What processors will be running the Apple bargains we’ll be seeking to purchase on Cyber Monday 2025? Presumably, Apple’s M5 chips will be inside some of them, with work already under way on the next amazing Apple Silicon processor.
Apple has requested that TSMC begin production/development of M5 chips with the aim of beginning production in late 2025, The Elec claims, supporting speculation from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. (We saw similar claims to this effect from Trendforce earlier this year, when trial production allegedly began.)
These new processors will maintain the impressive legacy Apple how has with its own silicon; expect faster 3nm processors with even better GPUs, artificial intelligence (AI) support, and impressively low energy requirements. If the reports are correct, this will be the third year running in which Apple has deployed 3nm chips, though this isn’t a bad thing — the company has decided to apply a little TSMC chip magic to push next year’s big performance gains.
The TSMC magic show
That magic comes in the form of TSMC’s System on Integrated Chip (SoIC) technology. Both AMD and Nvidia already collaborate with TSMC on this for use in chips to drive AI — and that kind of support has become equally important to Apple, which is converting its entire ecosystem into a full-fledged edge AI delivery system.
Of course, Apple already recognizes the challenges of building intelligence at the edge — principally, that some tasks require more processing power than you can provide in a handheld smartphone, no matter how advanced the chip.
This is why Apple Intelligence uses its own Private Cloud Compute system to handle some tasks, and offloads others to third-party vendor such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. No surprise, then, that these SoIC-supporting Apple M5 chips will see service in Apple’s ultra-secure Private Cloud Computer servers, as well as across Macs and other devices.
So, what’s so magical about SoIC?
More transistors, lower energy too
There’s a lot to learn about TSMC’s SoIC technology. The technology significantly increases transistor density — boosting speed and power efficiency — and increases the maximum number of cores per chip. To achieve this, TSMC uses its own state-of-the-art packaging solution to bond multiple chips to a single wafer, crafting processors that are smaller, thinner, and more performant as a result.
We don’t know how much performance these new chips will deliver inside future Apple hardware, but we can expect that AI will be Apple’s primary focus — in part, because AI seems to be Apple’s primary focus everywhere.
That’s got to mean the final design will focus on enhancements in the GPU and Neural engine, and likely also means additional cores for both. It could also be that Apple’s huge investments in 5G networking will make even more sense by the time these chips ship, as network performance in terms of data downloads and uploads will be of major significance when it comes to perceived performance of its own AI technologies.
Bringing the team together, as it were, could further widen Apple’s competitive moat, though the lack of 5G chips from Apple could complicate things. (They are expected in next year’s iPhone SE, but that remains to be seen.) The speculation about a connection between processor advances and new 5G radios could be off, but I feel that when it comes to edge AI, probably not by much.
All about AI?
It remains to be seen which faster Apple Intelligence services will support future product sales, of course, but what does seem true is that these new M5 chips will begin to rollout in Macs and iPads toward the end of next year. When they make their appearance, these will inevitably deliver performance increases similar to what we’ve seen so far with the M4 family of chips; they’ve already propelled all of Apple’s latest Macs to the top of the list.
The recently introduced super-powered M4 Mac mini and MacBook Pro models already illustrate the huge leaps in processor design Apple has been able to pull off, thanks to its work with ARM and TSMC. That journey is remarkable in itself, and it underlines the commitment to chip production the company has made.
That commitment means any enterprise migrating to Apple’s AI ecosystem (PC, smartphone, tablet) can do so in full expectation that they will not need to migrate again for at least a decade. That has to be a good thing for any business seeking stability amid change and wanting to deploy a trusted and secure platform for AI.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger retired Sunday, after more than 40 years in the industry.
The company quickly named two interim co-CEOs to hold the fort while it searches for a long-term replacement.
The two co-CEOS are David Zinsner, who currently serves as CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, who has also been named as CEO of Intel Products. In this newly created role she will oversee the company’s client computing group, data center and AI group, and network and edge group.
“Mr. Musk Goes to Washington.” And he’s planning to roll back remote work in the federal government.
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and one-time presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy are expected to be appointed by incoming president Donald J. Trump to run an advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump wants Musk to do to the federal bureaucracy what he did to Twitter — dramatically reduce the number of employees.
After Musk bought Twitter (in addition to changing its name to X, killing verification, enabling revenue sharing, increasing the character limit of posts, and other changes), he laid off 80% of the staff and issued an edict banning remote work.
The first step in the nearly impossible mission of radically downsizing government while using those agencies and their employees to govern the nation (CBS Daily Report newsman John Dickerson likened it to dismantling an airplane while flying it) is to implement a draconian mandate to work in offices rather than from home.
The expectation is that the in-office mandate will inspire thousands of employees to quit, reducing the number of employees who will have to be laid off. (Hey, if it worked for Twitter, it should work for history’s biggest-budget and most complex organization.)
A policy ending remote work mandated by Musk (who might well be ineligible for such a role given that his task will be to advise on downsizing or eliminating agencies charged with regulating or even currently investigating Musk-owned or Musk-run companies) contradicts findings by the government itself.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that remote work increased productivity across 61 private business sectors. Even more intuitively, non-labor costs, like office space, decreased more in industries with more remote work. Workers benefited from not commuting, which saved them time and money.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a study that telework in US businesses improved employee productivity and morale and helped companies hire and retain employees — something the DOGE is not interested in. (The GAO acknowledged that the long-term effects are unknown.)
In short, the government found that remote work is more efficient. The Department of Government Efficiency’s first order of business will be to make government less efficient.
The most efficient, cost-effective policy would be to lay off whomever you’re going to cull, but mandate remote work for the remaining employees.
According to the GAO, government employees in the Executive branch (more than four million people, including military personnel) often work from home. That practice varies by department, ranging from 11% of total hours worked at the Farm Service Agency to around 66% at the Veterans Benefits Administration.
One impact of a new government mandate to work in offices, beyond the expected employee downsizing, will be more employees on the market looking for work, which could affect hiring, salaries, and corporate remote work policies in the private sector.
Changes in attitudes, but fewer changes in lattitudes
According to the survey, 34% of CEOs favored an in-office model earlier this year. Now, 79% do, which is a massive change.
CEOs are increasingly willing to offer incentives to encourage employees to return to the office. A big majority (86%) of CEOs said they would reward employees who try to come into the office with benefits such as favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.
Why CEOs like back-to-office mandates
CEOs (like Musk, Ramaswamy, and, for that matter, Trump) typically favor remote work for themselves, but oppose it for their employees. These leaders have both good reasons and bad for opposing remote work.
Among the good reasons, they believe that in-person collaboration generates more and better ideas than remote collaboration.
While this may be true, it reveals a bias in favor of collaboration and against deep work (long, quiet, uninterrupted, and focused solitary work). Different companies, professions, departments, and industries benefit in varying ways from collaboration and deep work, and they’re both valuable. Office work best enables the former, and remote work the latter. But deep work is the more monetarily valuable kind of work, according to Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In a Distracted World.
CEOs also point out that physical proximity is better for mentoring, innovation, and maintaining company culture.
On the flip side, CEOs don’t trust their employees to work hard at home and fear they’re watching daytime TV in their pajamas while on the clock. They intuit office presence and the supervision of employees who appear to be working as a metric for productivity. They can feel personally more comfortable when they can walk around, interact with employees, and manage and supervise in person. Some CEOs also feel the need to justify their spending on office space, office equipment, and other costs associated with office work.
Whatever the reasons, there’s a general disagreement between employees, who mostly want the option to work from home, and CEOs, who mostly want to require employees to come into the office.
A prediction
The remote work revolution will take a serious hit next year, both in government and business. Then, with new generations of workers and leaders gradually rising in the workforce in the coming decade, plus remote work-enabling technologies like AI (specifically agentic AI) and augmented reality growing in capability, remote work will make a slow, inevitable, and permanent comeback.
In the meantime, 2025 will be a rough year for remote workers. Bu it also represents a huge opportunity for startups and even established companies to hire the very best employees who are turned away elsewhere because they insist on working remotely.
Two years can be an eternity for the technology industry: plenty of time for enterprises to innovate, launch a new product, peak on the stock market… and then plummet again.
Think about the bubbles that briefly surrounded 3D printing, smart glasses, or the metaverse.
But somehow ChatGPT has escaped that fate because two years after its launch —around the time when enthusiasm for the metaverse began to collapse — it is still on everyone’s lips and has managed to revolutionize the way many of us live and work.
OpenAI’s well-known chatbot has put generative artificial intelligence (genAI) firmly in the public sphere, prompting a wave of imitators and even moving the agendas of the highest political bodies.
The European Union, for example, had been working for several years on a new regulation for AI, but this was completely disrupted by the appearance of generative AI. It was renegotiated in record time, resulting in the AI Act approved last December.
This fact shows that this technology is not only about possibilities, but also about laws, ethics and philosophy, and security and privacy challenges. In addition, it has revealed the opposing strategies of the geopolitical blocs in the race for the digital economy.
All this, due in large part to the explosion of ChatGPT. In fact, six months after the chatbot’s release, the Future of Life Institute asked for a pause in its development in an open letter, saying its risks could not be controlled, even going so far as to say that it could pose a danger to our civilization as we know it if systems were built that surpassed humans. More than 31,000 people signed the letter, including industry figures such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk.
ChatGPT broke all predictions. A study by UBS found that it was the fastest consumer application to reach 100 million users, in just two months, although it has since been surpassed by Meta’s social network Threads. And, at the business level, it has one million licenses. In total, it has more than 180.5 million monthly active users as of April of this year, and its page was accessed by 1,625 million visitors in the month of February, according to PrimeWeb.
“It has transformed the way we interact with technology,” says Fernando Maldonado, an independent analyst. “Today, anyone can access AI without the need for advanced knowledge or intermediaries, something that was previously reserved for specialists.”
Sara Robisco, a data scientist and author of the book Historia de la Inteligencia Artificial, adds that there has also been a great marketing movement to get it used by everyone.
Evolving intelligence
It has been possible to reach this point, the two experts say, through the use of vast computing capacity, fed by new sources of data from a multitude of forums, documents, and social networks.
“Generative AI stands out because its improvements are due to the intensive use of resources, which depend directly on these two variables. For example, that the model processes more contextual information or its access to more up-to-date or specialized cases,” says Maldonado.
Thus, as far as society is concerned, ChatGPT has caused people to start looking for “more or less acceptable” information in a chatbot, in Robisco’s eyes.
Now, we are fully in the ‘GPT4 era’, the latest version of the system that improves in text, speech recognition and can even generate code, which has given rise to multimodal models. “It is possible to create videos from text,” says Maldonado. “In particular, this year we have seen how we have been able to ask it to draw something, thus expanding the ways of communicating with AI.”
Its evolution is clear, Robisco adds. “It is a model that has already been trained, which does not have to be started from scratch, which means that in a short time we can see significant improvements.” But ChatGPT still hallucinates a lot. “You have to ask them very specific questions and keep in mind that you can’t ask for something too current.”
And Maldonado sees the evolution continuing: “We are at a stage in which generative AI is developing reasoning capabilities, understood as planning and solving problems autonomously. These are the so-called AI agents, which can be understood as an evolution of virtual assistants. Although there is still a long way to go, I think it is useful to think that it is going from being a doctor’s office to a collaborator that does things for you.”
Risks and challenges
Given generative AI’s potential and upward progress, it raises many questions. One of the most controversial and feared is that it may take away jobs, if it is not already doing so — at least the most repetitive and automatable. Forrester estimates that generative AI replaced about 90,000 jobs globally in 2023, and that by 2030 the figure will increase to 2.4 million.
Maldonado believes that it is not doing it massively or directly. “In reality, it does not seek to replace people, but to empower them. However, as these models become more sophisticated and numerous, worker productivity will grow exponentially. As a result, fewer people will be needed to perform the same tasks.
Robisco, on the other hand, is optimistic about this and believes that it will only remove the most repetitive tasks, leaving the most creative, important and value-added part to humans.
But this is not the only issue of concern about generative AI: there are also the hallucinations themselves, bias in the data, or the lack of transparency and traceability. “This is going to limit some use cases, covered by current regulations and those that are to come,” says Maldonado.
And let’s not forget the security and privacy of the data those models are being fed, and how attackers use them to refine their threats. “There will even be people who can get private information just by knowing how to interrogate the machine,” Maldonado says.
OpenAI, in the middle of the maelstrom
If ChatGPT’s career has been dizzying and not without debate two past years, that of its creator company is not far behind. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit, then as it began to release products, Microsoft became its main investor. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman left abruptly, briefly joined Microsoft and, shortly after, returned.
Among the company’s other founders, Elon Musk, who had already left the company, sued its directors for breaking with the original statutes and becoming a for-profit company. He was right, as the latest movements of the organization confirm it, with many executives leaving and the company searching for more funding.
There are also those who wonder whether the illustrious Altman has become a liability for OpenAI itself.
In any case, Robisco summarizes, the company’s still-brief history corresponds to a “typical case of someone who want to innovate with a toy that they see no future for. But people have started using it and want it. The product is no longer a toy and now they want to price it.”
The effort to re-shore chip manufacturing in the US could be in peril as a new presidential administration has signaled a shift in direction, all while a semiconductor industry seems at times to be struggling.
Brandon Lucia, a Carnegie Mellon professor of electrical and computer engineering and CEO of chip startup Efficient Computer, believes the success of the CHIPS Act will hinge on three factors: substantial funding, advancements in manufacturing capabilities, and a thriving ecosystem of innovators in the U.S.
Efficient Computer is planning to launch its first commercial chip — an energy-efficient, general-purpose processor — in the first half of 2025. As demand for more powerful chips grows in tandem with the evolution and adoption of artificial intelligence, Lucia predicts chipmakers will prioritize energy efficiency for improved longevity and performance; they’ll also be forced to address sustainable manufacturing in semiconductor fabs to address environmental issues such as water runoff and carbon footprints.
Computerworld spoke with Lucia about the state of the CHIPS Act and the future of chip manufacturing. The following are excerpts from that interview.
Why do you believe President Biden has held off on actually disbursing the CHIPS Act funding? “I wouldn’t want to speculate on anything related to the enactment of government policy. I can tell you relative to the enactment of CHIPS Act…that I think there’s a big opportunity, whether it’s the CHIPS Act or something else. There’s a lot of opportunity for big-time innovation, but you need a lot of money to get this stuff done.
“So, while I’m not a political pundit, I think a big allocation of resources going into the domestic semiconductor industry is a great way to support innovation and to level up across the entire industry — from innovation to manufacturing and everything in between.”
How can the current administration get the funds distributed over the next two months? “I believe he’s on a very tight schedule. I think that you have to get the funding out there. It’s important to support the innovation economy around the semiconductor industry. It would be a real boon for the industry, whether through the CHIPS Act or not; it’s important to have that big allocation of resources into the semiconductor industry…. That means university innovation, basic research and start-up companies.
“It’s also about growing the ecosystem, and this is where I think the resources really begin to pay off — in developing new standards and new processes, supporting things like advanced manufacturing and new technologies like chiplets and advanced packaging.
“When I choose a process node through which I will implement my semiconductor product, I’m compelled by pricing, competitive performance and efficiency, time to market, and the complexity on the business side for manufacturing.”
How do you see chiplet-based processor packaging playing into the future success of the US semiconductor industry? “For different components of my system, I may choose to make one chiplet in one technology node and a second chiplet in another technology node because they offer different advantages from a technology perspective. The opportunity with advanced packaging of chiplet technology is you can integrate multiple heterogeneous chiplets together; they can come from different fabs. It’s very cool.
“Then you put it into a layer called an interposer and that’s something you use to glue the chiplets together and also communicate between them. So it gives them channels and wires to talk back and forth. When you do that, you can produce very sophisticated designs that can take advantage of the best options in the market.
“It’s also supportive of an ecosystem where a company like Efficient, can produce a chiplet — the biggest value in our design — and distribute that broadly. In the old days, even today, the way that typically happens is by selling licenses to the IP inside of your chip. So, that means I talk to a customer developing a chip and I can sell them design code resources and resources to use our architecture.
“Chiplets change the game. They say we can now produce a piece of hardware and sell that as a bare die off the manufacturing line, and you can integrate that into your heterogeneous chiplet-based product. So, it supports this innovation ecosystem where you can have many suppliers of chiplets with different capabilities and you can have a much simpler integration path. That path is emerging and it’s a very important piece of the innovation ecosystem moving forward.”
An example of a chiplet-based semiconductor where multiple smaller processors can work in tandem to address varying applications that are all tied together to serve a single purpose.
Shutterstock/Pete Hansen
How do sustainability efforts factor into the future of semiconductor production? “There are several dimensions to sustainability when it comes to manufacturing and operating semiconductors. The first is carbon emissions [which is] wrapped up in production and distribution of semiconductor parts. In the academic research, we call that the embodied system in production. That’s all the carbon emissions accounted for in the production and distribution.
“Then you have operational carbon emissions. This gets a lot of attention in the media because of the enormous amounts of energy that go into running data centers handling AI functions. So, you have those two categories and any system represents a point in the tradeoff of the space between those. You can produce more specialized chips that increase the amount of embodied carbon. You have special purpose accelerators for every function of AI you may want to do in a data center. Each of them would have potentially higher speed and efficiency, so that decreases their operational carbon.
“But the embodied carbon in a system that has that many chips is higher because we had to design, manufacture and distribute each of those different designs, and so the costs go up.”
Which semiconductor manufacturer has the best chance of re-shoring its manufacturing in the US? “I think there [are] a lot of interesting things going on inside Intel right now. I think they’re at an important moment in their existence. I think they’re pushing innovation in trying to develop what I think is the next generation and the generation after that in retail foundry services and manufacturing tech nodes. The conversation tends to turn toward their 18A node, which is a very advanced tech node. I think that will be a big win when Intel stands up manufacturing in the US. That turns into a roadmap for the future.
“Then you can’t have [that] conversation without talking about TSMC in the southwest with their massive fabrication implantation effort going on there. When that comes online, that will bring some of most advanced tech nodes that exist today to domestic production, and that’s important for a variety of reasons. I think over next few years the onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing for defense and security applications will be very important given the geopolitical state of the world today.”
Brandon Lucia holds one of his company’s prototype chips.
Brandon Lucia
Trump wants the federal government to put tariffs on overseas semiconductor makers who ship their products to the US instead of funding companies to incentivize chips manufacturing here. Do you agree? “I think in order to answer that question, I’d have to be more tied into the function of government and the foundation for the tariffs. What I can say is both are approaches attempt to get at the same end point.
“I think getting the resources in to support the semiconductor manufacturing industry is incredibly important. Those are two ways to do that, but there are many other ways to grow the domestic ecosystem through policy, industry efforts and advanced packaging techniques.
“Regardless of the mechanism, I think the need is there. I think what we need are resources to do basic research and take those ideas and put them into innovative start-up companies, even in support of incumbent [companies] in expanding their efforts in advanced manufacturing and foundries. Again, we’re seeing that with Intel and their 18A chip and TSMC nodes that will be manufactured in the southwest.
What kind of a thriving ecosystem is needed to support a healthy domestic semiconductor industry? “I have a strong belief in fundamental research in academia and industry as a driver of this. You have successful examples in some of the bigger companies with research arms and many examples of big ideas emerging from more basic research that happens in academia settings.
“It’s really driven economically, but also by things like the National Science Foundation directly supporting early-stage research that can be 10 years out from commercialization of a product sometimes. Much of what we’re doing at Efficient…was funded through the National Science Foundation. It goes back almost a decade.
“The other leg here is a thriving ecosystem of start-ups and an environment in which they can grow and produce value. You put all those things together and it’s a very big roadmap to how we could revolutionize the semiconductor industry. We can do fabrication of advanced nodes and packaging. This a la carte idea allows for new markets to emerge around this chiplet packaging technology.
“Then you have the ability for a startup to launch in a straightforward way to bring technology like that to market. Over a five-year window, a company could emerge and tap into all that research and tap into fabrication and manufacturing ecosystem to produce something that’s really new and has a lot of value.
“This is really our origin story. We came from the result of research that went on for nearly a decade. We realized we were doing something new that was untapped in the market today.”
Is your company’s design based on chiplets? “Right now, ours is not a chiplet-based design. In the future, we see a big opportunity for going into Chiplet integration. Our architecture is called Fabric and it’s a way of mapping computation in space across computing resources implemented in a chip. The basic idea is we have our architecture and it’s scalable to include more computing resources, and without decreasing efficiency, we can increase the performance in a chip.
“With chiplet technology, we can have multiple chiplets on our fabric architected together, which is a big opportunity for us to scale up from where we are today, which is focused on embedded applications and things like infrastructure, and wearables and space and defense applications. We can scale up further toward the edge, maybe even edge-cloud and, some day, data center applications.”
If you’ve read this column for long, you probably know that when it comes to tech purchases — and tech decisions in general, really — I’m typically not one to be hasty.
It’s practically in my blood at this point. I’ve spent so many years studying, researching, and obsessing over this stuff (both personally and professionally!) that it’s tough for me to commit to buying a new product or even using a new service without really digging in and thinking through the implications.
Plain and simple, I like to feel confident that whatever I’m using is not only “the best” in some broad, general sense — but is, critically, the best for me and my specific work purposes. It’s the same thing I encourage everyone else to do, too, when considering new tech twists and turns (whether via my own recommendations or any other source).
That’s why I really surprised myself when I happened to be walking through a Best Buy the other day and ended up walking out with a brand spankin’ new $600 laptop — a Chromebook, to be specific.
But Goog almighty, am I ever glad I made that uncharacteristically fast decision.
I’ve personally owned and relied on Google’s precious Pixelbook since that device’s debut in 2017. While I’d had plenty of other ChromeOS vessels before it, the Pixelbook was the first Chromebook I truly fell for — thanks to its rare combination of power, practicality, and design. The device’s sleek and minimalist form and in-a-league-of-its-own keyboard made it a singular treat to use and served as the perfect match for the more-than-capable computing power inside.
The Google Pixelbook Chromebook, released in 2017.
Google
For years, the Pixelbook left me with little to ask for. But despite the fact that the laptop is still technically being supported with regular ongoing ChromeOS updates — and will continue to be all the way through August of 2027 (!) — the system has more recently started showing its age.
I’ve been thinking about a replacement for it for a while now. But while I’ve tried out tons of perfectly capable and decent Chromebook options, I’ve yet to find one that really speaks to me and stands out in the same way.
The reason, I’ve come to realize, is that more and more, current Chromebooks are mostly about being good enough. For most people and purposes — whether businesses, schools, or just budget-conscious individual device-buyers — that’s perfectly fine and probably makes a lot of sense. But for those of us who place an emphasis on design and device quality both inside and out, the options have been a little lackluster lately. And so despite my motivation to find a suitable replacement for my rapidly aging Pixelbook, nothing I’ve considered had quite fit the bill.
At least, that was the case — until an alluring new digital vixen caught my eye. And, as you’ve no doubt realized by now, it didn’t take long to realize it was the one I’d been waiting for.
ChromeOS, take 2: My next Chromebook chapter
I’d been intrigued by the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus since I first heard about it ahead of its arrival this autumn. But it wasn’t until I spent several minutes with the system in a physical store that I realized just how special it actually was — and how much it filled the void I’d been seeking to satisfy since my poor Pixelbook started growing a little rusty.
So, first things first: The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus is far less clunky than its awkward name suggests. It’s sleek and almost shockingly minimal in its design — with an eye-catchingly subtle blue casing and an understated Samsung logo on the outer cover but no branding of any sort on the inside. (One of my biggest tech-nerd pet peeves is paying hundreds of dollars for a device and then being forced to stare at an ugly company tramp stamp right atop or beneath the screen for every second that I use the damn thing.)
Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus is refreshingly sleek and free from over-the-top branding.
Samsung
That alluring appearance is definitely what drew me in. But the way the Chromebook feels is what ultimately won me over.
No two ways around it: The Galaxy Chromebook Plus is a skinny fella. This thing is thin in a way I haven’t experienced on a laptop since — well, the Pixelbook.
Thin is in with Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus.
JR Raphael, IDG
In a sharp-as-can-be contrast to the typical utilitarian Chromebook of our current moment, the Galaxy Chromebook Plus feels light and luxurious. It’s a body that makes you want to carry and, dare I say, caress it constantly. All over-the-top tenderness aside, it’s a premium computer through and through and the closest thing I’ve seen to a spiritual successor to Google’s fading Pixelbook star.
Now, do all those surface-level superficialities matter, you might ask? As with so many things in the tech decision-making matrix, the answer depends entirely on you. Some people are perfectly satisfied with a utilitarian tech approach and knowing that their laptop has what counts on the inside — and hey, that’s okay! But some of us also appreciate the design and form and how those factors affect the overall experience of carrying and using a device.
And my goodness, when it comes to the Galaxy Chromebook Plus, is that experience ever exceptional.
The sweet surprise of Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus
No exaggeration: Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus is just a delight to work on — a true treat that makes you want to carry it everywhere and never put it down. The display is an AMOLED panel, which results in richer colors and deeper blacks than most standard laptop screens, and the 15.6″ display size is such a pleasant change after years of squeezing into smaller laptop dimensions. That arrangement also includes the side perk of a larger, less cramped keyboard, complete with a number pad at the right.
Even the keyboard is unusually roomy on the Galaxy Chromebook Plus.
Samsung
All in all, the Galaxy Chromebook feels lavishly spacious, and the slim frame keeps it from seeming at all bulky or even the least bit unwieldy. The whole “thin” race can slide into silly territory quickly, but I’m tellin’ ya: This laptop’s slimness is such a sweet surprise and something you really do appreciate. It’s an absolute pleasure to use — and, provided your budget can support it, adding that pinch of pleasure into your workday can make a world of difference when it comes both quality of life and productivity.
I’m also happy to share that the qualities of the Galaxy Chromebook that gave me pause early on haven’t proven to be particularly problematic in real-world use:
I worried that the system’s 8GB of RAM might be insufficient for my multitasking-heavy, resource-intensive style of work — but so far, at least, the computer’s been quite capable of handling anything I throw at it.
As reported, Samsung has been permitted to preload some of its own apps on the Chromebook — something that hasn’t traditionally been permitted in the ChromeOS ecosystem — but outside of the presence of a single preinstalled Samsung Notes app (which, thankfully, can easily be removed), there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary or concerning.
And while Google’s move to replace the signature ChromeOS Launcher/Search/Everything key with a weird new Gemini-connected “Quick Insert” key still strikes me as misguided, it’s an easy enough change to work around for anyone in the know. In fact, a quick tweak of the system keyboard settings is all it takes to restore the Launcher key to its proper position and to bump “Quick Insert” down to the keyboard’s bottom row, in a newly added “G” key that seems like a much more sensible spot.
The Search/Launcher/Everything key can be returned to its proper place with a couple quick clicks in the ChromeOS settings.
JR Raphael, IDG
After growing accustomed to having a convertible Chromebook that sports a touchscreen, I’d also been hesitant to go with a model that’s more of a traditional clamshell form without any touch capabilities. But over the past year or so, I’ve added a Pixel Tablet into my personal tech lineup and started relying on that for more casual video-watching and other such “lean-back”-style activity. This has pushed the laptop back into a more narrowly defined role of active keyboard-involving work for me, and consequently, I don’t find myself missing the touch and converting factors much at all — certainly nowhere near what I would’ve expected if I’d considered this same shift a couple years ago.
The only big question lingering in my mind now is what’s in the cards for ChromeOS from a longer-term perspective. As you may have read, rumors suggest Google could be looking at essentially replacing ChromeOS with Android — yes, again — or at least replacing it with some future version of Android that’s designed to provide a similar sort of desktop-friendly computing experience.
But regardless, if such a move ends up happening — and to be clear, that’s still a hefty “if” at this point — it’s almost certainly still years away. For now, I very much enjoy using ChromeOS in its current form. This laptop is guaranteed ongoing operating system updates through June of 2032, at a minimum, and one has to imagine that if Google were to start bringing a future Android version into Chromebooks down the line, it’d phase that change in gradually and avoid or at least make optional any sort of dramatic switch in how existing devices operate.
Long story short, I’m not too worried about what ChromeOS (or whatever we’re calling it) might look like a decade from now. If it stays the current course — hey, cool. I’m content! If an enticing option comes along to shift over to a more Chromebook-like version of Android in the future, maybe that could be interesting, too. For the moment, though, I couldn’t be happier with the laptop I’m using.
And, remember: This is coming from someone who had been stubbornly hanging onto his aging Pixelbook and refusing to accept any of the alternatives that had come along in the years since.
For now, this Chromebook is the one to beat. And this is the first time in a long time I’ve felt fully confident saying that — confident enough to pick up this system myself and happily head home with it the very same day I touched it for the first time.
The Competition Bureau of Canada has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of abusing its dominant position in the online advertising technology market to stifle competition and harm advertisers, publishers, and consumers.
The case, filed with the Competition Tribunal, is the latest in a series of global legal challenges targeting Google’s advertising practices.
The Bureau announced on Thursday that it had filed an application with the Competition Tribunal, seeking an order that would compel Google to sell two of its advertising technology tools and impose a penalty to ensure compliance with Canadian competition laws.
“The Competition Bureau conducted an extensive investigation that found that Google has abused its dominant position in online advertising in Canada by engaging in conduct that locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools, excluding competitors, and distorting the competitive process,” Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell said in a statement.
According to the watchdog, Google holds the largest market share across Canada’s ad tech stack and has “abused its dominant position” to entrench its market power.
Allegations of market abuse
The Bureau’s investigation alleges that Google has entrenched its dominance across the ad tech stack — a suite of tools that facilitates the buying and selling digital ad inventory. The Bureau asserts that Google unlawfully tied its ad tech tools together and leveraged its dominant position to distort auction dynamics. These actions reportedly forced market participants to rely on Google’s ecosystem, excluded competitors, and disrupted fair competition.
“Google’s conduct has prevented rivals from being able to compete on the merits of what they have to offer, to the detriment of Canadian advertisers, publishers, and consumers. We are taking our case to the Tribunal to stop this conduct and its harmful effects in Canada,” Boswell added.
The Bureau further claims that Google gave its own tools preferential access to advertising inventory, manipulated pricing to disadvantage rivals, and imposed restrictive terms on publishers transacting with competing platforms.
The Competition Bureau has asked the Tribunal to order Google to divest two of its ad tech tools, impose penalties to ensure compliance with Canada’s Competition Act and prohibit the company from continuing anti-competitive practices.
The Bureau’s investigation, which began in 2013, initially focused on Google’s search engine practices but expanded earlier this year to include its advertising technology services.
A request seeking comment from Google remains unanswered.
Parallel cases in the US and India
The Canadian lawsuit echoes similar antitrust challenges Google is facing globally, including in the US. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently concluded closing arguments in its antitrust case against Google, accusing the company of illegally dominating the online advertising market.
In its trial, the DOJ alleged that Google monopolized key ad tech markets, including publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and sought to dominate ad exchanges. Prosecutors argued that Google’s practices “rigged the rules of the road,” preventing fair competition. Google countered by emphasizing the competitiveness of the online ad market and dismissed the DOJ’s claims as mischaracterizations of legitimate business decisions.
Meanwhile, in India, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Thursday ordered a probe into Google’s restrictive policies for real-money gaming apps. The investigation follows a complaint from the gaming platform WinZO, which accused Google of discriminatory practices by excluding it from the Google Play Store while allowing competitors.
In 2022, the Indian authority imposed a monetary penalty of around $300 million on the search engine major for various anti-competitive practices.
A global spotlight on Google’s practices
Earlier this month the US DOJ has recommended extensive measures to limit Google’s dominance, including the potential breakup of its Chrome browser and Android operating system. These products are pivotal distribution platforms for Google Search, which was deemed an illegal monopoly in Federal Judge Amit Mehta’s August ruling.
These cases collectively highlight the increasing scrutiny of Google’s practices worldwide as regulators seek to address concerns about its dominance across various markets, including online advertising, app ecosystems, and gaming platforms.
For Google, the stakes remain high, as these lawsuits could lead to significant penalties, structural changes to its business, and a precedent for regulating Big Tech. With competition watchdogs ramping up their efforts globally, the outcomes of these cases could reshape the digital advertising landscape for years to come.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft, scrutinizing its cloud computing, software licensing, cybersecurity, and AI businesses.
The inquiry follows over a year of informal interviews with competitors and business partners, Bloomberg reported. FTC antitrust lawyers have sent Microsoft a detailed information demand, spanning hundreds of pages, after receiving approval from FTC Chair Lina Khan, the report said quoting sources familiar with the matter.
In the second week of November, Computer World reported that the FTC was preparing to investigate the business practices of Microsoft. The allegations were on whether Microsoft is abusing its market dominance by deploying restrictive licensing terms, which is not a fair practice.
Focus on market dominance and security practices
The investigation centers on Microsoft’s bundling of office productivity and security software with its cloud services, a practice critics argue disadvantages competitors in the authentication and cybersecurity markets. The FTC is particularly examining Microsoft Entra ID, its user authentication service, amid complaints that licensing terms and integration with its cloud offerings impede rival companies.
Microsoft’s role as a major government contractor and recent cybersecurity incidents involving its products have added urgency to the probe. The company provides billions of dollars in services to US agencies, including the Department of Defense, making its practices critical to national security.
In November 2023, FTC flagged concerns about the concentrated nature of the cloud market, warning that outages or performance issues could ripple through the economy. The authority had then collected feedback from civil society, industry stakeholders, and academia to prepare its report. As per the feedback, the majority of the concerns were related to competition and licensing practices.
The investigation is among the final actions of Lina Khan, who has led one of the FTC’s most aggressive campaigns against corporate consolidation in decades. Khan is expected to step down as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office though there is no official confirmation yet.
Trump’s regulatory stance remains unclear, but his administration could mark a shift from President Joe Biden’s focus on reining in Big Tech. Under Biden, the FTC pursued cases against Amazon and Meta, while the Department of Justice sued Google and Apple.
This renewed scrutiny comes more than 25 years after the government’s landmark antitrust case against Microsoft over bundling its Windows operating system and browser, which ended without a breakup.
The FTC’s investigation could have far-reaching implications for the tech giant’s market practices and the broader cloud and cybersecurity sectors.
There are important accounts to secure, and then there are important accounts to secure. Your Google account falls into that second category, maybe even with a couple of asterisks and some neon orange highlighting added in for good measure.
I mean, really: When you stop and think about how much stuff is associated with that single sign-in — your email, your documents, your photos, your files, your search history, maybe even your contacts, text messages, and location history, if you use Android — saying it’s a “sensitive account” seems like an understatement. Whether you’re using Google for business, personal purposes, or some combination of the two, you want to do everything you possibly can to keep all of that information locked down and completely under your control.
And guess what? Having a password that you hastily set seven years ago isn’t enough. With something as priceless as your personal data, that single key is only the start of a smart security setup. And even it might be due for an upgrade.
Take 10 minutes to go through these steps, then rest easy knowing your Google account is as guarded as can be.
Part I: Reinforce your front door
Step 1: Check up on your Google account password
We’ll start with something simple but supremely important — that aforementioned Google account password. Consider the following questions:
Is your Google password based on your name, the name of your partner or child, your birthday, your street address, or anything else someone could easily figure out by Googling you?
Does your Google password revolve around a common word or easily guessable pattern?
Is your Google password short — less than eight characters, at a minimum?
Do you use your Google password (or any variation of it) to sign into any other app, website, or service?
If the answer to any of those questions is yes, first, bop yourself firmly on the nose. Then use this link to go change your password immediately — preferably to something long, complex, and not involving any easily discoverable personal info, any common words or patterns, or anything you use anywhere else.
Step 2: Give your Google account a second layer of protection
No matter how strong your Google account password is, there’s always still the chance someone could crack it — but you can exponentially reduce the risk of anyone actually getting into your virtual property by enabling two-factor authentication on your account.
With two-factor authentication, you’ll be prompted for a second form of security in addition to your password — ideally something that requires a physical object that’d only ever be in your presence. In its simplest effective form, that could be a prompt or a code generated by your phone. If you want to get really fancy, it could be a button pressed on an actual key you carry (which could be a special USB- or Bluetooth-based dongle or even something built into your phone) — sometimes even called a “passkey,” which is basically just a confusing and overcomplicated way to say the same thing. There’s also an option to have codes sent to you via text message, but that method is relatively easy to hijack and thus not generally advisable to use.
Whatever path you choose, having that second layer in place will make it incredibly difficult for anyone to get into your Google account, even if they do somehow know your password.
Two-factor authentication makes it significantly more difficult for anyone to get into your Google account.
Step 3: Make sure you’re prepared to prove your identity
If Google ever detects some sort of suspicious activity on your account, it might require you to verify your identity before it lets you sign in. And if you haven’t looked at your account verification settings in a while (or ever, for that matter), there’s a decent chance the necessary info might be out of date or missing altogether.
Take a minute now to open up Google’s account security site and look in the section labeled “How you sign in to Google.” There, among other things, you should see two options:
Recovery phone
Recovery email
If the value next to either option is not current and correct, click it and update it immediately.
And with that, we’re ready to move on to our next level of Google account protection.
Part II: Clamp down on connections
Step 4: Review the third-party services with access to your account
When you set up an app that interacts with Google in some way — on your phone, on your computer, or even within a Google service such as Gmail or Docs — that app gets granted a certain level of access to your Google account data.
Depending on the situation, that could mean it’s able to see some of your activity within specific Google services; it could mean it’s able to see everything in your Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Drive; or it could mean it’s able to see everything across your entire Google account.
It’s all too easy to click through confirmation boxes without giving it careful thought — so look back now and see exactly what apps have access to what types of information. Visit Google’s third-party app access overview and look through the list of connected services. If you see anything there you no longer use or don’t recognize, click its line and then click the button to remove it.
Review your third-party app list and remove any items that no longer need access to your Google account.
JR Raphael / IDG
Allowing apps you know and trust to access your account is perfectly fine, but you want to be sure to revisit the list regularly and keep it as current and concise as possible.
Step 5: Review the devices with access to your account
In addition to apps, you’ve almost certainly signed into your Google account on a variety of physical devices over the past several months (and beyond). And often, once you’ve signed in at the system level, a device remains connected to your account and able to access it — no matter how long it’s been since you’ve actually used the thing.
You can close that loop and take back control by going to Google’s device activity page. If you see any device there that you no longer use or don’t recognize, click the three-dot menu icon within its box and sign it out of your account right then and there.
Step 6: Look over app permissions on your phone
Another important app-related consideration: If you’re using Android, some system-level permissions — such as those connected to your contacts and calendar — can effectively control access to areas of your Google account data, since services such as Google Contacts and Google Calendar sync that data between your phone and the cloud.
Head into the Security & Privacy section of your phone’s system settings and look for the line labeled “Permission manager.” (Depending on your device, you might have to tap a line labeled “Privacy controls” before you see it.) If you can’t find it, try searching your system settings for the phrase permission manager instead.
Once you get there, you can look through each type of permission and see which apps are authorized to access it — and, with a couple more taps, revoke the permission from any apps where that level of access doesn’t seem necessary.
Android makes it easy to review and adjust an app’s permission, if you know where to look.
JR Raphael / IDG
Step 7: Look over extension permissions in your browser
On the desktop, extensions added into Chrome or any other browser have the potential to expand your browser’s capabilities — but they also have the potential to put your privacy at risk.
Extensions could require access to anything from your complete browsing history to your system clipboard. They can often read and change data on sites you’re actively viewing, too — either any and all sites or only specific pertinent URLs, depending on the specific permissions requested.
None of this is necessarily bad, so long as the extension in question is reputable and requesting only the permissions it genuinely requires for the function it provides. But sometimes, even the most well-intending developers can get lazy and go with a broader permission than what their software actually needs. And in such an instance, an extension that does something as simple as enhancing the Gmail interface or allowing you to save articles for later could have access to everything you do in your browser — and the sort of broad data that’s typically kept under lock and key inside your Google account could be shared with external entities for no good reason.
So let’s do a quick little assessment, shall we? If you’re using Chrome, type chrome:extensions into your browser’s address bar. If you’re using another browser, look in its main menu to find the equivalent option for managing extensions or add-ons, as they’re sometimes also called.
Once you’re looking a list of all your installed extensions, click the “Details” or “Options” button for every extension on the page. Peek at the “Permissions” section within each one and then take a close look at the “Site access” section, in particular. Think carefully about the level of access that’s granted there and whether it’s genuinely needed — or whether it’d make sense to bring it down a notch and make it more limited in nature.
With Chrome and other Chrome-based browsers — like Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi — if the extension seems like it really only needs access to a specific site or domain and it’s requesting access to your activity on all sites, click the dropdown menu in that area and change its setting from “On all sites” to “On specific sites” (which lets you provide a specific, limited list of URLs on which the extension will have full visibility).
Chrome and other Chrome-based browsers make it easy to view and adjust the permissions for any browser extension you’re using.
JR Raphael / IDG
Just remember that many extensions do legitimately need certain levels of access in order to operate — so make these changes cautiously and only after carefully thinking through the potential implications. Worst-case scenario, though, if you bring an extension’s access down and then find it’s no longer working as expected, you can always come back to this same area of your browser’s settings later and change it back.
Firefox, incidentally, doesn’t allow this level of granular permission-granting — so if you find an extension there is accessing more than you’re comfortable with, your only real option is to uninstall it entirely.
Speaking of which…
Step 8: Get rid of any mobile apps and browser extensions you don’t need
While you’re thinking about third-party add-ons for your computer and phone, take a moment to review everything you have installed on both fronts and consider how many of those programs you actually still use. The fewer cracked windows you allow on your Google account, the better — and if you aren’t even using something, there’s no reason to keep it connected.
And with that, we’re ready for our final two parts of account-protecting possibilities.
Part III: Plan for the worst
Step 9: Set up or confirm your virtual Google will
Thinking about worst-case scenarios is never particularly pleasant — I’d much rather be eating crumpets, myself — but just as it’s important to have a plan in place for your physical and financial possessions, creating a virtual will for your Google account will make matters infinitely easier for your loved ones if and when you ever develop a mild case of death.
For company-managed Google Workspace accounts, someone at your organization would be able to take control of your account in the event that you were no longer able to access it. But with an individual Google account, no such system for passing along access exists.
Google has a simple system in place to manage this: Open up the Inactive Account Manager, and you’ll find tools for determining exactly what should happen if your account ever becomes inactive for a certain period of time. You can specify the number of months that must go by without any sign of your presence, along with the email addresses and phone numbers Google should use to contact you for confirmation. And then, you can give Google the email addresses of any people you want to be notified once it’s clear that you’re no longer available.
From there, you can specify exactly what types of information your chosen contacts will be able to access. You’ll even be able to leave a message for those people, if you want, and optionally create a broad autoreply that’ll be sent to anyone who emails you once your inactive period has begun (creepy!).
Google’s Inactive Account Manager is like a virtual estate planning tool for all of your account-associated data.
JR Raphael / IDG
Even if you’ve gone through this process before, it’s worth going back in and revisiting your preferences occasionally to confirm the info is all still complete and accurate — not only in the specific contacts you have set to be notified but also in what specific areas of your account those people will be able to access, if this situation ever actually arises.
For that latter piece of the puzzle, be sure to click the pencil-shaped icon next to the email address of each person you have listed. After you confirm their address, that’ll show you a list of account-related areas — everything from Contacts and Calendar to Google Chat, Google Photos, and even your location history (if you’re using a device that contributes to such a collection).
Virtually every time I’ve ever looked at that, I’ve found a handful of newer account-related areas weren’t selected to be shared — presumably because they didn’t exist when I had last reviewed the options. I had to manually check them all to be sure they’d be included in any post-consciousness account sharing.
Part IV: Turn your protection up to the max
Step 10: Think about Google’s Advanced Protection Program
Last but not least is a step that won’t be right for everyone but could be hugely consequential for certain types of Google users. For anyone at a higher risk of a targeted attack, Google offers an elevated form of account security called the Advanced Protection Program.
The program is described as being appropriate for business leaders, IT admins, activists, journalists, and anyone else who’s in the public eye and likely to be sought out by someone looking to do damage. It puts a series of heavy-duty restrictions on your Google account to make it especially difficult for anyone else to gain access — but as a result, it also makes things a bit more difficult for you.
The core part of the Advanced Protection Program is a requirement to have a physical security key the first time you sign into your account on any new device. That means in addition to your password, you’ll need that specific form of two-factor authentication — either an approved key built into your phone or a standalone dongle — in order to access your email, documents, or any other area of your Google account.
As part of the added security, you also won’t be able to connect most third-party apps to your Google account — including those that require access to your Gmail or Google Drive in order to operate. That could create some challenges (such as signing into an Android TV device, curiously enough) and require some compromises (such as no longer being able to use most third-party email clients with Gmail). And if you ever can’t get into your account for any reason, you’ll have to go through an extra-involved, multiday recovery process in order to restore access. You can read more about what the Advanced Protection Program is like to live with in this thoughtful overview.
Ultimately, only you can decide if the added inconveniences are worth the extra assurance. If you want the utmost in security for your Google account, though — and particularly if you’re someone who’s at a higher-than-average risk of being targeted — it’s something well worth considering.
If you do want to make the leap and add this extra layer of intense security onto your Google account, head over to Google’s Advanced Protection Program website to get started. With a personal account, you’ll be able to get yourself up and running in a matter of minutes. With an account that’s part of a paid company Workspace plan, your plan administrator will have to enable Advanced Protection for the organization before you’re able to do it. Once you start the enrollment process, you’ll see pretty quickly if it’s already available for your account or not — and if not, you can contact your company admin to ask about the possibility of allowing it.
And with that, give yourself a pat on the back: Now that these 10 steps are behind you, your Google account security is officially in tiptop shape — and you shouldn’t have to devote an ounce of thought to this area again anytime soon.
Just set yourself a reminder to revisit this page and review the steps within it once a year for good measure. (I’ll continue to update and expand the specific instructions as needed over time.) Do the same with security smarts in other areas — like your Android security settings, if you’re using an Android device of any sort — and then rest easy knowing your most important digital info is as secure as it can possibly be.
This article was originally published in February 2020 and updated in November 2024.
