Apple's big Let Loose iPad event has now come to an end and as expected, the company announced a number of new iPads as well as new accessories that will work with them. One of those accessories is the heavily rumored new Apple Pencil Pro, while the other is a revamped version of the Apple Magic Keyboard, and this new model is better than any of those that came before it - if only because the more rigid construction should stop it from flopping around so much.

Apple announced the keyboard by saying that it's a thinner and lighter option than those that came before it. The press release notes that it opens to a floating design that has already proven popular with customers while a new function row has been added to the top of the keyboard. That row adds support for things like display brightness adjustment keys as well as keys for adjusting the volume, among other things.

Other improvements include a new aluminum construction that should make the palm rest more rigid and less likely to bend, while the keyboard itself comes in both white and black color variants. Buyers will need to choose a different keyboard depending on the size of their tablet as has always been the case, with the 11-inch version selling for $299. Those who own a 13-inch iPad will have to pay a little extra, with Apple charging $349 for that version.

Apple has today announced a slew of new iPads as well as a couple of accessories to go with them and one of those accessories is an all-new stylus. Dubbed the Apple Pencil Pro, the new stylus is essentially a replacement for the Apple Pencil 2nd-generation but is exclusively compatible with the new M4 iPad Pro and revamped M2 iPad Air. That means that anyone who wants to be able to use one of these new Appel Pencil Pros will have to buy a new iPad to do it.

The updated Apple Pencil was heavily rumored before today's Let Loose event, but it was expected that it would be called the Apple Pencil 3 initially. Then, a leak on the Japanese Apple website appeared to suggest that the stylus could carry the Apple Pencil Pro name and that's now been confirmed. As for whether the new features that it offers justify the name, that's another matter entirely.

That isn't to say that the new features aren't notable, because they are. The rumored squeeze gesture is present and correct and Apple says that it will allow people to quickly access the tool palette to switch tools, adjust line weights, and pick a new color without having to stop what they are doing. To go with the new squeeze gesture Apple says that it has also included a new haptic engine to allow the Apple Pencil to tap the user to provide confirmation when a squeeze has been registered.

Apple's big Let Loose iPad event has now come to a close and the company announced everything that we expected it to. In fact, surprises were very few and far between which means that we saw Apple unveil the new iPad Air, the best and most powerful tablet ever to carry that moniker. The new tablet is available for preorder today with prices starting from $599, and it'll ship to those who preorder next week.

The updated tablet doesn't feature a big industrial design change although there are new colors for buyers to choose from. Apple says that the tablet can be had in charcoal gray, light violet, denim, and age while all of those colors are options whether or not you choose the smaller 11-inch version of the larger 13-inch tablet.

Yes, you read that right, and the rumors were true - Apple today added an all-new 13-inch model to the popular iPad Air lineup. The existing 11-inch version is still present and has been updated accordingly, but it's the addition of a new 13-inch version of the iPad Air that will likely capture many people's attention. It's the same size as the new OLED M4 iPad Pro, for example, but costs considerably less. The 13-inch iPad Air starts at $799 while the iPad Pro starts at an eyewatering $1,299. It's important to note that the iPad Air comes with 128GB of storage and the iPad Pro comes with 256GB, but for those who just want a bigger screen, the iPad Air is a great option at this price.

Microsoft has shut down three studios from ZeniMax as the games industry shrinks and retracts.

In a bid to cut spending and stabilize margins, Microsoft has made multiple rounds of layoffs across its Xbox games division. In January, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees across its Xbox and Activision branches, and today it was revealed that three entire studios will also be closing down.

Arkane Austin, the developer of Prey and the ill-fated Redfall, Tango Gameworks, the devs of Hi-Fi Rush and the excellent Evil Within games, and Alpha Dog, who made mobile games like Mighty Doom for ZeniMax, have all been shut down.

Microsoft has announced the closure of at least four developer studios under its Bethesda branch, including Arkane Austin, the studio behind Redfall, and Tango Gameworks, the creators of Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within.

According to an internal email sent to studios by Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft has decided to blame the inevitable job cuts on its initiative of "reprioritization of titles and resources". The email states the team at Arkane Austin will be closing, and some members of the team will be going to other teams at Bethesda.

Alpha Dog Studios, the developers of the mobile game Alpha Dog, will also be closing, along with the internal development studio Roadhouse Games, which will be merged into ZeniMax Online Studios, which is working on titles such as The Elder Scrolls Online. As for Tango Gameworks, the developer behind Hi-Fi Rush, Booty, thanked the team for their work and said the game will remain available to players, the same as Redfall.

The president of Nintendo has confirmed when the company will make an announcement regarding a successor to the Nintendo Switch - something fans have been dying to know for many months now.

If you have been following along with the Nintendo Switch 2 news, you will know there have been plenty of rumors and leaks of information regarding Nintendo's next console, with some pointing to support for higher than 60FPS gameplay, and others saying the console will come with "electromagnetic suction" Joy-Cons, along with an 8-inch display. While all of the rumors haven't been confirmed, Nintendo has finally confirmed when it will be announcing its next-generation console.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa took to X and stated Nintendo will make an announcement regarding the successor to the Nintendo Switch "within the fiscal year". The president of Nintendo made a point to mention the Nintendo Switch was announced in March 2015, making its existence 9 years old, an incredible age for the console. For context, the Switch became available in March 2017.

It looks like we could be in for a huge naming scheme change for AMD's upcoming "Strix Point" APUs, with the new ASUS VivoBook S16 laptops featuring an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor.

We've never heard of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor, but ASUS lists it as a 12-core, 24-thread CPU that clocks at up to 5.1GHz with 36MB of cache and Ryzen AI performance of up to 77 TOPS. Until now, no "AI" wording has made it into any processor from AMD like this, so it looks like we could see the Ryzen AI 5, Ryzen AI 7, and Ryzen AI 9 series CPUs in the near future.

ASUS will unveil the new VivoBook S16 laptops at Computex 2024 next month, and I'm sure we're going to get the official naming from AMD at their Computex 2024 press conference. The new Strix Point CPUs aka Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor will deliver up to 77 TOPS of AI performance from its beefed-up XDNA2-based Ryzen AI NPU and newer RDNA 3.5 GPU. The NPU on its own will provide 45 TOPS of AI workload performance.

In a new interview with MIT Technology Review, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed what the future will look like with artificial intelligence-powered systems becoming more engrained in our lives.

The CEO of one of the companies leading the charge in AI development began the interview by saying AI tools will replace the smartphone as the most dependent piece of technology in our daily lives, and the capabilities of AI will be so great that it will feel like "this thing that is off helping you." Altman went on to describe the perfect app for AI would be a "super-competent colleague that knows absolutely everything about my whole life, every email, every conversation I've ever had, but doesn't feel like an extension."

Additionally, this level of AI could attempt things outside its known capabilities, fail, and then come back to the user with follow-up questions. The answers the user provides to those questions are then integrated into its second attempt at the task. So, what will power this crazy new AI? Altman believes there's a chance that we won't even need a specific piece of hardware to use this AI on the go, as the new app could simply access the cloud.

The U.S. government is on a quest to reduce the strain on the microchip fabrication industry, which has progressively become more important with the rise of artificial intelligence-powered systems.

The Biden Administration is committed to bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States, and under the multi-billion CHIPS Act, applications have been opened for $285 million in funding to develop "digital twins". Digital twins are advanced software models of hardware that can be used by engineers to identify key problems in the design of a piece of hardware. In this case, to receive funding an institute would have to create a digital twin of microchips.

The result of having a digital twin for hardware means engineers can make changes to the design of a chip before its even manufactured, speeding up the overall time it takes to design new silicone-based hardware. These virtual clones of pieces of hardware have been used in the past by the auto industry and the Space Force for satellite simulations.

Helldivers 2 has had a somewhat tumultuous week following Sony Interactive Entertainment's announcement that PC gamers will soon be required to connect to a PSN account to access the game.

Sony has since backpedalled on that announcement, saying via the PlayStation X account that none of the the previously announced changes were going to go ahead and that it's still learning how to engage with the PC gaming community. The initial news of forced PSN and Steam connection resulted in massive backlash in the form of negative review bombing the game's Steam listing and an uproar in the Helldivers 2 Discord.

Spitz, the Helldivers 2 community manager stopped posting in the game's dedicated Discord server on Saturday, one day after the changes were announced. PCGamer reports the community manager left then server and has only returned today, telling the community he was almost fired for his last public comments about the controversial situation.