News

Apple Scary Fast Event: New M3 MacBook Pros And iMac

The latest chip upgrades promise huge power and efficiency increases.

Published

1 year ago

October 31, 2023

Nour Nasir

Apple

Apple unveiled its latest Mac refresh at its “Scary Fast” live-streamed event on Monday, which, incidentally, was the first of its kind to be shot entirely on an iPhone (specifically, the new iPhone 15 Pro Max).

“We’ve got something special for you tonight. No tricks, just treats,” teased Apple chief executive Tim Cook on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, before the event.

The “Scary Fast” moniker turned out (rather unsurprisingly) to be a reference to the company’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, which promise huge increases in power and efficiency while reducing the system’s reliance on memory.

“M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max are the most advanced chips ever built for a personal computer,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technology.

“Apple silicon has completely redefined the Mac experience. Every aspect of its architecture is designed for performance and power efficiency”, he added.

The New 24-Inch iMac

24 inch apple imac

Since its 2021 launch, the iMac hasn’t benefited from a single spec bump. That situation has now been rectified, with Apple boosting the tired M1 processors inside the colorful all-in-one PC for its latest M3 chip, doubling the already speedy device’s performance in the process.

Although the rest of the iMac 24 is largely unchanged, Apple claims to have tweaked the display quality, which now offers 11.3 million pixels and more than a billion colors, as well as adding faster wireless connectivity.

apple m3 chips

“We are excited to give iMac a big boost in performance with the M3 chip,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering.

“The new iMac with M3 is incredible for anyone, especially those who have not yet upgraded from Intel, providing a giant leap in performance and capabilities,” he added.

Online pre-orders for the new iMac are already being taken, with prices starting at $1,299 and deliveries expected to start from November 7.

The Latest MacBook Pros

Apple also announced a new MacBook Pro line-up with an M3 chip upgrade to both the 14 and 16-inch versions of the laptop, offering “phenomenal sustained performance” for machine learning programmers, 3D artists, and video editors.

Also Read: MENA Online Electronics Sales Grew By 7% In 2023

Starting at $1,599, the new MacBook Pros are now available for pre-order. Customers will begin to take delivery from November 7 to coincide with the laptops’ arrival in Apple stores.

News

Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users

The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

Nour Nasir

Google

Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.

Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.

Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.

Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.

Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide

To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.

While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.

Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.