New laptops come with more storage but also higher starting prices. Apple updated its low-end MacBook Pro with the Apple M5 chip back in October, but the higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch Pros stuck with the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. This morning, Apple circled back and updated the…
Questions remain as Google prepares to lock down Android app distribution in the name of security. It’s been nearly 20 years since Google revealed Android, which the company described as the first “truly open” mobile operating system, setting Google-powered phones apart from the iPhone’s aggressively managed experience. Over time,…
Unexpected RAM upgrade is the highlight of an otherwise straightforward refresh. As expected, Apple has announced a mild update for the iPad family’s middle child today. The new iPad Air is a lot like the old one, but it replaces the Apple M3 chip with an M4. That M4…
New just-the-basics phone replaces the year-old iPhone 16e at the same price. Apple’s biggest iPhone announcements usually happen in September, but for the second year in a row, the company is also introducing a new iPhone in March. The iPhone 17e is a new version of Apple’s basic no-frills…
First wave of Ryzen AI desktop CPUs targets business PCs rather than DIYers. AMD has been selling “Ryzen AI”-branded laptop processors for around a year and a half at this point. In addition to including modern CPU and GPU architectures, these are attempting to capitalize on the generative AI…
Can two declining companies form a profitable one? Netflix has dropped out of the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), making Paramount Skydance the expected owner of WBD. A Paramount-WBD merger remains subject to regulatory approval, but it’s likely that we will see a Paramount-Skydance-Warner-Bros.-Discovery media giant. Such…
Netflix shares jumped following the announcement. Netflix backed out of its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD’s) streaming and movie studios businesses on Thursday night. After increasing its bid for all of WBD by $1 per share on Tuesday, Paramount Skydance is poised to become the new owner…
Most new Macs can still be downgraded with few downsides. Here’s what to know. An Ars Technica colleague recently bought a new M4 MacBook Air. I have essentially nothing bad to say about this hardware, except to point out that even in our current memory shortage apocalypse, Apple is…
Apple is taking an “ain’t broke/don’t fix” approach to most of its gadgets. Excepting the AirTag 2, so far it’s been a quiet year for Apple hardware. But that’s poised to change next week, as the company is hosting a “special experience” on March 4. The use of the…
Google’s new image model replaces the previous versions immediately. The last year has been big for Google’s AI efforts. Its rapid-fire model releases have brought it to parity with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic and, in some cases, pushed it into the lead. The Nano Banana image generator…
