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Latest Tech News

The Apple M3 chip could be hit with delays after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced this week that it was delaying the opening of its Arizona chip fabrication plant until 2025.

Citing the shortage of skilled workers needed to install the extremely technical equipment used in the manufacturing of chip wafers, TSMC is pushing back its planned opening of its first US chip manufacturing plant from 2024 into 2025. Construction on the plant began in 2021.

"We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility," TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said in Nikkei Asia. "We expect the production schedule of N4 process technology to be pushed out to 2025."

N4 is TSMC's 4nm process node, but Nikkei Asia reported last year that TSMC was also hoping to move some of its 3nm production to the Arizona plant. Apple is reportedly using the existing N3 (3nm) process line in Taiwan for its M3-series chips, as well as its A17 Bionic mobile chip. These have reportedly been hit by delays as TSMC has had issues with some of the wafers coming off the N3 line.

To help get the new Arizona plant online, TSMC is flying out trained technical staff and engineers from its Taiwanese plants to make up for the lack of trained and qualified personnel in the US.

TSMC still has an operational N3 process line in Taiwan, so Apple won't be without any advanced process node to make its chips, but that does mean that until the Arizona plant opens, they will all have to rely on any available capacity at the Taiwanese plants.

Apple M3 won't be pushed off to 2024, but MacBooks might be harder to get in 2024

Considering that Apple is one of TSMC's biggest customers, it's unlikely that the Arizona plant's delay will hold up the entire M3 chip rollout, which many will expect will come later this year with a new Apple iMac. However, Nvidia is also putting demands on TSMC's 3nm process for its RTX 5000-series GPUs, according to our friends at PC Gamer, so how much Apple will be able to scale its orders for 2024 isn't clear.

Another key will be the refreshes of Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro devices, the former set to use an Apple M3 Chip while the latter will use a mix of M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, depending on the size of the laptop.

With these refreshes likely in 2024 and early 2025, having another plant in the US churning out 3nm chips would definitely help the availability of these products at launch, something that Apple has struggled with in previous years when customers had to wait for weeks for the delivery of a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air that they had preordered.

With the Arizona plant initially scheduled to begin N4 production in late 2024, with N3 production at some point after that, these extra nodes might have helped speed up delivery times. Hopefully the outlook for TSMC's first US plant in over 20 years improves in the months ahead, but it's not looking good at the moment.

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Latest Tech News

Of course, Apple is working on its own generative AI, Large Language Model (LLM) and possible ChatGPT rival called, naturally, AppleGPT. Sure, the news is based on a Bloomberg report and Apple is predictably mum on the matter but, seriously, how could the Cupertino tech giant not be working on its own AI?

According to the Bloomberg report, Apple is basing its ultra-secret project on a learning framework known as Ajax, from rival and sometimes friend Google.

The effort to build some sort of chatbot and maybe other generative AI systems has been going on since late last year but, as someone who attended Apple's WWDC 2023 can tell you, Apple made no mention of chatbots of any kind at the June developer's conference.

Privacy roadblock

Apple's hyper-focus on user privacy has, as I see it, somewhat hamstrung its efforts to bring any kind of LLM-based chatbot to consumers. ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Bing are all cloud-connected and send queries out to distant servers for rapid interpretation and response (based on the LLM's vast knowledge of how actual humans might respond under similar circumstances).

That, of course, is not the Apple way. Its Apple Silicon A16 Bionic's Neural Network is local. It does Machine Learning on your best iPhone. Sending queries with all those possibly personal details is anathema to Apple's privacy principles.

And yet, Apple clearly cannot afford to stay away from the siren call of generative AI. It is a revolution that is consuming the tech industry and the interests of average consumers and businesses. Even with the intense scrutiny AI development is under and the lawsuits some of it is facing, no one believes AI development is suddenly going to stop or go away. 

Apple has even gone as far as, according to Bloomberg, creating its own chatbot, or AppleGPT. But that's basically a highly limited and internal test and apparently not one that's ever headed to consumer desktops.

What about Siri?

Where does Siri sit in all this? 

Bloomberg claims that the Ajax work has already been used to improve Siri. That may be so, but the only Siri improvement we're getting with iOS 17 (currently in public beta) is the ability to stop starting each voice assistant prompt with "Hey."

I have no doubt that Apple is hard at work figuring out its place in the LLM AI sphere, but it's also clear from the report that these are early days. There is no overarching strategy, and I doubt the existential question of whether or not Siri could ever host AppleGPT (or whatever it's called) has been answered.

Ultimately, this is confirmation that Apple is just as aware of what's going on around it and with competitors as ever. It will sample and test, develop and test, scrap and develop, and then test some more. I don't expect Apple to tell us anything about this during the expected September launch of the iPhone 15. However, by the time WWDC 2024 rolls around, Apple might be ready to unveil a new platform. Maybe it'll be AppleGPT-kit, AppleLLM-Kit, or even AppleGPT. 

This assumes that Apple can solve its big privacy question. If not, AppleGPT could remain in Skunkworks indefinitely.

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Latest Tech News

Managing your smart home with Google Home is about to get simpler – if you have a Google Pixel device that is. That’s because Home Panel is rolling out to devices, including the Google Pixel 7 and Google Pixel Fold, and it allows you to control much of your smart home tech from your lock screen.

Home Panel debuted on the Google Pixel tablet, and it allows you to access controls like the brightness of your smart bulbs, the volume of your smart speaker, or the intensity of your smart fan without needing to unlock your Pixel device. You won’t be able to control everything from your locked phone, however. For example, you’ll need to unlock it to control your smart home security cameras.

The update is currently rolling out so you might not have access to the features quite yet. But those of you that have a Pixel device should make sure you’re running the latest version of Android 14 and be on the lookout for a Google Home app update.

To access the new feature when it has gone live or check if you have the update yet or not, you just have to lock your phone. Then, wake it up by picking your phone up, tapping on the screen or pressing the power button, and then pressing the Home icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. This will show you your home panel, and quick controls for your favorite smart devices.

Home Panel: Smart homes are getting smarter 

Unlocking your phone to manage your smart home gadgets can make the system feel sluggish – and not quite as smart as the name suggests. But this new Home lock screen menu should make the experience of managing your home a fair bit simpler and quicker.

Controlling home devices with your voice – thanks to the help of a compatible smart speaker – can also help to make your setup feel smarter, but sometimes using a control panel is the best option for what you need. 

On more than one occasion we asked our Google Assistant to turn the volume down to 7 because the speaker is too loud, only for the volume to go up because it was on a lower setting than we realized. Other times we’ve wanted to gradually dim the lights, but having to repeatedly ask Google to make your room darker until it hits the right level can be a bit tedious – or even worse, ask it to make it brighter when you realize you went too far.

If we’d used the Home Panel, we could have avoided this frustration. We could have seen the speaker was already at half volume and dragged the bar down to make it quieter; similarly, we could have adjusted the light levels using the control bar rather than bringing them down incrementally with several commands.

Hopefully, Home Panel will make its way to other devices soon, though it’s not clear when other phones in our best Android phones will get the feature.

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Latest Tech News

YouTube is set to introduce a faster way to double the playback speed of videos as it tests several upcoming features.

All people have to do, according to the platform, is long press anywhere on the video player, and after a few seconds, the content will double in speed. The current method isn’t the most arduous task, although it does require you to go through multiple on-screen menus before you can actually adjust the playback. It’s a nice quality-of-life upgrade that we can see being plenty useful when listening to podcasts on YouTube Music. Plus, you won't have to deal with accidentally skipping ahead on the timeline when you meant to open the Settings.

You can try out the long press update on the mobile app and desktop version right now, so long as you're a YouTube Premium subscriber. To activate it, go to the YouTube Labs website and click the Try It Out button under the 2x speed entry. The mobile app gives you direct access to YouTube Labs in the Settings menu. Do act fast if you’re interested because the 2x speed tool will only be available until August 13. 

Other experimental tools

As for the rest of the update, you have Lock Screen for disabling all “touch input while watching a [full screen] video” to ensure nothing is disrupted in case you ever accidentally tap your screen. YouTube states the feature will be behind a new gear icon in the top left corner of the display. Do note Lock Screen is exclusive to YouTube's mobile app. 

For the third change, YouTube is trying out bigger thumbnail previews on all versions of the platform. The company states the larger size will make it “easier to find the exact moment in the video you want to watch”. 

As with 2x speed, the last two features will be only available for a limited time. You have until August 5 to try out Lock Screen on mobile, while with the bigger thumbnails, you have until August 13 – the same day as the long press change.

A potential fourth?

There is a fourth experiment out there called Stable Volume. However, we don’t know a lot about it as YouTube is seemingly only giving a few users access to it. YouTuber M. Brandon Lee speculated on Twitter it could be a “normalizer and compressor” to even out audio “so you don’t have big jumps in volume between videos”. Lee goes on to say Stable Volume “may be problematic for music”, presumably because force-compressing audio could ruin a song’s quality. Fortunately, it appears people will be able to turn off Stable Volume at any time.

We reached out to Google for more information on when we can expect to see the official launch of the experimental features and if it plans to expand the reach of Stable Volume. This story will be updated at a later time.

It is good to see YouTube testing something positive for once. Recent experiments have seen the platform go for a more aggressive approach in stopping people from using ad-blockers on the website.

But that shouldn’t stop you from wanting to enjoy an ad-free browsing experience. In fact, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best ad blockers for 2023 to learn more. 

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