|
Apple has scheduled a product launch event, dubbed an "Apple Experience", for March 4 at 9AM ET. The company is reportedly holding this event in NYC, London and Shanghai.
Everyone loves shiny new products, so what can we expect to see at Apple's first launch event of 2026? We don't know anything for certain, but we have plenty of educated guesses that have been sourced from industry reports and speculation from analysts.
Budget-Friendly MacBook
There have been rumors swirling that Apple is preparing to launch a cheaper alternative to the MacBook Air. Bloomberg reported on this all the way back in November. Industry rumors indicate that Apple will be stuffing this laptop with an iPhone processor, the A18 Pro, to keep the price down.
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) February 16, 2026
It's also been suggested that this laptop will only include 8GB of RAM, which kind of
|
|
 Back at WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that it was planning to allow CarPlay users to watch video via AirPlay in their vehicles while they are not driving, and the first beta of iOS 26.4 suggests the feature may be nearing availability.
|
|
 With iOS 26.4, CarPlay users will be able to use third-party chatbots with ?CarPlay?. AI services like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT will be accessible through the ?CarPlay? system for the first time.
|
|
 New trade-in data indicates that Apple's iPhone 17 Pro Max has rapidly become the single most traded-in smartphone.
|
|
 There is a long list of new features in the iOS 26.4 beta, many of which we highlighted yesterday, but we've since discovered several other smaller changes that Apple made in the software.
|
|
 Apple on Monday invited selected journalists and content creators to a "special Apple Experience" on Wednesday, March 4 in New York, London, and Shanghai.
|
|
 In iOS 26.4, Apple added an Average Bedtime metric to the Sleep section of the Health app, letting users better monitor how bedtime impacts sleep quality.
|
|
Finding yourself far from a wall socket when your phone hits five percent is positively nervewracking. If you stash a portable battery in your bag, you can avoid that feeling altogether. But there are thousands of power banks out there and it can be tough to pick the right one for what you need. I've spent a few years testing dozens of batteries and found the best power banks for different scenarios. Whether you need a quick reup for your phone or a huge brick to keep your laptop alive, you'll find something fitting here.
Best power banks for 2026
|
|
It's been 17 years and counting since Nemertes first wrote about the logic of integrating event response in the enterprise: bringing together the security operations center (SOC) and network operations center (NOC) at the organizational, operational, and technological levels. Needless to say, this has not happened at most organizations, although there has been a promising trend toward convergence in the monitoring and data management side of things. It's worth revisiting the issue.
Why converge?
The arguments for convergence remain pretty compelling:
Both the NOC and SOC are focused on keeping an eye on the systems and services comprising the IT environment; spotting and understanding anomalies; and spotting and responding to events and incidents that could affect or are affecting services to the business.
Both are focused on minimizing the effects of events and incidents on the business.
The streams of data they watch overlap hugely.
They often use the same systems (e.g. Splunk) in managing and exploring that data.
Both are focused on root-cause analysis based on those data streams.
Both adopt a tiered response approach, with first-line responders for "business as usual" operations and occurrences, and anywhere from one to three tiers of escalation to more senior engineers, architects, and analysts.
Most crucially: When something unusual happens in or to the environment (that router is acting funny), it can be very hard to know up front whether it is fundamentally a network issue (that router is acting funny - it has been misconfigured) or a security issue (that router is acting funny - it has been compromised) or both (that router is acting funny - it has been misconfigured and is now a serious vulnerability). Having fully separate NOC and SOC can mean duplicative work as both teams pick something up and examine it. It can mean ping-ponging inciden
|
|
