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Apple's new MacBook Air with M2 chip will be available to order on Friday starting at 5 a.m. PT, the tech giant said on Wednesday. Orders are expected to start arriving at customers' locations on July 15.

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Even though Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for awhile now, it’s never completely caught on with gamers. Reasons for this vary, but one contributing factor is there’s not many modern, updated headsets to choose from. Today, there’s really only one affordable option in town; the Meta Quest 2 headset. It controls the vast majority of the VR market due to its affordable price and great performance. That’s about to change though, according to a new report from IDC. Apple is widely reported to be entering the market soon with a mixed reality device. Sony has also announced its second generation VR hardware for the Playstation 5. This means Meta is about to get some serious competition for the first time. Given the investments by Apple and Sony, it could radically alter the VR landscape.

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The cost of Intel's Wi-Fi chips is going up this year. The semiconductor company will raise prices on its microprocessors and peripheral chip products later this year, Nikkei Asia reported on Thursday.
Intel's processors are found in Dell, Lenovo, HP and other computers, meaning those devices will become more expensive to produce.

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Augmented reality took a backseat to virtual reality in the pandemic. VR headsets, which block out the real world to immerse you in a virtual one, suddenly commanded new appeal when everything social shut down and we sequestered ourselves at home. But now, AR -- which overlays the real world with digital ornaments -- has regained one prominent stage to show off its cutting edge again: immersive in-person experiences at big film festivals.

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There’s been a lot of news in the past week or so about a crisis of sorts unfolding for Nvidia. The company is gearing up to launch its 40-series GPUs, but it has a little problem: There’s currently way too many 30-series cards still on virtual store shelves. Those GPUs weren’t supposed to be there. After all, there’s been a GPU shortage for the past two years. However, in May the crypto market started to implode. That accelerated in June, and now that we’re in July, crypto is on life support. That’s lead to an unexpected dump of GPUs onto the open market. All of a sudden, it’s the opposite of a GPU shortage. This has now lead Nvidia to throw a fire sale on its most powerful Ampere GPUs. All of its high-end GPUs are now way under MSRP at major retailers.

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Nothing is a tech brand started in 2020 by entrepreneur Carl Pei. He was one of the founders of OnePlus, a company that offers phones and other devices and has been known for making solid products with good specs at prices that typically undercut its rivals Apple and Samsung.

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Alienware's latest 17-inch gaming laptop, the m17 R5, is finally available after being announced back in January. Originally expected in March starting at $1,599, it's one of the first partner systems to ship with the updated AMD Advantage specs. While the timing is off, the starting price is still about $1,600. The m17 R5 starts at £1,599 in the UK and AU$3,199 in Australia.

The laptop uses all of AMD's latest technologies, many of which are in service of increasing the battery life of gaming laptops, and boosting performance by directing more power where it's needed when it's needed.

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Although Intel won’t be releasing its high-powered Arc discrete graphics in the US for a few more months, its PR rep is already making the rounds. Intel’s Ryan Shrout posted a short video to YouTube giving us the first benchmarks for its high-end A750 Limited Edition GPU. Like any company doing pre-launch marketing, Intel is obviously picking games that show their card in a good light. Still, we at least get a peek of the card, and can gain an idea of what it’s capable of doing in AAA titles. Alleged pricing for the entire series has also leaked.

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Intel's nascent effort to build chips for other companies, called Intel Foundry Services, won over a major customer, Taiwan-based MediaTek.
By helping Intel's efforts to reclaim its chipmaking leadership and expand processor manufacturing in the US, MediaTek's business could make Intel and the country more competitive.

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It’s been a long and winding road for Intel’s return to the discrete GPU market. It seems like it was first announced in a different era, and since then a lot has changed. Along the way Intel has run into several delays, generating confusion about what was launching, and when. The mist seems to be clearing though, and Intel has now stated its high performance GPUs are launching soon. Or at the very least, they will be in reviewers’ hands in the near future.As a refresher, Intel stated in May that the Arc GPU launch would be delayed to “later this summer.” It announced it was doing a “staggered” launch that would start in China, then eventually make its way to the US. Six weeks later, the first Arc GPU launched, again, in China. However, in addition to the staggered launch it became clear Intel was also starting at the bottom of the stack, then working its way up to the top cards.

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