Apple Launches Faster M2 Chips, Powerful Laptops in Rare January Launch

17 February 2016, Bavaria, Munich: The Apple logo shines on the facade of an Apple Store. (dpa)
17 February 2016, Bavaria, Munich: The Apple logo shines on the facade of an Apple Store. (dpa)
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Apple Launches Faster M2 Chips, Powerful Laptops in Rare January Launch

17 February 2016, Bavaria, Munich: The Apple logo shines on the facade of an Apple Store. (dpa)
17 February 2016, Bavaria, Munich: The Apple logo shines on the facade of an Apple Store. (dpa)

Apple Inc on Tuesday unveiled MacBooks powered by its new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, in a surprise announcement weeks ahead of its traditional launch event. 

The Mac mini starts at $599, cheaper than the latest iPhone 14 series, and is available from Jan. 24. MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch with the latest chips start at $1,999, compared with the $1,299 price tag of a 13-inch model fitted with the M2 chip. 

Apple's latest chips are upgrades to the M2 chip launched last year and a part of the company's efforts to rely more on chips designed in-house after it moved away from using Intel's technology in 2020 following 15 years of collaboration. 

The M2 Pro has nearly 20% more transistors than the M1 Pro and double the amount in M2, helping programs like Adobe Photoshop run heavy workloads "faster than ever", Apple said. 

The company replaced chipmaker Nvidia as one of the top ten semiconductor vendors by revenue last year, according to a Gartner report on Tuesday. 

"This is all connected to the delayed chipset transition ... With it being delayed, Apple has been faced with the questions to wait for the traditional, expected launch or actually do something a bit unexpected," said Canalys research analyst Runar Bjørhovde. 

"This is a great way of throwing things around and surprising the consumers and competitors," Bjørhovde said, adding that the announcement could generate some hype when the market is currently tough for vendors and a quiet month for Apple. 

The company traditionally has four launch events in a year, with the first spring event scheduled in March, when Apple launches its iMacs and accessories. 

Last year, Apple launched a lower-end iPhone and M1 Ultra chip in March, followed by the iPhone 14 ahead of the holidays, a phone that did not get as much attention due to its high price point and similarities to the iPhone 13. 



Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
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Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo

US tech behemoth Microsoft is investing millions of dollars to funnel more European-language data into AI development, company president Brad Smith told AFP Monday.

With today's leading AI models mostly trained on material in English, "the survival of these languages and the health of these cultures is quite literally at stake" without a course correction, Smith said in an interview.

AI models are "less capable when it is in a language that has insufficient data," he added -- which could push more users to switch to English even when it is not their native language.

Microsoft will from September set up research units in the eastern French city Strasbourg to "help expand the availability of multilingual data for AI development" in at least 10 of the European Union's 24 languages, including Estonian and Greek.

The work will include digitizing books and recording hundreds of hours of audio.

"This isn't about creating data for Microsoft to own. It is about creating data for the public to be able to use," Smith said, adding that the information would be shared on an open-source basis.

The US-based company has in recent months striven to position itself as especially compatible with a gathering political push for European technological sovereignty.

Leaders in the bloc have grown increasingly nervous at their dependency on US tech firms and infrastructure since Donald Trump's reelection to the White House.

In June, Microsoft said it was stepping up cooperation with European governments on cybersecurity and announced new "data sovereignty" measures for its data centers on the continent.

Smith said that Monday's announcement was just the latest evidence of the company's commitment to Europe.

Most leading AI firms are American or Chinese, although Europe has some standouts like France's Mistral or Franco-American platform Hugging Face.

Away from Microsoft, some European initiatives such as TildeLM are pushing to develop local-language AI models.

The Windows and Office developer also said Monday that it was working on a digital recreation of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral that it plans to gift to the French state, as well as digitizing items from the country's BNF national library and Decorative Arts Museum.