If you missed the chance to buy Apple’s AirPods Pro when they were $175 in February, they’re now back down to that price once again. Amazon has discounted the company’s best-sounding earbuds by 30 percent for a limited time. You could probably get them for less if you’re patient, but we’re unlikely to see them drop to their previous low of $159 for quite some time.
While they’re a few years old now, the AirPods Pro are still one the best pair of wireless earbuds you can buy. We awarded them a score of 87 when Apple first released them in 2019. Since then, the company recently refreshed the included case to offer MagSafe charging in addition to the original Qi and Lightning options that came at launch.
As before, what the AirPods Pro lack in sound quality, they more than make up in utility. They feature active noise cancellation alongside a transparency mode that’s useful for ensuring you’re safe when out walking on a busy street. An IPX4 rating also means you can safely use them during workouts. With Apple’s included H1 chip, Hey Siri support allows you to control the AirPods Pro without reaching for your iPhone or one of the stems. That might not seem like much, but it’s one of those features that’s invaluable when your hands are full.
Last but certainly not least, since the AirPods Pro come with interchangeable silicone tips they’re the Apple earbuds to buy if you’re unsure if the one-size-fits-all approach of the second- and third-generation AirPods will work with your ears.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Nine years after it first emerged a live-action HaloTV series was in the works, the show is only a few days away from premiering on Paramount+. To celebrate its debut, Microsoft is giving Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers a free 30-day trial to the streaming service via Perks.
FYI: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members can get 30 days of Paramount+ for free via Perks starting March 23, right before the Halo series lands on March 24. Perfect timing. #HaloTheSeriespic.twitter.com/rd7JoVV4Sl
The offer will be available on March 23rd, the day before Halo arrives. There’s a catch, though. Given that only one installment of the nine-episode season is scheduled to drop each week, you might need to subscribe to Paramount+ to watch the entire season (unless you activate the offer a bit later). Paramount+ costs $5 per month with ads or $10 per month to go commercial free and gain access to a feed from your local live CBS station.
Earlier this week, Paramount+ released the final trailer for the show, which has a separate plot from the games and is already renewed for a second season. Along with some story beats, the two-minute clip shows an Elite with an Energy Sword and several shots of Master Chief in action.
Arturia is offering a solid deal on its MiniLab MkII, which may lower the barrier to entry for those who want to try making music with a MIDI keyboard. Not only has the company dropped the price to $99, a reduction of 25 percent, it bundled the MiniLab MkII with software worth over $400.
The MiniLab MkII is a portable, 25-key MIDI keyboard controller. It has 16 velocity and pressure-sensitive pads, the same number of rotary encoders and two touch strips for modulation and pitch bend. The USB-powered device has eight user control presets too.
The MiniLab MkII comes with Ableton Live Lite, a version of one of the most popular DAWs around. It offers dozens of instruments and effects. With Analog Lab Intro, you’ll get access to 500 presets, while UVI Grand Piano replicates the sound of the Steinway Model D grand piano. The bundle also includes Mini V, Stage-73 V and Rev PLATE-140 plugins.
At 3.3 lbs, the MiniLab MkII isn’t the most portable MIDI controller around. Still, it’s a great option for beginners.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
If you think you need the sheer power of the Mac Studio, then you probably need the Mac Studio. That’s all you really need to know about Apple’s squat little desktop. It fits neatly into the company’s current offerings: The Studio delivers more performance than the M1 Max-powered MacBook Pros, but it costs significantly less and gives you access to all the ports you’d want from a desktop. It’s basically the super-powered Mac Mini many have been waiting for. The only question for the Mac faithful: Should you get one, or wait for the Mac Pro revamp that’ll surely blow it out of the water?
The answer, naturally, will depend on your budget. The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with the M1 Max chip and jumps to $3,999 if you want to go full beast mode with the M1 Ultra. But while those prices may seem high, they’re in line with PC workstations meant for editing 4K and 8K video. If it’s not clear by now, the Studio isn’t really targeted at mainstream consumers – that’s what the Mac Mini is for. Its purpose lies in its name: It’s a diminutive desktop meant for creative professionals working in something akin to a studio (or a swanky home office).
Here’s what’s really exciting, though: The Mac Studio is within reach for many professionals. It’s more practical than the ill-fated iMac Pro, which started at $4,999 when it launched in 2017. (At the time, even we were genuinely confused about its intended audience.) That machine was unceremoniously discontinued last year, to no one’s surprise. The Studio is also far more approachable than the long-awaited Mac Pro Apple introduced in 2019, a feat of industrial design with a $5,999 entry price (which could easily scale to tens of thousands of dollars). The Mac Pro was certainly an impressive beast, but it was so far removed from consumers that Apple never sold it in their retail stores.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
The Mac Studio has some benefits that are obvious even before you turn it on: It doesn’t take up much floor or desk space; it’s easy to move around (clocking in at either 5.9 pounds for the M1 Max model or 7.9 pounds for the M1 Ultra); and its curvy aluminum case looks like something you’d find at MoMa. It’s not meant to disappear into the background like the Mac Mini. No, the Studio deserves a prominent spot on your desk, a symbol that you’ve become a true creative professional.
Also, you’d definitely want it on your desk to get easy access to all of its ports. So many ports! Up front, there are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections and an easily accessible microSD card slot. On the rear, they’re joined with four more Thunderbolt 4 USB-C sockets, two USB Type-A connections, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI and a headphone jack. I was shocked Apple even remembered USB Type-A exists, but I’m sure plenty of customers will be pleased that they can still use their old gear.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
My only quibble is the rear headphone jack/line out connection: It’s fine if you’re using speakers, but it’s annoying for people who constantly need to plug and unplug their headphones, especially since it’s right beside the power button. (I know several video editors who’ll be particularly peeved by this.)
Apple sent along two Mac Studio models for testing: one with an M1 Max chip and 64GB of RAM, and another with the M1 Ultra chip and 128GB of RAM. (I can say with certainty there’s never been this much RAM on my desk at once.) The M1 Max is pretty much the same chip that was featured on the new MacBook Pro: It has 10 CPU cores (8 8 performance cores, 2 for efficiency), a 24-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine for AI processing.
In all practical respects, the M1 Ultra is basically two M1 Max chips joined together with Apple’s “UltraFusion” die-to-die interconnect. That means you can just double all of those stats: It has a 20-core CPU, 48-core GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine. The M1 Ultra can be equipped with up to 128GB of unified RAM with 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth (again, double what’s possible on the M1 Max).
While Apple’s custom processors were miraculous on laptops — delivering speed and power efficiency like we’ve never seen before with x86 CPUs — desktop workstations are a far greater challenge. AMD has been able to cram 64 cores into the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, a monstrously powerful chip with a power-hungry 280-watt TDP (thermal dynamic profile). But then again, that chip can cost well over $8,000.
Apple’s more direct competition is the Intel Core i9-12900K. While the company didn’t offer specific details on its chip thermals, it noted that the M1 Ultra can reach up to 90 percent higher performance in the same power envelope as the “fastest 16-core PC desktop chip available.” That’s most likely the 12900K. Apple adds that the Ultra can match that PC chip’s peak performance while using 100 watts less power.
The big takeaway: You can expect the Mac Studio to deliver a lot of performance without generating much heat or fan noise. And, for the most part, that’s what I found during my testing. The M1 Ultra-powered Mac Studio achieved the highest Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 multithreaded scores we’ve ever seen, all without spinning up its fan or working up a sweat. The M1 Max model, meanwhile, scored the same as the Max-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro, and well above other 10-core systems. Intel’s 14- and 16-core 12th-gen chips scored slightly higher than the M1 Max in multithreaded performance, but the M1 Ultra trounced them completely.
I’m not a professional video editor, and I don’t work with complex 3D models regularly. So I relied on a few Apple-provided projects to get a better sense of the Mac Studio’s real-world performance: an 8K video edit in Final Cut Pro, and a 54-million voxel CT scan in Horos Mobile. I was able to export an 8K version of that 34-second video in 23 seconds on both Mac Studios (the M1 Max model took 0.2 seconds longer). There was a slightly bigger difference when exporting to 4K: the M1 Ultra Mac Studio took 23.5 seconds, while the M1 Max took an additional two seconds.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Both systems also let me rotate and explore that massive Horos Mobile CT scan without any major slowdowns. Apple’s unified memory architecture is particularly helpful for large files, since it gives the GPU direct access to all of the system’s RAM. PC GPUs, meanwhile, are limited by their onboard memory. NVIDIA’s flagship RTX 3090 packs in 24GB of VRAM, but our Mac Studios could give Horos Mobile, or any other app, access to a big chunk of their 64GB or 128GB of RAM if necessary. That alone could make them tempting for editors working with feature-length 8K videos.
So sure, the Mac Studios can deliver a ton of performance. But there are plenty of downsides when compared to PC workstations. For one, since they’re Macs, there aren’t many games to play when you need some R&R. Apple Arcade titles are decent distractions, and there are a handful of older and indie Steam games that run on the Mac Studio, like Hitman and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. But you can give up hope on playing new titles like Elden Ring, or using PC VR headsets. Apple’s M1 chips are based on a mobile ARM architecture, so you can’t install Windows on the Mac Studio like you could with Intel-based Macs. External GPUs are also out of the question, since Apple’s Silicon depends on having direct access to GPU hardware (an eGPU would just be slowed down by the Thunderbolt interface).
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
You can’t upgrade the Mac Studio either, which is a bummer if you wanted to jump to faster SSDs in a few years. Their RAM is built right into the M1 chips, which means there’s no physical way to expand the memory either. I’d wager many creatives wouldn’t have much of a reason to upgrade anyway, though. The M1 Max model comes with 32GB of RAM by default, while the Ultra configuration has 64GB. The SSDs on both systems are also incredibly fast, delivering almost 10 Gigabytes per second read speeds and over 6 GB/s in writing performance. Those are the highest figures we’ve ever clocked on SSDs.
As great as the overall Mac Studio experience is, it’s hampered a bit by Apple’s accessories. The Magic Keyboard is fine to type on, but I’d still like more key depth. And the Magic Mouse is, once again, a disastrous design. You can only charge it from the bottom, and it’s simply too small for me to use comfortably. Instead, I gravitated towards the Magic Trackpad, which feels more like using one of Apple’s laptops. If you’re a PC user jumping ship to Macs, I’d recommend bringing over your favorite Logitech hardware instead.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
If you just want a powerful Mac desktop, and you’re fine with the lack of upgradability, the Mac Studio will serve you well for years. But if you’re concerned you may outgrow it soon, you’ve also got plenty of PC workstations to choose from. Intel’s NUC 12 Extreme (above) is a bit larger, but it can be equipped with a full-sized graphics card and you can upgrade the RAM and SSDs as much as you want. That machine only comes as a DIY kit, but you’ll be able to buy pre-configured models from third-party retailers eventually. Alternatively, you could always go for a pre-built small-form-factor PC from builders like Origin, but expect to pay more than the cheapest Mac Studio.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
As I mentioned up top, Apple’s revamped Mac Pro could be a compelling option for power-hungry creators. But it would likely cost well over $6,000 at a minimum, based on the pricing for the last model and the fact that the $4,000 Mac Studio exists. At this point, the Mac Pro seems like it’s only meant for production houses or people with seriously deep pockets.
Unlike the iMac Pro, it’s easy to tell who the Mac Studio is for: People who demand power, ports and reasonably priced hardware. It’s taken a while, but now Apple finally has a Mac desktop that can go toe-to-toe with PC workstations under $5,000.
Slack has furnished its iPad app with a much-needed update. The highlight of the release is a redesigned interface that introduces a two-column layout to the app. If you’re already familiar with the desktop version of Slack, you know what to expect. Yo…
Apple ordered the evacuation of a "portion" of its Apple Park headquarters on Tuesday after first responders from the Santa Clara County Fire Department found an envelope containing an unidentified powdery white substance, according to NBC Ba…
The rumors of Steam coming to Chromebooks were true. As 9to5Googlereports, Google mentioned in its Games Developer Summit keynote that a Steam alpha test for Chrome OS will be available for “select” Chromebooks. Details weren’t available as of this writing, but Google pointed would-be players to a (currently unavailable) Chromebook community forum post. We’ve asked the company for more information.
A February leak at 9to5 may have revealed the initially supported hardware. At the time, Steam would only run on a trio of Acer Chromebooks (including the Spin 713), ASUS’ Chromebook CX9 and Flip CX5, HP’s Pro c640 G2 and an unnamed Lenovo model. You might be limited to models with at least an 11th-gen Core i5 and 7GB of RAM, too. This wouldn’t be shocking given the demands of many Steam games, but it might rule out many entry-level laptops and well-known models like the Galaxy Chromebook 2.
This will be an alpha, and there are already hints Google will widen support. The bigger question might surround gaming. Which titles will work? Will Steam developers need to optimize games for Chromebooks? All the same, it might be welcome for gamers who’ve wanted a Chromebook but wanted more to play than Android games and cloud services could offer.
“Windows games can ship with DirectStorage” starting today, Microsoft has announced. DirectStorage is the tech giant’s fast game-loading technology that was introduced with the Xbox Series X and S consoles. In September 2020, Microsoft revealed that it will also make the DirectStorage API available on Windows, allowing games for PCs to take advantage of the technology.
DirectStorage leverages the speed of modern NVMe SSDs, which can deliver multiple gigabytes per second, to load games faster than before. As Microsoft explains, current storage APIs weren’t optimized for modern games’ data loading methods and create bottlenecks that lengthen loading times even for those who have an NVMe SSD. In addition, most gaming assets need to be decompressed before they’re sent to the GPU for rendering. DirectStorage solves those issues by processing multiple I/O requests needed to load assets into batches and by using the best current (and future) decompression technologies.
Microsoft released a developer preview of the technology in mid-2021, but as The Verge reports, there are no available games with DirectStorage support yet. One of the first titles to take advantage of the technology is Square Enix’s Forspoken, which will be released for Windows and the PS5 in October. Other developers may have only just started working on incorporating the technology into their games. It may take a while for more titles to come with DirectStorage, especially since not everyone has upgraded to NVMe SSDs yet. It’s worth noting, though, that while Windows 11 unlocks the technology’s full potential, even gamers on Windows 10 will still see some improvements while playing games that support it.
The tech giant will present an introduction to DirectStorage at GDC on March 22nd and is expected to give tips and tricks developers can use to get started. Forspoken developer Luminous will also be talking about how it integrated the technology into the game at the same event.
Apple has begun rolling out iOS 15.4. The highly anticipated update adds a handful of features many iPhone users have been waiting to try out since the company first began testing them back in January. Among the most notable is the option to unlock your device while wearing a mask, making it so that you don’t need an Apple Watch to unlock your phone without removing a face covering or inputting your passcode. Once you’ve installed iOS 15.4, you’ll need to activate it manually in the Face ID and Passcode section of the Settings menu. iOS 15.4 also comes with a new voice option for Siri.
Apple has also released iPadOS 15.4. It introduces another highly anticipated feature: Universal Control. First announced at WWDC in June and then delayed at the end of the year, it allows you control multiple Macs and iPads with a single keyboard and trackpad or mouse. The two updates also with the 37 new emoji characters introduced as part of Unicode 14.0. That means you can use characters like the “melting face” in your text conversations, and add skin tones to the handshake emoji.
To download the new updates, launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, then tap “General” followed by Software Update.
Apple’s latest MacBook Pros are some of the most powerful laptops you can get right now, and they have high price tags to match. But if you’ve had your eye on the 16-inch model, you can grab it for $200 less than usual right now thanks to a new Amazon sale. The online retailer has the 512GB model for $2,299 and the 1TB version for $2,499, both of which are record-low prices.
These are the MacBook Pros many have been waiting for, not only for their impressive power but also their equally improved connectivity. We gave the M1 Pro and M1 Max laptops a score of 92 for their excellent performance, lovely Liquid Retina XDR Displays, great speakers and solid battery lives. Both machines blew every Windows machine we reviewed last year out of the water when it came to performance benchmarks, and we didn’t notice a slow down when the laptops ran in battery power. Plus, you’ll get a lot of use out of them before you need to power up — the 14-inch laptop lasted about 12.5 hours in our testing, while the 16-inch model survived for just over 16 hours.
Power alone makes these laptops solid options for videographers, photographers and other creatives, but they’re made even better by the new ports Apple included on both laptops. You’re no longer limited to just a few Thunderbolt ports — both machines now have a full-sized HDMI port, a MagSafe power connector, three USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and an SD card slot. So while you will still need an adapter if you have USB-A accessories, hooking the machine up to other peripherals is much easier than it was on previous models. They may still be expensive even with this discount, but it’s hard to beat the latest MacBook Pros if you’re looking for a new laptop with as much power as possible, plus all of the latest features from Apple.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
