Instead of making Titanfall 3, developer Respawn took the franchise in a completely different direction with Apex Legends. A free-to-play battle royale game that mashes together elements of Overwatch and Fortnite, Apex Legends was a complete surprise when it launched, but it has turned out to be a big hit early on, luring tens of millions of players. Keep up with the game as it continues to develop and grow right here. Apex Legends 2 got announced before Titanfall 3? Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends follow Fortnite by going back to the beginning. Apex Legends is having a rough week Apex Legends locks things down and brings back Three Strikes. Apex Legends devs confirm esports hacking incident, respond with ‘layered’ updates Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends hit the reset button. The fifth anniversary of Apex Legends is bringing big changes. Cross-progression is finally coming to Apex Legends. Apex Legends: Resurrection is another fresh start for EA’s battle royale April Fools’ 2023: Apex Legends. The new season of Apex Legends won’t add a new character, but it does have a new weapon and team deathmatch. Apex Legends’ new character comes with a cute sidekick and a big sniper rifle Xbox input lag for Apex Legends is finally fixed, two weeks later Apex Legends season 13 pushes teamwork with a new kind of hero and ranked mode changes Apex Legends next-gen console updates with 4K and HDR launch tomorrow Apex Legends turns three and prepares to change everything with the launch of Defiance Apex Legends: Escape takes the battle royale shooter on vacation at the perfect time Apex Legends’ ranked mode will be the key to keeping it alive EA wants to bring Apex Legends to mobile Respawn won’t rush Apex Legends updates so that it can ‘avoid crunch’ The first Apex Legends battle pass launches tomorrow with new character Octane Twitch streamer Ninja reportedly earned $1 million for promoting Apex Legends launch E-sports teams are flocking to Apex Legends There’s not enough time to play all of these online shooters Apex Legends is a better battle royale, but I’d rather hang out in Fortnite Apex Legends players think its in-game items are way too expensive Apex Legends has hit 25 million players after one week Fortnite, Overwatch, and Apex Legends: how to follow a huge week for e-sports Apex Legends hits 10 million players in just three days Apex Legends is great because you don’t have to talk to anyone Respawn says it’s ‘putting a lot on the line’ with Apex Legends’ surprise launch Titanfall creator Respawn takes on Fortnite with free shooter Apex Legends — and it’s out now

Naturally, there’s an AI element in the Apple Intelligence-created backgrounds.Apple launched a new app today, called Apple Invites, which lets you create, share, and manage invitations for events. With it, you can generate a quick digital invitation that, when shared with your friends, lets them gather all the info about the event, RSVP, and add it to their calendar. That includes your Android friends, who can access invites using a web-based version of the app on the iCloud site.It’s a mostly straightforward, easy-to-use app that offers a better way to invite friends to things than trying to cram all the details into a text message or make sure everyone checks their Facebook events. Creating an event using the plus button at the top of the Apple Invites app will let you type in a name and add time, date, and location details. You can also add an Apple-made background, pick a photo from your library, or, if you have a phone with Apple Intelligence support, whip up an AI-generated one using Apple’s Image Playground feature. You can invite people by picking from your contacts, manually entering phone numbers or email addresses, or copying a link to your event and sending it from outside the app. The app also lets you choose whether each person is allowed to invite others, and you can send notes to invitees after the event is created. The event’s info is shown with widgets, including one showing the weather forecast for that day and an Apple Maps box that you can tap to get directions. You can also create a photo album for people to peruse or add a music playlist, too, using Apple Music. All of that works mostly seamlessly on an iPhone, apart from some buggy behavior I encountered, like invitations that wouldn’t load and trouble getting the photo album in an invite to actually populate with pictures after I picked them.The experience has some hiccups for those not fully in the Apple ecosystem, which isn’t surprising. For starters, where an iPhone user can go straight to the invitation using your link (assuming they’re already signed into iCloud), Android users have to enter their email address and then a verification code to get in. They’ll also need to sign up for an Apple account to look at a photo album if you add one, and Android user or not, your friends need an Apple Music subscription to hear your playlist (otherwise, they’ll only get a preview of it). None of that will keep Android users from seeing key details about your event or RSVPing to it, but it’ll be obvious that they aren’t getting the whole experience. Event invite app Partiful offers largely the same experience — maybe a little too samey, as the app’s developers insinuated today — while remaining a “platform-agnostic product,” Partiful cofounder and CEO Shreya Murthy said in a statement emailed to The Verge.Copycat accusations and bugs aside, Apple Invites seems like a promising start, particularly if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and want to keep friends in the loop without using Facebook events, third-party apps, texts, or emails. But it’s also an app with a social purpose that Apple claims in its announcement “brings people together for life’s special moments.” That sounds pleasant but feels less so once you get the mediocre Android version of the experience.

Google parent company Alphabet expects to invest “approximately $75 billion” in capital expenditures in 2025, according to a statement from CEO Sundar Pichai in Alphabet’s Q4 2024 earnings release.Capital expenditures have become a hot topic as of late as big tech companies race to build infrastructure to support their growing AI ambitions, and today’s announcement from Alphabet is clearly meant to keep the company in that conversation. Alphabet spent $32.3 billion on capital expenditures in 2023, so $75 billion in 2025 would be a big jump. And while Google’s press release today doesn’t specifically say that the upcoming capital expenditures are all for AI, given the amount of money flowing into AI infrastructure across the industry, it seems likely that a good amount of the expense will go toward benefitting Google’s AI work. AI continues to benefit Google’s business as well. Overall revenues are up 12 percent year-over-year to $96.5 billion. Google Cloud revenues are up 10 percent to $12.0 billion, which Google says is “led by growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core GCP products, AI Infrastructure, and Generative AI Solutions.” On today’s investor call, Pichai said that the company has “very good ideas for native ad concepts” in its Gemini AI assistant. He also teased that Google plans to put new Search experiences “in front of users through the course of 2025.”During its fourth quarter, the company made some big news about its AI products, including revealing Gemini 2.0, an AI agent called Project Mariner that can complete tasks in a Chrome browser, and its Deep Research tool that can research things on the web for you. It also demoed a new Android XR mixed reality OS.Alphabet-owned Waymo had a pretty good 2024 overall, though today’s earnings report shows that “Other Bets,” which includes Waymo, had lower revenue and higher losses year-over-year.In Q4, the Department of Justice also proposed that Google potentially divest itself of Chrome as a remedy for Judge Amit Mehta’s August ruling that the company is a monopolist in the search and advertising markets. The final outcome of those remedies could have a big impact on Google / Alphabet’s future.Update, February 4th: Added details from Alphabet’s investor call.

Nowadays, we all look for the latest software, sleek interfaces, and web apps, and it’s easy to forget the unsung heroes of productivity that have quietly stood the test of time. Microsoft had a big share of discontinued apps along the way, but some of them were really great for their purpose and some might be even better than the modern apps we have today. Here, we take a look at a few of the heroes from the early digital era.

OpenAI’s wordmark uses the company’s updated typeface, OpenAI sans.OpenAI just gave itself a full rebrand, complete with a new typeface, logo, and color palette, as explained to Wallpaper in an interview about the process behind the changes. You’ll have to look closely to spot the difference between the redrawn logo and its old one, but a side-by-side comparison shows the updated “blossom” with a slightly larger space in the center and cleaner lines.Though the original logo was designed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, an in-house design team led by Veit Moeller and Shannon Jager took the reins this time around, intending to create a “more organic and more human” identity, Wallpaper reports. OpenAI’s old logo (left) vs. its new one (right). Image: OpenAI As part of the rebrand, OpenAI showed off a new typeface — called OpenAI sans — that it says “blends geometric precision and functionality with a rounded, approachable character.” It now uses this typeface in the OpenAI wordmark, which features an “O” with a perfectly round exterior and an imperfect interior “to counter any robotic precision and make things feel more human,” Moeller said, according to Wallpaper.When asked whether OpenAI used the company’s AI-powered tools like ChatGPT to create the designs, Moeller told Wallpaper that the team only used it to help calculate different type weights.“We collaborate with leading experts in photography, typography, motion, and spatial design while integrating AI tools like DALL·E, ChatGPT, and Sora as thought partners,” OpenAI’s designers told Wallpaper. ‘This dual approach — where human intuition meets AI’s generative potential— allows us to craft a brand that is not just innovative, but profoundly human.”

Network-attached storage (NAS) is not limited to simply storing files and backups, although that's precisely what you'll use the device for. These powerful servers can also run apps and services. Are you tired of paying out for Microsft 365? Run your own online collaborative tools, office apps, and email server. Ready to cancel Netflix? Fire up Jellyfin and create a media streaming platform for all your purchased content. You can even use the same NAS device to block advertisements and other unwanted elements.

Obsidian has become a popular note-taking and personal knowledge management system tool in quick time. This is primarily because it has a clean interface that’s distraction-free, while also having a bunch of useful features that traditional word processors lack. However, there’s one feature on Obsidian that’s missing – the ability to sync notes across all your devices for free.

Security and smart home products are often overlooked, and only really come to the attention of consumers after something has occurred. While not necessary, these products can put your mind at ease, and can often become lifesavers in your time of extreme need. While smart locks are a great way to keep your home safe, we think that smart cameras are an even better investment.

Google’s Gemini AI assistant doesn’t have ads today, but the company has “very good ideas” for ways they could show up down the road, CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet’s investor call this afternoon. Right now, you can access Gemini for free or pay for a subscription to use advanced features, but it sounds like ads could be part of the product at some point.On the call, a Wells Fargo analyst asked Pichai how people should think about the “future monetization opportunity of Gemini” and if the company sees a potential “ad component.” Here’s my transcription of Pichai’s answer, which I’ve lightly edited for clarity:On the monetization side, for now, we have focused on a free tier and subscriptions. But as you’ve seen [with] Google over time, we always want to lead with the user experience and we do have very good ideas for native ad concepts. But you will see us lead with the user experience.I do think we’re always committed to making the products work and reach billions of users at scale. And advertising has been a great aspect of that strategy. Just like you’ve seen with YouTube, we’ll give people options over time. But for this year, I think you’ll see us be focused on the subscription direction.Based on that last sentence, it doesn’t seem like you’ll have to worry about ads in Gemini at least through this year. But Google’s overall business is built on ads, and it seems like we should expect them to come to Gemini at some point. They’re already in AI Overviews, after all.Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.As part of its earnings, Google also announced that it plans to spend $75 billion this year on capital expenditures to help it keep up in the AI race.

There are a lot of great gaming laptops out on the market right now, but if you want one of our favorites for a great price, this deal is going to be for you. We scored Alienware's x16 R2 gaming laptop a 9 out of 10, praising its raw power, 240Hz screen, and fantastic graphics prowess.

Elgato is releasing a new version of its audio stream control software Wave Link that includes new AI-powered voice enhancements for your mic. It also has a new OS-level management system to redirect audio streams to certain apps, split audio to yourself and your audience, add audio effects, and quickly mute channels. The latest version 2.0 update is available to download now and works with Elgato hardware, including the company’s Mic and Stream Deck control ecosystem.Elgato and audio machine learning company AIcoustics are including Voice Focus in the Wave Link program, which can remove noise and fix acoustic problems so you can have professional-sounding audio regardless of your room situation. It also supports audio effects, and you can include custom plugins to get your desired sound. However, you do need an Elgato microphone or a Stream Deck Plus to use Wave Link and its low-latency audio mixing magic.Wave Link 2.0 now works more like SteelSeries GG, taking over the entire Windows audio process. It allows you complete control to route audio where you want it to go or group apps into one input channel so certain audio always stays together. Wave Link can create custom Stream Deck control buttons with “add to Stream Deck” that lets you quickly change the volume for each audio stream you manage. It can even show a volume slider that can span multiple buttons, so you know the current volume levels at a glance. It also works in conjunction with Stream Deck foot pads and the dials of the Stream Deck Plus.

Back in 2003, m0n0wall started as a GUI to manage a firewall. Manuel Kasper, its developer, once said that no option out there "met all [his] requirements", and he created m0n0wall as a result. Later, pfSense forked from m0n0wall, and OPNsense forked from pfSense in 2014. m0n0wall then shut down in 2015, with Kasper telling users to switch to OPNsense instead. What happened? How did OPNsense become the recommended GUI firewall even though it was late to the party? And which should you use?