Enlarge / Canon’s FPA-1200NZ2C nanoimprint lithography machine. The company has been developing technology to stamp chip designs onto silicon wafers rather than etching them using light. (credit: Canon)

Canon hopes to start shipments of new low-cost chip-making machines as early as this year, as the Japanese company best known for its cameras and printers tries to undercut longtime industry leader ASML in providing the tools to make leading-edge semiconductors.

The challenge from Canon comes as Western governments attempt to restrict China’s access to the most advanced semiconductor technologies and as global demand for chipmaking machines has soared. If successful, Canon’s “nanoimprint” technology could give back Japanese manufacturers some of the edge they ceded to rivals in South Korea, Taiwan and, increasingly, China over the past three decades.

“We would like to start shipping this year or next year... we want to do it while the market is hot,” said Hiroaki Takeishi, head of Canon’s industrial group, who has overseen the development of the new lithography machines. “It is a very unique technology that will enable cutting-edge chips to be made simply and at a low cost.”

Enlarge / The Framework Laptop 16. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Now that the Framework Laptop 13 has been through three refresh cycles—including one that swapped from Intel's CPUs to AMD's within the exact same body—the company is setting its sights on something bigger.

Today, we're taking an extended look at the first Framework Laptop 16, which wants to do for a workstation/gaming laptop what the Framework Laptop 13 did for thin-and-light ultraportables. In some ways, the people who use these kinds of systems need a Framework Laptop most of all; they're an even bigger investment than a thin-and-light laptop, and a single CPU, GPU, memory, or storage upgrade can extend the useful life of the system for years, just like upgrading a desktop.

The Laptop 16 melds ideas from the original Framework Laptop with some all-new mechanisms for customizing the device's keyboard, adding and upgrading a dedicated GPU, and installing other modules. The result is a relatively bulky and heavy laptop compared to many of its non-upgradeable alternatives. And you'll need to trust that Framework delivers on its upgradeability promises somewhere down the line since the current options for upgrading and expanding the laptop are fairly limited.

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  Our specific RTX 4070 Ti Super is a PNY model, the RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB Verto. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

Of all of Nvidia's current-generation GPU launches, there hasn't been one that's been quite as weird as the case of the "GeForce RTX 4080 12GB."

It was the third and slowest of the graphics cards Nvidia announced at the onset of the RTX 40-series, and at first blush it just sounded like a version of the second-fastest RTX 4080 but with less RAM. But spec sheets and Nvidia's own performance estimates showed that there was a deceptively huge performance gap between the two 4080 cards, enough that calling them both "4080" could have lead to confusion and upset among buyers.

Taking the hint, Nvidia reversed course, " unlaunching " the 4080 12GB because it was "not named right." This decision came late enough in the launch process that a whole bunch of existing packaging had to be trashed and that new BIOSes with new GPU named needed to be flashed to the cards before they could be sold.

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  XFX's take on AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

We don't need a long intro for this one: AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 XT is almost exactly the same as last year's RX 7600 , but with a mild bump to the GPU's clock speed and 16GB of memory instead of 8GB. It also costs $329 instead of $269, the current MSRP (and current street price) for the regular RX 7600.

It's a card with a pretty narrow target audience: people who are worried about buying a GPU with 8GB of memory, but who aren't worried enough about future-proofing or RAM requirements to buy a more powerful GPU. It's priced reasonably well, at least—$60 is a lot to pay for extra memory, but $329 was the MSRP for the Radeon RX 6600 back in 2021. If you want more memory in a current-generation card, you otherwise generally need to jump up into the $450 range (for the 12GB RX 7700 XT or the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti) or beyond.

The fact of the matter is that this is the same silicon we've already seen. The clock speed bumps do provide a small across-the-board performance uplift, and the impact of the extra RAM does become apparent in a few of our tests. But the card doesn't fundamentally alter the AMD-vs-Nvidia-vs-Intel dynamic in the $300-ish graphics card market, though it addresses a couple of the regular RX 7600's most glaring weaknesses.

Enlarge / Reflective screens and creases aren't the only concerns with foldable PCs. (credit: Scharon Harding)

Although foldable smartphones have been available for five years , the devices are still trying to justify themselves. And after using a foldable-screen laptop as my primary PC for about four weeks, I'm not sure they're ready for prime time.

I'm leaving my time with HP's first foldable laptop with a sense of anticipation for the future of laptops, which I think would benefit from a resurgence of creative ideas that cater to the unique ways people use their computers. But I seriously question if the benefits of having a 17-inch screen in a 12-inch laptop body are worth the trade-offs inherent in today's foldable PCs .

Early participants in the foldable laptop world have an opportunity to define the space, while consumers can decide if this is something they even want. HP's foldable is the most beefed-up option ever, and weeks of use have shown me a lot about what I want and don't want to see when the dust settles.

Enlarge / Apple's 16-inch, M3 Max-powered MacBook Pro. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The next year or two will be a turning point for people who bought into the last few generations of Intel Macs. AppleCare+ subscriptions are going to expire, batteries will begin to lose a noticeable amount of capacity, software updates and security fixes will gradually dry up , and normal wear-and-tear will slowly take its toll.

Every new generation of Apple Silicon Mac is another opportunity for Apple to get those people to update. Which may or may not help to explain why Apple is introducing its new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max MacBook Pros less than 11 months after releasing the M2 versions.

Like the early 2023 MacBook Pros, these late 2023 models are iterative improvements to the 2021 redesigns . They keep the things that made those laptops such a big improvement over the late-model Intel MacBook Pros while adding just a little more performance and one or two other minor improvements to entice people who still haven't made the Apple Silicon switch.

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  This is the Framework Laptop 13. We're using the same pictures as a previous review because it's the exact same laptop. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

The Framework Laptop 13 is back again.

My third review of this laptop is probably the one that I (and many Framework-curious PC buyers) have been the most interested to test, as the company has finally added an AMD Ryzen option to the repair-friendly portable. Updates to the Intel version of the Framework Laptop have boosted CPU performance, but its graphics performance has been at a standstill since the Framework Laptop originally hit the scene in mid-2021.

Even AMD's latest integrated graphics won't make a thin-and-light laptop a replacement for a gaming PC with dedicated graphics, but a bit more GPU power makes the Framework Laptop that much more versatile, making it easier to play games at reasonable resolutions and settings than it is on Intel's aging Iris Xe graphics hardware.

Enlarge / From left to right: iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max. (credit: Samuel Axon)

It’s been six years since the iPhone X hit store shelves, but at a glance, 2023’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro aren't all that different. Thanks to a few steps of iteration, though, these smartphones still feel like a big step up—maybe not compared to last year’s iPhone, but certainly compared to 2017's, or even 2020’s.

Though I don’t have any insight into what’s coming next year, the iPhone 15 seems like the final form of a product that has gone through a multi-year cycle. It sees Apple cementing a likely long-term strategy of treating the cheaper model as a rerun of the previous year’s pro model, it addresses one of the longest-standing complaints about iPhones (even if Apple’s hand was forced by regulation), and it refines a tried-and-true design.

The iPhone 15, its pricier siblings, and its strong competitors on the Android side make the case that for better or worse (mostly better), we’ve reached peak smartphone.

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I was preparing to write an intro calling macOS Sonoma—version 14.0 of Apple's desktop operating system, for those of you who can't keep the ever-lengthening list of California codenames straight—a "low-key" or "small" release. Because it definitely feels that way, and it's tempting to think that Apple is taking it easy on new features for older OSes because it's devoting so much internal time to VisionOS and the Vision Pro.

But looking back, I've said something along those lines for each of the last few macOS releases (and several others before that). Honestly, these days, what macOS update hasn't been "low-key"? Every one since Big Sur (11.0) overhauled the UI and added Apple Silicon support has been content to add a few pieces on top of the foundation, fiddle a bit with under-the-hood enhancements and new security measures, maintain feature parity with iOS for the built-in apps, and call it a day. That's what Sonoma does, too.

So macOS Sonoma is a perfectly typical macOS release, a sort of " Ventura -plus" that probably has one or two additions that any given person will find useful but which otherwise just keeps your Mac secure and avoids weird iCloud compatibility problems with whatever software is running on your phone. You probably don't need to run out and install it, but there's no real reason to avoid it if you're not aware of some specific bug or compatibility problem that affects the software you use. It's business as usual for Mac owners. Let's dive in.