Nintendo Switch racks up big sales numbers, spendy Apple iMac Pro makes its debut on Thursday, ET-hunting group gives asteroid a listen.
Breath of the Profits
It’s been a banner year for resurgent gaming company Nintendo, thanks to their megahit Nintendo Switch gaming console. Forbes says the company has sold over ten million of the innovative gaming systems in just nine months, or just a bit more than a million a month or about 36,000 per day. We here at DT love the Switch and voted it as our tech Product of the Year for a lot of good reasons, so we’re not surprised by the sales figures.
But, if you’re hoping to score a Nintendo Switch system in time for the holidays, better get to shopping. It’s still in stock or close to it on most major websites, but the window is closing fast, so better make your move sooner than later.
A long, long way from Bondi Blue
If the Switch isn’t your thing, maybe Apple’s new flagship iMac is. Better known as the Apple iMac Pro, it looks like you may be able to sneak one under the tree – or just right onto your desk – before the holidays. Apple has updated the iMac Pro portion of their site to show that the new iMac Pro will be available on Thursday, although exactly how many they‘ve got boxed up and ready to ship is unknown.
In case you had any illusions the iMac Pro is going to be cheap, let us assure you: it won’t be. The top-of-the-line iMac starts at $4,999 and will quickly spool up from there according to how you spec it out with RAM, hard drives, GPUs and processor options. The best chip you can drop in is an 18-core Intel Xeon CPU that will likely add a few grand to the price, although Apple has yet to put the buy button and options list on the page. We’ll know more on Thursday.
Needle in a solar system
Remember that “asteroid” that come looping into the Terran star system ( that would be ours) back in October from parts unknown, only to make a turn and head out of our system at a robust 85,000 miles an hour? Scientists took as good a look as they could while it flew by, and discovered some interesting properties. For one, the shape is very odd, even more than they first thought: it may be about 2,000 feet long and only about 80 feet wide.
Also, it didn’t have a “tail” of debris as it flew past the Sun near the close-in orbit of Mercury, so scientists think it’s a solid object, not an amalgamation of loose stuff like a comet. What could it be? Those questions unsurprisingly have the attention of an ET hunter group, who are going to point a very large telescope at it for a prolonged listening session, just in case it’s not quite what it seems.
Scientific American says the Breakthrough Initiatives project, which is similar but more broadly focused – and much better funded – than SETI, is funding the 10-hour eavesdropping session, which will listen for any radio signals coming from the object, which is already halfway to Jupiter orbit. They’ll turn on the microphones tomorrow at about 1pm.
We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.
