the brushed metal is arguably a step up in terms of finish.

The yokes feature click adjustments, with visible dimples along the inside of the band, and mate with a black steel outer headband and polymer inner section. The headband is solid at both ends, while material has been removed from the center section to reduce weight.

A composite leather suspension strap attaches beneath the narrower portion of the headband before widening to nearly 2.5 inches at the center to distribute weight more evenly across the head. The assembly has enough flexibility to accommodate a wide range of head sizes, and there is sufficient rotation at the yoke/headband junction to work with most head shapes. There is no visible hinge along the vertical axis, but it is there, cleverly hidden within that junction.

At 389 grams, the HE600 is still not a light headphone, but for many listeners, the weight of the original HE-6 was not some abstract specification. It was the central problem.

My original HE-6 weighs 543 grams on my postal scale; more than half a kilogram. To comfortably wear one all day, you would need the neck of Brock Lesnar or perhaps an NFL linebacker. I am not a small person, and as much as I loved the sound, the weight was always an issue.

The HE600 reduces that burden enough that I had no trouble wearing it for three to four hours at a time. Yes, it can still become fatiguing, but it takes considerably longer before things become genuinely uncomfortable.

The HE600 uses HiFiMAN’s FocusPad design, combining memory foam with pleather and soft velour surfaces. The mixed-material approach makes sense. Pleather helps maintain a good seal around the ear and preserves low-frequency consistency, while the velour reduces the sticky, heat-trapping sensation that can make fully synthetic pads unpleasant during longer listening sessions.

The pads are also large enough to accommodate most ears, and their tapered profile helps improve fit and comfort. The HE600 is still a headphone best reserved for quiet, seated listening, but the improvement over the original cannot be denied.

Connectivity is handled by dual 3.5 mm connectors at the earcups, with the supplied cable terminating in a 3.5 mm plug for source devices. HiFiMAN also includes a 6.35 mm adapter.

The earcup connectors are angled by approximately 10 degrees, with the stated goal of reducing mechanical stress and improving long-term cable reliability. That is a welcome refinement. Straight connectors can place unnecessary leverage on the socket, particularly when the cable drops sharply toward the listener’s shoulders.

The use of standard 3.5 mm connectors also makes cable replacement straightforward. A simple cable swap allows the HE600 to be used with balanced sources or an XLR-equipped amplifier instead of the supplied single-ended 3.5 mm cable.

Internals: Sixteen Years of Planar Progress

While the outside of HiFiMAN headphones can sometimes look a little industrial and pedestrian, nobody can deny that what is inside the earcups is usually state of the art. HiFiMAN has specialized in planar magnetic drivers since its earliest models, and most of the current lineup incorporates some variation of that technology.

Planar magnetic drivers use a thin membrane with conductive traces that carry the electrical signal. That membrane moves toward or away from an array of magnets depending on the voltage and current being applied. The theoretical advantage is that the driving force is distributed across a much larger surface area than with the voice-coil arrangement used in a conventional dynamic driver. When the diaphragm and magnet geometry are properly executed, that can improve control, transient response, and distortion performance.

HiFiMAN describes the HE600 as using an Enhanced Magnet system based on rare-earth-free permanent magnetic materials with an optimized structure. The move away from rare-earth magnets is worth noting. These materials are costly and place additional pressure on supply chains, so I applaud HiFiMAN for pursuing an alternative approach rather than assuming that stronger and more exotic magnets are automatically the only path forward.

The magnets also need to be more than merely powerful. They must be small and carefully positioned because, while strong interaction between the diaphragm and magnetic structure is essential, unrestricted airflow is equally important. Large magnets sitting directly in the path of the sound would create their own problems.

HiFiMAN provides considerably more detail about the diaphragm itself, which it calls the NEO Supernano Diaphragm. This is an ultra-thin dielectric polyester/plastic substrate film with a microscopic conductive coating that forms the electrical trace across its surface.

The challenge is not simply making the diaphragm as light as possible. It also needs sufficient rigidity to behave properly across its entire surface. Reduce the mass too far without maintaining structural control and you have merely traded one problem for another.

The moving mass of the HE600 driver is claimed to be only 40% that of the original HE-6. Sixteen years separate the two headphones, and that figure offers some perspective on just how far diaphragm materials and manufacturing techniques have advanced during that period.

The new driver has a nominal impedance of 28 ohms and a sensitivity of 94 dB/mW, both substantial departures from the original HE-6. Frequency response is specified at 8 Hz to 65 kHz, which extends well beyond what any human being is going to hear and probably into territory better appreciated by the neighborhood bats.

More importantly, the HE600 is dramatically easier to drive.

For those unfamiliar with the original HE-6, HiFiMAN actually sold an adapter that allowed owners to connect the headphones directly to the speaker taps of a two-channel power amplifier. Portable sources need not apply, and even many dedicated desktop headphone amplifiers lacked sufficient output to drive the original HE-6 with adequate headroom.

The HE600 removes much of that complication, opening the door to a far wider range of headphone amplifiers, DAC/amps, and portable sources without abandoning the planar magnetic architecture that made the HE-6 so compelling in the first place.

Specifications:

• Type: Open back, over ear headphones
• Driver Type: Planar magnetic
• Diaphragm: 2nd Gen NEO Supernano Diaphragm
• Magnet System: Rare earth free Enhanced Magnet design
• Frequency Response: 8 Hz to 65 kHz
• Impedance: 28 ohms
• Sensitivity: 94 dB
• Weight: 389 grams (13.72 oz)
• Ear Pads: FocusPad with memory foam, pleather, and velour surfaces
• Headphone Connectors: Dual 3.5 mm
• Included Cable: 1.5 meter detachable cable with 3.5 mm termination
• Included Adapter: 3.5 mm to 6.35 mm

Listening

In order to be considered a spiritual successor to the HE-6, the HE600 needs to deliver an inspired combination of speed, dynamics, resolution, and a relatively full-bodied tonal balance. Those were the expectations I carried into my listening sessions, but I deliberately avoided an immediate A/B comparison with the original HE-6 because I felt the HE600 deserved to be judged on its own first.

What follows are my listening impressions of the HE600 as I would evaluate any other headphone, followed by a direct comparison with the original HE-6.

Bass

Sub-bass extension is better than expected, especially considering that one of the perennial issues with large planar magnetic headphones has been a lack of genuine bass authority. No, the HE600 will not satisfy listeners looking for a significant boost in the bottom end, but it is a far cry from some earlier planar designs that rolled off steeply below 50 Hz.

Depth is good and clarity is even better, so what the HE600 gives up in absolute quantity it compensates for with control and definition. Mid-bass is slightly more prominent, adding some welcome warmth without becoming loose or bloated in the process.

Midrange

The transition from the mid-bass into the lower midrange is seamless, with no obvious bleed or obstruction. Lower-register vocals have good weight and sit slightly ahead of the instrumentation, although not dramatically so.

Electric guitars have good attack and plenty of growl, while acoustic guitars benefit from strong texture and tonal nuance. Strings also have good energy, aided by a lower-treble lift that pushes upper-register vocals somewhat forward in the mix. On some recordings, those higher voices can sit a full step ahead of lower-register vocals.

Treble

The lower treble is moderately elevated before beginning to fall away above roughly 10 kHz. The result is an open top end with enough air and sparkle to keep things interesting, although it stops short of the expansive presentation offered by some of HiFiMAN’s more expensive models.

Cymbals have good ring and decay, while percussion has sufficient snap without becoming sharp or fatiguing. There is still enough treble energy here that listeners who are particularly sensitive in that region should audition before buying, but the HE600 generally avoids crossing the line into abrasive territory.

Soundstage and Imaging

The soundstage is moderately sized, with good width and depth and enough height to allow movement around the stage to be tracked convincingly. Imaging and layering are both quite strong, helped by the driver’s fast decay and clean separation between instruments.

Seating an orchestra is straightforward, with no obvious overlaps or unnatural gaps between sections. The resulting presentation feels proportionate and believable rather than artificially stretched beyond the boundaries of the recording.

HE600 vs. the Original HE-6

Overall, the HE600 does a lot of things very well, but is it an HE-6 clone?

In a word, no.

The tonal balance is similar in some respects but noticeably different in others. To my ears, the original HE-6 still offers greater resolution, and anyone expecting the HE600 to completely reproduce that aspect of its performance will find that it stops short.

Bass extension, however, is better on the HE600, while the original HE-6 extends more convincingly at the top end. That alone shifts the tonal balance of the two headphones in different directions.

The HE600 sounds somewhat fuller and weightier, while the HE-6 remains the faster and more technically incisive headphone. The treble emphasis is also more pronounced on the HE600, so listeners who are particularly treble-sensitive are unlikely to love either model and may actually find the HE600 to be the bigger offender.

There is little question that the original HE-6 remains the more technically capable performer, but there are also substantially higher barriers to extracting that performance.

Finding an early HE-6 in excellent condition can easily cost enough to purchase two HE600s, and that is before dealing with amplification. The original is notoriously demanding and requires an amplifier capable of delivering serious current and headroom. Something like the xDuoo TA-30 is probably near the lower end of where I would start, while more powerful desktop amplification from Benchmark, Pass Labs, or something similarly capable makes considerably more sense.

The HE600 presents an entirely different proposition.

It worked extremely well with the Questyle M18i Max connected to my phone, while the original HE-6 sounds flat, dynamically restrained, and largely lifeless with probably 99% of the portable headphone gear currently available.

That does not mean the HE600 is particularly easy to drive. It remains more demanding than models such as the Ananda, and pairing it with an unpowered dongle may leave you underwhelmed—or watching your phone battery disappear at an impressive rate.

The HE600 is easier to drive than the headphone that inspired it, but this is still fundamentally a headphone designed for serious desktop listening rather than something I would build a portable system around.

The Bottom Line

The HiFiMAN HE600 leaves me with mixed emotions. Paired with a potent portable or desktop amplifier, it is warm, full-bodied, technically capable, and considerably easier to live with than the original HE-6. At 389 grams, it is still not light, but the improvement in long-term comfort is substantial.

The bigger issue is value. At $799, the HE600 faces serious competition from the HEDD D1, Dan Clark Audio AEON, and Audeze LCD-GX, while the lack of a case or balanced cable makes the package feel rather sparse.

Those hoping for a modern HE-6 will also come away disappointed. The HE600 does not match the original’s resolution, speed, or top-end extension.

But judged on its own terms, it makes considerably more sense. The HE600 offers stronger bass extension, a fuller tonal balance, excellent planar speed, and far more reasonable amplification requirements.

Perhaps calling it an HE-6 successor does it a disservice. The HE600 is not the second coming of the original, but it is a very good planar headphone that deserves an audition at $799.

Pros:

• Warm, full-bodied tonal balance with strong bass extension
• Fast, clean planar magnetic presentation with good imaging
• Far easier to drive than the original HE-6
• Significant reduction in weight improves long-term comfort
• Standard dual 3.5 mm connectors make cable swaps easy

Cons:

• Does not match the original HE-6 for resolution, speed, or top-end extension
• Still relatively heavy at 389 grams
• Treble emphasis may bother sensitive listeners
• Sparse accessory package with no case or balanced cable
• $799 price puts it against some formidable competition

Our Ratings:

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Build Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Comfort

★★★★★★★★★★ Features

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

Where to Buy:

Related Reading:

Earth’s days are not exactly the same length. Scientists have been recording small variations in for decades. These changes are minuscule—sometimes just a few milliseconds—and mostly imperceptible, but scientists are keen to understand them as they point to a much more monumental change: Our planet’s rotation speed is shifting.

Scientists have already pinpointed a handful of compounding causes. Fluctuations in the atmosphere and oceans can slightly speed up or slow down the Earth’s rotation; major earthquakes can redistribute part of the planet’s mass; and by depositing enormous amounts of water into the oceans, melting continental ice is also a factor.

These influences account for some of the more sudden and recent changes, but on a several decades-long timescale, some of the variation appears to originate from a source much deeper within the Earth. Beneath our planet’s rocky mantle lies the outer core—a 1,400 mile thick layer of ultra-hot liquid metal that is in constant motion. As these flows change, they can slightly alter the speed at which the rest of the planet rotates.

However, how these forces are transmitted from one region to another has remained a mystery. Friction between the core and the mantle is too weak, so geologists have been searching for other mechanisms operating in the Earth’s interior.

In a new study published this week in Nature, researchers believe they have identified one of these hidden gears. They propose that the gravity of the inner core pushes rotation in one direction, while other interactions between the core and the mantle oppose it. The result of this competition, accumulated over decades, would be small accelerations and decelerations in the planet’s spin.

The idea is based on the fact that the inner core does not rotate at the same rate as the rest of the planet, causing it to become slightly misaligned with certain mass irregularities in the mantle. But the core “wants to be aligned,” Mathieu Dumberry, a geophysicist at the University of Alberta involved in the study, said in a press release. What this means is that gravity tries to pull the layers of the inner Earth back into their more harmonic position, which influences—albeit minutely—the rotation of the planet’s surface.

The authors reconstructed how this interaction influenced Earth’s spin between 1964 and 2019 using seismic estimates of the inner core’s rotation and models of liquid metal flows in the outer core. Their gravitational model closely reproduced both the timing and the magnitude of real gradual changes that had been observed over the decades.

Other yet-unknown factors are likely involved, but this proposal unravels a major component of our variable days. The model also didn’t account for all the forces competing involved, but it didn’t need to to produce a compelling result. Because it might be a tug-of-war, Dumberry said, but “gravity still wins.”

This story originally appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

This Smart & Interactive Self-Rotating Cat Toy Ball is a USB-rechargeable toy featuring 360-degree rolling movements, obstacle avoidance, and changing LED lights to help keep cats entertained. It’s built out of scratch-resistant and bite-resistant materials, the ball is tough enough to withstand rough play from high-energy kittens and adult cats alike. It’s on sale for $20.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

The collaboration aims to advance agricultural resilience and crop-based carbon removal using AI technologies.

Oxford spin-out Wild Bioscience (Wild Bio) and technology company Oracle have announced a collaboration that will see both groups advance agricultural resilience and crop-based carbon removal using AI. As part of the partnership, Wild Bio intends to utilise Oracle cloud and IoT tech in support of its field research. 

Established in 2021 by Dr Ross Hendron and Irish man Prof Steve Kelly, Wild Bio specialises in crop genetics by researching genetic solutions that developed through evolution to improve crops in the past, and then using these discoveries to design simple fixes for modern crops.

The start-up uses AI to tackle two major challenges in agriculture: maintaining crop productivity as environmental stress increases and developing crop varieties that can remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

Wild Bio will use Oracle’s technology to capture field data, bring it together in an integrated cloud environment and use AI to analyse the resulting datasets and inform future research.

Oracle’s technology will be used to analyse real-time data from field trials by studying soil moisture, plant performance and environmental conditions, building an auditable, field-level measurement system for how much carbon the studied crops are actually taking in. This will then inform and power Wild Bio’s own research.

The organisations are of the opinion that AI has the ability to learn from millions of years of plant evolution and identify traits that can improve how crops perform.

Commenting on the partnership, Clay Magouyrk, the CEO of Oracle said: “AI is creating new opportunities to solve problems that once seemed out of reach. Wild Bio is a powerful example of how combining AI with deep scientific expertise can turn new ideas into practical solutions with the potential to improve lives around the world.”

“The world cannot solve climate change and food security as separate problems,” said Kelly, the chief scientific officer for Wild Bio. 

Kelly added: “We need crops that can perform better under increasing pressure while also helping address atmospheric CO2. This collaboration enables us to build the capabilities we need to measure how our crops perform in the field.”

The collaboration will also support Oracle’s broader sustainability strategy, including its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the tech giant.

In late July, Wild Bioscience acquired wheat breeding business F1 Seed for an undisclosed amount. In acquiring the organisation, Wild Bio said it was aiming to become a fully integrated, end-to-end UK seed company, forming a single business capable of designing, breeding and delivering new wheat varieties for growers.

Last year, the company raised $60m in a Series A funding round led by the Ellison Institute of Technology, a research institute founded by Larry Ellison – better known to most as the co-founder and chair of Oracle.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Microsoft has paused the rollout of the KB5002907 Microsoft 365 update after users report that it deactivated, or in some cases completely removed, perpetual Office 2016 and Office 2019 installations.

KB5002907, titled “Optional update for out-of-date Microsoft 365 Apps installations,” was released to help users update Microsoft 365 Apps installations that are more than 90 days out of date.

“This optional update is available only for Windows PCs with Microsoft 365 Apps installations that are more than 90 days out of date and use Current Channel or Monthly Enterprise Channel,” explains the KB5002907 release notes.

“Installing the update can help the apps resume updating and move to a current build for the device’s assigned update channel.”

Microsoft says KB5002907 is an optional update offered through Windows Update and does not install automatically.

Shortly after the update was released, BleepingComputer was told by Christian Van Hautte, who runs an MSP in Belgium, that several of his customers suddenly found their perpetual Office installations showing as an “Unlicensed Product.”

Van Hautte told BleepingComputer that five unrelated customers contacted his company within approximately ten minutes on September 24, with dozens of PCs affected across the organizations.

“The affected installations are all Office 2016 and Office 2019 Home & Business (perpetual/one-time purchase licenses),” Van Hautte told BleepingComputer.

“The common factor is KB5002907, an update released around September 23 and described as targeting ‘outdated Microsoft 365 Apps installations’ — but it is clearly also landing on perpetual (non-subscription) Office installs and breaking their license state.”

Van Hautte said re-entering the original Office product key restored activation on affected systems.

Furthermore, Van Hautte warned that even though the update is listed as optional, it installed automatically on his customers’ devices.

However, he later discovered that KB5002907 appears to remove and reinstall, or migrate the existing Office installation as part of its update process.

Van Hautte says that on systems with Office components of different architectures, such as a 32-bit Office 2016 or 2019 installation alongside a 64-bit Microsoft Access Runtime, the reinstall can fail because Microsoft Office setup does not allow mixing 32-bit and 64-bit Office products.

In those cases, he says the existing Office suite is removed but is not successfully reinstalled, leaving the device without Office.

Microsoft has not confirmed that mixed-bitness installations cause this behavior.

Reports from other administrators and users began appearing online at approximately the same time.

One Reddit user reported that multiple Office 2019 installations suddenly became deactivated and said entering the product keys again restored activation on at least some devices.

The user later updated the post to say the problem was not limited to Office 2019 and that some systems required signing into a Microsoft account and selecting the license rather than just entering the key.

In another report, an administrator said several unrelated customers contacted them after Office had been completely uninstalled.

“My Office 2019 and dad’s Office 2016 installs both got nuked overnight… both are 100% legit keys purchased long ago,” another user replied.

Similar reports appeared in the Microsoft forums, where multiple people reported similar issues after installing the update.

Microsoft pauses Microsoft 365 KB5002907 update

After BleepingComputer contacted Microsoft about the reports, the company confirmed that it had paused the update while investigating the issue.

“We are aware of these reports and have paused the update while we investigate. Additional customer guidance will be communicated via appropriate channels,” a Microsoft spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

Microsoft also updated the KB5002907 support bulletin to acknowledge the problems.

“Microsoft is investigating reports of unexpected results on some devices running Office 2016 or Office 2019 after this update is installed,” the company now says.

“To prevent additional devices from being affected, we have paused the rollout of this update.”

Microsoft confirms that affected Office installations can suffer from two different problems.

In some cases, Office may appear unlicensed, and Microsoft recommends that customers reactivate their purchased product.

In what Microsoft describes as “rare cases,” Office may be removed entirely. Microsoft instructs those users to download and reinstall their purchased copy of Office 2016 or Office 2019.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

Save your seat

At a Workday-hosted roundtable in Dublin, four industry leaders – and guests – traded views on AI adoption, the reskilling race and why women are still locked out of AI’s best-paid jobs.

Earlier this month, I chaired a roundtable of women in technology hosted by Workday in Dublin, with an impressive panel of women leaders and an accomplished array of guests. We had around 90 minutes to share useful insights on AI before lunch, and what followed was one of the more thoughtful conversations I’ve chaired on the subject – less hype, more real-life application and human challenges.

The panel was made up of Claire Hickie, EMEA CTO at Workday; Terry O’Laoghaire, COO of technology infrastructure at State Street; Dympna O’Sullivan, VP of research and innovation at TU Dublin; and Sue Duke, LinkedIn’s managing director for EMEA and LatAm and its VP of global public policy.

Around the table were guests from Enterprise Ireland, IBM, Connecting Women in Technology (CWIT) among others, and their contributions added significantly to the dialogue.

The adoption curve

O’Laoghaire set the tone on adoption. State Street, she pointed out, is “responsible for trillions of the world’s financial assets”, so caution is not optional. “We have to be secure, we have to do this with governance and control,” she said, describing a roll-out where every employee now has Copilot but agents have not yet gone to the full workforce.

Rather than having push back, she was surprised at the appetite among staff . “I think they’re ready and eager,” she said of her own staff, “chomping at the bit” for more, even as a very real fear about job security sits alongside that enthusiasm.

“It’s more about jobs changing than a fear,” she said. “But that fear exists. You have to move people past the fear before they can be open to learning a new skill, before they feel safe doing that. So there’s an important psychological safety piece there.”

Duke, drawing on LinkedIn’s global workforce data, addressed that fear directly. The overriding question she gets asked, she said, is whether AI is displacing jobs. “What we see in the data is there isn’t job displacement,” she told the table. The real shift, she argued, is in what skills are in demand, not how many jobs exist.

Hickie made the same point from inside her own company, Workday. “People often forget that we’re employees too,” she said, describing an “everyday AI” programme Workday launched for its own staff nearly two years ago.

“What that did very early was to get us as individuals really adjusted and used to AI.”

Her favourite proof of how far that’s come? She now raises only one support ticket a year, and this year’s was on a personal tax query, she joked, adding that the reply came back in under 30 seconds. “I was like, oh, bring it on,” she said.

O’Sullivan offered the view from higher education. While on an operational level, the team is employing AI very effectively, the more challenging element of course is with the student body. TU Dublin now runs a five-point traffic-light system for AI use in student assessment, she says, from no AI through to full AI use.

The bigger question, though, has moved past academic integrity. “What are we actually trying to teach and what are we actually trying to assess?” she asked. “We don’t have it figured out yet.” Something that is echoed in conversations I have been having with other academic institutions in recent days.

Skills are the new currency, but the pipeline is broken

Duke put a number on how fast the ground is shifting: LinkedIn estimates the skills needed for most roles will have changed by 70pc by 2030. She grouped what’s needed into three buckets: hard technical AI skills, still held by only around one in 100 workers in developed markets; AI literacy, now a baseline expectation even in non-technical senior roles; and human soft skills, which she said are harder to build and increasingly what separates good leaders from the rest.

Sabrina Staunton, strategy lead at Connecting Women in Technology, raised the sharpest concern about where that leaves junior talent. She’s seeing developers today who are using AI and are “not willing to fail”, which makes it harder for them to build the critical thinking skills the job actually needs. “How do you become a senior engineer if you don’t have a junior engineer?” she asked, a question that landed hard around the table.

It’s a concern echoed by O’Sullivan, who drew a distinction between friction in the workplace and friction in the classroom. “Friction is friction” in operations, she said, “but I think in education, friction is the actual learning”.

“Learning is supposed to be difficult, supposed to be challenging. That’s how we all learn – by getting it wrong and then coming back to it. That’s where the real learning happens.” Strip too much difficulty out of how students learn, she suggested, and you risk stripping out the learning itself.

O’Laoghaire made the same case for the workplace. Even in infrastructure, a field she said is often assumed to be dying out, the skills are simply evolving rather than disappearing. “Instead of a physical data centre, we have a software-defined data centre. You still need to know what it is.”

Much of her team, she said, have moved from being makers to checkers. “But if you’re a checker, you still need to know how it works.” None of that happens, she added, unless companies actually protect the time given to it.

“We expect you to spend time upskilling, we’re going to provide it. It’s very hard to do that if you’re not given the room in your day job to do it, and know you’ll be rewarded for that time.”

O’Sullivan’s own worry showed up in the latest CAO numbers. Demand for computer science courses has fallen, driven, she believes, by anxiety among students and their parents about AI replacing coding jobs. Her counter to that was straightforward. “Technology has always been a net job creator, and skills like systems thinking, data governance and cybersecurity are becoming more important, not less, even as raw software engineering shrinks as a share of the job.”

The triple penalty for women

While the majority of the conversation tackled adoption of AI in the workplace, and in education, we inevitably came around to the dearth of women in senior AI roles.

Duke cited research LinkedIn had published just weeks earlier. Women, she said, make up only one in eight of AI leadership roles at AI companies. That figure comes from LinkedIn’s new report, ‘The Triple Penalty: Mapping the Gender Gap in the AI Economy’, which found women hold just 13pc of executive AI roles worldwide, the product of three gaps that compound each other – a leadership gap, an AI-role gap and an AI-company gap. The pattern holds in all but a handful of the 27 countries studied.

One figure from that same report puts it in even sharper relief: women make up 19.1pc of CEOs at traditional companies, but that share drops to 13.9pc at AI-native firms. In other words, the closer a company gets to the centre of the AI economy, the harder it gets for a woman to run it.

Duke called the overall picture “a good news, bad news story for women”. The bad news is that women remain underrepresented in exactly the technical roles now seen as prerequisites for senior jobs.

The good news? Soft-skills requirements for C-suite roles have risen sharply, and career paths to the top have become far less linear over the past five years, which favours women, who are 55pc more likely to take a career break. “A linear tick, tick, tick, tick is not working for women,” she said. “But we have got to recognise and valorise different skills and different career paths.”

Lauren Morrissey, Workday’s EMEA accessibility manager, extended that concern to the wider issue of diversity, and in particular disability. Almost 96pc of websites, she said, still have significant accessibility barriers, and AI risks widening that gap rather than closing it, unless disabled people’s needs are built in from the start. “But we’re moving too fast to even recognise it,” she argued.

AI’s trust problem

Possibly the most serious moment of the morning came when one of our guests put a tough question to the panel. With graduates already wary of the sector and a slowing hiring market feeding that anxiety, what is industry actually doing about AI’s toxic public image? “AI has become almost like the super villain,” she said. “It’s ending the world, it’s taking the jobs.”

“There’s no question that AI has a massive reputational problem,” Duke said, pointing to genuine safety incidents, the scale and speed at which harmful content can now spread, and a generation that feels the environmental cost of AI more acutely than any before it.

It was widely agreed at the table that there is a ‘black and white’ view out there among young people at the moment, where they either love or hate AI, and the latter camp dismiss the potential benefits. All the leaders present conceded that the industry has not done a great job of communicating the gap between data and perception, and that there’s much work left to do on this.

It was a sober note to end a panel discussion on, but an honest one. If there was a single line that stayed with me as we wrapped, it came from Hickie, almost as an aside. She became a grandmother two years ago, she told us, and her granddaughter is never far from her mind when this subject comes up.

“I just don’t know what her world is going to be,” she said. “But I do think it’s in the hands of technologists. It’s in the hands of leaders. And it’s in the hands of every decision-maker, and every person who has some level of influence at a human level today, to be able to frame that.”

It was an apt reflection of the entire morning’s conversation. The technology is moving on at pace and on its own terms, but who gets to shape it, and who gets left out of shaping it, is still very much a human choice.

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A graphics card is rarely bought in isolation. It has to fit the case, the cooling system, the display, the games or applications that will run on it, and increasingly, the kind of work a PC is expected to handle. A compact 1440p gaming machine has little in common with a 4K enthusiast build, while a workstation running local AI models can make entirely different demands on its GPU.

ASUS’s Radeon range reflects those differences rather than trying to force every buyer toward the same specification. The lineup stretches from the Radeon RX 9060 XT through the RX 9070 GRE and RX 9070 XT, with different card designs addressing everything from compact systems and carefully matched white builds to demanding gaming and local AI workloads. All of the graphics cards covered here also come with a three-year warranty, which matters when a GPU is likely to remain one of the most substantial components in a PC for several years.

Choosing between them, then, is less about finding a universally superior card and more about understanding where each one makes sense. The RX 9070 XT is built for buyers who want serious 1440p and 4K gaming performance. The RX 9070 GRE occupies a more measured position for 1440p systems, while the RX 9060 XT makes a stronger case where size and compatibility carry more weight. The Turbo Radeon AI Pro R9700 sits outside that gaming hierarchy altogether, targeting users who need the memory and compute capability for local AI and other demanding workloads.

Start with the kind of PC you are building

A graphics card can be powerful on paper and still be the wrong choice for a particular PC. Case dimensions, cooling, noise, display resolution and the kind of software you use all matter once the card is installed.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition is the straightforward choice for someone who wants to push gaming performance without treating the rest of the card as an afterthought. It is built around 16GB of GDDR6 memory and is designed for strong 1440p gaming as well as 4K, with an OC mode reaching up to 3080 MHz boost and 2540 MHz game clock according to ASUS.

The TUF’s cooling system is a major part of the card’s overall proposition. Its 3.125-slot design uses three Axial-tech fans, a large fin array and a phase-change GPU thermal pad, while dual-ball bearings are designed for long-term use. A metal exoskeleton adds rigidity while also allowing additional ventilation. The result is a card that makes sense when performance is the priority and the PC has enough room to accommodate a substantial cooler.

The TUF model also adds features not found on the Prime or Dual cards, including an illuminated TUF logo and a protective PCB coating designed to help guard against short circuits caused by moisture, dust and debris. ASUS also uses military-grade components designed to support long-term durability and reliable power delivery.

The ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition takes much of the same performance proposition and puts it into a smaller package. It retains 16GB of GDDR6 and is built for 1440p and 4K gaming, but its 2.5-slot design gives compact builds more breathing room. Its OC mode reaches up to 3030 MHz boost and 2480 MHz game clock, while Axial-tech fans, a phase-change GPU thermal pad and dual-ball bearings handle the cooling.

The distinction between TUF and Prime is therefore less about raw performance than the space available inside the case. TUF gives the cooling system more room to work; Prime gives the builder more room to work around the GPU. For a large enthusiast build, TUF’s substantial cooler is an easy trade. In a more compact system, Prime’s smaller footprint can matter considerably more.

Gaming and AI workloads call for different priorities

Not every demanding GPU workload is a gaming workload. A card that makes sense for high-refresh 1440p or 4K gaming can have very different strengths from one designed to run large AI models locally, and the difference becomes particularly important once memory capacity enters the equation.

The ASUS Turbo Radeon AI Pro R9700 is built for that second category. Its 32GB of GDDR6 memory, 256-bit memory interface and bandwidth of up to 640GB/s are aimed at workloads that can quickly outgrow the memory available on a conventional gaming card. The card is designed for local LLMs, Stable Diffusion and Flux, AI development, content creation and other memory-heavy compute tasks.

Its specifications are tailored accordingly. The card uses RDNA 4 with 128 AI accelerators and up to 1,531 TOPS of INT4 performance, while PCIe 5.0 support and a 2-slot design make it suitable for dense multi-GPU workstation configurations. Its cooling system is also designed around sustained compute rather than short bursts of gaming, combining a diecast shroud and backplate with a wave-pattern design that ASUS says can reduce memory temperatures by up to 16%.

For a gaming PC, the RX 9070 XT and the other Radeon gaming cards make more sense because their strengths are aligned with that workload. The Turbo Radeon AI Pro R9700 becomes the more relevant choice when the machine is expected to handle local AI, large models or sustained GPU compute, where 32GB of VRAM and dedicated AI capability can matter far more than gaming-oriented specifications.

1440p gaming does not always require the biggest card

The step down from the higher-end gaming cards does not mean stepping away from serious 1440p performance. The mid-range options in this lineup are aimed at systems where smooth gaming matters, but power consumption, physical size and overall build balance deserve more attention.

With 12GB of VRAM and an OC mode reaching up to 2880 MHz boost and 2300 MHz game clock, the Prime Radeon RX 9070 GRE EVO OC Edition is built around that balance. Its 2.5-slot design measures 304 × 126 × 50mm, making it slightly smaller than the Prime RX 9070 XT. Lower power consumption within the 9070 tier also makes the EVO a practical fit for a build where the GPU does not need to dominate the entire system.

A similar approach carries over to the ATS Radeon RX 9070 GRE OC Edition, which reaches the same 2880 MHz boost and 2300 MHz game clock figures and measures 305 × 126 × 50mm. Both cards use Axial-tech fans, a phase-change GPU thermal pad, dual-ball bearings and 0dB technology, so there is little value in repeating the same cooling specification list for each model.

For a 1440p gaming PC, these cards occupy a useful middle ground. They offer the performance needed for that resolution without moving into the larger footprint and higher-end positioning of the RX 9070 XT, making them worth considering when the rest of the system needs to stay compact and balanced.

When size and design become part of the decision

Physical compatibility is not always about fitting the largest GPU into the smallest case. In some builds, the graphics card also has to work with the visual language of the rest of the system. ASUS offers a white version of the Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT for precisely that kind of build, retaining the same 2.5-slot format as the standard Prime model.

There is no need to treat the white edition as a different performance tier. Its appeal is the white finish and sleek design, while the underlying cooling and performance proposition remains broadly aligned with the standard Prime RX 9070 XT.

A similar white edition is also available for the Radeon RX 9060 XT, giving buyers building smaller or more affordable systems another way to keep the graphics card consistent with an all-white setup.

Smaller builds still have options

A compact PC does not necessarily mean settling for a compromised graphics card. The ASUS Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB GDDR6 is aimed at buyers who need to make better use of limited space, including those building in smaller form factor cases.

Its 2.5-slot design is intended to balance compatibility with cooling, while the Axial-tech fan design uses a smaller hub and longer blades to maintain airflow through the card. 0dB technology also allows the fans to remain off during lighter workloads, while dual-ball bearings are designed for long-term durability.

In a compact build, those dimensions can have consequences beyond the graphics card itself. A GPU that occupies less space leaves more room to work around adjacent components and makes overall component selection less restrictive. That makes the Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT a practical choice when building around a smaller chassis is the priority, rather than trying to squeeze a larger card into a case that was never designed for it.

GPU control does not end when the card is installed

ASUS also has a software layer that runs across much of this lineup. GPU Tweak III provides access to OC and Silent modes, fan controls, thermal settings and system monitoring, allowing users to adjust the behaviour of the card rather than treating its factory configuration as fixed. Profiles can store preferred voltage and clock settings, while the hardware monitor can track fan RPM and system power metrics.

Dual BIOS provides another level of control on the supported cards, allowing users to switch between Quiet and Performance profiles. The Turbo Radeon AI Pro R9700 is the exception in this lineup, with the supplied ASUS brief specifying that Dual BIOS is not available on that model.

The result is a lineup that is easier to understand when viewed through the PC being built rather than through a simple hierarchy of numbers. TUF is about substantial gaming performance and cooling. Prime RX 9070 XT makes high-end performance easier to fit into a compact build. Prime White is for buyers who want the graphics card to complement the rest of the system. The two RX 9070 GRE cards occupy the 1440p middle ground, while the RX 9060 XT brings dedicated graphics into smaller systems. Turbo AI Pro R9700 takes the conversation beyond gaming altogether.

Explore the ASUS Radeon graphics card range to compare the models and find the card that fits your build, workload and priorities.

Microsoft is changing one of Excel’s most familiar rules: a cell no longer has to contain just one value. The company has introduced lists, arrays in cells and nested arrays, giving users new ways to keep multiple pieces of information together without turning them into a single block of text.

The features are currently rolling out as previews to Excel for Windows and Mac Beta Channels. Microsoft says the behaviour may change before general availability and recommends against using the features in important workbooks at this stage.

Excel lists make multiple values easier to manage

The simplest part of the update is the new Lists feature. Instead of putting several values into separate cells or combining them into ordinary comma-separated text, users can store multiple individual values inside one cell.

For example, a project could have several owners listed in a single cell, while a survey response could contain multiple appointment times. With lists, Excel keeps those entries separate internally, allowing users to filter individual values and use them in calculations.

Creating a list involves selecting Insert > List or pressing Ctrl+J, then entering or pasting items separated by commas or semicolons, depending on regional settings. Users can later edit individual entries by double-clicking the cell or pressing F2.

The feature also changes how filtering works. Instead of treating a comma-separated cell as one large piece of text, Excel can filter by individual items. Referencing a list can also return all its values, allowing them to spill into separate cells when needed.

That could make spreadsheets containing project assignments, survey responses or other multi-value data considerably easier to organise.

Arrays bring a much bigger change to spreadsheets

Microsoft is also introducing arrays directly inside cells, including nested arrays. Arrays can now exist as values or formula results inside a single cell and can have different sizes and shapes. Users can also wrap spilling formula results in braces to keep the entire result inside one cell.

Nested arrays take this further by allowing arrays to exist inside other arrays. Microsoft says formulas that previously returned truncated results or a #CALC! error in some array-of-array situations can now return the complete nested result.

To work with these structures, Excel is gaining four new functions: FLATTEN, HAS, HASANY and HASALL. FLATTEN can remove levels of nesting, while the HAS functions can check whether a particular value, some specified values or all specified values appear within an array.

For power users, the change could open up new spreadsheet designs. Microsoft demonstrates a run tracker where different numbers of kilometre splits can be stored in the same row while statistics are calculated alongside them.

There are still limitations. Conditional formatting, data validation, charts, PivotTables, Power Query and Find & Replace do not yet fully support list and array values. The features currently require specific Beta Channel builds, and nested-array calculations require Compatibility Version 3.

For now, Microsoft is treating this as a preview rather than a finished Excel feature. But if the rollout goes smoothly, the humble spreadsheet cell is about to become considerably more capable.

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