Enlarge / The 2024 Porsche Macan is still months away from going on sale, but Porsche let us drive the prototype in Los Angeles this summer. (credit: Porsche)

Porsche provided flights from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles and two nights in a hotel so we could drive the prototype Macan. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.—Porsche's plans to electrify 80 percent of its product range by 2030 requires the German automaker to offer more than just Taycans. Other than the 911, which probably won't be a battery-electric vehicle (unless and) until solid-state batteries alter the energy-to-mass calculations, that means everything else in the lineup will need to trade engine, exhaust, and fuel tank for a battery pack and an electric motor or two. And it's starting with its second-best-selling model, the Macan crossover.

An all-new Macan arrives in showrooms next year for model year 2024 and will confusingly coexist for some time alongside the current gas-burning Macan, which recently went through its midlife refresh. The new version is entirely electric, however, and will be built on a new 800 V architecture called Premium Platform Electric, being developed by Porsche together with its corporate sibling, Audi.

Spy shots of barely disguised Macan EVs have been circulating for some time as Porsche puts on its finishing touches. Some of those test cars have even been spotted here in the US; a couple of years ago, it decided to develop local market prototypes. For our market, that means things like making sure the satellite radio works and that the advanced driver assistance system (or ADAS) can read our road signs and knows that on US highways, faster traffic rarely sticks to the leftmost lane.

Enlarge / It only cost Michael MJD nearly $1,800, plus a replacement display controller, to get to the point where he could play the memory game on a classic iMac. (credit: Michael MJD / YouTube)

Two remarkable things appear in a recent Michael MJD video . One is an iMac G3 from 1999 that responds to not just touchscreen taps and drags, but also touch pressure. The other is a sticker on the side of the Strawberry tray-loading iMac, indicating that it was an "Engineering Prototype" from Elo, a company that was an official "Value Added Reseller" for Apple products.

The first iMac's release was 25 years ago last month . The device was a breakthrough on many levels. The transparent brightly colored plastic, the streamlined shape with rounded corners, and the bold-for-the-time choice to forgo floppy drives and myriad other PC ports made the G3 a style icon, to the point where the G3 is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection . It rebuilt and fortified Apple's position in the tech landscape. And, not for nothing, it kicked off an era-defining surge in transparent design .

The iMac G3 heralded some of Apple's future strategies and focus, but the company and its business model contained many aspects of an earlier era. Elo, a company that continues to make touchscreens for point-of-sale systems and other applications, turned some iMacs into touchscreen kiosks, with Apple's approval as a "Value Added Reseller." As Michael MJD points out in his video, the iMac made sense as a good-looking computer you could park on a surface and allow people to manipulate without a keyboard or mouse. What's more, Elo was only one of three known companies offering this kind of third-party touchscreen conversion.

Enlarge / After 50 years away, Ferrari is building a works endurance prototype again. (credit: Ferrari)

Ferrari provided flights from DC to Bologna and back, plus three nights in a hotel so we could meet the 499P and drive the 296 GTS. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

IMOLA, ITALY—After a break of 50 years, Ferrari is returning to top-level endurance racing with a new hybrid prototype race car. It's called the 499P, and in 2023 Ferrari will campaign a pair of cars in the World Endurance Championship, a series with the 24 Hours of Le Mans as its crown jewel.

As I've written before , 2023 is going to be an exciting time for fans of prototype racing. After the cubic megabucks-era of LMP1h collapsed under the weight of unsustainable budgets , the top class of the World Endurance Championship has spent a few years in the doldrums as Toyota faced minimal opposition from much smaller teams. But the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (which runs the Le Mans race) has a new ruleset now, called LMH (Le Mans Hypercar), designed to attract the interest of automakers by keeping costs sane—€30 million versus the €80-200 million that LMP1h cost—and, with less reliance on aerodynamic downforce , allowing for a closer visual link to their road-going products.

And so far, it's working. Toyota was first to LMH with its GR010 , followed by boutique manufacturer Glickenhaus, then this year saw Peugeot ease its way back into to endurance racing with its new 9X8 —still not sporting a rear wing—ahead of a full campaign in 2023. But none of those brands have quite the same magic as Ferrari. Even though it last won Le Mans outright in 1965, it still has more of those overall wins (nine) than Toyota (five) and Peugeot (three) combined, trailing just Audi (13) and Porsche (19).