Time’s running out to get a free gift card when you preorder a new MacBook
This has been a week to remember here at The Verge. MWC 2026 in Barcelona lead straight into Apple’s week of product announcements. There was truly something for everyone, whether you’ve been wanting a company to make a phone that can start fires, or had your fingers crossed for a brand-new MacBook model that costs just $599.99. It was also a great week for gaming, with the launch of Slay the Spire 2 on Steam as an early access game, plus Pokémon Pokopia on Nintendo Switch 2, and Marathon on PC and PS5. It was also a pretty good week when it comes to deals, especially if you’re in the market for new hardware. You can nab a free gift card with a preorder of early 2026’s most anticipated tech launching on March 11th, including Apple’s new MacBooks, plus Samsung’s lineup Galaxy S26 phones. Let’s not forget that Google’s Pixel 10A launched this week, and the gift...
This has been a week to remember here at The Verge. MWC 2026 in Barcelona lead straight into Apple’s week of product announcements. There was truly something for everyone, whether you’ve been wanting a company to make a phone that can start fires, or had your fingers crossed for a brand-new MacBook model that costs just $599.99. It was also a great week for gaming, with the launch of Slay the Spire 2 on Steam as an early access game, plus Pokémon Pokopia on Nintendo Switch 2, and Marathon on PC and PS5.It was also a pretty good week when it comes to deals, especially if you’re in the market for new hardware. You can nab a free gift card with a preorder of early 2026’s most anticipated tech launching on March 11th, including Apple’s new MacBooks, plus Samsung’s lineup Galaxy S26 phones. Let’s not forget that Google’s Pixel 10A launched this week, and the gift card promo for that is happening through March 11th. Here are this week’s best deals.March 11th is a big day for tech launches. That’s when every product that Apple announced this past week will ship and hit shelves, including its M5-powered MacBook Air, its MacBook Pro models equipped with the M5 Pro and M5 Max processors, its affordable new MacBook Neo, the M4 iPad Air, plus two new Studio Displays. But wait, there’s more! Samsung’s Galaxy S26, the S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra launch that day, too.With a couple exceptions (the Studio Displays and the iPad Air), you can get a gift card when you buy any of those products right now. Best Buy is the source for gift cards on most of Apple’s latest gear (including $25 with the MacBook Neo, $50 with the MacBook Air, or $100 with the MacBook Pro), while you can get one with any of Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 phones at Amazon (ranging from $100 to $200, depending on the model). Let’s not forget about the Google Pixel 10A, which launched March 5th and includes a $100 gift card through March 11th at Best Buy and Amazon.
MacBook Neo (with $25 e-gift card)
For a limited time, you can get a $25 gift card at Best Buy when you preorder the MacBook Neo.
Where to Buy:
$599 at Best Buy (256GB)
$699 at Best Buy (512GB)
$599 at Amazon (256GB, no gift card)
Spring is in the air, and that means the return of many things: warmer weather, beautiful green leaves on trees, and bugs. Alright, I’m not excited about bugs, but I am excited about the return of the creatures who feast a lot of them — birds! I’m tempted to get a camera-equipped bird feeder this year, in part to let my toddler get a close look at hummingbirds, and one of the most appealing models out there is 37 percent off. Birdbuddy’s Smart Hummingbird Feeder Pro Solar is down to $189 at Birdbuddy and just $10 more at Chewy.This model is powered by its solar panel, which works even on cloudy days (it can be recharged via USB-C if where you place it doesn’t get enough sun). Its motion-activated camera can capture 5-megapixel stills, slow motion footage, and HDR video of hummingbirds doing their thing. While these birds are often too quick to fully appreciate with the naked eye, this feeder will give you access to view them leisurely from the company’s companion app. There’s a Birdbuddy Premium subscription that starts at $69.99 per year that lets you name birds and track returning visitors, plus other features, but the base bird-viewing experience doesn’t cost extra.
Birdbuddy Smart Hummingbird Feeder Pro Solar
Where to Buy:
$299 $189 at Birdbuddy
$299 $239 at Amazon
$299 $199 at Chewy
If you’re into first-person shooters, you’ve probably heard of — and possibly already own — Marathon, Bungie’s anticipated PvPvE multiplayer t**le that’s a modern remake of one of the studio’s first games in the 1990s. The game just launched on PlayStation 5 and PC for $39.99, and you can get a small deal on the Steam PC version. Fanatical is selling Steam keys for $34.39, which is a 14 percent discount. Nothing huge, but it’s a nice price cut.Several of us here at The Verge are playing Marathon, and are digging it so far. Its art style is unlike any other game, and admittedly, it has me strongly considering buying an OLED gaming monitor to enjoy. I need to see those neon colors pop.
Marathon
Where to Buy:
$39.99 $34.39 at Fanatical (Steam)
Other great deals you might have missed this week
There’s a new M4-equipped iPad Air coming out on March 11th. While you won’t get a gift card for preordering one, you can save a bit of money off the retail price. Right now, the 128GB / Wi-Fi model is available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart starting at $559 ($40 off), while the LTE config is selling for $709 ($40 off) at Best Buy. If you want more storage space, Amazon and Walmart are also both selling the 11-inch model with 256GB and Wi-Fi for $649 ($50 off). The larger 13-inch variant, meanwhile, can be found at the same retailers, including Amazon and Walmart, in its base configuration with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $749 ($50 off).
Over the Garden Wall is a beloved cartoon with narrative ties to Dante’s Inferno that ran on Cartoon Network in 2014. At long last, it’s coming to Blu-ray on April 7th, and you can save a smidge on preorders through Gruv if you’re a first-time customer. Use the offer code FIRSTGRUV15 at checkout to knock the cost from $19.99 to $17. The cast is stacked, with voices provided by Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, and Christopher Lloyd, to name a few.
Bose’s Ultra Open earbuds are down to their lowest price at Amazon, selling for $199 (originally $299). Unlike most earbuds, these clip around your lower ear, with the audio driver leaving your inner ear partially exposed so you can hear outside noises. This Ultra Open is great for people who want to go for a walk or run outside without cutting themselves off to hearing potential oncoming hazards, and they provide better sound quality than bone conduction headphones, which don’t cover your ears at all. This is a price that I bet my former colleague Chris Welch would have been happier with when he reviewed the Ultra Open in early 2024.
I turned a nearly 10-year-old laptop into the most useful machine in my home lab
Despite spending my teenage years drooling over enterprise-tier hardware, my current home lab mostly consists of consumer-grade systems, with the only outlier being a Xeon workstation from 2016. In fact, running a few Proxmox experiments on my old gaming PC proved that I don’t need top-of-the-line specs to access its...
Despite spending my teenage years drooling over enterprise-tier hardware, my current home lab mostly consists of consumer-grade systems, with the only outlier being a Xeon workstation from 2016. In fact, running a few Proxmox experiments on my old gaming PC proved that I don’t need top-of-the-line specs to access its virtualization features, and today, I’ve got everything from mini-PCs and thin clients to x86 single-board computers fueling my tinkering escapades to some extent.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Trevor Noah is hosting Google’s Pixel 11 launch event
Google is set to host its next live Made by Google hardware launch event on August 12th, and the company says in a new video that comedian Trevor Noah will be hosting the show. The video indicates that the event will feature other celebrities and influencers as well, including Call...
Google is set to host its next live Made by Google hardware launch event on August 12th, and the company says in a new video that comedian Trevor Noah will be hosting the show.The video indicates that the event will feature other celebrities and influencers as well, including Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper (who was at the 2025 event), Indian cricketer Shubman Gill (who has starred in Pixel ads), Japanese actress Ayami Nakajo (who has also starred in Pixel ads), and NBA star / Google Performance Advisor Stephen Curry. (Cooper and Noah are also bringing shows to YouTube.)Jimmy Fallon hosted the show last year, an event that my colleague V …Read the full story at The Verge.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I switched from Docker to Proxmox LXCs, and managing my home lab finally stopped being a chore
Docker has been my go-to tool for self-hosting ever since I started building a home lab. It made deploying new applications incredibly simple, so I rarely considered using anything else. That changed after I started exploring Proxmox LXC containers. I initially expected them to be a lightweight alternative to virtual...
Docker has been my go-to tool for self-hosting ever since I started building a home lab. It made deploying new applications incredibly simple, so I rarely considered using anything else. That changed after I started exploring Proxmox LXC containers. I initially expected them to be a lightweight alternative to virtual machines, but they ended up becoming my preferred way to run most of my self-hosted services. They offer the isolation of separate systems without the overhead of full VMs, while keeping everything easy to organize and manage. I now choose Proxmox LXCs over Docker for most of my home lab.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
The best thing about the ZimaCube 2 isn’t the drive bays: It’s the PCIe slots
A six-bay NAS is easy to understand at a glance. You load it with drives, build a storage pool, install the services you need, and start throwing data at it. That’s a big part of the ZimaCube 2’s appeal, but the drive bays aren’t the part I keep coming back...
A six-bay NAS is easy to understand at a glance. You load it with drives, build a storage pool, install the services you need, and start throwing data at it. That’s a big part of the ZimaCube 2’s appeal, but the drive bays aren’t the part I keep coming back to. The two PCIe slots inside are much more interesting because they leave room for the ZimaCube 2 to become something quite different from the NAS you bought on day one.
Josephine Hughes United States
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I gave up on Firefox for a browser nobody talks about, and it’s the best I’ve ever used
Firefox had been my default browser for so long that I never really thought about replacing it. Whenever I tried another browser, I always ended up coming back. That changed when I decided to give Zen Browser a try. I expected it to be another Firefox alternative that I'd use...
Firefox had been my default browser for so long that I never really thought about replacing it. Whenever I tried another browser, I always ended up coming back. That changed when I decided to give Zen Browser a try. I expected it to be another Firefox alternative that I'd use for a few days before uninstalling. Instead, it slowly became the browser I open for everything. Before I realized it, Firefox was no longer my default choice. Here's what made Zen Browser stand out and why I think it's one of the most underrated browsers you can use today.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
This Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x laptop we rated 9/10 just dropped to $800, and it’s built for everything
This Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x laptop features a beautiful display, a slim design, and comes in at a price that's easy to afford right now. The usual $1,300 price tag is now slashed by $500, bringing it down to just $800 for a limited time. We don't think you'll be...
This Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x laptop features a beautiful display, a slim design, and comes in at a price that's easy to afford right now. The usual $1,300 price tag is now slashed by $500, bringing it down to just $800 for a limited time. We don't think you'll be disappointed with what this has to offer, especially at this price.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
My favorite Notion alternative isn’t Obsidian, it’s something I can actually self-host
When people talk about replacing Notion, Obsidian is usually the first app that comes up. I tried it too, and while it's an excellent note-taking app, it wasn't the replacement I was actually looking for. I wanted something that felt closer to Notion while giving me complete control over where...
When people talk about replacing Notion, Obsidian is usually the first app that comes up. I tried it too, and while it's an excellent note-taking app, it wasn't the replacement I was actually looking for. I wanted something that felt closer to Notion while giving me complete control over where my data lived. That search eventually led me to AFFiNE. After using it for a while, I realized it offered a better balance between flexibility, ownership, and everyday usability for my workflow. AFFiNE has become my favorite Notion alternative, rather than the one most people expect.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
The AirPods Pro are $60 off, their best price since late June
AirPods Pro 3 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Best Buy kicked off a sale on Apple products with discounts on its latest smartwatches to phones. Another deal that caught our eye is on the latest AirPods Pro, Apple’s flagship wireless earbuds, which are down to $189.99...
AirPods Pro 3 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Best Buy kicked off a sale on Apple products with discounts on its latest smartwatches to phones. Another deal that caught our eye is on the latest AirPods Pro, Apple’s flagship wireless earbuds, which are down to $189.99 ($60 off), with retailers like Amazon and Walmart matching the price. That’s their lowest price since Prime Day in late June, and just $20 shy of their all-time low.AirPods Pro 3The AirPods Pro 3 have a new design that improves their fit, superior noise cancellation, better bass, and fairly accurate heart rate sensors. Read our review.Where to Buy: $249 $189.99 at Amazon $249 $189.99 at Walmart $249 $189.99 at Best BuyThe AirPods Pro are our favorite wireless earbuds to recommend for iPhone owners because they offer better sound quality than Apple’s entry-level AirPods. Our A/V reviewer John Higgins uses them more often than other pairs because of their, praising their excellent audio, best-in-class active noise cancellation, and just how easy they are to use. They also provide a tighter fit, making them more comfortable for some people, especially during workouts.Beyond how good they sound, they offer a number of perks for Apple users. They can automatically sync with other Apple devices you’re signed in on, so you can move from taking a call on your iPhone to watching a show on your iPad. They also feature a built-in heart rate sensor that works with more than 50 workout types in Apple’s Fitness app, so you can use them as a fitness tracker of sorts. Read our AirPods Pro 3 review.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I bought cheap server hardware for my home lab, and the electricity bill taught me an expensive lesson
Having built my first home server using components cobbled together from older builds, I realized fairly quickly that an experimental workstation doesn’t need cutting-edge specs to drive my virtualization projects. As time went on, I started grabbing outdated machines from flea markets, and with a little coat of Proxmox, they...
Having built my first home server using components cobbled together from older builds, I realized fairly quickly that an experimental workstation doesn’t need cutting-edge specs to drive my virtualization projects. As time went on, I started grabbing outdated machines from flea markets, and with a little coat of Proxmox, they became reliable nodes for my home lab, self-hosting, and DevOps experiments.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
The last generation of fully upgradeable PCs is being built right now
The most memorable PC I've had was the one I bought in 2013, and it stayed with me till 2023, until I built my new PC from scratch. Over the course of a decade, this PC went through three GPUs, two CPUs, and even a motherboard upgrade, evolving with the...
The most memorable PC I've had was the one I bought in 2013, and it stayed with me till 2023, until I built my new PC from scratch. Over the course of a decade, this PC went through three GPUs, two CPUs, and even a motherboard upgrade, evolving with the times (and, of course, my bank balance). This PC was never really finished, and it almost felt like a sibling that grew up with me in the same house.
Michael Johnson Chicago
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Jony Ive’s first OpenAI gadget is reportedly a hockey puck-sized smart speaker
The AI device OpenAI is developing with former Apple designer Jony Ive is "essentially a smart speaker without a display" that's battery-powered, doughnut-shaped and roughly the size of a hockey puck, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The device, expected to launch in 2027 for a price over $300, reportedly...
The AI device OpenAI is developing with former Apple designer Jony Ive is "essentially a smart speaker without a display" that's battery-powered, doughnut-shaped and roughly the size of a hockey puck, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The device, expected to launch in 2027 for a price over $300, reportedly "will have a unique look, complete with moving parts," including some that will move on their own to show when the device is responding or interacting with the user, along with lights, a camera system, and other sensors.Gurman's sources also say the "battery-powered" device is designed to be "easy to carry around the home wit …Read the full story at The Verge.
John Doe New York
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Every time a movie disappears from streaming, I’m glad I already own it on Blu-ray
We live in the streaming age where movies and TV shows are available with a click of the remote. It's more convenient than manually dealing with physical media. However, nothing is more annoying than a service removing content I enjoy. So, I have my most cherished content on Blu-ray.
We live in the streaming age where movies and TV shows are available with a click of the remote. It's more convenient than manually dealing with physical media. However, nothing is more annoying than a service removing content I enjoy. So, I have my most cherished content on Blu-ray.
