The new in the world of technology

Apple has officially released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0), which is available to download now assuming you have a compatible Mac. Big Sur is one of the biggest updates to Apple’s laptop and desktop software in years, featuring a top-to-bottom redesign of the interface, icons, and menu bar, a new control center UI borrowed from iOS, widgets (also borrowed from iOS), and a variety of other improvements (see here for the full list). It’s such a big change that Apple is actually moving on from the OS X / OS 10 branding that it’s been using for Macs for almost 20 years. Apple’s also adding some new privacy-focused features, including better tracking information in Safari and new privacy data in the Mac App Store for any apps you download. But Big Sur isn’t just exciting for the features it brings to existing Macs. It’ll also be the operating system that runs on Apple’s newly announced M1-powered MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini computers w

Many Mac users reported that their computers have been running slower than usual on Thursday — including a number of Verge staffers — with apps launching slowly or not at all, alongside other Apple service issues. It appears that the problem is due to many people rushing to download macOS Big Sur, which was officially released today, which in turn seems to have crashed Apple’s OCSP (online certificate status protocol) service — which is used for several key aspects of macOS, including validating digital certificates for both Apple and third-party software on the Mac, as Ars Technica reports. Apple’s status site notes that the company had resolved an issue earlier today that may have prevented users from downloading macOS software updates, although it hasn’t been confirmed that the Big Sur update was the cause of the outage. The company also reported issues with iMessage and full-blown outages with Maps routing and navigation as well as its traffic tracking, which may have been relate

AMD has beaten Intel’s performance advantage in desktop PCs with its new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. That’s the verdict from a range of reviewers this week that have been testing AMD’s flagship $799 Ryzen 9 5950X with its 16 cores and 32 threads. Even the entry level Ryzen 5 5600X offers some impressive performance at just $299. AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X steals the performance crown from Intel in gaming in most tests. Tom’s hardware has the 5950X beating Intel’s Core i9-10900K comfortably in an average of eight games at 1080p and 1440p. Some other games are closer, but AMD’s latest Zen 3 chips beat Intel’s equivalents for single-threaded performance too. Anandtech saw similar gaming performance results, with the 5950X beating the i9-10900K in the majority of its gaming tests at a variety of resolutions. HotHardware also put the 5950X up against the i9-10900K in a variety of gaming benchmarks, and it came out on top in almost all of them. Digital Foundry found some games are friendlier to Inte

Motorola has announced the Moto G9 Power, a budget handset with one standout feature: a huge 6,000 mAh battery that Motorola claims will deliver up to 60 hours of battery life. It’s not the biggest battery we’ve seen in a device of this caliber (Samsung’s Galaxy M51 has a 7,000 mAh battery, for example) but it’s still certifiably chunky. The Moto G9 Power will cost €200 in Europe (around $235), though exact dates for availability are unclear. It’ll also be coming to “select countries” in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in the weeks to come, reports Android Authority, though there’s no mention of a US launch Other specs for the device include a 64-megapixel triple camera array on the rear, 16-megapixel lens on the front, 6.8-inch HD+ LCD screen, 128GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM, and a Snapdragon 662 chipset. There’s a fingerprint sensor on the back, hidden under the Motorola “batwing” logo, and a dedicated button on the side for Google Assistant. Motorola also says the d