Daily Tech News 26 June 2026

• As we saw yesterday, Micron has locked in contracts delivering the company 90% margins. (The Register)
  
  For the next five years.
  
  
  
• Apple has raised prices on everything except its phones by between 20% and 30%. (Notebook Check)
  
  Apple's memory prices were starting to look almost reasonable given the chaos going on in the PC market.
  
  No longer.
  
  Also, all the high-end models like the 512GB Mac Studio are simply gone.
  
  The MacBook Neo now starts at $699 rather than $599.
  

• The most expensive Mac now costs $14,399 - and it only has 96GB of RAM. (WCCFTech)
  
  I bought 96GB of RAM six months ago for $300. Yes, it was older, slower DDR4, but that was already months into the Rampocalypse and Apple now charges that much for 12GB.
  
  
  
• Apple will not be releasing M6 Pro or Max versions. (WCCFTech)
  
  Those will wait for the M7 range.
  
  Meanwhile we're still waiting for the M5 Ultra - there was no M4 Ultra - but not making any plans to buy it given the pricing of the M3 Ultra models I just mentioned.
  
  
  
• The Chuwi UniBook, featuring Intel's low-end Wildcat Lake processor, is now available in the US for $449. (Liliputing)
  
  It has a lower resolution screen than the MacBook Neo, but has ten I/O ports including wired Ethernet compared with just three on the Neo. Weight is almost identical as well.
  
  And it's now significantly cheaper rather than just barely.
  
  
  
• Re-reviewing AMD's Ryzen 5800X3D. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's back and it's exactly the same as it was before but $100 cheaper.
  
  If you mostly want to play games and you have a good graphics card and already have a bunch of DDR4 memory, it might make sense. But at $350 the eight core 5800X3D costs more than the sixteen core 5900XT, and unless you only play games it might not be the best choice.
  
  I think I might go for the 5900XT. I checked the Passmark subscores and it actually performs well except on a couple of specific tests where it is limited by the DDR4 bandwidth. For the stuff I tend to do it will be twice as fast as the 5800X3D.
  
  
  
• If you're looking for a cheap DDR5 CPU, AMD's 9600X and 7600X are discounted right now. (WCCFTech)
  
  To $180 and $150 respectively.
  
  
  
• Xbox prices are going up again, and the 2TB model is going away. (WCCFTech)
  
  I have an Xbox Series X. In my closet. In the original packaging. Which it has never left.
  
  
  
• On the plus side, Microsoft has extended free Windows 10 updates to October 2027. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So there's that.
  
  
  
• Anthropic says that Chinese competitor Alibaba must be published punished for infringing on their copyright on Claude. (Ars Technica)
  
  Stop laughing, this is serious.
  
  
  
• IBM has demonstrated its first chip made on a 0.7nm process. (IBM)
  
  This isn't expected to reach production for another five years, but in the photos you can see the true scale of the advance because you can count the individual silicon atoms. They use a transmission electron microscope to scan the chip, and it can actually resolve that level of detail.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is preparing new server CPUs for launch in 2028. (WCCFTech)
  
  The Dragonfly C1000 will feature 256 cores running at 5GHz and will support PCIe 7.0.
  
  
  
• At the other end of the server scale is the Rmatamini P99M. (Liliputing)
  
  It's a compact 8"x8"x6" box with a sixteen core Intel CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, and an Nvidia graphics card, and starts at just $239.
  
  There's a catch or two: The CPU is an Intel Xeon E5-2698v3 from 2014, the memory is DDR4 (which might be good or bad depending), and the Nvidia GPU starts with the GTS 450 from 2010. For $369 you get upgraded to the much more capable GTX 1650.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

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