Take the Speakers, Headphones, and Earphones SurveyTake other PCMag surveys. Each completed survey is a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift card. OFFICIAL SWEEPSTAKES RULESNO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. Readers' Choice Sweepstakes (the "Sweepstakes") is governed by these official rules (the "Sweepstakes Rules"). The Sweepstakes begins on May 9, 2025, at 12:00 AM ET and ends on July 27, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET (the "Sweepstakes Period").SPONSOR: Ziff Davis, LLC, with an address of 360 Park Ave South, Floor 17, New York, NY 10010 (the "Sponsor").ELIGIBILITY: This Sweepstakes is open to individuals who are eighteen (18) years of age or older at the time of entry who are legal residents of the fifty (50) United States of America or the District of Columbia. By entering the Sweepstakes as described in these Sweepstakes Rules, entrants represent and warrant that they are complying with these Sweepstakes Rules (including, without limitation, all eligibility requirements), and that they agree to abide by and be bound by all the rules and terms and conditions stated herein and all decisions of Sponsor, which shall be final and binding.All previous winners of any sweepstakes sponsored by Sponsor during the nine (9) month period prior to the Selection Date are not eligible to enter. Any individuals (including, but not limited to, employees, consultants, independent contractors and interns) who have, within the past six (6) months, held employment with or performed services for Sponsor or any organizations affiliated with the sponsorship, fulfillment, administration, prize support, advertisement or promotion of the Sweepstakes ("Employees") are not eligible to enter or win. Immediate Family Members and Household Members are also not eligible to enter or win. "Immediate Family Members" means parents, step-parents, legal guardians, children, step-children, siblings, step-siblings, or spouses of an Employee. "Household Members" means those individuals who share the same residence with an Employee at least three (3) months a year.HOW TO ENTER: There are two methods to enter the Sweepstakes: (1) fill out the online survey, or (2) enter by mail.1. Survey Entry: To enter the Sweepstakes through the online survey, go to the survey page and complete the current survey during the Sweepstakes Period.2. Mail Entry: To enter the Sweepstakes by mail, on a 3" x 5" card, print your first and last name, street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, and email address. Mail your completed entry to:Readers' Choice Sweepstakes - Audio 2025c/o E. Griffith 624 Elm St. Ext.Ithaca, NY 14850-8786Mail Entries must be postmarked by July 28, 2025, and received by Aug. 4, 2025.Only one (1) entry per person is permitted, regardless of the entry method used. Subsequent attempts made by the same individual to submit multiple entries may result in the disqualification of the entrant.Only contributions submitted during the Sweepstakes Period will be eligible for entry into the Sweepstakes. No other methods of entry will be accepted. All entries become the property of Sponsor and will not be returned. Entries are limited to individuals only; commercial enterprises and business entities are not eligible. Use of a false account will disqualify an entry. Sponsor is not responsible for entries not received due to difficulty accessing the internet, service outage or delays, computer difficulties, and other technological problems.Entries are subject to any applicable restrictions or eligibility requirements listed herein. Entries will be deemed to have been made by the authorized account holder of the email or telephone phone number submitted at the time of entry and qualification. Multiple participants are not permitted to share the same email address. Should multiple users of the same e-mail account or mobile phone number, as applicable, enter the Sweepstakes and a dispute thereafter arises regarding the identity of the entrant, the Authorized Account Holder of said e-mail account or mobile phone account at the time of entry will be considered the entrant. "Authorized Account Holder" is defined as the natural person who is assigned an e-mail address or mobile phone number by an Internet access provider, online service provider, telephone service provider or other organization that is responsible for assigned e-mail addresses, phone numbers or the domain associated with the submitted e-mail address. Proof of submission of an entry shall not be deemed proof of receipt by the website administrator for online entries. When applicable, the website administrator's computer will be deemed the official time-keeping device for the Sweepstakes promotion. Entries will be disqualified if found to be incomplete and/or if Sponsor determines, in its sole discretion, that multiple entries were submitted by the same entrant in violation of the Sweepstakes Rules.Entries that are late, lost, stolen, mutilated, tampered with, illegible, incomplete, mechanically reproduced, inaccurate, postage-due, forged, irregular in any way or otherwise not in compliance with these Official Rules will be disqualified. All entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned.WINNER SELECTION AND NOTIFICATION: Sponsor shall select the prize winner(s) (collectively, the "Winner") on or about Aug. 11, 2025, ("Selection Date") by random drawing or from among all eligible entries. The Winner will be notified via email to the contact information provided in the entry. Notification of the Winner shall be deemed to have occurred immediately upon sending of the notification by Sponsor. Selected winner(s) will be required to respond (as directed) to the notification within seven (7) days of attempted notification. The only entries that will be considered eligible entries are entries received by Sponsor within the Sweepstakes Period. The odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. The Sponsor reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to choose an alternative winner in the event that a possible winner has been disqualified or is deemed ineligible for any reason.Recommended by Our EditorsPRIZE: One (1) winner will receive the following prize (collectively, the "Prize"):One (1) $250 Amazon.com gift code via email, valued at approximately two hundred fifty dollars ($250).No more than the stated number of prize(s) will be awarded, and all prize(s) listed above will be awarded. Actual retail value of the Prize may vary due to market conditions. The difference in value of the Prize as stated above and value at time of notification of the Winner, if any, will not be awarded. No cash or prize substitution is permitted, except at the discretion of Sponsor. The Prize is non-transferable. If the Prize cannot be awarded due to circumstances beyond the control of Sponsor, a substitute Prize of equal or greater retail value will be awarded; provided, however, that if a Prize is awarded but remains unclaimed or is forfeited by the Winner, the Prize may not be re-awarded, in Sponsor's sole discretion. In the event that more than the stated number of prize(s) becomes available for any reason, Sponsor reserves the right to award only the stated number of prize(s) by a random drawing among all legitimate, un-awarded, eligible prize claims.ACCEPTANCE AND DELIVERY OF THE PRIZE: The Winner will be required to verify his or her address and may be required to execute the following document(s) before a notary public and return them within seven (7) days (or a shorter time if required by exigencies) of receipt of such documents: an affidavit of eligibility, a liability release, and (where imposing such condition is legal) a publicity release covering eligibility, liability, advertising, publicity and media appearance issues (collectively, the "Prize Claim Documents"). If an entrant is unable to verify the information submitted with their entry, the entrant will automatically be disqualified and their prize, if any, will be forfeited. The Prize will not be awarded until all such properly executed and notarized Prize Claim Documents are returned to Sponsor. Prize(s) won by an eligible entrant who is a minor in his or her state of residence will be awarded to minor's parent or legal guardian, who must sign and return all required Prize Claim Documents. In the event the Prize Claim Documents are not returned within the specified period, an alternate Winner may be selected by Sponsor for such Prize. The Prize will be shipped to the Winner within 7 days of Sponsor's receipt of a signed Affidavit and Release from the Winner. The Winner is responsible for all taxes and fees related to the Prize received, if any.OTHER RULES: This sweepstakes is subject to all applicable laws and is void where prohibited. All submissions by entrants in connection with the sweepstakes become the sole property of the sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned. Winner assumes all liability for any injuries or damage caused or claimed to be caused by participation in this sweepstakes or by the use or misuse of any prize.By entering the sweepstakes, each winner grants the SPONSOR permission to use his or her name, city, state/province, e-mail address and, to the extent submitted as part of the sweepstakes entry, his or her photograph, voice, and/or likeness for advertising, publicity or other purposes OR ON A WINNER'S LIST, IF APPLICABLE, IN ANY and all MEDIA WHETHER NOW KNOWN OR HEREINAFTER DEVELOPED, worldwide, without additional consent OR compensation, except where prohibited by law. By submitting an entry, entrants also grant the Sponsor a perpetual, fully-paid, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, distribute, display, exhibit, transmit, broadcast, televise, digitize, perform and otherwise use and permit others to use, and throughout the world, their entry materials in any manner, form, or format now known or hereinafter created, including on the internet, and for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising or promotion of the Sweepstakes, the Sponsor and/or its products and services, without further consent from or compensation to the entrant. By entering the Sweepstakes, entrants consent to receive notification of future promotions, advertisements or solicitations by or from Sponsor and/or Sponsor's parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, and business partners, via email or other means of communication.If, in the Sponsor's opinion, there is any suspected or actual evidence of fraud, electronic or non-electronic tampering or unauthorized intervention with any portion of this Sweepstakes, or if fraud or technical difficulties of any sort (e.g., computer viruses, bugs) compromise the integrity of the Sweepstakes, the Sponsor reserves the right to void suspect entries and/or terminate the Sweepstakes and award the Prize in its sole discretion. Any attempt to deliberately damage the Sponsor's website(s) or undermine the legitimate operation of the Sweepstakes may be in violation of U.S. criminal and civil laws and will result in disqualification from participation in the Sweepstakes. Should such an attempt be made, the Sponsor reserves the right to seek remedies and damages (including attorney's fees) to the fullest extent of the law, including pursuing criminal prosecution.DISCLAIMER: EXCLUDING ONLY APPLICABLE MANUFACTURERS' WARRANTIES, THE PRIZE IS PROVIDED TO THE WINNER ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT FURTHER WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. SPONSOR HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL FURTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE WITH RESPECT TO THE PRIZE.LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: BY ENTERING THE SWEEPSTAKES, ENTRANTS, ON BEHALF OF THEMSELVES AND THEIR HEIRS, EXECUTORS, ASSIGNS AND REPRESENTATIVES, RELEASE AND HOLD THE SPONSOR its PARENT COMPANIES, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATED COMPANIES, UNITS AND DIVISIONS, AND THE CURRENT AND FORMER OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, SHAREHOLDERS, AGENTS, SUCCESSORS AND ASSIGNS OF EACH OF THE FOREGOING, AND ALL THOSE ACTING UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE FOREGOING, OR ANY OF THEM (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONAL AGENCIES AND PRIZE SUPPLIERS) (EACH A "RELEASED PARTY"), HARMLESS FROM AND AGAINST ANY AND ALL CLAIMS, ACTIONS, INJURY, LOSS, DAMAGES, LIABILITIES AND OBLIGATIONS OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER (COLLECTIVELY, THE "CLAIMS") WHETHER KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, SUSPECTED OR UNSUSPECTED, WHICH ENTRANT EVER HAD, NOW HAVE, OR HEREAFTER CAN, SHALL OR MAY HAVE, AGAINST THE RELEASED PARTIES (OR ANY OF THEM), INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, CLAIMS ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THE SWEEPSTAKES OR ENTRANT'S PARTICIPATION IN THE SWEEPSTAKES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, CLAIMS FOR LIBEL, DEFAMATION, INVASION OF PRIVACY, VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT OF PUBLICITY, COMMERCIAL APPROPRIATION OF NAME AND LIKENESS, INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT OR VIOLATION OF ANY OTHER PERSONAL OR PROPRIETARY RIGHT), AND THE RECEIPT, OWNERSHIP, USE, MISUSE, TRANSFER, SALE OR OTHER DISPOSITION OF THE PRIZE (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, CLAIMS FOR PERSONAL INJURY, DEATH, AND/OR PROPERTY DAMAGE). All matters relating to the interpretation and application of these Sweepstakes Rules shall be decided by Sponsor in its sole discretion.DISPUTES: If, for any reason (including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes beyond the control of the Sponsor which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Sweepstakes), the Sweepstakes is not capable of being conducted as described in these Sweepstakes Rules, Sponsor shall have the right, in its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual who tampers with the entry process, and/or to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Sweepstakes. The Sponsor assumes no responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of, entries. The Sponsor is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer online systems, servers, providers, computer equipment, software, or failure of any e-mail or entry to be received by Sponsor on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any website, or any combination thereof, including, without limitation, any injury or damage to any entrant's or any other person's computer related to or resulting from participating or downloading any materials in this Sweepstakes. Because of the unique nature and scope of the Sweepstakes, Sponsor reserves the right, in addition to those other rights reserved herein, to modify any date(s) or deadline(s) set forth in these Sweepstakes Rules or otherwise governing the Sweepstakes, and any such changes will be posted here in the Sweepstakes Rules. Any attempt by any person to deliberately undermine the legitimate operation of the Sweepstakes may be a violation of criminal and civil law, and, should such an attempt be made, Sponsor reserves the right to seek damages to the fullest extent permitted by law. Sponsor's failure to enforce any term of these Sweepstakes Rules shall not constitute a waiver of any provision.As a condition of participating in the Sweepstakes, entrant agrees that any and all disputes that cannot be resolved between entrant and Sponsor, and causes of action arising out of or connected with the Sweepstakes or these Sweepstakes Rules, shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, exclusively before a court of competent jurisdiction located in New York, New York, and entrant irrevocably consents to the jurisdiction of the federal and state courts located in New York, New York with respect to any such dispute, cause of action, or other matter. All disputes will be governed and controlled by the laws of the State of New York (without regard for its conflicts-of-laws principles). Further, in any such dispute, under no circumstances will entrant be permitted to obtain awards for, and hereby irrevocably waives all rights to claim, punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, or any other damages, including attorneys' fees, other than entrant's actual out-of-pocket expenses (i.e., costs incurred directly in connection with entrant's participation in the Sweepstakes), and entrant further irrevocably waives all rights to have damages multiplied or increased, if any. EACH PARTY EXPRESSLY WAIVES ANY RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply.PRIVACY: Information collected from entrants in connection with the Sweepstakes is subject to Sponsor's privacy policy, which may be found here.SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION: Although the Sweepstakes may be featured on Twitter, Facebook, and/or other social media platforms, the Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or in association with Twitter, Facebook, and/or such other social media platforms and you agree that Twitter, Facebook, and all other social media platforms are not liable in any way for any claims, damages or losses associated with the Sweepstakes.WINNER(S) LIST: For a list of name(s) of prizewinner(s), after the Selection Date, please send a stamped, self-addressed No. 10/standard business envelope to Ziff Davis, LLC, Attn: Legal Department, 360 Park Ave South, Floor 17, New York, NY 10010 (VT residents may omit return postage).BY ENTERING, YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE READ AND AGREE TO ALL OF THESE SWEEPSTAKES RULES.

In April 2025, at the ITER Private Sector Fusion Workshop in Cadarache, something remarkable unfolded. In a room filled with scientists, engineers and software visionaries, the line between big science and commercial innovation began to blur.   Three organisations – Microsoft Research, Arena and Brigantium Engineering – shared how artificial intelligence (AI), already transforming everything from language models to logistics, is now stepping into a new role: helping humanity to unlock the power of nuclear fusion.  Each presenter addressed a different part of the puzzle, but the message was the same: AI isn’t just a buzzword anymore. It’s becoming a real tool – practical, powerful and indispensable – for big science and engineering projects, including fusion.  “If we think of the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, the AI revolution is next – and it’s coming at a pace which is unprecedented,” said Kenji Takeda, director of research incubations at Microsoft Research.  Microsoft’s collaboration with ITER is already in motion. Just a month before the workshop, the two teams signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore how AI can accelerate research and development. This follows ITER’s initial use of Microsoft technology to empower their teams. A chatbot in Azure OpenAI service was developed to help staff navigate technical knowledge, on more than a million ITER documents, using natural conversation. GitHub Copilot assists with coding, while AI helps to resolve IT support tickets – those everyday but essential tasks that keep the lights on.  But Microsoft’s vision goes deeper. Fusion demands materials that can survive extreme conditions – heat, radiation, pressure – and that’s where AI shows a different kind of potential. MatterGen, a Microsoft Research generative AI model for materials, designs entirely new materials based on specific properties. “It’s like ChatGPT,” said Takeda, “but instead of ‘Write me a poem’, we ask it to design a material that can survive as the first wall of a fusion reactor.”  The next step? MatterSim – a simulation tool that predicts how these imagined materials will behave in the real world. By combining generation and simulation, Microsoft hopes to uncover materials that don’t yet exist in any catalogue.  While Microsoft tackles the atomic scale, Arena is focused on a different challenge: speeding up hardware development. As general manager Michael Frei put it: “Software innovation happens in seconds. In hardware, that loop can take months – or years.”  Arena’s answer is Atlas, a multimodal AI platform that acts as an extra set of hands – and eyes – for engineers. It can read data sheets, interpret lab results, analyse circuit diagrams and even interact with lab equipment through software interfaces. “Instead of adjusting an oscilloscope manually,” said Frei, “you can just say, ‘Verify the I2C [inter integrated circuit] protocol’, and Atlas gets it done.”  It doesn’t stop there. Atlas can write and adapt firmware on the fly, responding to real-time conditions. That means tighter feedback loops, faster prototyping and fewer late nights in the lab. Arena aims to make building hardware feel a little more like writing software – fluid, fast and assisted by smart tools.  Fusion, of course, isn’t just about atoms and code – it’s also about construction. Gigantic, one-of-a-kind machines don’t build themselves. That’s where Brigantium Engineering comes in. Founder Lynton Sutton explained how his team uses “4D planning” – a marriage of 3D CAD models and detailed construction schedules – to visualise how everything comes together over time. “Gantt charts are hard to interpret. 3D models are static. Our job is to bring those together,” he said.  The result is a time-lapse-style animation that shows the construction process step by step. It’s proven invaluable for safety reviews and stakeholder meetings. Rather than poring over spreadsheets, teams can simply watch the plan come to life.  And there’s more. Brigantium is bringing these models into virtual reality using Unreal Engine – the same one behind many video games. One recent model recreated ITER’s tokamak pit using drone footage and photogrammetry. The experience is fully interactive and can even run in a web browser. “We’ve really improved the quality of the visualisation,” said Sutton. “It’s a lot smoother; the textures look a lot better. Eventually, we’ll have this running through a web browser, so anybody on the team can just click on a web link to navigate this 4D model.”  Looking forward, Sutton believes AI could help automate the painstaking work of syncing schedules with 3D models. One day, these simulations could reach all the way down to individual bolts and fasteners – not just with impressive visuals, but with critical tools for preventing delays.  Despite the different approaches, one theme ran through all three presentations: AI isn’t just a tool for office productivity. It’s becoming a partner in creativity, problem-solving and even scientific discovery.  Takeda mentioned that Microsoft is experimenting with “world models” inspired by how video games simulate physics. These models learn about the physical world by watching pixels in the form of videos of real phenomena such as plasma behaviour. “Our thesis is that if you showed this AI videos of plasma, it might learn the physics of plasmas,” he said.  It sounds futuristic, but the logic holds. The more AI can learn from the world, the more it can help us understand it – and perhaps even master it. At its heart, the message from the workshop was simple: AI isn’t here to replace the scientist, the engineer or the planner; it’s here to help, and to make their work faster, more flexible and maybe a little more fun. As Takeda put it: “Those are just a few examples of how AI is starting to be used at ITER. And it’s just the start of that journey.”  If these early steps are any indication, that journey won’t just be faster – it might also be more inspired. 

The government has axed a scheme for upgrading energy efficiency in public sector buildings. The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) delivered more than £2.5bn in its first three phases for measures such as heat pumps, solar panels, insulation and double glazing, with further funding of nearly £1bn recently announced. But the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has told Building Design that the scheme has been dropped after the spending review, leaving uncertainty about how upgrades will be funded when the current phase expires in 2028. Source: UK Government/FlickrEd Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is responsible for the scheme The department said it would set out plans for the period after 2028 in due course. In a post on LinkedIn, Dave Welkin, director of sustainability at Gleeds, said he had waited for the release of the spending review with a “sense of trepidation” and was unable to find mention of public sector decarbonisation when Treasury documents were released. “I hoped because it was already committed in the Budget that its omission wasn’t ominous,” he wrote. Yesterday, he was told by Salix Finance, the non-departmental public body that delivers funding for the scheme, that it was no longer being funded. It comes after the withdrawal of funding for the Low Carbon Skills Fund (LCSF) in May. According to the government’s website, PSDS and LCSF were intended to support the reduction of emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037, compared to a 2017 baseline. “Neither LCSF or PSDS were perfect by any means, but they did provide a vital source of funding for local authorities, hospitals, schools and many other public sector organisations to save energy, carbon and money,” Welkin said. “PSDS has helped replace failed heating systems in schools, keeping students warm. It’s replaced roofs on hospitals, helping patients recover from illness. It’s replaced windows in our prisons, improving security and stopping drugs getting behind bars.” However, responding to Welkin’s post, Steve Connolly, chief executive at Arriba Technologies, a low carbon heating and cooling firm, said that the scheme was being “mismanaged” with a small number of professional services firms “scooping up disproportionately large grants for their clients”. The fourth phase of the scheme was confirmed last September, with allocations confirmed only last month. This latest phase, which covers the financial years between 2025/26 and 2027/28, saw the distribution of £940m across the country. A DESNZ spokesperson said: “Our settlement is about investing in Britain’s renewal to create energy security, sprint to clean power by 2030, encourage investment, create jobs and bring down bills for good. “We will deliver £1bn in current allocations of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme until 2028 and, through Great British Energy, have invested in new rooftop solar power and renewable schemes to lower energy bills for schools and hospitals across the UK. “We want to build on this progress by incentivising the public sector to decarbonise, so they can reap the benefits in lower bills and emissions, sharing best practice across government and exploring the use of repayable finance, where appropriate.” A government assessment of phase 3a and 3b projects identified a number of issues with the scheme, including delays and cost inflation, with more than a tenth being abandoned subsequent to grants being offered. Stakeholders interviewed for the report also identified “difficulties in obtaining skilled contractors and equipment”, especially air source heat pumps. The first come first served approach to awarding funding was also said to be “encouraging applicants to opt for more straightforward projects” and “potentially undermining the achievement of PSDS objective by restricting the opportunity for larger [and] more complex measures which may have delivered greater carbon reduction benefits”. But the consensus among stakeholders and industry representatives interviewed for the report was that the scheme was “currently key to sustaining the existing UK heat pump market” and that it was “seen as vital in enabling many public sector organisations to invest in heat decarbonisation”.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 saw a range of announcements that offered a glimpse into the future of Apple’s software design and artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, highlighted by a new design language called  Liquid Glass and by Apple Intelligence news. Liquid Glass is designed to add translucency and dynamic movement to Apple’s user interface across iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs. The overhaul aims to make interactions with elements like buttons and sidebars adapt contextually. However, the real news of WWDC could be what we didn’t see.  Analysts had high expectations for Apple’s AI strategy, and while Apple Intelligence was talked about, many market watchers reported that it lacked the innovation that have come from Google’s and Microsoft’s generative AI (genAI) rollouts. The question of whether Apple is playing catch-up lingered at WWDC 2025, and comments from Apple execs about delays to a significant AI overhaul for Siri were apparently interpreted as a setback by investors, leading to a negative reaction and drop in stock price. Follow this page for Computerworld‘s coverage of WWDC25. WWDC25 news and analysis Apple’s AI Revolution: Insights from WWDC June 13, 2025: At Apple’s big developer event, developers were served a feast of AI-related updates, including APIs that let them use Apple Intelligence in their apps and ChatGPT-augmentation from within Xcode. As a development environment, Apple has secured its future, with Macs forming the most computationally performant systems you can affordably purchase for the job. For developers, Apple’s tools get a lot better for AI June 12, 2025: Apple announced one important AI update at WWDC this week, the introduction of support for third-party large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT from within Xcode. It’s a big step that should benefit developers, accelerating app development. WWDC 25: What’s new for Apple and the enterprise? June 11, 2025: Beyond its new Liquid Glass UI and other major improvements across its operating systems, Apple introduced a hoard of changes, tweaks, and enhancements for IT admins at WWDC 2025. What we know so far about Apple’s Liquid Glass UI June 10, 2025: What Apple has tried to achieve with Liquid Glass is to bring together the optical quality of glass and the fluidity of liquid to emphasize transparency and lighting when using your devices.  WWDC first look: How Apple is improving its ecosystem June 9, 2025: While the new user interface design Apple execs highlighted at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) might have been a bit of an eye-candy distraction, Apple’s enterprise users were not forgotten. Apple infuses AI into the Vision Pro June 8, 2025: Sluggish sales of Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset haven’t dampened the company’s enthusiasm for advancing the device’s 3D computing experience, which now incorporates AI to deliver richer context and experiences. WWDC: Apple is about to unlock international business June 4, 2025: One of the more exciting pre-WWDC rumors is that Apple is preparing to make language problems go away by implementing focused artificial intelligence in Messages, which will apparently be able to translate incoming and outgoing messages on the fly. 

A Discount, You Say? inZOI is on sale for the first time to celebrate the big June update If you recently felt an itch to check in on inZOI, but never actually bought it, Krafton has a deal for you. Image credit: Krafton News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on June 13, 2025 It seems like things are getting exciting in the world of inZOI once again, after what felt like months of no comms and some patch delays. Earlier this week, the team behind the life sim finally announced a release date for its next update. What was initially billed as the May update missed that window by quite a margin, but was officially given a proper release date - in June - just a few days ago. Update v0.2.0 arrives today, and with it, a discount that could maybe tempt those who have yet to jump in. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. This is inZOI’s first-ever discount since its release back in March. It’s part of a larger sale for publisher Krafton, which also happens to be the company’s first publisher sale on Steam. 17 titles from the publisher’s catalogue are on sale from now until Thursday, June 26. Sale percentages vary, and in inZOI’s case, the discount is a bit meagre, slashing the price by just 10%. Now, the game is still in Early Access, and never had the price of a AAA title to begin with, so it’s not exactly the sort of thing to get a bigger 20-30% off - at least not quite yet. Watch on YouTube The latest inZOI patch introduces official mod support to the game in the form of ModKit, adds same-sex relationships, the ability for Zois to have - and adopt - children, and much more besides. Things are popping off elsewhere in the world of life sims and The Sims-likes, too. Paralives, a highly-anticipated, long-in-development Sims-like, recently set a release date for its Steam Early Access launch. The Sims 4 itself just dropped the first trailer for Enchanted by Nature, the game’s next expansion which is set to arrive in July.

Tutankhamun’s Iconic Gold Death Mask Is Getting a New Home Near the Pyramids of Giza Soon, the elaborately decorated artifact will be transferred to the brand new Grand Egyptian Museum, joining more than 5,000 other items from the boy king’s tomb Tutankhamun's gold funerary mask has been on display at the Egyptian Museum for nearly a century. Mostafa Elshemy / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images For nearly a century, visitors have flocked to the Egyptian Museum on Cairo’s Tahrir Square to admire Tutankhamun’s funerary mask, the intricately decorated artifact designed to cover the mummified pharaoh’s face. Starting this summer, they’ll be able to see the mask in its new home, the $1 billion Grand Egyptian Museum located in nearby Giza. Officials will soon transfer the mask to the massive new venue, where it will join more than 5,000 artifacts from the boy king’s tomb. “Only 26 objects from the Tutankhamun collection, including the golden mask and two coffins, remain here [at the Egyptian Museum] in Tahrir,” says Ali Abdel Halim, director of the Egyptian Museum, to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). “All are set to be moved soon.” Halim didn’t say when the death mask will be transferred, but the new Grand Egyptian Museum is scheduled to fully open to the public in early July after years of delays. Some portions of the Grand Egyptian Museum have been open since November 2023, with an additional 12 exhibit halls opening last October. All told, the museum complex spans more than 5 million square feet and houses more than 100,000 artifacts, which makes it the largest museum in the world focused on a single civilization. “We spent all this money to build the greatest museum in the world,” said Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist who has twice served as Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister, to NBC News’ Keir Simmons, Charlene Gubash and Mithil Aggarwal in October. “You will see the objects for the first time in an incredible way.” The Untold Secrets of King Tut's Tomb Watch on Tutankhamun's mask has been housed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo since 1934, 12 years after British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the pharaoh’s tomb. However, the 123-year-old Beaux Arts venue is small and starting to show its age, so officials decided to relocate Tutankhamun's treasures to the enormous, high-tech Grand Egyptian Museum. At the new facility, the Tutankhamun artifacts will have their own dedicated, climate-controlled wing—one that’s large enough to display all of them together for the first time. Last month, officials carefully transferred 163 Tutankhamun treasures to the new museum, according to an announcement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. That delivery included the pharaoh’s elaborately decorated ceremonial chair, various pieces of jewelry and the canopic chest that held the jars containing Tutankhamun’s organs, reports Artnet’s Sarah Cascone. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, meanwhile, is not closing. Though it has lost Tutankhamun’s treasures and more than 20 mummies, it still has roughly 170,000 artifacts in its collection, per the AFP. Curators say they plan to replace the Tutankhamun artifacts with a new exhibition, though they haven’t shared many details. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Rumors strongly suggest that Apple will be overhauling the MacBook Pro in 2026, marking five years since the previous redesign that we know and love today. There are three key rumors to follow with this redesigned MacBook Pro, and we’ll be delving into them here. OLED display After debuting in the iPad Pro in 2024, Apple is expected to introduce OLED display technology to the MacBook Pro for the very first time with the redesign in 2026. This’ll provide higher brightness, better contrast ratios, and nicer colors to the MacBook Pro lineup for the very first time. Plus, according to TheElec, Apple will be using the same Tandem OLED display tech as the aforementioned iPad Pro: The OLED MacBook Air is also expected to get a standard single-stack display, rather than the more sophisticated Two-Stack Tandem displays we reported on for the MacBook Pro. Single-stack displays have one red, green and blue layer, while two-stack tandem OLED has a second RGB layer. Two layers stacked in tandem increases the brightness of the screen, while also increasing longevity. While transitioning to OLED, Apple may also ditch the notch, in favor of a smaller camera hole cutout. This information comes from Omdia, who describes it as a “rounded corner + hole cut.” The report doesn’t specify whether or not it’ll be a single hole punch, or something more similar to Dynamic Island on the iPhone. Either way, there won’t be as chunky of a cutout in your MacBook Pro display once the redesign arrives. Thinner design According to Bloomberg, Apple will be adopting a new, thinner design with the 2026 MacBook Pro. There aren’t many other details specified, so it’s unclear if the overall chassis design will change: Though Apple has continued to enhance the product with new chips and other internal improvements, the MacBook Pro probably won’t get another true overhaul until 2026. The company had once hoped to release this new version in 2025 — with a thinner design and a move to crisper OLED screens — but there were delays related to the display technology. Cutting-edge M6 chip Apple will also debut the M6 family of chips in this new MacBook Pro redesign. Currently, M6 is anticipated to be the first generation of Apple Silicon to adopt TSMC’s 2nm technology, alongside the A20 chip for iPhone. As per usual, we should see M6, M6 Pro, and M6 Max versions of the MacBook Pro, in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes. With a new process node, we should see noticeable performance and efficiency gains. Wrap up Overall, the biggest feature of this upgrade is certainly the fact that the MacBook Pro will be adopting OLED. That said, I’ll certainly appreciate the thinner design – particularly on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which currently comes in at 4.7 pounds. In case you aren’t too fond of waiting around a year and a half to buy a new MacBook Pro, there are some good discounts on the current M4 MacBook Pro models now that they’re around halfway through their lifespan. You can pick up an M4 14-inch for $1429, an M4 Pro 14-inch for $1779, or an M4 Pro 16-inch for $2249. These are all around $200 off compared to their typical prices. My favorite Apple accessory recommendations: Follow Michael: X/Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.Tech billionaires are making a risky bet with humanity’s future Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others may have slightly different goals, but their grand visions for the next decade and beyond are remarkably similar.They include aligning AI with the interests of humanity; creating an artificial superintelligence that will solve all the world’s most pressing problems; merging with that superintelligence to achieve immortality (or something close to it); establishing a permanent, self-­sustaining colony on Mars; and, ultimately, spreading out across the cosmos.Three features play a central role with powering these visions, says Adam Becker, a science writer and astrophysicist: an unshakable certainty that technology can solve any problem, a belief in the necessity of perpetual growth, and a quasi-religious obsession with transcending our physical and biological limits.In his timely new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Becker reveals how these fantastical visions conceal a darker agenda. Read the full story. —Bryan Gardiner This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands! Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration Earlier this week, two new leaders of the US Food and Drug Administration published a list of priorities for the agency. Both Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad are controversial figures in the science community. They were generally highly respected academics until the covid pandemic, when their contrarian opinions on masking, vaccines, and lockdowns turned many of their colleagues off them. Given all this, along with recent mass firings of FDA employees, lots of people were pretty anxious to see what this list might include—and what we might expect the future of food and drug regulation in the US to look like. So let’s dive into the pair’s plans for new investigations, speedy approvals, and the “unleashing” of AI. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 NASA is investigating leaks on the ISSIt’s postponed launching private astronauts to the station while it evaluates. (WP $)+ Its core component has been springing small air leaks for months. (Reuters)+ Meanwhile, this Chinese probe is en route to a near-Earth asteroid. (Wired $) 2 Undocumented migrants are using social media to warn of ICE raidsThe DIY networks are anonymously reporting police presences across LA. (Wired $)+ Platforms’ relationships with protest activism has changed drastically. (NY Mag $)  3 Google’s AI Overviews is hallucinating about the fatal Air India crashIt incorrectly stated that it involved an Airbus plane, not a Boeing 787. (Ars Technica)+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Chinese engineers are sneaking suitcases of hard drives into the countryTo covertly train advanced AI models. (WSJ $)+ The US is cracking down on Huawei’s ability to produce chips. (Bloomberg $)+ What the US-China AI race overlooks. (Rest of World) 5 The National Hurricane Center is joining forces with DeepMindIt’s the first time the center has used AI to predict nature’s worst storms. (NYT $)+ Here’s what we know about hurricanes and climate change. (MIT Technology Review) 6 OpenAI is working on a product with toymaker MattelAI-powered Barbies?! (FT $)+ Nothing is safe from the creep of AI, not even playtime. (LA Times $)+ OpenAI has ambitions to reach billions of users. (Bloomberg $) 7 Chatbots posing as licensed therapists may be breaking the lawDigital rights organizations have filed a complaint to the FTC. (404 Media)+ How do you teach an AI model to give therapy? (MIT Technology Review) 8 Major companies are abandoning their climate commitmentsBut some experts argue this may not be entirely bad. (Bloomberg $)+ Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims. (MIT Technology Review) 9 Vibe coding is shaking up software engineeringEven though AI-generated code is inherently unreliable. (Wired $)+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review) 10 TikTok really loves hotdogs And who can blame it? (Insider $) Quote of the day “It kind of jams two years of work into two months.” —Andrew Butcher, president of the Maine Connectivity Authority, tells Ars Technica why it’s so difficult to meet the Trump administration’s new plans to increase broadband access in certain states. One more thing The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we needIt’s a tough time to try and buy a home in America. From the beginning of the pandemic to early 2024, US home prices rose by 47%. In large swaths of the country, buying a home is no longer a possibility even for those with middle-class incomes. For many, that marks the end of an American dream built around owning a house. Over the same time, rents have gone up 26%.The reason for the current rise in the cost of housing is clear to most economists: a lack of supply. Simply put, we don’t build enough houses and apartments, and we haven’t for years. But the reality is that even if we ease the endless permitting delays and begin cutting red tape, we will still be faced with a distressing fact: The construction industry is not very efficient when it comes to building stuff. Read the full story. —David Rotman We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + If you’re one of the unlucky people who has triskaidekaphobia, look away now.+ 15-year old Nicholas is preparing to head from his home in the UK to Japan to become a professional sumo wrestler.+ Earlier this week, London played host to 20,000 women in bald caps. But why? ($)+ Why do dads watch TV standing up? I need to know.

Inside Apple’s high-gloss standoff with AI ambition and the uncanny choreography of WWDC 2025There was a time when watching an Apple keynote — like Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone in 2007, the masterclass of all masterclasses in product launching — felt like watching a tightrope act. There was suspense. Live demos happened — sometimes they failed, and when they didn’t, the applause was real, not piped through a Dolby mix.These days, that tension is gone. Since 2020, in the wake of the pandemic, Apple events have become pre-recorded masterworks: drone shots sweeping over Apple Park, transitions smoother than a Pixar short, and executives delivering their lines like odd, IRL spatial personas. They move like human renderings: poised, confident, and just robotic enough to raise a brow. The kind of people who, if encountered in real life, would probably light up half a dozen red flags before a handshake is even offered. A case in point: the official “Liquid Glass” UI demo — it’s visually stunning, yes, but also uncanny, like a concept reel that forgot it needed to ship.https://medium.com/media/fcb3b16cc42621ba32153aff80ea1805/hrefAnd that’s the paradox. Not only has Apple trimmed down the content of WWDC, it’s also polished the delivery into something almost inhumanly controlled. Every keynote beat feels engineered to avoid risk, reduce friction, and glide past doubt. But in doing so, something vital slips away: the tension, the spontaneity, the sense that the future is being made, not just performed.Just one year earlier, WWDC 2024 opened with a cinematic cold open “somewhere over California”:https://medium.com/media/f97f45387353363264d99c341d4571b0/hrefPhil Schiller piloting an Apple-branded plane, iPod in hand, muttering “I’m getting too old for this stuff.” A perfect mix of Lethal Weapon camp and a winking message that yes, Classic-Apple was still at the controls — literally — flying its senior leadership straight toward Cupertino. Out the hatch, like high-altitude paratroopers of optimism, leapt the entire exec team, with Craig Federighi, always the go-to for Apple’s auto-ironic set pieces, leading the charge, donning a helmet literally resembling his own legendary mane. It was peak-bold, bizarre, and unmistakably Apple. That intro now reads like the final act of full-throttle confidence.This year’s WWDC offered a particularly crisp contrast. Aside from the new intro — which features Craig Federighi drifting an F1-style race car across the inner rooftop ring of Apple Park as a “therapy session”, a not-so-subtle nod to the upcoming Formula 1 blockbuster but also to the accountability for the failure to deliver the system-wide AI on time — WWDC 2025 pulled back dramatically. The new “Apple Intelligence” was introduced in a keynote with zero stumbles, zero awkward transitions, and visuals so pristine they could have been rendered on a Vision Pro. Not only had the scope of WWDC been trimmed down to safer talking points, but even the tone had shifted — less like a tech summit, more like a handsomely lit containment-mode seminar. And that, perhaps, was the problem. The presentation wasn’t a reveal — it was a performance. And performances can be edited in post. Demos can’t.So when Apple in march 2025 quietly admitted, for the first time, in a formal press release addressed to reporters like John Gruber, that the personalized Siri and system-wide AI features would be delayed — the reaction wasn’t outrage. It was something subtler: disillusionment. Gruber’s response cracked the façade wide open. His post opened a slow but persistent wave of unease, rippling through developer Slack channels and private comment threads alike. John Gruber’s reaction, published under the headline “Something is rotten in the State of Cupertino”, was devastating. His critique opened the floodgates to a wave of murmurs and public unease among developers and insiders, many of whom had begun to question what was really happening at the helm of key divisions central to Apple’s future.Many still believe Apple is the only company truly capable of pulling off hardware-software integrated AI at scale. But there’s a sense that the company is now operating in damage-control mode. The delay didn’t just push back a feature — it disrupted the entire strategic arc of WWDC 2025. What could have been a milestone in system-level AI became a cautious sidestep, repackaged through visual polish and feature tweaks. The result: a presentation focused on UI refinements and safe bets, far removed from the sweeping revolution that had been teased as the main selling point for promoting the iPhone 16 launch, “Built for Apple Intelligence”.That tension surfaced during Joanna Stern’s recent live interview with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak. These are two of Apple’s most media-savvy execs, and yet, in a setting where questions weren’t scripted, you could see the seams. Their usual fluency gave way to something stiffer. More careful. Less certain. And even the absences speak volumes: for the first time in a decade, no one from Apple’s top team joined John Gruber’s Talk Show at WWDC. It wasn’t a scheduling fluke — nor a petty retaliation for Gruber’s damning March article. It was a retreat — one that Stratechery’s Ben Thompson described as exactly that: a strategic fallback, not a brave reset.Meanwhile, the keynote narrative quietly shifted from AI ambition to UI innovation: new visual effects, tighter integration, call screening. Credit here goes to Alan Dye — Apple VP of Human Interface Design and one of the last remaining members of Jony Ive’s inner circle not yet absorbed into LoveFrom — whose long-arc work on interface aesthetics, from the early stages of the Dynamic Island onward, is finally starting to click into place. This is classic Apple: refinement as substance, design as coherence. But it was meant to be the cherry on top of a much deeper AI-system transformation — not the whole sundae. All useful. All safe. And yet, the thing that Apple could uniquely deliver — a seamless, deeply integrated, user-controlled and privacy-safe Apple Intelligence — is now the thing it seems most reluctant to show.There is no doubt the groundwork has been laid. And to Apple’s credit, Jason Snell notes that the company is shifting gears, scaling ambitions to something that feels more tangible. But in scaling back the risk, something else has been scaled back too: the willingness to look your audience of stakeholders, developers and users live, in the eye, and show the future for how you have carefully crafted it and how you can put it in the market immediately, or in mere weeks. Showing things as they are, or as they will be very soon. Rehearsed, yes, but never faked.Even James Dyson’s live demo of a new vacuum showed more courage. No camera cuts. No soft lighting. Just a human being, showing a thing. It might have sucked, literally or figuratively. But it didn’t. And it stuck. That’s what feels missing in Cupertino.Some have started using the term glasslighting — a coined pun blending Apple’s signature glassy aesthetics with the soft manipulations of marketing, like a gentle fog of polished perfection that leaves expectations quietly disoriented. It’s not deception. It’s damage control. But that instinct, understandable as it is, doesn’t build momentum. It builds inertia. And inertia doesn’t sell intelligence. It only delays the reckoning.Before the curtain falls, it’s hard not to revisit the uncanny polish of Apple’s speakers presence. One might start to wonder whether Apple is really late on AI — or whether it’s simply developed such a hyper-advanced internal model that its leadership team has been replaced by real-time human avatars, flawlessly animated, fed directly by the Neural Engine. Not the constrained humanity of two floating eyes behind an Apple Vision headset, but full-on flawless embodiment — if this is Apple’s augmented AI at work, it may be the only undisclosed and underpromised demo actually shipping.OS30 live demoMeanwhile, just as Apple was soft-pedaling its A.I. story with maximum visual polish, a very different tone landed from across the bay: Sam Altman and Jony Ive, sitting in a bar, talking about the future.https://medium.com/media/5cdea73d7fde0b538e038af1990afa44/hrefNo stage. No teleprompter. No uncanny valley. Just two “old friends”, with one hell of a budget, quietly sketching the next era of computing. A vision Apple once claimed effortlessly.There’s still the question of whether Apple, as many hope, can reclaim — and lock down — that leadership for itself. A healthy dose of competition, at the very least, can only help.Too big, fail too was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.