President Biden on Tuesday signed a $280 billion package that aims to boost the domestic chip-making industry and scientific research.
What they’re saying: “Fundamental change is taking place today — politically, economically and technologically,” Biden said before signing the Chips and Science Act. “Change that can either strengthen our sense of control and security, of dignity and pride in our lives and our nation, or change that weakens us.”
“This is the moment we face,” he added. “Today is the day for builders. Today America is delivering.”
“Today, I am signing the law, the Chips and Science Act, a once-in-a-generation investment in America itself, a law the American people can be proud of.”
Why it matters: The funding is meant to bolster the domestic production of semiconductors — a vital component for almost every electronic device we use today — to help prevent future supply chain crises and increase competition with China.
The bill, which passed Congress in late July with bipartisan support, gives $52.7 billion in funding for US semiconductor production and another $200 billion for scientific research, including a technology directorate at the National Science Foundation meant to translate basic research into commercial products.
Montblanc’s Summit 3 features a lightweight titanium case with hand finishes and other design tweaks.
Montblanc
Textsize
Montblanc’s Summit smartwatch collection has graduated to the next technological level with the Summit 3, featuring a lightweight titanium case with hand finishes and other design tweaks, plus the latest Wear OS by Google operating system.
“It’s really a big step forward not only in technology, but also in terms of design,” said Felix Obschonka, Montblanc’s director of new technology, during a video-conference presentation of the new model. “The biggest thing happened on the software side when we moved from second generation to third generation of Wear OS, which makes the watch more responsive, faster, and puts the focus on experiences like tiles, which allow you to quickly access different apps,” he says.
He also noted new health and fitness features like blood oxygen measurement, as well as enhanced battery life and GPS.
Since it entered the smartwatch fray in 2017, Montblanc has modeled its smartwatches on its traditional watch collection. “When we started, it was never about shrinking the phone to the wrist, but our ambition is bringing the voice of watchmakers to the smartwatch market. We call it a smartwatch for watch enthusiasts,” Obschonka says.
Summit 3’s 42mm case is available in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, and Titanium Bicolor.
Montblanc
Summit 3’s 42mm case—available in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, and Titanium Bicolor—was inspired by the 1858 collection, and it has the same hand-polished and hand-brushed finishes one expects to see on a handcrafted mechanical watch. Designers refined the case lugs and the pusher buttons, resembling chronograph pushers, that control the functions. A full metal case back is another update.
The dial options also draw directly from Montblanc’s traditional watch range. Wearers can opt for the 1858, Bohème, Geosphere, or other familiar designs, in addition to contemporary dials that are function focused for fitness tracking.
Select the 1858 Geosphere dial, and the smartwatch closely resembles its mechanical cousin, which features twin turning global hemispheres for a novel twist on a world-time function. The Summit 3, however, has another trick up its sleeve. When you tap one of the hemispheres, it activates an animation that transitions into a world-time function that tells the time as well as sunrise and sunset times all over the world.
“When we talk about smartwatches, we talk about fine watchmaking meets the latest in technology,” Obschonka says. “It is key for us, as watchmakers, that Montblanc offers something that fits the brand heritage and DNA, something that really elevates the perception of watchmaking to the smartwatch segment, and that we stayed true to ourselves.”
Summit 3’s Boheme watch face.
Montblanc
When it comes to popular fitness and health tracking functions, users can download apps such as Fitbit or Strava, or use Montblanc’s health suite with seven different applications including step tracking, sleep monitoring with the different sleep phases, and blood oxygen measurement. The fitness app has also evolved with a variety of workouts that can be tracked to maximize and improve performance over time with guidance.
In addition, Wear OS by Google delivers turn-by-turn navigation to your wrist with Google Maps and quick and easy payments on the go with Google Pay, plus a world of content available through Google Play.
Each Summit 3 comes with a calfskin strap for a more polished look and a rubber strap for a sporty option. A user-friendly interchangeable system lets you switch them back and forth on a whim, plus you can purchase additional strap options. By combining different dials and straps, you can personalize the design to suit your style on any given day.
“Compared to Apple, it’s a niche,” Obschonka says, noting that the Summit 3’s price of US$1,290 is not that much higher than a titanium Apple Watch with a leather strap. “We are not differentiating on the technology side, it’s differentiating on the materials, the finishing. We are targeting someone who wants to wear something beautiful, something that looks like a real watch with the same refinement, rather than someone who only cares about technology and doesn’t care how it looks.”
Apple silicon—including the M1 and new M2 chips—has a reputation for staying cool even under intense workloads. Intel Macs, on the other hand, run notoriously hot. They’re still capable computers, but they heat up fast, which, in turn, slows things down. If you have an Intel-based Mac, you’ve probably experienced this computational heatwave for yourself. Rather than guessing how hot your computer is getting, however, there’s a hidden monitor built into every Intel-based Mac that lets you know exactly what the internal temperature is.
Why your Mac overheats (and why it’s bad)
I talked about this subject beforewhen I mostly focused on laptops. Whether you have a MacBook or an iMac, however, the general principle is the same: You don’t want your machine to overheat.
Computers heat up because the internal components, namely the CPU and GPU, generate heat as they work. Depending on your computer, you might not notice it while performing light tasks. Once you start pushing the machine, however, you’ll feel the temperature ramping up.
It’s not that this heat will damage or break your computer. I mean, it absolutely could, but manufacturers make sure that will never happen. A little heat is okay; the parts are designed to operate normally within a wide range of temperatures. However, when the chips start to get too hot—usually around 90 degrees FAhrenheit—your computer will slow down its processing speed in order to cool things down, a process referred to as “throttling.”
G/O Media may get a commission
70% off
Jachs NY Summer Shorts Sale
Exclusive sale on summer styles Patterned, plain, twill, and chino, these classic shorts with 7-9″ inseams tell a story—you’re a guy who vacations, maybe on a boat.
Throttling sucks, because it means you’re not getting the performance you expect from your machine. Truea slow machine is better than a burnt and broken one, but avoiding the overheating problem in the first place can help you prevent throttling before it kicks inand push your Mac to its maximum potential.
While there are many ways to combat overheating, one is to keep tabs on your Mac’s temperature. And if you have an Intel Mac, you already have a monitor built right into macOS.
macOS’ hidden temperature monitors for Intel Macs
You won’t find these temperature monitors by searching through the apps installed on your Mac. You won’t even find them in Activity Monitor, as useful a utility as it is. Rather, your Mac’s temperature monitor is found in Terminal. Using Terminal likely seems intimidating to many users, because it allows you to control your Mac using only text-based commands. But you don’t actually need to memorize any of thosee commands to use Terminal; a copied and pasted command works just as well.
There are plenty of useful Terminal commands everyone can use (we covered many of them in this piece) but we’re focusing on the temperature monitors this time. There are two commands you can use here. The first lets you see temperature stats for your Mac’s CPU. Copy and paste the following command exactly as-is into a new Terminal window (quotation marks and all):
sudo powermetrics —samplers smc |grep -i “CPU die temperature”
If done right, Terminal will ask for your password. Enter it (you won’t be able to see what you’re typing, unfortunately), then press the return key. After a moment, you’ll begin seeing temperature readings, updating roughly every five seconds. The temperatures are written in Celsius, so you’ll need to convert to Fahrenheit on your own, but, after a while, you start to pick up which temperatures are cool, warm, hot, and too hot.
Speaking of which, you will also get access to one of my favorite data points in macOS: When things start to get too hot and your Mac decides it needs to cool things down, you’ll see (fan) written next to the temperatures (if your Mac has fans, that is). That lets you know the fans are starting to work harder to move hot air out of your machine. Fans are obviously a good tool for cooling computers, but they aren’t perfect: If your CPU is still heating up to unsafe levels—usually 98 degrees Fahrenheit, going by my experience in Terminal—you’ll start to see (power) instead. When this reading appears, it means macOS is throttling your CPU to keep the temperature from going overboard.
You can also check your GPU temperatures with the following command:
sudo powermetrics –samplers smc |grep -i “GPU die temperature”
Notice that you won’t see (fan) or (power) appear on this Terminal windowonly temperature readings.
Options for Apple silicone
While Apple’s suite of silicon chips don’t face as many heat ramps as Intel-based Macs, they can still overheat and throttle like any other chip. Unfortunately this built-in Terminal command won’t work on M1 and newer, since those chips are designed differently than Intel chips in how they handle heat.
The only solid temperature monitor for Apple silicon available rright now is TG-Prowhich comes at a cost. It’s usually $20, though at the time of this writingit’s on sale for $10. If you’re looking for a temporary solution, the app offers a two-week free trial, so you can monitor your temperatures on M1, M2, or any other Apple silicon variant for 14 days free of charge.
Hopefully, as Apple silicon is adopted by more and more of the Mac user base, developers will write more temperature monitoring apps for the platform. Hey, maybe Apple will even make their own—for free.
