I really think the world needs more cyberdecks. They're cool portable computers, usually powered by slim yet capable hardware, packaged inside a case that makes you feel like some sort of hacker as you use it.

Apple’s handy location trackers are cheaper than ever right now. Black Friday often brings the best Apple deals of the year, but not everyone wants to spend their Thanksgiving weekend shopping online (or in person). Thankfully, if you want to get a head start, you don’t have to wait. As is typical, the early Black Friday deals are already beginning to trickle in, including some of the best deals we’ve seen all year on Apple devices like the latest entry-level AirPods and new M5-powered MacBook Pro. Other Apple gadgets aren’t quite as steeply discounted, but some are discounted enough to be worth considering.If you want to avoid the holiday rush, we’ve gathered the best Apple deals you can get in the run-up to the main event. We’ve also included recent price history and our expectations for Black Friday proper, so you can decide whether to make your purchase now or hold out for a potentially better deal.What to expect on Black FridayThe best wireless earbud and headphone dealsThe best Apple Watch dealsThe best iPad dealsThe best MacBook dealsAirTags and other miscellaneous dealsWhat to expect on Black FridayAlthough we’re currently seeing a number of Apple products sitting at their lowest price to date, several of these deals could drop even lower as we get closer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Past deal history gives us a few clues about what to expect. Apple Watches: Apple’s latest-gen Apple Watches often hit their best prices to date during Black Friday. Last year, for instance, the Series 10 dropped to $329, while the second-gen SE fell to a mere $149 in its entry-level configuration. We anticipate that some of the last-gen models will be heavily discounted come the 28th, especially as retailers aim to offload remaining stock.AirPods: Historically, the newest AirPods receive their most significant discounts around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so it’s likely that we’ll see a deal on the newer AirPods Pro 3, which have only received a modest $10 discount thus far. Last-gen models like second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C are also likely to receive steep discounts, though we don’t anticipate them dropping much further than their current low of $139. Current-gen models — including the AirPods 4 — could dip again, too, especially given they recently hit a new low of $84.99 ($45 off) before climbing back up.iPads and MacBooks: New iPad models, including the new M5 iPad Pro, may dip a little further in price next week, especially since they’ve recently been hovering just above their lowest prices to date. Previous sales indicate the current-gen base iPad could drop to as low as $279 on Black Friday, which would match its best price to date. As for laptops, both the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are already sitting at a record low price, so there’s no telling whether we’ll see additional discounts.AirTags: Last year, you could pick up an individual AirTag for $19 or a four-pack for $69.99. However, Apple’s location trackers are already available for less than that, and there’s no indication they will drop further in price, given many Black Friday promos have already kicked off.The best wireless earbud and headphone dealsApple AirPods Pro (second-gen) with USB-CThe second-gen AirPods Pro improve upon Apple’s original pair with better noise cancellation, improved sound quality, and onboard volume controls. They also now ship with a USB-C charging case, as opposed to Lightning. Read our original review.Where to Buy: $249 $139 at Walmart $249.99 $189.99 at Best BuyThe cream-colored Beats Solo Buds are at Walmart for $39 ($40 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the entry-level wireless earbuds to date. They lack noise cancellation but deliver balanced, clean sound and an impressive 18 hours of battery life. They also include four sets of ear tips and work well with both iOS and Android, though bear in mind you’ll need to drop them into the case and recharge them over USB-C. Read our hands-on impressions.Apple EarPods (USB-C)Apple’s wired earbuds are comfortable, offer great microphone quality for the price, and feature a built-in remote for controlling audio playback.Where to Buy: $19 $16.99 at Amazon $19 $16.99 at WalmartThe best Apple Watch dealsApple Watch Series 11 (42mm, GPS)Although the Apple Watch Series 11 is the same size as its predecessor, it features a 5G cellular modem, a display that’s twice as durable, and slightly improved battery life. Read our review.Where to Buy: $399 $349.99 at Amazon $399 $349.99 at Walmart $399 at Best BuyApple Watch SE 3The Apple Watch SE 3 offers some big upgrades over its predecessor, including an always-on display, allowing you to glance at the time or unread notifications. It also has Apple’s powerful S10 chip, which enables on-device Siri requests. Read our review.Where to Buy: $249 $199.99 at Amazon (40mm, GPS) $279 $229.99 at Amazon (44mm, GPS) $249 $239 at Costco (40mm, GPS)The 42mm Apple Watch Series 10 with GPS is on sale at Walmart starting at $249 ($150 off), which is its best price to date. While the Series 11 offers slightly longer battery life, a more efficient 5G modem, and a more scratch-resistant display, the Series 10 remains an excellent smartwatch. It features a large, wide-angle OLED display and the same S10 SiP chip found in the Series 11. It also supports FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection and offers the same hypertension notifications, courtesy of the recent watchOS 26 update. Read our review.You can buy the 40mm Apple Watch SE (second-gen) with GPS at Amazon starting at $159.99 ($90 off), which is $10 shy of the all-time low we saw during Black Friday last year. If you’re on a tight budget, the last-gen Apple Watch SE is still worth considering. It lacks some of Apple’s newer sensors and doesn’t offer an always-on display, but it remains relatively fast, given that it uses the same chipset as the Apple Watch Series 8. It also provides all the essentials, including daily activity and sleep tracking, heart-rate monitoring, fall and crash detection, and access to the newer Vitals app in watchOS 26.The best iPad deals11-inch iPad Pro (M5, 2025)Apple’s newest iPad Pros have an M5 processor, an N1 chip, and a C1X chip for cellular versions. They’re faster, support Wi-Fi 7, charge more quickly, and start with 12GB of RAM. Read our review.Where to Buy: $999 $927 at Amazon (256GB, Wi-Fi) $1199 $1150 at Amazon (512GB, Wi-Fi) $1599 $1516 at Amazon (1TB, Wi-Fi)The latest 13-inch iPad Pro is also on sale at Amazon in its 256GB base configuration for $1,240 ($58 off), which is just $5 shy of its all-time low. If you need more storage, the 1TB model is down to $1,794 ($105 off) at Amazon, while the 2TB version is going for $2,164 ($135 off). The heavier 13-incher is nearly identical to the 11-inch model, but it offers more screen real estate and higher resolution.11-inch iPad Air M3The latest 11-inch iPad Air features Apple’s fast M3 chip with GPU upgrades like dynamic caching for smoother performance in demanding apps. It also supports the Apple Pencil Pro and the newest Magic Keyboard, which features a larger build and a 14-key function row. Read our review.Where to Buy: $599 $499.99 at Amazon (128GB, Wi-Fi) $599 at Best Buy (128GB, Wi-Fi)If you want a larger display, the 13-inch version of the M3-powered iPad Air with 128GB of storage is also on sale at Amazon, where you can buy it for $699.99 ($100 off), $50 shy of its record low price.13-inch iPad Pro M4The last-gen iPad Pro comes in either an 11- or 13-inch configuration with Apple’s M4 processor. Both feature an OLED display and a thinner build than previous models, as well as horizontal placement for the front camera and support for the Apple Pencil Pro. Read our review.Where to Buy: $1299 $1049.99 at Amazon (256GB, Wi-Fi) $1499 $1399 at Amazon (512GB, Wi-Fi) $1899 at Amazon (1TB, Wi-Fi)Apple’s latest entry-level iPad is on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Target with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $299 ($50 off), which is $20 more than its best price to date. If you just need a tablet for play and light work, the latest iPad is a great choice. It offers twice the base storage of its predecessor and runs on Apple’s A16 Bionic chip, which provides it with enough oomph for most basic tasks. That said, it doesn’t support Apple Intelligence and works with fewer accessories than Apple’s higher-end tablets. Read our review.The best MacBook deals13-inch MacBook Air (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD)Powered by the M4 chip, Apple’s latest 13-inch MacBook Air is faster than its predecessor and offers double the base RAM. It can also connect to two external displays with the lid open, unlike prior models, and features an improved 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam. Read our review.Where to Buy: $999 $749.99 at Amazon $999 $749.99 at Costco $999 at AppleMacBook Pro 14-inch (M5, 2025)Apple’s 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro takes everything we loved about the M4 model — including all-day battery life and a 12-megapixel webcam — and improves upon it with an M5 chip. It also offers faster storage and a 10-core CPU / 10-core GPU that’s up to 3.5x faster at AI tasks. Read our review.Where to Buy: $1599 $1472 at Amazon (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) $1799 $1648 at Amazon (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) $1999 $1985 at Amazon (24GB RAM, 1TB SSD)The last-gen 16-inch MacBook Pro is still a powerhouse even if it runs on the older M4 Pro chip, and right now you can buy it with 24GB of RAM and 512GB of storage $2,199 (about $300 off) at Amazon, which is just a few dollars shy of its all-time low. Compared to the 14-inch last-gen model, it adds faster Thunderbolt 5 ports and a sharper 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam. The new M5-powered MacBook Pros don’t yet come in a 16-inch size, so if you want a larger display, this is your best bet. Read our review of the 14-inch M4-powered MacBook Pro.If you’re in the market for a desktop and don’t mind supplying your own keyboard and mouse, you can buy the M4 Mac Mini with an M4 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage for $499 ($100 off) at Amazon, which is one of its best prices to date. The desktop can handle everyday tasks with ease, along with some light gaming and 4K video editing. It can also run up to three displays simultaneously and offers a great port selection that includes three Thunderbolt 4 (USB4) ports, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, two 10Gbps USB-C (USB 3) ports, and a front-facing 3.5mm audio jack. Read our review.AirTags and other miscellaneous dealsApple AirTagApple’s AirTags can help you find your lost items with their UWB technology. You’ll get the best compatibility with an iPhone, though Apple released an Android app to detect an AirTag’s location if one seems to be following you. Read our original review.Where to Buy: $29 $17.97 at Amazon $29 $17.97 at Walmart $99 $64.98 at Amazon (four-pack)You can buy the Apple Pencil Pro for $99 ($30 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Target, which is $10 more than its record low price. If you own the latest iPad Pro, iPad Mini, or an M2- or M3-based iPad Air, this is a fantastic stylus that offers several features not found on the entry-level Apple Pencil with USB-C. In addition to wireless charging, you get Find My support, pressure sensitivity, and a “Barrel Roll” gyroscope that allows you to easily adjust the angle of your pen with a twist.Anker MagGo Qi2 Certified 15W Wireless ChargerThe latest version of Anker’s magnetic MagGo charging pads supports 15W Qi2 and has a five-foot USB-C cable.Where to Buy: $29.99 $19.99 at Amazon (without adapter, Prime only) $35.99 $23.99 at Amazon (with adapter, Prime only)

Epic Games is teaming up with arguably its biggest game development rival, Unity, to bring games made using Unity’s engine into Fortnite. The change will mean that Unity games could sit alongside Epic’s own suite of experiences as well as those created by third-party developers using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite — and it opens the door for significantly more games to be available to play within Fortnite.“Just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together in order to build the open metaverse in a way that’s interoperable and fair,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says in a statement. “Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.”The change represents an important step in Epic’s long-running vision of turning Fortnite into an open metaverse that’s a big 3D social space with a huge number of experiences to participate in with your friends. Epic has been marching down this path for years with Fortnite itself by putting an increased focus on creator-made experiences and making browsing through those experiences in the Fortnite lobby feel like scrolling YouTube. You can even check out experiences on the web — and buy new Fortnite outfits in your browser, too.Right now, Fortnite is a closed ecosystem, meaning that creators can only make games for the platform using Epic’s tools, can’t (yet) easily drop those games into Unreal Engine to bring them to other platforms, or bring experiences built on other engines into Fortnite. But even in 2023, Tim Sweeney was telling The Verge how much he believed in the future of interoperable game engines being key to his vision.Epic has had some success expanding Fortnite from being a battle royale into a broad, Roblox-like ecosystem with games from outside creators. By the end of last year, it had 70,000 total creators that published nearly 200,000 “islands,” or Fortnite’s term for experiences. But the Unity Editor, which is designed to help developers build their games once and run them across multiple platforms, has more than 1.2 million monthly active users. Even a fraction of those developers also bringing their games to Fortnite could add a lot to the platform.The plan is to allow Unity games to come to Fortnite next year, Matt Bromberg, President and CEO of Unity, tells The Verge.The partnership potentially gives developers another potential avenue to find an audience and monetize their games, which could be a lifeline for smaller developers amid continued industry struggles and layoffs. It could also consolidate even more power into Fortnite, which is already a behemoth. But Sweeney actually envisions a world for Fortnite that’s much more decentralized — more like the open web.“Fortnite’s still this big thing operated by Epic completely,” Sweeney says. “But there will be a day when you can, from the program that’s currently called Fortnite, go to other sites that are completely controlled by other companies. We have nothing to do with them. We make no revenue from them. We don’t have commercial agreements with them. They’re just like websites on the web.” Today’s news with Unity is the first opportunity for “the rubber to meet the road” of engines that are operating together.For now, whether a creator makes a Fortnite experience using Fortnite’s tools or with Unity, Sweeney says there will be a review process to ensure that it’s “ratings-compliant and works adequately.” But in the future, “as this evolves into a completely open system, we’d only have reviews for stuff that we host, and anybody would be able to put anything anywhere, and people would be able to browse to it like you do in a web browser today.”Allowing Unity games will “greatly expand the developer base,” Sweeney says. “The challenge of building content in Fortnite today is you start from scratch.” You can’t currently take an Unreal Engine game and deploy it into Fortnite — that’s something that Epic is aiming for with Unreal Engine 6, which is likely years away. Ironically, Sweeney says, “publishing Unity games into Fortnite will happen before publishing standalone Unreal Engine games into Fortnite.”There’s a second component to today’s news, too: Unity will bring support for Unreal Engine to the commerce management platform it announced last month, which lets developers manage their digital storefronts across many platforms from all inside Unity Engine. That was pitched at the time as a way to make it much easier to deal with the complexities of different storefronts and payment processors.Bringing support for Unreal Engine to the platform gives developers “more choice around how they build stores and how they manage those stores,” Bromberg says. “Ultimately, I think the thing that Tim and I couldn’t agree any more strongly on is that having more choice and more places where developers can build things and giving them more control over their destinies is the most important thing we can do to help the gaming ecosystem.”

Valve just made a huge splash in the VR market, announcing a streaming-first VR headset alongside a compact PC and a new controller. The Steam Machine and Steam Controller are making ripples of their own, but the Steam Frame might just be the most disruptive product Valve has announced since the Steam Deck. It might not boast the cutting-edge specs you'd expect from a 2026 VR headset, but the secret ingredient might just be Valve's SteamOS ecosystem powering the goods.

The promise of the public cloud often comes with the silent killer of cost creep and a loss of data control. The solution wasn’t a bigger server or dozens of SSDs; it was a radical simplification. What if you could achieve the same seamless file access, real-time synchronization, and remote functionality without the hefty recurring fees?

There’s gold at the end of those AI travel queries. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge I was starting to doubt it would ever happen, but I finally found a regular, helpful use for AI: vanlife travel planner. I'm not a student and I don't code. I am, however, on day 48 of my van tour through Europe with my wife and dog. We travel without a specific itinerary, chasing the wind and sun while working our 9 to 5 jobs. AI's mastery of travel planning has made it an unexpected but irreplaceable expert. So much so that we've grown increasingly dependent upon the free versions of Gemini and ChatGPT to help choose our next destination. It all started with a simple query. Tired after a 25km hike with only a few hours left of daylight …Read the full story at The Verge.

The MS605 has an articulated installation plate allowing the angle of the sensor to be adjusted. | Image: Meross Meross has announced a new version of its MS600 presence sensor that’s now battery-powered, so installation isn’t limited to places where you can camouflage a power cord. A single CR123A battery powers the new MS605 presence sensor for up to three years. Battery life may be reduced in high-traffic areas if the sensor is activated more frequently. It’s available for preorder now through Meross’ online store and discounted to $34.99 for a limited time.The switch to battery power is made possible by another new feature: support for Matter over the low-power Thread protocol. The MS605’s year-old predecessor was also Matter-compatible, but over Wi-Fi. You’ll need to make sure you have a Thread-capable hub somewhere in your home to use the MS605 with Google Home, Apple Home, or Alexa, but it doesn’t have to be a Meross hub.The MS605 has a similar design to the older MS600 and carries forward its articulated mounting plate, allowing the sensor to be angled up to 90 degrees and rotated 360 degrees. It’s been upgraded with an IP67 waterproof rating so it can now be used outdoors. It also offers the same combination of light, passive infrared (PIR), and 24GHz mmWave radar sensors used to detect people in motion or standing still, and to differentiate inanimate moving objects, like a window curtain, from humans. The only real downside to the battery is that the MS605’s range has been reduced to 6 meters (from 12) for motion and 4 meters (from 6) for presence detection.

A blog post published Tuesday night by Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince has details on what caused its “worst outage since 2019,” pinning the issue to a problem in the Bot Management system that is supposed to control which automated crawlers are allowed to scan particular websites using its CDN.Cloudflare said last year that about 20 percent of the web runs through its network, which is supposed to share the load to keep websites online in the face of traffic spikes and DDoS attacks. But today’s crash disconnected many of them, knocking out everything from X to ChatGPT to the well-known outage tracker Downdetector for several hours and resembling recent outages caused by problems with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.Cloudflare’s bot controls are supposed to help deal with problems like crawlers scraping information to train generative AI. It also recently announced a system that uses Generative AI to build the “AI Labyrinth, a new mitigation approach that uses AI-generated content to slow down, confuse, and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and other bots that don’t respect ‘no crawl’ directives.” However, it says the problems today were due to changes to the permissions system of a database, not the generative AI tech, not DNS, and not what Cloudflare initially suspected, a cyberattack or malicious activity like a “hyper-scale DDoS attack.”According to Prince, the machine learning model behind Bot Management that generates bot scores for the requests that travel over its network has a frequently updated configuration file that helps ID automated requests; however, “A change in our underlying ClickHouse query behaviour that generates this file caused it to have a large number of duplicate ‘feature’ rows.”There’s more detail in the post about what happened next, but the query change caused its ClickHouse database to generate duplicates of information. As the configuration file rapidly grew to exceed preset memory limits, it took down “the core proxy system that handles traffic processing for our customers, for any traffic that depended on the bots module.” As a result, companies that used Cloudflare’s rules to block certain bots returned false positives and cut off real traffic, while Cloudflare customers who didn’t use the generated bot score in their rules remained online. For now, it lists four specific plans to keep this kind of problem from happening again, even if the growing centralization of internet services may make these outages inevitable:Hardening ingestion of Cloudflare-generated configuration files in the same way we would for user-generated inputEnabling more global kill switches for featuresEliminating the ability for core dumps or other error reports to overwhelm system resourcesReviewing failure modes for error conditions across all core proxy modules

The Game Awards nominations just dropped, and with them, comes the annual ritual all gamers secretly love: celebrating the deserving, arguing about the questionable, and rallying behind the brutally snubbed. 2025's lineup is stacked, which isn't surprising at all, and plenty of games are rightfully getting their flowers.

If there's anything I've learned from the XDA Developers writing team, it's that you don't get between a tinkerer and their coffee. Tech-heads are at their nicest when they've had their morning caffeine; without it, they go through a similar transformation that Bruce Banner takes when he becomes The Hulk.

Not having enough storage can easily become a huge problem, which is why it's always a good idea to expand when you can, so you're never in a situation that leads to deleting files you still need. Although storage used to be pretty cheap just a couple of years ago, prices have risen and pretty much stayed the same for a good chunk of time now, making it hard to pick up storage at a good price.

Most journaling apps want you to free-write into the void. They promise mindfulness through blank pages and gentle prompts, but I kept abandoning them after a week. The problem was that I needed structure, not serenity. So I built my own journaling system inside ClickUp, a project management tool designed for teams shipping software, not people tracking their feelings. The free tier gave me enough room to create a "daily wins" tracker that finally made burnout visible before it became a crisis.