LG Electronics (LG) is introducing two new displays designed specifically to integrate seamlessly with the newest MacBook and MacBook Pro models. The new UltraFine 27-inch 5K display and its 21.5-inch 4K display from LG are ideal for creating an expanded work space in the home or office and the perfect complement for MacBook and MacBook Pro users who desire expansive, high-quality resolution at all times.

Designed and optimized for the new MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3 running macOS 10.12 and later, the stunning 27-inch UltraFine 5K display appeals to a range of creatives, including video and photography professionals. With a breathtaking resolution of 5120 x 2880 and 218 pixels per inch (ppi), the color reproduction capabilities of the UltraFine 5K display allow it to cover 99 percent of the P3 color space. What's more, the monitor's advanced IPS display technology minimizes color shift and color loss from any viewing angle, ensuring that users see the original content as it was meant to be seen.

Today, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX), announced its Thunderbolt 3 portfolio of storage solutions aimed at helping video professionals excel with ultra high-resolution footage. First, the LaCie Bolt3 combines Thunderbolt 3 speed with the latest M.2 PCIe SSDs to create the world's fastest desktop drive. In addition, the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3 and 6big Thunderbolt 3 are ready to handle massive amounts of content thanks to fast transfer speeds, RAID 5/6 security and enterprise-class drives. These storage solutions, design by Neil Poulton, are ideal companions to the all-new MacBook Pro.

For the Bolt3, LaCie harnessed the breakthrough performance potential of Thunderbolt 3 and paired it with two M.2 PCIe SSDs striped into a 2 TB volume. Bolt3 delivers record speeds of up to 2800 MB/s and cuts valuable time off of post-production workflows, such as ingesting RAW footage from RED or Blackmagic cinema cameras or transcoding 4/5/6K footage using Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. What's more, videographers can transfer a terabyte of 4K ProRes 4444 XQ footage from the LaCie Bolt3 to RAID storage-such as the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3-in only 5 minutes and 11 seconds.

Apple today introduced the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever, along with a breakthrough interface that replaces the traditional row of function keys with a brilliant, Retina-quality Multi-Touch display called the Touch Bar. The new MacBook Pro features Apple's brightest and most colorful Retina display yet, the security and convenience of Touch ID, a more responsive keyboard, a larger Force Touch trackpad and an audio system with double the dynamic range. It's also the most powerful MacBook Pro ever, featuring sixth-generation quad-core and dual-core processors, up to 2.3 times the graphics performance over the previous generation, super-fast SSDs and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports.

The Touch Bar places controls right at the user's fingertips and adapts when using the system or apps like Mail, Finder, Calendar, Numbers, GarageBand, Final Cut Pro X and many more, including third-party apps. For example, the Touch Bar can show Tabs and Favorites in Safari, enable easy access to emoji in Messages, provide a simple way to edit images or scrub through videos in Photos and so much more.

Belkin, the market leader in mobile accessories, today announced the Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD. The Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD plugs into devices with a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port. With 40 Gbps data transfer rates, dual 4K video support and 85 Watts of power delivery, the Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD is a complete single-cable docking solution providing connectivity and power to your notebook.

"Belkin has a long-standing history of designing complementary peripherals and accessories for the industry's most innovative hardware products, such as the all-new MacBook Pro," said Steve Malony, vice president and general manager, Belkin. "The new Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD and its exceptional single-cable docking solution for notebooks was developed with a deep understanding of consumers' needs for ideal connectivity solutions."

AMD today unveiled a new family of power-efficient graphics processors, Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics. Available first in the all-new 15-inch MacBook Pro, select Radeon Pro 400 Series graphics deliver extraordinary performance and efficiency gains over the prior generation to fuel modern creative efforts from anywhere inspiration strikes.

Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics are designed specifically for today's makers -- the artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, visualizers and engineers that shape the modern content creation era. Harnessing AMD's acclaimed Polaris architecture, Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics are built on the industry's most advanced process technology for graphics processors in production today, 14 nm FinFET, resulting in incredibly small transistors.

To enable the thinnest graphics processor possible, AMD also employs a complex process known as 'die thinning' to reduce the thickness of each wafer of silicon used in the processor from 780 microns to just 380 microns, or slightly less than the thickness of four pieces of paper. Operating in a power envelope under 35W, the Radeon Pro 450, 455, and 460 Series graphics processors deliver spectacular energy efficiency and cool, quiet operation to speed through the most demanding tasks in popular creative applications.

NVIDIA could be close to scoring design wins with Apple, for its MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro families. This came to light in a job posting at NVIDIA, which calls for applicants to "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products." Although Apple has offered options of both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs on its Mac products in the past, the company hasn't offered NVIDIA GPUs for several generations now, with AMD Radeon being the only discrete GPU choice for MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro products, with the only other choices being integrated GPUs by Intel.

Apple is preparing its first major design overhaul for the MacBook Pro in four years. The next-generation premium notebook from Apple, reportedly features a thinner form, a touchscreen strip in place of function keys, acting as a second display; and an upscaling of the USB type-C based universal connector concept introduced with the new MacBook.

Apple's Touch ID feature could be ported to the Mac ecosystem with the new MacBook Pro, which could feature a fingerprint reader. Under the hood, the new MacBook Pro could be the launchpad for the company's next MacOS "Sierra" software, which brings Siri to the Mac platform, and deeper iCloud integration. Its processor supplier is unclear at this point, but its graphics processing could be care of an AMD "Polaris" GPU.

OWC Digital, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today announced the all-new Aura SSD for Mid 2013 and Later Mac laptops, the most anticipated SSD upgrade release in OWC's history. In an era of ever-expanding storage needs, this long-awaited upgrade allows users, for the first time ever, to expand the stock storage that came with their Mac laptops and reuse their original factory drive to transfer data and as a high-performance external storage solution.

Available in 480GB and 1TB capacities, Aura SSD upgrade kits are the first and only PCIe-based flash storage upgrades available for MacBook Pro with Retina display (Late 2013 and newer) and MacBook Air (Mid 2013 and newer) models.

Apple today updated the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display with the new Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage, longer battery life and faster discrete graphics, delivering even more performance and capabilities to the MacBook Pro line. Apple also today introduced a new $1,999 configuration of the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display featuring a breathtaking 14.7 million pixel display, quad-core processors and AMD graphics, and lowered the price of the top-end iMac with Retina 5K display to $2,299.

"The response to the new MacBook and updated 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has been amazing, and today we are thrilled to bring the new Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage and longer battery life to the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Customers love the groundbreaking iMac with Retina 5K display, and now with a new lower starting price, even more people can experience the best desktop we've ever made."

Sonnet today announced the Echo Express SE I, the latest addition to the award-winning Echo Express line of Thunderbolt 2-to-PCIe expansion systems. Like the other members of the Echo Express family, the SE I enables the use of a wide variety of high-performance PCI Express (PCIe) cards - originally designed for use in desktop computers - with any Mac or Windows computer with a Thunderbolt port. The new single-slot model supports nearly every Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe card on the market, including double-width cards (PCIe card plus daughter card).

The Echo Express SE I features Thunderbolt 2 technology, which provides ample bandwidth for many of the most demanding, highest performance PCIe cards, and incorporates support for the DisplayPort 1.2 protocol, which enables video streaming to a 4K video monitor. The new expansion chassis is ideally suited for use with a wide variety of pro video capture, audio interface, SAS or SATA HBA, 16Gb or 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and RAID controller PCIe cards, allowing them to connect with Thunderbolt-enabled iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro computers, as well as Mac Pro computers that lack PCIe expansion slots. Plus, the Echo Express SE I's dual Thunderbolt 2 ports not only support full-bandwidth connectivity with 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2-equipped host computers, but provide full backward compatibility with 10Gbps Thunderbolt-equipped computers and devices, and support daisy-chaining of other Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt devices.

Apple today updated the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display with the all-new Force Touch trackpad, fifth generation Intel Core processors and Intel Iris Graphics 6100, two times faster flash and longer battery life, bringing even more performance and capabilities to our pro customers.* Apple also today updated the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air with fifth generation Intel Core processors, Intel HD Graphics 6000, and Thunderbolt 2, and added up to two times faster flash to the 13-inch MacBook Air, making the perfect everyday notebooks even better.

"Today the popular 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, 11-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Air all received significant upgrades," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The 13-inch MacBook Pro has been updated with the latest processors, more powerful graphics, faster flash, longer battery life and the all-new Force Touch trackpad. We're also bringing the latest processors and graphics, and faster Thunderbolt 2 to the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air, as well as up to two times faster flash to the 13-inch MacBook Air."

Apple today updated MacBook Pro with Retina display with faster processors, double the memory in both entry-level configurations, and a new, lower starting price for the top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook. MacBook Pro with Retina display features a stunning high-resolution display, an amazing design just 0.71-inches thin, the latest processors and powerful graphics, and up to nine hours of battery life, delivering unbelievable performance in an incredibly portable design.* Apple today also lowered the starting price of the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, a very popular system with Windows switchers, by $100 to $1,099.

"People love their MacBook Pro because of the thin and light, aluminum unibody design, beautiful Retina display, all day battery life and deep integration with OS X," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The MacBook Pro with Retina display gets even better with faster processors, more memory, more affordable configurations and a free upgrade to OS X Yosemite this fall."

Today, OWC expanded its award-winning line of high-performance SSDs in capacities ranging from 120GB to 480GB for the MacBook Air 2010-2012 and the MacBook Pro with Retina display 2012-2013. The new upgrade options deliver even greater affordability and are backed by the support and expertise OWC is known for around the world.

Aura and Aura Pro SSD: The Easy Drive Upgrade for Air and Retina
Aura and Aura Pro SSD (Flash) drive upgrades provide an easy and economical path versus buying a new laptop to achieve greater performance and/or internal drive capacity. Repurpose the original factory drive with a sleek, award-winning Envoy/Envoy Pro external enclosure included with complete DIY Kits.

Acer is working on a variant of its 13.3-inch Aspire S7 Ultrabook with a higher resolution display. It will offer WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution, which works out to a pixel density of 221 ppi, which is not too far away from the 227 ppi that Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display offers. Depending on its other innards, the WQHD Aspire S7 will come in two variants - a base model priced at US $1,499, driven by Intel Core i5-4200U, and a top model priced at $1,799, with a faster Core i7-4500U chip. Both feature 8 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, and 256 GB of SSD storage, each. The two will begin to show up on leading US retailers in the coming week.

Apple today updated MacBook Pro with Retina display with fourth generation Intel Core processors, the latest graphics, longer battery life, faster flash storage and next generation Wi-Fi. Starting at a new lower price of $1,299 (US), the updated MacBook Pro with Retina display features a stunning high-resolution display, an amazing thin and light design, and the latest technology to power through the most demanding projects. Apple today also announced that both iWork and iLife are now free with the purchase of every new Mac.

"We've made the world's best pro notebook even better by adding more performance and even longer battery life," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "MacBook Pro with Retina display continues to redefine the pro notebook."

Belkin, a trusted leader of technology solutions for office, classroom, IT infrastructure and mobile environments, today announced that its USB 3.0 Dual Video Docking Stand for Ultrabooks is now compatible with MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Mac OS 10.8.5 and above. Users can now get greater flexibility and more computing options through the MacBook's USB 3.0 port. The Dual Video Docking Stand for Ultrabooks and MacBooks makes mobile computing easier and more productive for business users. The stand, which leverages DisplayLink technology, allows users to turn an Ultrabook or MacBook into a full-function desktop with a single plug-and-display USB 3.0 cable.

The new docking stand is designed to provide versatility to accommodate mixed platforms and multiple users, including visiting professionals, contractors and 'hot desk' environments. Because it allows easy access to multiple peripherals, users can configure their workstations based on their preferences. Belkin's docking stand provides a SuperSpeed connection to two high-resolution monitors and peripherals via a single USB 3.0 cable. The sturdy, ergonomic stand holds the laptop in an organized space, raising the screen to an equal level with desktop displays.

While Apple's MacBook Air got its direly needed hardware upgrade this June, it left its MacBook Pro lineup untouched. The company plans to hold a press event in September, when it plans to unveil its next MacBook Pro lineup. These could include MacBook Pro driven by Core "Haswell" GT3e processors, which feature large integrated graphics cores, featuring 40 execution units, allowing it to do away with discrete GPUs, and improve battery life. A new rumor doing rounds in the tech circles states that Apple could make Intel build-to-order a new class of Haswell GT3e processors with even faster graphics cores than Iris 5200, the graphics core inside today's Core i7-4950HQ.

Apple's MacBook Air refresh for 2013 saw it integrating Intel's 4th generation Core "Haswell" CPUs in an effort to improve performance and battery life. It was only a matter of time before the CPU architecture caught up with the rest of Apple's lineup. A validation of a 15-inch MacBook Pro on Geekbench database reveals that Apple is already testing the notebook with the very latest Intel chips.

With Core "Haswell," Intel introduced a new grade of silicon codenamed "Haswell-GT3," which combines four CPU cores with up to 6 MB L3 cache, and a large integrated graphics core that features 40 execution units, as opposed to 20 found on regular "Haswell-GT2" and "Haswell-GT1" grades. The added pixel-crunching muscle makes the chip ready to singlehandedly take on Apple's Retina displays, without the need for discrete GPUs, such as the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M that handled the first Retina-equipped MacBook Pro.

Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today introduced the OWC Mercury Helios+E2 Thunderbolt SSD Solution. The bootable 'all-in-one' storage performance and expansion solution offers owners of Thunderbolt technology enabled Macs and PCs sustained read/write data throughput up to 617MB/s from up to 960GB of OWC Mercury SSD capacity; two Thunderbolt interfaces for connecting multiple Thunderbolt devices; and two eSATA 6Gb/s expansion ports for connecting up to an additional 32TB or more of external storage/backup capacity.

Apple is making the MacBook Pro with Retina display faster and more affordable with updated processors and lower starting prices. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now starts at $1,499 for 128 GB of flash, and $1,699 for a new 2.6 GHz processor and 256 GB of flash. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display now features a faster 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, and the top-of-the-line 15-inch notebook comes with a new 2.7 GHz quad-core processor and 16 GB of memory. Apple today also announced that the 13-inch MacBook Air with 256 GB of flash has a new lower price of $1,399.

Kanex, a leader of innovative Apple and iOS connectivity solutions for homes and businesses worldwide, today announced DualRole, a USB 3 Hub and Gigabit Adapter all in one solution. The hub portion uses the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard for fast transfer speeds between devices and your computer. It has three extra USB 3 ports which enable users to connect more USB 3 devices such as hard drives, digital cameras, MP3 players and more. The Gigabit Ethernet adapter adds a Gigabit port to your MacBook Air, MacBook Pro with Retina display or any other USB 3 enabled computer and provides a fast and secure wired connection without hassle of Wi-Fi setup.

"We designed DualRole with MacBook travelers in mind," said Kelvin Yan, president of Kanex. "We know when on the road sometimes you need an Ethernet connection for Internet or network access or even more USB ports, which is why we combined both a hub and adapter into one small compact solution."

Matrox today announced the worldwide availability of Matrox MXO2 Dock, an accessory that allows users of Matrox MXO2 I/O devices and MacBook Pro or MacBook Air to easily create an ideal ergonomic workspace for video editing and content creation. From a single Thunderbolt cable, users can connect an MXO2 I/O device plus add multiple peripherals including a large HDMI display, a full-size keyboard, and a mouse. A gigabit Ethernet port provides connectivity to a wired network, enabling data transfers 18 times faster than Wi-Fi. One SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports are also provided.

"Many Matrox MXO2 users enjoy the portability of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air for field work, but would prefer a more comfortable work environment when they are spending the day in the edit suite," said Wayne Andrews, product manager at Matrox. "The new Matrox MXO2 Dock increases productivity by adding screen real estate and brings much-needed expandability for USB 3.0 storage, control surfaces, optical drives, and other peripherals."

In the coming years, Apple could end its partnership with Intel for supply of CPUs, according to a Bloomberg report, citing Gartner research. The company plans to make a transition from x86 to ARM for its Mac product line, which includes MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac Mini. Such a transition would be similar to the one Apple took from PowerPC to x86 machine architecture, across 2005-06. According to the report, Apple's engineers are confident of designing an ARM-based chip of their own that's powerful enough for mainstream personal computing on Mac products. Apple's engineers foresee a convergence of technologies between mobile devices (such as the iPhone and iPad), and Macs. Currently, Apple designs its own processors for iOS devices, which are ARM-based.

Other World Computing (OWC) www.macsales.com, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today the OWC Mercury Aura Pro is the industry's first high-performance Solid State Drive upgrade for the new 2012 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display (rMBP) computers introduced by Apple last week.

Available in 480 GB capacity for immediate ordering and with additional capacities to be announced in November, the 6G (6 Gb/s) SandForce Driven Mercury Aura Pro offers rMBP owners up to nearly 3x more storage and/or backup capacity than the factory 128 GB flash module.

Apple's new iMac and MacBook Pro owe their sleek, slim design to the lack of optical drives, a feature consumers found very much wanting, which can still be overcome using external USB optical drives. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Apple senior VP of global marketing, Phil Schiller stressed the importance of letting go of optical drives. "These old technologies are holding us back. They're anchors on where we want to go," he said. "We find the things that have outlived their useful purpose. Our competitors are afraid to remove them. We try to find better solutions - our customers have given us a lot of trust. In general, it's a good idea to remove these rotating medias from our computers and other devices. They have inherent issues - they're mechanical and sometimes break, they use power and are large. We can create products that are smaller, lighter and consume less power."

On how newer media like Blu-ray don't quite make optical drives an obsolete component, given that it's fast taking over as the mainstream physical home video medium, Schiller said that customers have stopped asking Apple for Blu-ray drives, and that it comes with its own set of issues that make it unfit for desktops and notebooks. "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks." Apple, with its iTunes service is one the leading digital content distribution businesses, including movie rentals and purchases.