MacworldIf the iMac is too small and underpowered for your needs, youre probably in for a long wait for an iMac Pro. But you can build your own 27-inch beast with a savings of more than $400 on this bundle: Amazon is selling the M4 Pro Mac mini for $1,294 and the 27-inch Studio Display for $1,300, a total savings of $405.The M4 Pro Mac mini chip is a remarkably fast machine for such a tiny enclosure. Its packed with 24GB of memory and 512GB of storage, which should be more than enough for all those apps and files you have to store on there. In our review, we gave this one a 4-star rating, praising its performance, multitude of ports, and of course, its tiny and quiet design.The Apple Studio Display is a drop-dead gorgeous 5K monitor that will fit in fantastically with all your Apple gear. At 27 inches, you have plenty of screen real estate to enjoy all the content you want to watch, as well as get work done. Plus its got a great six-speaker Spatial Audio system, a FaceTime camera with Center Stage, and three USB-C ports. We also gave this display a four-star rating in our review and loved the gorgeous design and excellent image quality.So there you have it: if Apple wont sell an iMac Pro, you can build one yourself with an M4 Pro Mac Mini and the Apple Studio Display and save a few hundred bucks while youre at it.Get the M4 Pro Mac Mini for $1,294Buy now at AmazonApple Studio Display for $1,300Buy now at Amazon

MacworldApple websites in many countries where Engish is not the primary language now show that Apple Intelligence will be available in early April, which likely coincides with the release of iOS 18.4. Macworlds sister publication, Macwelt, caught the change on the Apple Germany website; we checked Apple France, Apple Japan, and Apple Mexico, and those sites also state an early April timeline.The iOS and iPad OS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3 updates (both of which were updated with point releases) were released in late January, but Apple has yet to release the iOS 18.4/macOS 15.4 betas to developers weeks later. With an early April deadline, we expect betas to arrive next week to give testers ample time to dig through the new features.The Apple Intelligence sites in Japan, Germany, and France now state an early April release.iOS 18.4 will be the first look at Apple Intelligence for many users around the world. However, the specific Apple Intelligence features that will be made available is not yet known. Apple has released Apple Intelligence features in phases, with the first set including notification summaries, the Photos Clean Up tool, reply suggestions in Messages and Mail, writing tools, and the new Siri UI. These features will likely be available at release, but its unclear whether the second set, released in the iOS/iPadOS 18.2, which includes ChatGPT integration, the Image Playground app, Visual Intelligence, and Genmoji, will be delayed.One update that reportedly wont appear in iOS/iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 is the much-anticipated Siri content overhaul. A recent report by Bloombergs Mark Gurman reported that work on this has run into bugs and performance issues, forcing the company to push its release to May or later with iOS/iPadOS 18.5. Learn more about Apple Intelligence and the feature rollout.

Apple CEO Tim Cook met with President Donald Trump on Thursday morning, likely to discuss the import tariff situation and US manufacturing.Tim Cook arriving at the White House on November 20There's little detail about the visit, as first reported by Edward Lawrence at Fox News. However, there are obvious topics of discussion between the two men, with billions of dollars on the line.Cook was spotted on his way into the White House at about 10:10 AM Eastern Time on Thursday. He departed about 45 minutes later, telling the gathered cameras nothing more than he had a "great meeting" with the President. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Apple says that you can use wireless Qi chargers with the iPhone 16e and it's true, but isn't MagSafe and that causes problems.Apple can't come out and say wired charging is better than wireless, but it tried.One of the compromises Apple made with making a lower-cost entry to the iPhone 16 range was to remove MagSafe. Apple is correct when it says you can still use wireless charging, but that's not the half of it.If you have to use a Qi charger instead of MagSafe, it will take much longer and it will be so inefficient that it uses more power. And that's if you can be certain you have placed the iPhone 16e on exactly the right spot of the Qi charger. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Between laying off its Seattle-based development team for Marvel Rivals and reportedly evaluating its Western investments, NetEase Games has much going on. Nevertheless, the hero shooter continues to achieve new milestones, amassing over 40 million players to date.As revealed in its Q4 2024/early 2025 operational highlights, it quickly reached over 10 million players within 72 hours. Of course, it crossed 20 million shortly after, and the announcement of Season 1 resulted in the title topping Steams charts. Theres also plenty of buzz surrounding Season 1.5 on February 21st, which adds The Thing and Human Torch alongside a new map, Central Park.Other notable updates include Everstone Studios Where Winds Meet, launched in China last December and crossing three million downloads in four days on PC. It would ultimately surpass 15 million players on PC and mobile devices in two weeks. The open-world action RPG doesnt have a worldwide release date, but its expected later this year. Stay tuned for more updates.

As Capcom prepares for the February 28 release of Monster Hunter Wilds, director Yuya Tokuda has revealed that one of the main themes will be the relationship between hunters and the world around them. In an interview with PC Gamer, Tokuda said that Wilds was inspired by the relationship between people, nature, and monsters, and what exactly is a hunters role in a world like that.We wanted to illustrate that not just through the gameplay, but a very deep story, he continued. There are many other things we have planned down the line that are aligned to the concept of Monster Hunter Wilds, and were confident this game was able to achieve what we wanted to express with it.It is worth noting that Monster Hunter has traditionally never placed a big emphasis on its story. Until the release of World and spin-off titles like the Stories series, Monster Hunter has offered up minimal storytelling through quest descriptions. World upped the narrative focus, and Wilds will be taking it even further by featuring more dialogue.Despite this, however, Tokuda emphasises that players who prefer to ignore the story and get on hunting their favourite monsters can still choose to do so.There may be players who prefer to skip all that and just go keep hunting the next monster thats possible too, said Tokuda. The volume of the text thats available in the game will not affect the number of monsters available, so we can satisfy everybody.Doing so, however, will have players miss out on the characters and stories that Monster Hunter Wilds is trying to build. This includes new characters like Nata and how their perspective shapes the plot.We have various people living in that world, like Nata, who had his hometown destroyed by a monster, and Olivia, who wants to correct that, he continued. There are many people with different perspectives living all together. And we also wanted to illustrate how the hunter would feel in a world like that. What would they feel? How would they think? Everybody is different, so we decided to add those kinds of elements to Monster Hunter Wilds.Tokuda also said that the studio has many other things planned down the line that will focus on similar themes and build on top of what we get to see in Wilds.While Monster Hunter games might come off as being cruel at times, the franchise has always included concepts of ecological preservation and living in harmony with nature through subtext. Several stories in older Monster Hunter games, for example, focused on maintaining the natural equilibrium of the world by defending areas against invasive species. Games like Monster Hunter Stories and its sequel even have hunters outright befriending monsters.Monster Hunter Wilds is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. In case youre coming in from the previous major release, Monster Hunter Rise, here are some of the differences you can expect. And if youre a PC player, you might want to give the PC Benchmark Tool a shot.

Making Featured stories even more visibleIntroducing new push notifications and Featured story feeds for publication followersPublished inThe Medium Blog2 min readJust now--A few months ago, we launched Featured stories for publications as a way for publication editors to directly influence story recommendations for their followers. Since then, our team has released multiple improvements, making Featured stories visible in stats and post page labels.Now, were excited to give Featured stories even wider distribution and more prominent placement on each users logged-in Homepage great news for both writers and readers. Over the next few weeks, well be rolling out new Featured story push notifications and new Featured story Homepage feeds for publication followers.For writers, this means even more people seeing your Featured stories. For readers, it will be easier than ever to see Featured stories from all of the publications you follow.In addition to being recommended more highly in Digest emails, the For You feed, and publication story pages, Featured stories now will be pushed directly to a publications followers via in-app notifications. Followers with the Medium app installed on iOS or Android also can receive Featured story push notifications whenever a publication they follow features a story.Featured stories also will appear in the new Featured tab on the homepage for logged-in users. Unlike many of Mediums other feeds, which include content recommendations from the Medium algorithm and our in-house curation team, the Featured feed highlights all Featured stories from publications that a user follows in the order they were featured. This means readers will never miss out on seeing a publications Featured story.The Featured feed is another way that Medium is investing in both publications and human curation. Publication editors play an important role in understanding what kind of content is uniquely valuable to their readers. By giving publication editors more control over the content that followers of the publication see on Medium, we are excited to help even more stories find the right audience. To learn more about Featured stories, check out the help center.P.S. Weve had the Featured feed turned on for Medium staff for about a month now. What started as a staff-only prototype made its way to production pretty quickly after we had the chance to experience it. Trust us when we say that it has become a go-to source of reading material for many of us!

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Developers from Cyrpus studio Belka Games have founded a new team by the name of Studio42.Per PocketGamer, former Belka CEO Alexandr Bogdanov has co-founded the new venture with former development head Ivan Larionov and ex-R&D leader Pavel Sudakov. Larionov will be Studio42's COO, and Sudakov its producer.While Studio42 was established in 2024, the trio appear to have only recently committed to it full-time, as both Larionov and Sudakov's LinkedIn posts revealed they left Belka sometime in January.A mobile puzzle focus for Studio42The team will focus on developing puzzle games for the mobile market, and Larionov revealed its first project will launch "Soon. And after that, another one. And another. We have the knowledge, experience, the best partners one could dream of, a strong team, and eyes burning with passion."Studio42's website features art for three game projects. However, none have backlinks to a store page, and only one appears to have an actual name: Purrfect!In a separate statement, Studio42 told PocketGamer it aims to create "something new, on our own terms, no limits. We missed the days of small, cozy teamsthe kind where 15 people work side by side, turning bold ideas into real games fast, without getting lost in endless processes."Belka Games is best known for its bevy of casual games, including Clockmaker and Bermuda Adventures. In spring 2024, it laid off 33 employees across various divisions, including narrative and level design.None of the three Studio42 co-founders were impacted at the time. As its then-CEO, Bogdanov said the studio would focus on making new hits and "preparing for the next stage of growth."