If I happened to be one of Apple’s newly-introduced M5 MacBook Pro systems, I would feel a bit as if the equally new MacBook Neo had just strutted into the party like the star of the song.

Yes, the incredibly disruptive Neo is a strong option for almost anyone who needs an affordable general purpose computer. But let’s not forget what Apple’s higher-end range brings to the (party) table with the power and performance high-end users need for the most demanding tasks. 

What’s the data?

In essence, the power they contain means you can use a MacBook Pro to build 3D models almost as easily as you use a Neo to make a spreadsheet. Geekbench proves my point. (I’ve included the M1 chip as a comparison.) Look at these Geekbench scores and you’ll see what I mean:

M1 Mac: 2,386 single-core; 8,571 multi-core.

MacBook Neo: 3,467 single-core; 8,668 multi-core.

M5 Mac: 4,227 single-core; 17,802 multi-core.

M5 Pro Mac: 4,280 single-core; 28,030 multi-core.

M5 Max Mac: 4,268 single-core; 29,159 multi-core.

The data shows, that for the toughest multi-core tasks, Apple has more than tripled computational performance in just five years. It is also relevant to note Apple’s statement that the M5 Pro/Mac systems deliver over six times the peak AI compute we got from the original M1 systems.

That’s faster progress than Moore’s Law, which says computational performance should double every 18-24 months, and that trajectory shows how quickly Apple’s Macs have become highly competitive at the highest reaches of the PC industry. Gone are the thermal throttling limitations that plagued Intel Macs during high-end tasks, in comes the capacity to use Apple’s computers when sustained performance is required.

Macs were always good, which is why millions made use of them, But the introduction of Apple Silicon improved them with a degree of hardware excellence they had lacked.

This is formula one

Together, this meant that the performance of an entry-level MacBook Air was better than an Intel-based MacBook Pro, while — like the F1-series vehicles currently turning Apple executives eyes — MacBook Pro performance, including in the new M5 Pro/Max systems, sped ahead on the autobahn. 

The truth is that performance on both pro and the entry-level Macs has accelerated to the point that it has created a big gap at the low end, which MacBook Neo and its iPhone chip can easily fill. That means Apple’s traditional two-part Pro/Consumer product matrix has been transformed into Good, Better, and Best options. 

Furthermore, Apple’s silicon development seems to be accelerating so swiftly it is creating space for an all-new ‘Ultra’ tier for the most demanding users, recent reports claim. 

As a result, the number of people Apple can offer a Mac to is growing as rapidly as the product matrix. Future Ultra Macs will take that reach all the way up to the very, very top tiers currently served by furiously expensive PC workstations, while the Neo range (which I’m willing to bet gets a backlit keyboard and more memory next year) extends its hand all the way to students and general purpose computer users.

General purpose doesn’t mean average

Don’t neglect that — despite being an entry-level, $599 system — the MacBook Neo is faster for general purpose (single-core) tasks than the M3 Macs Apple introduced in October 2023. Here are the Geekbench numbers:

MacBook Neo: 3,467 single-core, 8,668 multi-core.

M3 Mac: 3,135 single-core, 12,042 multi-core.

The M3 retains the edge for complex tasks, of course, and it will always be true that if your work involves anything more than casual video or image editing, you should aim for a more advanced Mac than a Neo.

The thing is by pointing out just how powerful the iPhone chip inside a MacBook Neo has become in Mac performance terms, I’m also attempting to illustrate the phenomenal advances Apple has made at the high-end of its range. If you want to surf the web and write emails you’ll get a Neo; if you need to research and develop AI models, or run any kind of workloads that demand maximum GPU compute and high unified memory bandwidth, the M5 Max MacBook Pro can deliver.

Apple is becoming cheap

Another slice of context: 

A TrendForce report earlier this week tells us to expect steep (40%) price increases for PC notebooks as manufacturers grapple with dramatic cost spikes for memory and CPUs. This is a much bigger problem for Windows OEMs than for Apple, in part because Apple controls manufacturing of its own processors. That makes them cheaper to obtain, and while the company is putting more memory in some Macs, it can still deliver these high performance experiences with less RAM than an equivalent PC would require.

Apple has always worked to get more from less memory. But as the AI evolution causes memory prices to spike, that lean approach leaves the Mac maker more resistant to component-driven price increases than competitors. 

Never been a better time to offer up Mac

In short, Macs no longer seem so expensive, and for IT purchasers it suggests that there has never been a better time to introduce Macs to your employee tech preference schemes. And, of course, with Apple Silicon, the future should look even better tomorrow.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Also, now on Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Allison Steffens Herrera The company removed 159 million scam ads last year and took down 10.9 million accounts linked to criminal networks. Now it wants to catch scammers before they get to you. Meta has announced a fresh wave of anti-scam tools across its platforms, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook, as it steps up both on-platform detection and cooperation […] This story continues at The Next Web

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Anthropic, in collaboration with Mozilla, identified 22 security flaws in the Firefox browser during a two-week test, with 14 of the vulnerabilities classified as serious.

The discoveries were made using the AI model Claude Opus 4.6. It began by analyzing the Firefox JavaScript engine and then moved on to other parts of the code base. In total, the model examined nearly 6,000 C files and generated 112 error reports.

Most of the vulnerabilities had already been fixed in Firefox 148, which was released in February. However, some of the fixes are not expected until the next version of the browser is released.

The test also showed that Claude is significantly better at finding security flaws than at writing code to exploit them. Despite spending around $4,000 in API credits, the team only managed to exploit two of the bugs.

Source:: Computer World

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By Paulo Vargas Rokid just gave its smart glasses a free update that adds Google Gemini and keeps ChatGPT, letting you switch between four AI models on one device.
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By Deepti Pathak Apple’s MacBook lineup now includes devices designed for both premium users and budget buyers. The new…
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By Ana Maria Constantin The acquisition of Promptfoo, which counts more than 125,000 developers and 30-plus Fortune 500 companies among its users, is OpenAI’s most direct move yet into AI application security. Its technology will go into Frontier, the company’s enterprise agent platform launched just a month ago. When Ian Webster was leading the LLM engineering team at Discord, […] This story continues at The Next Web

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The human and environmental costs of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East are bad enough on their own, but there are other impacts likely to be felt. Along with most financial markets, Apple’s shareholders are no doubt spooked by the conflict, which threatens to metastasize to the detriment of the region and the world.

Yes, Apple in Cupertino, CA is a long, long away from that region, so why would investors be concerned? Because of a host of potential problems — from supply chain disruptions to manufacturing worries and rising energy costs — are now on the horizon.

Immediate regional impacts

Apple has had to close offices and retail stores in several places, including the UAE due to security concerns. Stores in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and AI Ain have all seen staff forced to work from home. The attacks across the region also mean Apple products are not being sold to tourists and affluent customers, as no one is shopping.

A second local impact that hasn’t been discussed is the extent to which the company’s Israel-based R&D operations have been affected. It’s R&D center in Herzliya is one of its biggest such hubs, and it has similar setups in Haifa and Jerusalem. While ongoing censorship means we don’t know the extent to which those locations have been affected by the conflict, it’s unlikely they are operating as usual. More broadly speaking, revenue losses, disruptions to retail and customer care services, the potential loss of R&D data, closed laboratories, and impacts on processor design — all these can create larger, pan-regional problems.

On a globally-connected planet, changes in one place can spill over into others.

Immediate supply chain effects

One illustration of this involves logistics and transportation. Apple has been making investments in a product transportation hub in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

Saudi Minister for Transport and Logistics, Saleh Al-Jasser, last year said: “Apple will set up a regional distribution center in the zone as part of its plans to establish an assembly line, along with maintenance services and light manufacturing going forward.”

That investment underlines the important place the region plays in the company’s supply chain. But, just as war is already disrupting air transport in the region, it will disrupt global product logistics, too. Apple’s investment in Riyadh suggests the region may be important to the company’s air logistics as it exports iPhones from India and China. And while I imagine Apple’s operations team has already implemented a backup plan, the conflict could create delays in iPhone distribution and certainly will contribute to higher logistics costs and management challenges.

It seems probable the conflict will also lead to higher insurance premiums for cargo, putting further pressure on margins across the Apple supply chain. Given the insurance industry continues to struggle with problems since the COVID-19 epidemic, there’s no guarantee those insurance premium price increases will fall much after the current crisis.

Manufacturing challenges

Think of it this way: Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. It is deeply woven into everything you do — how you travel, packaging, the food you eat, and the gas you use to fill your car. Shipping and air transport rely on oil, and chip manufacturing is particularly vulnerable to an oil-price-based shock as it seeks the energy to build some components, particularly processors. On the basis of transit costs alone, oil price fluctuations hurt.

That pressure will show up somewhere, which means some of the company’s downstream component suppliers may have to renege on contracts, either because they can’t source components or can’t do so profitably. Apple won’t be the only company to feel this pain – it’s likely to create even more pressure on the already stretched memory market. 

All these effects create a constellation of consumer misery, but this goes beyond the price of tech.

Inflation and demand

As energy prices rise, consumers will see the cost of the food in their stores and the gas in their tank increase. When it comes to food supply, the timing of the conflict is serious because so much of the nitrogen used in fertilizers by farmers worldwide ordinarily ships through the region. This is peak planting season in the Northern hemisphere, which means shortages of fertilizer at a critical time for agriculture. Of course, you need to plant food before you eat it, and any shortage in fertilizer means some of the effects of the current conflict won’t become visible for months as food yields shrink and food prices rise. 

What does this have to do with Apple? Simple. As consumers find their pocketbooks squeezed by price increases for the basics they need, consumer confidence will erode. That means less demand for tech products, slower upgrade cycles, and sluggish sales. It could also generate added pressure on consumer credit; defaults might increase making credit harder to secure, which in itself may erode interest in the latest shiny Apple products.

(Though this could also mean the MacBook Neo couldn’t have been better timed for a price-constrained consumer market.)

Component supply

That’s assuming there’s any available stock in the shops to purchase in the first place.

The Middle East is a major supplier of many of the components and materials used by the global tech industry. These include helium, nitrogen, argon and speciality process gases, such as silane, which are used in advanced electronics fabrication.  

But perhaps one of the most important materials used across Apple products that may be affected by the war is aluminum; smelting of it is concentrated in the Gulf, which accounts for 9% of global aluminum production. ING reports that: “In a severe disruption scenario, aluminum prices could briefly move above $4,000/t, although demand destruction would likely limit further upside.” 

Apple uses lots of aluminum in its products, though we can hope that the impact of any shortage on Cupertino might be limited by the company’s industry-leading use of recycled aluminum in its products. (The MacBook Neo uses 90% recycled aluminum, Apple says.)

Connect the dots

Beyond the preventable, tragic and ongoing loss of lives, I’m sure there are additional consequences Apple and the wider tech industry might be vulnerable to as a result of this conflict, including an inevitable increase in state-sponsored cybercrime.

Apple is not alone in feeling any of these side effects, nor is it likely to be the most exposed to impact. But just as a stone thrown into the center of a pond creates ripples that spread across the whole body of water, the global economic damage of the conflict will only be truly visible months after all parties involved in it find some way to resolve their differences. 

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Source:: Computer World

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Microsoft has added agentic AI capabilities to Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve its usefulness for office workers — including its own version of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork.

Microsoft’s AI assistant has, so far, failed to attract significant business demand since launching more than two years ago, at least compared to its other products. Only 3% of the Microsoft 365 customer base is subscribed to the paid version of the AI agent, Microsoft said last month, with a total of 15 million paid licenses.

The new features announced Monday are aimed at igniting adoption. Among them is the introduction of Copilot Cowork; it’s built on Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, the AI agent tool that caused SaaS vendor shares to tank earlier this year due to its ability to complete tasks autonomously.

Copilot Cowork “brings together long-running parallel task completion inside of Microsoft 365 Copilot,” Charles Lamanna, president for business apps and agents at Microsoft, said in pre-recorded statement. 

srcset=”https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 1706w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=300%2C190&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=768%2C485&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=1024%2C647&quality=50&strip=all 1024w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=1536%2C971&quality=50&strip=all 1536w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=1103%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 1103w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=266%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 266w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=133%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 133w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=760%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 760w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=570%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 570w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Copilot-Cowork.jpg?resize=396%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 396w” width=”1024″ height=”647″ sizes=”auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px”>Microsoft says its Copilot Cowork offers users “a new way of getting work done.”
Microsoft

The introduction of Copilot Cowork expands Microsoft 365 Copilot’s functionality beyond just chat, he said, with the agent able to complete work in the background so workers can focus on other tasks. “This allows you to amplify your work and be more productive while you multitask and work across all kinds of different Microsoft 365 applications,” said Lamanna.

Copilot Cowork “taps into the growing hype around Anthropic’s Claude Cowork concept,” said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, and “significantly extends it by embedding the capability across Microsoft 365 applications rather than keeping it as a desktop-centric tool.” 

There are, however, some limitations compared to Anthropic’s tool. “Unlike Claude Cowork, [Copilot Cowork] does not support local computer use, cannot interact directly with local files or applications, and lacks native integrations with third-party tools and services,” Gartner analysts said in a research note. “These omissions constrain Cowork’s autonomy and limit its ability to operate end-to-end workloads outside Microsoft 365.”

There are also risks associated with deploying an agentic tool such as Copilot Cowork in a business setting, said Gownder: “Anthropic transparently suggests that sensitive information shouldn’t be used with Claude Cowork at this time,” he said. “In theory, adding [Copilot Cowork] to Microsoft 365 makes it cloud-enabled and scalable with greater data access…, if it works, which is not a given based on Copilot’s trajectory so far.”

There are also questions about whether the tool can live up to its promise of usefulness to business users. 

“Enterprise leaders tell me that Copilot, though backed by OpenAI’s models, consistently underperforms ChatGPT and ChatGPT Enterprise as part of the Copilot environment,” said Gownder. “Microsoft’s years of overpromising on Copilot mean that there exists a trust gap, so Copilot + Cowork will have a lot of work to do proving its utility.”

Copilot Cowork is available as a “research preview” via Microsoft’s early access Frontier Program. The company didn’t release pricing details.

Microsoft collaborated with Anthropic on the development of Copilot Cowork, another sign of divergence from its partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft also added Claude as an optional AI model to use in the core Copilot chat interface.

In addition, there are new “agentic experiences” for Microsoft 365 Copilot. These allow Microsoft 365 Copilot to act on documents as directed by the user — creating a pivot table, for instance, or slides for a presentation. It’s also possible to direct  actions using the Copilot chat interface, such as asking Copilot to draft an email and then send it without switching tools. 

“We want to really move from a simple prompt and response to Copilot actually doing the work for you,” said Zoe Hawtof, senior technical advisor for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The agent capabilities are available now in Word, Excel and Copilot Chat, and will roll out to Outlook and PowerPoint soon, Microsoft said.

Microsoft also revealed the launch date for Agent 365, the agent management and governance platform announced at Ignite last year. This will be generally available on May 1, priced at $15 per user each month. 

Microsoft said it has already deployed Agent 365 internally, where it’s used to manage 500,000 agents for purposes such as research, sales, and HR self-service. These agents have generated 65,000 responses a day for the past four weeks, Microsoft said.

Microsoft also unveiled its long-rumored E7 payment tier. Dubbed the “Frontier Suite,” E7 bundles all the features of Microsoft 365 E5 — including Entra Suite, Defender, Intune and Purview — with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 in a single SKU.

Microsoft E7 “Frontier Suite” bundles all the features of Microsoft 365 E5 with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 in a single SKU.
Microsoft

At $99 per user per month, E7 will sit above E5 as the most expensive SKU available to business customers when it launches May 1. Microsoft said it should save customers money compared to purchasing each product individually. (Although recent reports suggested E7 would include consumption-based pricing, Microsoft said that is not the case.)

Businesses are still largely just getting started on rolling out AI agents, said Jack Gold principal analyst at J. Gold Associates 

“Mass agent deployment is really in a go-slow mode right now, as enterprises remain cautious — as they do with many new technologies,” Gold said. “But there is certainly much experimentation going on, often in ‘shadow AI” modes.’”

Governance and security are “critical factors” that have a bearing on which AI agents to roll out and how to deploy them, said Gold. “We’re in an early stage of agents and so many enterprises are still deciding what standards to put in place and how IT will manage the potentially vast deployments.” 

For Microsoft customers, one of the challenges will simply be navigating the various agent products available. These can often overlap in terms of functionality.

“Microsoft’s ecosystem is gaining all sorts of agents and solutions, and understanding when to use one over the other is already confusing,” said Gownder.

Other AI agent tools with similar capabilities include Researcher, launched last year, and Copilot Tasks, announced just a few weeks ago, he said. Meanwhile “users are creating Copilot Agents that are proliferating into agentic sprawl, but that apparently haven’t solved user problems…, so they’re bringing in Cowork.

“It’s a complicated environment,” said Gownder.

Source:: Computer World

By Moinak Pal Researchers have developed a smart pillow that streams music and podcasts, offering users a relaxing alternative to doomscrolling on smartphones before bedtime.
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