Apple this week released the latest developer beta of tvOS 18.2, the software that powers the company’s Apple TV 4K streaming media devices. As previewed during the WWDC 2024 keynote, the new software includes support for 21:9 and several other aspect ratios that are wider than 16:9, which has become the dominant shape for modern TVs.

Why does that matter?

Most of us have experienced letterboxing or pillarboxing — that’s when a set of horizontal or vertical black bars frame the content on our TVs. It happens when there’s a mismatch between the aspect ratio of a movie or show and the aspect ratio of your screen.

A lot of modern content, especially shows and movies developed for streaming services like Netflix, Max, Paramount+, or Apple TV+, is shot in 16:9, so letterboxing that content on 16:9 TVs isn’t necessary. On the Apple TV 4K, even the user interface is formatted for this ratio, which keeps things looking good.

However, some folks own projector screens or widescreen monitors with non-16:9 aspect ratios. For these people, all Apple TV 4K content ends up with those pesky black bars because the device’s signal is formatted for 16:9. When tvOS 18.2 arrives for everyone in December, the software should automatically detect the ratio of your display, and reformat itself to match.

If that detection fails, a new Aspect Ratio settings menu will let you manually select the appropriate one for your setup. Available ratios are 16:9, 21:9, 2.37:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, DCI 4K, and 32:9.

It will be the first time that someone who owns a 21:9 projector, or who uses an anamorphic lens to achieve a ratio like 2.39:1, can get the Apple TV 4K to produce a perfectly proportioned and fullscreen image.

So how many people will benefit from the new settings? “It really won’t affect very many,” said Jeff Gosselin, chief experience officer at Cloud 9 AV, a Toronto-based custom home theater installer. “Any new theaters we have done in the past 15 years have all used 16:9 screens. For any ultrawide projection systems, this will be an enhanced viewing experience.”

Pillarboxing will still likely occur when watching 16:9 content on such a screen, but when 21:9 content is available, it should play in fullscreen, with no black bars.

Presumably, app developers — like the services mentioned above — will have to update their apps to ensure that their content displays correctly under the new aspect ratio settings. But eventually, this will become the norm.

Recently, 91mobiles spotted the Motorola Razr 50s Ultra on two certification platforms—Wireless Power Consortium and SGS Fimko Testing & Certification Services.

Motorola launched the Motorola Razr (2024) (review) and Motorola Razr Motorola Razr+ (2024) in the US back in June this year. The models are called the Motorola Razr 50 and Motorola Razr 50 Ultra respectively outside the States. However, the company also appears to be working on two more devices under the Razr 50 series – the Motorola Razr 50s and Motorola Razr 50s Ultra. The Motorola Razr 50s previously appeared on Geekbench with a single and multi-core score of 1040 and 3003 respectively.

Motorola Razr 50s Ultra design and specifications

In the latest news, the Motorola Razr 50s Ultra has appeared on the Wireless Power Consortium with model number XT2451-6. In terms of design, the Motorola Razr 50s Ultra closely resembles the Razr 50 Ultra, featuring a rounded middle frame and a large external display with two distinct cutouts for the rear camera setup.

The inner display features a center-positioned punch-hole cutout for the selfie camera and narrow bezels. This is similar to those on other models in the Razr 50 series. The volume rocker and power button are located on the right edge, with the SIM tray on the left side—similar to the existing models. At the bottom, there’s a USB Type-C port, speaker vents, and a microphone opening.

The bottom portion appears to have a leather finish and houses the iconic Razr branding.

According to the listing, the maximum load power this device can utilize is ‘15.0,’ which hints at 15W charging support. For context, the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra supports 45W wired charging and 15W wireless charging. In contrast, the standard Razr 50 supports slightly slower 30W wired charging, along with 15W wireless charging support.

The Motorola Razr 50s Ultra could come with a total of six variants

The SGS Fimko Testing & Certification Services listing for the phone reveals a total of six variants for this device: XT2451-1, XT2451-2, XT2451-3, XT2451-4, XT2451-5, and XT2451-6.

Additionally, the ‘Technical data’ and ‘Specific characteristics’ sections list ’11V 4A’, suggesting support for 44W fast charging. This implies that the ‘15.0’ notation on the Wireless Power Consortium listing likely refers to 15W wireless charging support, while the device still offers faster speeds, up to 44W, with wired charging similar to other models in the lineup.

Apple’s excellent MacBook Pros are faster than ever with its new M4 chips. That’s it, that’s the review. Their screens are slightly brighter, and the 14-inch model now starts with 16GB of RAM, but otherwise these are the same laptops that have been around since the M1 Pro redesign in 2021. Really, though, it’s not as if Apple had much to improve on. The MacBook Pros have been among our favorite premium laptops for years — now they’re just better.

When I last reviewed Apple’s MacBook Pros, I concluded by saying, “Just try to save up for 16GB of RAM.” Now, thanks to the increasing memory demands of Apple Intelligence, that’s not something anyone will have to worry about again. That makes the $1,599 14-inch MacBook Pro a far better deal than before (you previously had to add on another $200 to get to 16GB). The 16-inch model, which starts at $2,499 with 24GB of RAM, is also a better choice for big-screen fans since its M4 Pro chip is a tremendous upgrade over last year’s hardware.

Apple

Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro is better than ever thanks to its M4 chips, Thunderbolt 5 support and slightly brighter screens.

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Pros

• Fast M4 chips
• Brighter display
• Sharp 12MP Center Stage webcam
• Thunderbolt 5 with M4 Pro/Max
• Long battery life

$1,599 at Adorama

Apple

Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is better than ever thanks to its M4 chips, Thunderbolt 5 support and slightly brighter screens.

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Pros

• Fast M4 chips
• Brighter display
• Sharp 12MP Center Stage webcam
• Thunderbolt 5 with M4 Pro/Max
• Long battery life

$2,450 at Amazon

What’s new in the M4 MacBook Pros?

The star of the show this year are Apple’s new M4, M4 Pro chips and M4 Max chips. The M4 features a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, while the Pro bumps up to a 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. The Max model, as usual, goes even harder: It features a 16-core CPU and a whopping 40-core GPU.

As you’d expected, the prices for those more powerful chips escalate dramatically: The M4 Pro 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 ($400 more than the base model), while the M4 Max model starts at $3,199. At least you get slight RAM and storage bumps with those pricier chips, the M4 Pro starts with 24GB of RAM, while the Max model includes 36GB RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Aside from dramatically better chips, all of the new MacBook Pros feature MiniLED Liquid Retina XDR screens that can reach up to 1,000 nits for SDR (standard dynamic range) content. That’s a 400-nit increase from before, and it should help make content far more visible in daylight or in very bright rooms. (HDR content, as usual, can push the display even further to a peak of 1,600 nits.) There’s also a nano-texture glass option (for a $150 surcharge) that can make the screens more glare resistant, which is useful for working in bright environments. Note, however, that it can also make the screen appear less sharp.

Apple also upgraded the MacBook Pros’ webcams to 12-megapixels, a major leap over the previous 1080p camera. (Apple hasn’t confirmed the megapixel figure for that camera, but it’s likely around 2MP, the bare minimum to reach 1080p). Having a higher resolution camera also opens the door for Center Stage, which can keep you in focus as you move around your room.

I didn’t hate Apple’s previous webcams, but mostly that’s because I remember how mediocre its older 720p webcams used to be. The new models look far sharper with more accurate colors, and the overall image doesn’t look as heavily filtered as the previous cameras. They also support Desk View (above), Apple’s helpful feature for showing off objects below your screen.

If you’re often dealing with large file transfers, you might also appreciate support for Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. It can support up to 120 Gb/s speeds, up from 40 Gb/s in Thunderbolt 4, which the standard M4 chip includes. That could make a huge difference if you’re moving terabytes worth of 4K and 8K videos onto external drives – just note you’ll need to invest in similarly equipped Thunderbolt 5 storage. Thunderbolt 5 could potentially allow for external AI accelerators (unfortunately, Apple Silicon doesn’t support external GPUs).

In use: The best MacBook Pros yet

I didn’t really expect much from the new MacBook Pros, especially since the previous M3 models were already very impressive. But, once again, Apple managed to surprise me with its mobile hardware. The M4 chip, which was in our 14-inch review unit, was a solid performer. But the M4 Pro in our 16-inch MacBook Pro was an astonishing leap ahead of its predecessor, and it’s also faster than every other computer we’ve tested this year (aside from the new Mac mini, which also had a M4 Pro chip).

Unfortunately, we didn’t have an M4 Max-equipped MacBook Pro to test, but given that it’s filled with more M4 CPU and GPU cores, I’d expect another major performance jump.

In Geekbench 6’s CPU benchmark, the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro scored 1,000 to 1,500 points higher than other recent laptops when it came to single-threaded work. Its multi-threaded performance lead was more slim, but it still beat out Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. The M4 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro scored similarly for single-threaded work, but it blew the competition by 9,000 to 12,500 points. That performance gap alone is equivalent to the multi-threaded Geekbench 6 scores from other laptops this year! (It’s also slightly faster than last year’s M3 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, another major achievement.)

Cinebench 2024 scores tell a similar story. Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro scored well above the competition in the single-threaded test. The M4 system was on-par with the best multi-threaded scores we saw from the Surface Laptop 7 (powered by a Snapdragon X Elite chip) and HP Omnibook Ultra 14 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375). But the M4 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro, once again, handily outclassed other systems with its multithreaded score, which was nearly double what we’ve been seeing throughout the year.

Cinebench’s GPU benchmark puts the M4 Pro’s graphics performance in line with NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 in Dell’s XPS 16, while the M4 chip is in line with the Framework Laptop 16’s Radeon 7700S. That’s all about what I expected after testing the Mac mini with an M4 Pro chip, and it’s simply astonishing to see that level of performance from a mobile-focused GPU.

When it comes to games, the M4 Pro 16-inch MacBook Pro was able to maintain 60fps in Lies of P, Resident Evil 4 and Myst while playing in 1,440p with the graphics settings cranked to the max. 4K was possible, but typically slowed things down to around 30fps, which isn’t very playable on a computer. The M4 14-inch MacBook Pro, meanwhile, handled those same games in 1080p at 60fps. We typically wouldn’t recommend gaming much on Macs, but Apple’s graphics hardware is hard to ignore at this point, and the company is also working to get more high profile titles in the App Store, like Remedy’s Control.

To put Apple’s Neural Engine to the test, I also used the Whisper Transcription app (AKA MacWhisper) to turn an hour and nine-minute long podcast episode into a transcript. The M4 14-inch MacBook Pro took three minutes and two seconds, while the M4 Pro 16-inch model took two minutes and 11 seconds (similar to what I saw on the M4 Mac mini). In comparison, an M3 14-inch MacBook Pro took three minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

While the speed upgrades are more than welcome, in my testing I noticed that both of the MacBook Pros’ screens were easier to see in bright sunlight. That alone isn’t enough to upgrade for if you’ve already got an M2 or M3 MacBook Pro, but it’s definitely something to look forward to. And even though Apple’s keyboard and enormous trackpad haven’t changed, they’re still among the best in the industry. I also still appreciate having a wide variety of ports on these systems: three USB-C connections (Thunderbolt 4 with the M4, Thunderbolt 5 with the M4 Pro), an HDMI port, a headphone jack, a MagSafe power connector and an SD card reader.

Both MacBook Pros also continue to deliver excellent battery life. The 14-inch lasted for 34 hours and 15 minutes while looping an HD video, whereas the 16-inch went for 30 hours and 16 minutes. That’s the first time we’ve seen our video rundown test go beyond 30 hours. In real-world usage, I could typically use both machines for general productivity work for two days without needing a recharge. That’s the benefit of relying on power-sipping mobile hardware.

Should you buy the new M4 MacBook Pros?

There’s no doubt these new MacBook Pros are compelling, especially if you need the raw power of the M4 Pro (or conceivably, the M4 Max). If you’re running an M1 MacBook Pro, or still trucking along with an Intel model, you’ll definitely see some notable performance gains from these machines. But if you’ve got an M2 or M3 MacBook Pro, the M4 hardware is less of a qualitative leap. You’re probably better off waiting for the eventual OLED refresh, which is rumored to happen in 2026.

MIPS released its P8700 CPU based on the RISC-V computing architecture to target driver assistance and autonomous vehicle applications.

The San Jose, California-based company, which focuses on developing efficient and configurable intellectual property compute, licenses its designs to other chip makers. Today, it is announcing the general availability launch of the MIPS P8700 Series RISC-V Processor.

Designed to meet the low-latency, highly intensive data movement demands of the most advanced automotive applications such as ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) and autonomous vehicles, the P8700 delivers accelerated compute, power efficiency and scalability, said Sameer Wasson, CEO of MIPS, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“Automotive is a big segment where we focus. It continues being a very exciting place. Some companies came and some disappeared,” Wasson said. “They lost interest. They came out of COVID and refilled their inventory. But what’s happening in the industry right now is very interesting. I think autonomy is now coming back to that steady growth rate.”

He added, “It is one of the biggest driving forces to continue innovating in terms of bringing better solutions. If you think about the solutions today, most of the deployments in vehicles are driven by what used to be vehicle technology. That was basic microcontrollers, simple stuff. They could open and close doors, run internal combustion engines. As autonomy grows, you’re going to see compute needs evolve toward more AI network compute. That allows you to have higher levels of autonomy.”

“We have technology and we have a play in making it much more mainstream than it has been,” he said.

Typical solutions for ADAS and autonomous driving rely on a brute-force approach of embedding a higher number of cores at higher clock rates driving synthetic, albeit unrealistic and unrealized performance.

The P8700 with its multi-threaded and power-efficient architecture allows MIPS customers to implement fewer CPU cores and much lower thermal design power (TDP) than the current market solutions, thereby allowing OEMs to develop ADAS solutions in an affordable and highly scalable manner. It also mitigates the system bottlenecks of data movement inefficiency by providing highly efficient, optimized and lower power latency sensitive solution specifically tailored for interrupt laden multi-sensor platforms.

“If you look at the RISC-V space overall, I think these spaces are ready for disruption, with a chance for new architectures coming in,” Wasson said. “Otherwise, EVs will be much more expensive than they need to be.”

For Level 2 or higher ADAS systems with AI Autonomous software stack, the MIPS P8700 can also offload core processing elements that cannot be easily quantized in deep learning and reduced by sparsity-based convolution processing functions, resulting in a greater than 30% better AI Stack software utilization and efficiency.

“The automotive market demands CPUs which can process a large amount of data from multiple sensors in real-time and feed the AI Accelerators to process in an efficient manner,” said Wasson. “The MIPS Multi-threading and other architectural hooks tailored for automotive applications, make it a compelling core for data intensive processing tasks. This will enable automotive OEMs to have high performance compute systems which consume less power and better utilize of AI Accelerators.”

The MIPS P8700 core, featuring multi-core/multi-cluster and multi-threaded CPU IP based on the RISC-V ISA, is now progressing toward series production with multiple major OEMs. Key customers like Mobileye (Nasdaq: MBLY) have embraced this approach for future products for self-driving vehicles and highly automated driving systems.

“MIPS has been a key collaborator in our success with the EyeQ™ systems-on-chip for ADAS and autonomous vehicles,” said Elchanan Rushinek, executive vice president of engineering for Mobileye, in a statement. “The launch of the MIPS P8700 RISC-V core will help drive our continued development for global automakers, enabling greater performance and excellent efficiency in cost and power usage.” 

The P8700 Series is a high-performance out-of-order processor that implements the RISC-V RV64GC architecture, including new CPU and system-level features designed for performance, power, area form factors and additional proven features built on legacy MIPS micro-architecture deployed in more than 30+ car models today across the global OEM market.

Engineered to deliver industry-leading compute density, MIPS’ latest processor harnesses three key architectural features, including MIPS out-of-order multi-threading, which enables execution of multiple
instructions from multiple threads (harts) every clock cycle, providing higher utilization and CPU efficiency.

It also has coherent multi-core, multi-cluster, where the P8700 Series scales up to 6 coherent P8700 cores in a cluster with each cluster supporting direct attach accelerators.

And it has functional safety designed to meet the ASIL-B(D) functional safety standard (ISO26262) by incorporating several fault detection capabilities such as end-to-end parity protection on address and data buses, parity protection on software visible registers, fault bus for reporting faults to the system, and
more.

The MIPS P8700 processor is now available to the broader market, with key partnerships already in place. Shipments with OEM launches are expected shortly. MIPS has been around for three decades and billions of its chips have shipped to date.

In the past, Wasson said vendors were using the wrong computer architecture, which was built for entertainment and screen applications, rather than hardcore AI problems.

“What we are trying to do is go focus on building compute for ADAS and higher levels of autonomy, from the ground up,” he said.

Vasanth Waran, worldwide head of business development at MIPS, said in an interview with VentureBeat that other architectures have been pushing performance forward through brute force, adding more complexity and scaling, but not necessarily coming up with affordable designs.

“If you want to bring it to a larger market, you want autonomy to be affordable, and you want it to scale,” Waran said. “There needs to be a more pure approach, given the lack of a better word, and that’s what motivated us. The 8700 from the ground up is where you can move data seamlessly between different parts of a design. If you look at a car, you have a lot of sensors with data coming in, from cameras, radar, LiDAR, in some cases, and the inputs from these need to be processed. It needs to be pushed out to an AI accelerator system. And then that data needs to help you make a decision.”

MIPS’ designs try to offload a lot of the performance from AI accelerators, whether it’s in pre-processing or post-processing. With a general-purpose processor, new software can be supported, and such software for AI accelerators is changing all the time.

RISC-V has been building up its ecosystem in the past couple of years, and its ecosystem is now at the right size to support applications.

“The other big thing that’s happening is software defined vehicles. Our products can be used for a holistic software-defined vehicle architecture,” Waran said. “We’re focused completely on the autonomous journey.”

Wasson said his company will be at the CES 2025 event coming up in Las Vegas in January, where pitching automakers will be a big task for the company.