The Morning After: Is the 15-inch MacBook Air any good?
Plus, a first look at ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ and the start of Reddit’s civil war.
In a world where every Apple laptop is thin and light, do we still need to market some of them based on that alone? In many ways, a 15-inch MacBook Air makes you wish Apple would bring back the suffix-free MacBook name for its mainstream machines. But, silly branding aside, is the biggest, newest Air worth the money? Your friend and mine, Nathan Ingraham, has spent the last week running the rule over the new hardware to see what’s good.
On paper, the 15-inch Air (nope, still sounds weird) is just a bigger version of its 13-inch sibling. You’ll get the same design language, port selection and chip options carried over, but that’s no bad thing. After all, the M2 MacBook Air marked a quantum leap in Apple’s hardware design, building a gorgeous and speedy machine into such a slender body. The only real downside is the Air’s focus on affordability means you’ll get a 60Hz display rather than the 120Hz on the new Pros.
– Dan Cooper
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If Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s AMA late last week was meant to defuse tensions between the company’s leadership and its users, it wasn’t very successful. More than 6,000 subreddits have now gone dark in protest of the service’s API changes that have boxed out several third-party apps. This includes several of its biggest communities, with all of which going dark at once being enough to temporarily topple the site.
Apple Mac Studio review (M2 Ultra, 2023): A better Mac for pros
Who needs a Mac Pro now?
Reading Devindra Hardawar’s review of the M2 Mac Studio left me wondering why the Mac Pro still exists. Sure, expandable RAM and having free PCI-E slots are still valuable for some use cases, but for everything else? This tiny machine has the raw grunt, if you spec it up enough, to make even the most powerful pro computers weep into their cereal. Read on to learn how jaw-droppingly swift this thing is, and if it’s worth the investment.
Watch the first 'Star Wars Outlaws' gameplay trailer
Ten minutes of scoundrel wish fulfillment.
Waiting on an open-world Star Wars game? You won’t have to wait much longer, thankfully. Star Wars Outlaws has broken cover entirely. At its Ubisoft Forward event on Monday, the game publisher shared 10 minutes of gameplay footage that touched on exploration, stealth and good ole-fashioned gunplay. You’ll be able to traverse the game's world on a speeder bike and even take to the skies and space with a starship, with seemingly no loading between game elements. (I think I’ve heard of that before…) Star Wars Outlaws will be available next year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
'Alan Wake II' stands out in a sea of sequels
More of the same, but better?
Engadget’s Jessica Conditt watched a 30-minute hands-off preview of Alan Wake II at Summer Game Fest, and she liked what she saw. The original Alan Wake came out in 2010, so the timeline in the sequel has also progressed by that same period. In it, writer Alan Wake has been missing for 13 years, while FBI agent Saga Anderson is hunting the ghost of FBI agent Robert Nightingale, who was killed off at the end of the first title. The big innovation in Alan Wake II is the ability to swap between Saga and Alan, playing as both characters throughout the game. Chapter one begins with Saga in the driver’s seat, and after that, players can choose to play as her or Alan at the beginning of each new section. Intrigued? Read on for more first impressions.
