Category: 4. Technology

There’s a reason Apple gear is so in demand. After reviewing nearly every major device out there, our current favorite laptop, smartwatch, tablet and smartphone are all made by Apple. The only problem is, Apple gear isn’t cheap. So it’s sometimes wise to wait for an event like Amazon’s Prime Day before you buy. This guide rounds up the best Prime Day Apple Deals we could find so far, including some of the lowest prices of the year on iPads, Apple Watches, AirPods and MacBooks. We’ve also linked to our reviews and buying guides so you can make the most informed purchases possible.

Best Prime Day Apple Watch deals

Apple Watch SE for $169 (32 percent off): Those on tight budgets can opt for the Apple Watch SE and know they’re getting the core Apple wearable experience with few compromises. We consider it to be the best smartwatch for newbies.

Best Prime Day iPad deals

Apple iPad Pro (11-inch, M4) for $899 ($100 off): We named the iPad Pro the best tablet money can buy. The screen is one of the best we’ve seen and Apple somehow managed to make the Pro model lighter than Air models. If you plan on handling heavy productivity — video rendering and editing, machine learning apps and the like, this is the way to go.

Apple iPad Pro (13-inch, M4) for $1,099 ($200 off): The larger iPad pro is the ultimate laptop replacer. The M4 chip is faster than many computers out there but the thin and light design makes it super portable. The battery life will last through a whole day of work and more (we clocked over 10 hours of use in our review) and the screen is brilliant. Our only real complaint is the price, and this Prime Day helps at least a little.

Apple iPad Mini (A17 Pro) for $399 ($100 off): Apple’s smallest iPad earned an 83 review score from us when it came out late last year. Despite its compact size, it’s still a fully-featured iPad, with support for accessories and a laminated, anti-reflective screen. It’s not a laptop-replacer, but rather the perfect couch companion, handling games, video, web browsing and email triage.

Best Prime Day MacBook deals

MacBook Air (M4, 15-inch) for $1,049 ($150 off): If you want a little more screen real estate, go for the 15-inch Air. Devindra found the screen more immersive than the smaller model, and only slightly less portable. The slightly larger battery gave it a few more minutes of life. Whichever size you go for, the MacBook Air will be able to handle all but the most demanding rendering tasks without breaking a sweat.

MacBook Air (15-inch, M3, 24GB RAM) for $1,249 ($450 off): This higher-specced version of the M3 MacBook Air from last year has a 15-inch screen and a little extra internal memory. We gave the 15-inch model a score of 90 in our review when it came out in early 2024. Outside of its older M3 chip (which is still plenty fast for everyday use), marginally improved camera and inability to power two external displays with the lid open, this MacBook is virtually identical to the M4 version.

Best Prime Day AirPod deals

AirPods Max (USB-C) for $480 ($69 off): Apple’s only over-ear headphones are due for an update. The company outfitted the AirPods Max with a USB-C port late last year, but the internals haven’t had an overhaul since 2020. Still, we named them the best (and only) over-earn AirPods. They are comfortable and relatively lightweight, have a balanced sound and the noise cancellation is solid.

Best Prime Day deals on Apple accessories

Apple Pencil Pro for $99 ($30 off): Apple announced the Pro version of its pencil at the same time as the iPad Pro with the M4 chip. It adds haptic feedback, squeeze gestures and roll capabilities to the usual stylus tricks. It works with the newest iPad Pro, Air and Mini models.

RYO YAMADA’S ART INSTALLATION REFLECTS LONG-TERM CLIMATE IMPACT

Ryo Yamada’s Zero Meter Above Sea Level 20000 is a site-specific installation situated in the War Memorial Gallery at Summerhall Arts, Edinburgh. The work models the projected sea level in this specific location 19,980 years into the future, assuming a continued trajectory of global sea-level rise.

The installation is based on the current elevation of Summerhall, approximately 76 meters above present sea level. With ongoing climate-induced sea-level rise, currently estimated at approximately 0.5 meters globally over the next century, the piece extrapolates this trend to visualize a time when the sea may reach the current elevation of the gallery site.

all images courtesy of Ryo Yamada

Zero Meter Above Sea Level 20000 uses timber and non-woven fiber

Constructed over 33 days, the installation occupies a footprint of 4.2 meters by 4.2 meters within the 7-meter-wide by 6-meter-deep gallery. The ceiling height of the work is set at 2.17 meters, referencing a calculated sea-level height relative to the gallery floor, which itself sits 1.35 meters above the base elevation point of 76 meters.

Designer Ryo Yamada’s installation uses slender 21mm x 21mm timber elements, each manually cut by the artist. Despite their fine dimensions, the frame is structurally stabilized through precise interconnections, forming a unified, monolithic volume. The skeletal timber structure supports a surface of non-woven fiber, which diffuses light to evoke the visual and atmospheric quality of a future sea surface.

projected sea level 19,980 years from now, modeled in timber and light

Zero Meter Above Sea Level 20000 situates the future sea at gallery height

timber frame marks a speculative ocean surface in central Edinburgh

Rolling out with the latest update, Spotify is getting a redesign on Android Auto and also adding support for “Jam” on the car’s display.

Announced back at Google I/O 2025 earlier this year, Spotify is now taking advantage of Android Auto’s newfound flexibility in media apps. An update available now brings additional functionality to Spotify’s Android Auto app, most notably including support for “Jam.”

The new Spotify app includes a handful of key changes. There’s now a more prominent “Downloaded” section in your Library, allowing you to only use music that’s available offline. That might be handy when driving on rural roads without stable signal. You’ll also now see an indicator on downloaded tracks while browsing albums or playlists.

There are also some minor UI changes throughout the app, as well as a new floating Search shortcut that opens a dedicated search page for Spotify. Previously, Google Assistant was the sole was to search for music and it would just start playing. Now, you can search for albums or tracks and see results in the app.

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Finally, the big addition is Spotify Jam. This feature, found on the “Now Playing” page, pulls up a QR code which other users can scan to start collaborating on the current music queue. The driver is the host, with guests able to add music which is then played through the car, which seems like a really useful feature for road trips. Once a guest has been added, the app will easily allow them to be removed by the driver.

This change appears to be attached to Spotify 9.0.58.596 for Android, available now via the Play Store.

Other media apps are likely to start getting similar updates in the months to come, with Google having confirmed Amazon Music and YouTube Music will both leverage the added flexibility in time.

More on Android Auto:

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SUSE developers working on their new operating system installer “Agama” have been making steady progress and on Friday debuted Agama 16. With Agama 16 they have moved from X.Org to Wayland for powering their installer UI along with a number of other changes.

The Agama 16 operating system installer has introduced better matching for storage devices, installation status reporting via IPMI for Linux servers, initial support for using existing MD RAID arrays from the Agama web interface UI, a more friendly experience for remote installations, checking the strength of typed passwords, and other enhancements.

SUSE also decided that it’s time to switch from using the X.Org Server to Wayland as the display server for running their Firefox-based web UI for the installer on graphical installations. Switching to Wayland did increase the install image size compared to their former images using X11 but they are going to be working on improvements there along with restoring some now-missing keyboard shortcut support.

SUSE continues working on the Agama operating system installer so that it will be ready for use with the upcoming openSUSE Leap 16.0 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 16.0 operating system releases. More details on the Agama 16 changes via the Agama project blog.

The rollout of Android 16 happened sooner than we expected. However, the highly anticipated Material 3 Expressive design language won’t be available until the Android 16 QPR1 update later this year. In the meantime, we’ve seen multiple Google apps, such as Google Messages, introduce Material 3 Expressive elements into the app. The messaging app is now working on yet another change in line with the updated design philosophy.

An APK teardown of the latest Google Messages beta (version 20250701_01_RC00) by Android Authority has revealed work on a design refresh for the contact profile/chat info page. This page can be accessed by tapping the contact’s name at the top of a 1-1 conversation or from the list of chats by tapping the contact’s profile image, followed by the “i” icon.

Current vs upcoming (via Android Authority)

This redesign focuses on enlarging the four key buttons on the contact profile page: Call, Video, Contact info, and Search. Compared to the current set of buttons, the upcoming version features significantly larger, oval-shaped buttons. These changes align with the Material 3 Expressive updates we’ve seen across multiple Google apps so far.

The updated visual elements should be available imminently

In addition to their larger size, Google is giving these four buttons more flair. A video uploaded by Android Authority shows how the buttons expand momentarily when the user interacts with them, which is a nice touch. It’s worth pointing out that this feature was manually activated, which means that simply sideloading the Google Messages beta APK on your Android smartphone won’t suffice.

There are no specifics available on the wider rollout of this contact page redesign, which isn’t surprising given that it is only accessible through the beta version. However, with Material 3 Expressive being a big area of focus for Google in the coming months, we’d be surprised if these changes didn’t reach the stable version of Google Messages imminently.

Similar to Google Messages, we’ve recently seen apps like Google Wallet gaining some Material 3 Expressive changes. Meanwhile, email client Gmail is also prepping an updated look in line with Android’s updated design language.

It shouldn’t be particularly surprising as Fedora Linux has always been known for shipping with a leading-edge compiler toolchain, but the formalities have now been submitted for Fedora 43 to ship with the latest GNU and LLVM toolchain components.

Fedora 42 already shipped with the GCC 15 compiler ahead of the annual stable compiler feature release in the spring. For Fedora 43 the plan is to ship with GCC 15.2 as what will be the newest point release to GCC 15 and should be out as stable around August.

In addition to moving to the GCC 15.2 point release, the GNU toolchain update proposal also includes shipping GNU Binutils 2.45 and GNU C Library 2.42 and GNU Debugger 17.1. All what will be their latest stable releases by this autumn for Fedora 43.

There is also a change proposal for shipping Fedora 43 with the LLVM 21 toolchain that will be the newest with Clang 21 and other LLVM 21 components for those using that GNU toolchain alternative. In addition, the LLVM package is now built with Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) for better performance. The change proposal notes that the PGO’ed LLVM/Clang should be noticeably faster compiling C and C++ files.

These change proposals still need to be approved by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) but with Fedora’s long history of always shipping the very latest compiler toolchain components, they’ll likely be approved with ease.

Aren’t pets such a drag? I mean, really. They’re all furry, and cute, and innocent. And you have to feed them and love them, and respect their autonomy and basic needs. For what? Borderline unconditional love? Who’s got time for all that? Certainly not me. My job is computer, and I need efficiency—a practical companion that’s alive when I want it to be and shutting the f**k up when I need to have the TPS report filed by EOD so corporate can circle back on the EOY roadmap. You got all that? Me neither; I’ll just have AI summarize it for me. Alright, sorry, I’m done joking now. It’s time to get serious—or should I say… Sirius.

Sirius is a $1,200 robot dog made by a company you’ve never heard of called Hengbot. It’s part of a long lineage of robot dogs punctuated by the likes of tech titans like Sony, Xiaomi, Fisher-Price, and, uh, Ideal Toy Company’s impeccably named mechanical dog from 1960, Gaylord the Pup (you can’t make this shit up, folks). But this isn’t just another Gaylord. It’s a robot dog with—say it with me now—AI. Using large language models (LLMs) like the ones that power ChatGPT, Sirius comes equipped with the ability to understand voice commands. What can you ask Sirius? Some stuff.

In a demo with Sirius, I saw the dog take voice commands like “sit,” “shake,” and “pee,” though I wouldn’t want to train your real dog to do that last one. They’re activated pretty much how you’d think they would be. Just blurt out, “Hey, Sirius,” and then talk away. The dog has to be connected to Wi-Fi to do all of this stuff, FYI—there’s no onboard processing, but this ain’t an iPhone after all. Speaking of iPhones, be careful when yelling “Hey, Sirius” because “Sirius” sounds an awful lot like another voice assistant, who’s had a bit of trouble with AI lately. I don’t know what happens when you ask your iPhone to pee, but frankly, I’d rather not find out.

I wasn’t able to test the voice commands with my review unit of Sirius because I had trouble connecting it to Wi-Fi, but I did get to see them in a live demo, and Sirius’s voice assistant looks about as good as Apple’s, which is to say… pretty mid. It recognized some commands right away, and others not so much. However mid Sirius is at processing and understanding voice commands, it’s much worse at (sigh) walking. This thing falls kind of a lot, and unlike a dog made of flesh and blood, it cannot figure out how to get up after taking said spill. Lots of my time testing Sirius was spent extricating it from the insufferable foibles of its own clumsiness. I have my own foibles to suffer, thank you very much. I don’t need a robot dog to add to the pile.

(Note: you may not have the same Wi-Fi headache as the one I encountered. My unit was a demo version and didn’t have the same OTA update as the ones shipping after. We’ll be updating this post if and when I can get Sirus online.)

Using a game controller provided with my review unit, I tried parading Sirius around the Gizmodo office for shits and giggles but found that (especially when it’s in autonomous mode) it would often get tripped up when I sent in an input to walk forward or move side-to-side and then flop to the ground harder than Cristiano Ronaldo when his team is down 2-1. Say what you will about dogs, but they’re pretty good at locomotion most of the time. When Sirius isn’t falling over, you can use a game controller to do some fun stuff manually, like directing it to jump in four directions (left, right, forward, or back) and also activate some silly commands like making it sit and meow like a cat. Cute!

I think if I’m going to give Sirius any credit, it’s that the actuators used to move the dog around are pretty cool and can actually simulate the movements of a real dog fairly well. I suppose, depending on your feelings toward robots, that could also be a point against it, too. There’s something vaguely uncanny valley about Sirius, and the weird, single robot eye on the dog’s face probably doesn’t help.

Despite the fact that Sirius, with its onboard camera, can actually track your face, it cannot follow you around like other robot dogs like Xiaomi’s Cyberdog. That’s a bummer. I think going for a walk is probably high on the list of things people would want to do with their new $1,200 pet, or toy, or AI companion, or… wait a second, what is this thing, actually? If you’re reading these words (and I’m sorry if you are), please send me your coordinates so I can tell the police to save you from the evil villain Clockwork Oranging robot dog reviews into your eyeballs—then you may also be curious who Sirius is meant for. The short answer is I have no freaking clue.

Is it a toy for serious adults who want an AI-programmable companion? Is it supposed to be cute? Like, I don’t know, Furby cute? Or Sony Aibo robot dog cute? I’m not positive, but if it’s the latter, then I would venture to say that it’s not really hitting the mark. Superficially, it looks like a cross between Boston Dynamics’ Spot and a DJI drone, and functionally, it can do a little bit more than the robot dogs of yore, I guess. But in practice, it’s just not very, I don’t know… fun. There’s a sort of binary that exists in gadgets, robot dogs included. There are toys—things that aren’t meant to do much, but they’re fun to use. And then there are tools. Things that do a thing that you need or very much want done. As it stands, I don’t think Sirius is hitting either of those marks, but in the end, the stakes are kind of low. I don’t know who this robot dog is for, but some dogs have no master, right? Then again, those dogs, sooner or later, often get sent to the pound…