Not a day goes by without me getting frustrated at the state of the mobile web. I rarely use my iPhone to read news articles now because every time I do there’s a cookie prompt obstructing what I want to read, or so many ads on a page that I can’t even see the text anymore.

Apple is clearly just as frustrated as I am, so it’s added a Thanos snap animation to iOS 18 that wipes out annoying parts of websites.

The new “Distraction Control” feature showed up in Safari earlier this week in the fifth beta of iOS 18 and iPadOS18. It’s designed to let you temporarily remove annoying and distracting elements from a mobile website, including cookie prompts, ads, those infuriating autoplay videos that follow you around while you scroll a site, and more.

The animation is a beautiful nod to the Thanos snap, and it certainly feels like I’m wielding all six Infinity Stones and snapping my fingers to exterminate half of the crap that exists on mobile websites these days. I also don’t feel guilty about it. This isn’t an adblocker, so it’s only temporary and nothing persists. You still load up the ads so the website owner gets an ad view, no harm done.

MacRumors has a great hands-on video demonstrating how it all works, but I just wish there was an easier way of using Distraction Control. In the latest iOS 18 beta 5 release you have to tap on the same button you’d use to enable the reader mode — which also lets you focus in on text on a website — to be able to hide parts of webpages. If there was a gesture to swipe these annoying ads away then that would make this even more useful.

Unless Apple does some last minute changes to iOS 18, this new Distraction Control feature should arrive as part of the final iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 release, likely to arrive next month.

Equipping a student for school, especially campus life, takes more than some composition books and a few No. 2 pencils.

Back-to-school season may have once felt far off, but I regret to inform you that it has arrived in many parts of the US. Thankfully, a new school year also brings new opportunities — along with exciting new gadgets and supplies that can help young academics get their work done. Because, let’s be honest, churning through a flurry of humdrum assignments is always more enjoyable with a spiffy new pen, notepad, or gadget.

With that in mind, we at The Verge have pooled together a list of gift ideas for the student in your life. Some are pretty conventional, like a spiral notebook or a book light, only they’re a bit nicer than your average supermarket fodder. Others, like Philips Hue’s colorful LED strip and League of Lexicon, allow students to personalize their space, settle into campus life, and unwind after a stressful week of 8AM classes (because those always seem like a good idea at first).

Hopefully, these recommendations get the kids as excited about the start of school as you are to see them get out of the house.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign took an interesting detour today as the former president appeared in a livestream hosted by streamer Adin Ross. The livestream was hosted on Kick and, at its peak, had over 580,000 viewers.

Ross is a streamer known for courting controversy. At the height of his popularity on Twitch, he accumulated over 7 million followers. He’s hosted influencer Andrew Tate, who is currently facing charges in Romania for rape and human trafficking. He was repeatedly banned from Twitch for using racial slurs, before being permanently banned last year after featuring a chat stream where users spammed racial and antisemitic slurs. Ross migrated to the alternative streaming site Kick, where continued his antics which included hosting known white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Ross’ terms-of-service-breaking content, like streaming the Super Bowl and scrolling through PornHub, has made him popular with Gen-Z males and thereby a perfect conduit for Trump to reach a younger audience — something his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is herself attempting by hosting rallies featuring rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

The stream with Trump may drive just as much controversy. At one point in the interview, Ross presented Trump with Rolex watch. Shortly after gifting him the watch, Ross brought up Fani Willis, a district attorney in the state of Georgia, who has filed an indictment against Trump for alleged election interference during the 2020 presidential election.

“I have a friend who’s currently being treated very unfair by [District Attorney Willis]. He’s a rapper named Young Thug,” Ross said during the livestream, referencing Williams’ racketeering case against the rapper. “I was just wondering if there’s a way that we could make sure he gets treated fair?”

Donald Trump has a precedent for getting rappers out of sticky legal situations. At the end of his term in 2021, Trump pardoned the rapper Lil Wayne after he pled guilty to illegal gun possession. He also commuted the sentence for rapper Kodak Black, who was sentenced to 46 months after lying on federal forms in an attempt to purchase firearms.

Trump didn’t directly respond to Ross’ question, saying, “He’s gotta be treated fair.” As the details of the stream spread across social media, observers wondered if Ross was attempting to bribe Trump or whether accepting such an expensive gift constituted some kind of campaign finance violation.

The two continued the livestream with Trump offering one word comments on a list of celebrities and politicians, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Finally, at the end of the stream, Ross presented Trump with another gift: a Tesla Cybertruck with a custom wrap featuring the now famous picture of Trump after he was shot at during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The stream ended with Ross and Trump streaming from the Cybertruck as “YMCA” played them out.

It’s possible Apple may release a slew of new wearables in the fall, but until then, the 49mm Apple Watch Ultra 2 remains the most capable smartwatch in Apple’s arsenal. It’s also the most expensive at $799, but right now, you can pick it up at Amazon with an Ocean Band, an Alpine Loop, or a Trail Loop for $699.99 ($99 off). That’s not its lowest price to date — we’ve seen it fall to $642 in select configurations before — but the Ocean Band model rarely dips below $719, unlike the others.

Powered by Apple’s S9 SiP processor and second-gen ultra wideband chip, the Apple Ultra 2 allows for onboard Siri processing and Apple’s new double tap feature, which lets you control the watch by tapping your index fingers and thumb together twice. However, the LTE-enabled Ultra 2 is more capable than the Series 9 despite sporting the same chipset, with a brighter 3,000-nit display, better performance, and a battery that can last days at a time.

As a rugged watch geared toward adventurers, the Ultra 2 also includes several features built with outdoorsy, active types in mind. These include sensors for measuring various dive metrics and a customizable Action Button, as well as more robust water resistance and durability. The wearable even offers a useful siren you can activate should you need help, which could come in handy if you’re hiking off the grid.

Read our Apple Watch Ultra 2 review.

Scientists discovered ‘dark oxygen’ in the ocean’s abyss, where companies want to mine battery metals.

The discovery of “dark oxygen” in the ocean’s abyss is raising the stakes in negotiations over whether to mine the seafloor for battery materials — and how to protect sensitive marine life in the process.

Rules for deep-sea mining have been at the heart of talks during the International Seabed Authority’s (ISA) annual meetings in Kingston, Jamaica, that ended Friday. A mining company has already said that after the meetings end, it would submit the first-ever application to exploit minerals from the deep sea.

The company’s plans have triggered a race to get rules in place before any mining starts. But there’s so little that humans know about the deep sea that a growing chorus of scientists, advocates, and policymakers are sounding the alarm that there could be grave, unforeseen consequences. Evidence of mysterious “dark oxygen” from the abyssal seafloor was published in a prestigious journal in July. It raises new questions about the risks mining might pose to life at the bottom of the ocean that scientists are still trying to understand and is amplifying calls for a moratorium on mining.

“Today, we are at a crossroads. The decisions we make at this Assembly will shape the future health and productivity of our oceans for generations to come,” Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. said in his opening statement during the ISA Assembly on July 29th. “Whether it is the undiscovered biodiversity that might unlock the cures for cancer, or the recent discovery just last week of ‘dark oxygen’ being produced in the deep ocean, by the nodules on the seafloor, we have so much to learn about the deep seabed and the vital role it plays for our planet.”

What is dark oxygen?

Oxygen is a product of photosynthesis. Plants and plankton use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create sugars and oxygen. That’s what makes the discovery of dark oxygen at the bottom of the abyss, with depths between 9,842 to 21,325 feet (3,000 to 6,500 meters), so incredible — what’s down there that can produce oxygen without sunlight? A paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience last week suggests that there’s a completely different and previously unknown process for producing oxygen on Earth, and it comes from arguably the most unexpected of places.

The findings were so surprising the authors themselves were initially skeptical of their own data. They’d set out to document how much oxygen deep-sea organisms use up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, in an area between Hawaii and Mexico that companies are eyeing for mining. They’d sent landers down some 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) to take measurements in spaces closed off to outside currents that would typically bring oxygen from the surface of the sea. The method is sort of like placing a can upside down on the bottom of a pool and documenting what happens inside. They expected to see oxygen levels drop over time in the enclosed area, but they documented the opposite. Thinking something must be wrong with their sensors, they swapped out the equipment and yet kept getting similar readings. When they lifted those landers up, oxygen bubbled out.

They still don’t know for sure how the oxygen is produced. But they have a hypothesis. Polymetallic nodules rich in nickel, copper, cobalt, iron, and manganese are strewn across the seafloor — exactly what mining companies are interested in exploiting and have even described as “batteries in a rock.” They might just be able to produce enough of an electrical charge to split seawater, releasing oxygen through electrolysis.

There’s a lot more research to be done to test that hypothesis. The authors of the paper were taking oxygen readings and weren’t looking for higher levels of hydrogen — which you’d expect to see if these rock batteries are actually capable of splitting water. They brought some nodules up to land to see if they could replicate the process in a lab. That’s how they were able to rule out other possibilities like microbes producing dark oxygen. Again, the results were surprising.

“I had approached the problem from the perspective of, you know, there’s no way that these things have this high voltage ... and the readings were off the chart,” says Franz Geiger, one of the authors of the paper and a professor of physical chemistry at Northwestern University.

The team documented voltage as high as around 950 millivolts — just shy of the 1.3 to 1.5 volts that would be needed to split seawater or at least get an oxygen-producing half-reaction — called an oxygen evolution reaction. Out in the ocean where there are vast networks of nodules, the voltage might get high enough to trigger those reactions, they hypothesize.

The research was funded in part by The Metals Company (TMC), the same company planning to apply for a license to start deep-sea mining. The company says it’s conducting “one of the most comprehensive deep-sea research programs in history,” spending more than $200 million on environmental assessments. But now, they’re disputing the findings of the paper published in Nature Geoscience last month — picking a fight with researchers whose findings might not jive with the company’s claim that mining the ocean’s abyss would be a less harmful alternative to mining on land.

When The Verge reached out to the company, it pointed us to a statement it released saying it was “surprised to see the questionable paper” published. The company says it’s still “preparing a comprehensive rebuttal” but is so far questioning the researchers’ “flawed” methods in part because the data was “collected under conditions not representative” of the seafloor area where it’s interested in mining. It also says that the paper contradicts other studies and was rejected by other journals.

The research team stands by its work. “We were the worst critics of this paper for a long time. For eight years I discarded the data showing oxygen production, thinking my sensors were faulty. Once we realized something may be going on, we tried to disprove it, but in the end we simply couldn’t,” lead author Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, says in his own statement responding to The Metals Company.

Why there still aren’t rules for deep-sea mining

Dark oxygen has already made waves in Kingston, observers who attended the ISA meetings with advocacy groups and intergovernmental delegations tell The Verge. Delegations representing several countries have brought the research up in their opening statements, and there’s reportedly also talk of the research in negotiation rooms and at side events. “It has come up quite a lot along the corridors as well,” says Pradeep Singh, an expert on ocean governance and a fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability at Helmholtz Centre Potsdam.

Unsurprisingly, it’s spurring calls to pump the brakes on mining. “The significance [of this research] can’t be overestimated,” says David Santillo, a marine biologist and senior scientist at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories based at the University of Exeter. Greenpeace is one of the environmental groups opposing deep-sea mining. “Clearly, it’s going to have implications also for the natural systems and the processes on which not just deep sea ecosystems depend, but on which the whole planet depends. We know the value and the importance of oxygen as an element on Earth,” Santillo says.

So far, 32 countries have expressed support for either an all-out ban, moratorium, or “precautionary pause” on deep-sea mining either until there are rules in place to prevent unnecessary harm or until there’s a better understanding of what mining might disturb. That includes five new countries joining the cause during this year’s ISA meeting.

The ISA missed a key deadline last year to craft rules — two years after the island nation of Nauru sent everyone into a tizzy by announcing that it would sponsor The Metals Company’s deep-sea mining aspirations. That’s what enables TMC to apply for a mining license now.

Whether the ISA will give TMC the green light if it applies this year is another story. Though it missed its initial deadline, the ISA set out an aspirational timeline for getting rules in place by 2025. The ISA Council also put out language at last year’s negotiations saying commercial mining shouldn’t move forward until those rules are set in place, although that’s not necessarily a legally binding decision. So there’s still a push to put a more official moratorium in place and also to establish a more general conservation policy under the ISA for protecting marine environments.

The ISA also voted in a new secretary-general on Friday, replacing one who faced allegations of getting too cozy with mining companies with an oceanographer who will become the first scientist to hold the post. For now, it looks like there are still too many disagreements among delegates on what rules should look like for the ISA to hit its 2025 goal, observers tell The Verge. “They are really far apart on issues of who’s going to pay for damage if it happens? How much liability would the damage incur? Would they simply be required to clean up the mess, if indeed that was even possible?” says Matthew Gianni, who cofounded the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition now calling for a moratorium.

Geiger, the study author, isn’t convinced the world may be able to avoid deep-sea mining forever, especially as electric vehicles and renewable energy drive up demand for battery materials. “The materials are needed, there’s absolutely no question about it. So we may be forced sooner or later to take this step as a society. This work, we hope, informs where and when and how often to do this with the minimized impact on the ecology down there,” he says.

“It’s not like you can wait 100 million years and have these nodules grow back. Once you take them out, they’re gone.”

Apple’s latest developer betas launched last week with a handful of the generative AI features that were announced at WWDC and are headed to your iPhones, iPads, and Macs over the next several months. On Apple’s computers, however, you can actually read the instructions programmed into the model supporting some of those Apple Intelligence features.

They show up as prompts that precede anything you say to a chatbot by default, and we’ve seen them uncovered for AI tools like Microsoft Bing and DALL-E before. Now a member of the macOS 15.1 beta subreddit posted that they’d discovered the files containing those backend prompts. You can’t alter any of the files, but they do give an early hint at how the sausage is made.

In the example above, an AI bot for a “helpful mail assistant” is being told how to ask a series of questions based on the content of an email. It could be part of Apple’s Smart Reply feature, which can go on to suggest possible replies for you.

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

This sounds like Apple’s “Rewrite” feature, one of the Writing Tools that you can access by highlighting text and right-clicking (or, in iOS, long-pressing) on it. Its instructions include passages saying, “Please limit the answer within 50 words. Do not hallucinate. Do not make up factual information.”

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

This brief prompt summarizes emails, with a careful instruction not to answer any questions.

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

I’m pretty certain that this is the instruction set for generating a “Memories” video with Apple Photos. The passage that says, “Do not write a story that is religious, political, harmful, violent, sexual, filthy or in any way negative, sad or provocative,” might just explain why the feature rejected my prompt asking for “images of sadness”:

A shame. It’s not hard to get around, though. I got it to generate a video in response to the prompt, “Provide me with a video of people mourning.” I won’t share the resulting video because there are pictures of people who aren’t me in it, but I will show you the best picture it included in the slideshow:

Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge

There are far more prompts contained in the files, all laying out the hidden instructions given to Apple’s AI tools before your prompt is ever submitted. But here’s one last instruction before you go:

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

Files I browsed through refer to the model as “ajax,” which some Verge readers might recall as the rumored internal name for Apple’s LLM last year.

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

The person who found the instructions also posted instructions on how to locate the files within the macOS Sequoia 15.1 developer beta.

Expand the “purpose_auto” folder, and you should see a list of other folders with long, alphanumeric names. Inside most of those, you’ll find an AssetData folder containing “metadata.json” files. Opening them should show you some code and — occasionally, at the bottom of some of them — the instructions passed to your machine’s local incarnation of Apple’s LLM. But you should remember these live in a part of macOS that contains the most sensitive files on your system. Tread with caution!

Apple is adding a new feature to Safari called “Distraction Control” that lets you remove distracting things like cookie preference pop-ups while you’re browsing, MacRumors reports. The new feature is available with the fifth iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia developer betas that launched on Monday.

You can get an idea of how Distraction Control works thanks to a video from MacRumors. From a menu, you can choose an option to “Hide Distracting Items” and then select items you want to hide from the page you’re looking at. When items are hidden, they dissipate away with a very slick animation.

In a pop-up shown in the video, Apple notes that “hiding distracting items will not permanently remove ads and other content that updates frequently,” so you won’t be able to use this feature to hide every ad you see for good. Parts of a website that you hide also don’t sync across your devices, MacRumors says.

The new iOS 18 beta also brings changes to the redesigned Photos app, including removing the new carousel view feature.

One of the biggest tech antitrust trials since the US took on Microsoft is underway.

After three years, a Washington, DC, judge will hear the Department of Justice’s potentially landmark antitrust case against Google. The department alleges Google struck anticompetitive deals with Apple and other companies for prime placement of its search engine, while Google contends its dominant market share is the result of a superior product.

It’s the biggest tech antitrust trial since the US took on Microsoft in the 1990s: 10 weeks that could tip the balance of power online.

On August 5th, Judge Amit Mehta issued his ruling, saying that “...the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

Read on below for all of the updates and notes from the case.

A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” according to the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

Judge Amit Mehta’s decision represents a major victory for the Department of Justice, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing the online search market. Still, Mehta did not agree with all of the government’s arguments. For example, he rejected the claim that Google has monopoly power in one specific part of the ads market. He agreed with the government, however, that Google has a monopoly in “general search services” and “general search text advertising.”

It’s not yet clear what this ruling will mean for the future of Google’s business, as this initial finding is only about the company’s liability, not about remedies. Google’s fate will be determined in the next phase of proceedings, which could result in anything from a mandate to stop certain business practices to a breakup of Google’s search business.

Google plans to appeal the ruling, president of global affairs Kent Walker said in a statement. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”

DuckDuckGo, whose CEO testified against Google in the trial, applauded the decision, but recognized the fight isn’t over. In a statement, SVP for public affairs Kamyl Bazbaz said, “The journey ahead will be long. As we are seeing in the EU and other places, Google will do anything it can to avoid changing its conduct. However, we know there is a pent up demand for alternatives in search and this ruling will support access to more options.”

Mehta rejected Google’s arguments that its contracts with phone and browser makers like Apple were not exclusionary and therefore shouldn’t qualify it for liability under the Sherman Act. “The prospect of losing tens of billions in guaranteed revenue from Google — which presently come at little to no cost to Apple — disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine when it otherwise has built the capacity to do so,” he wrote.

He said the framework from the last landmark tech monopoly case, US v. Microsoft, was in fact relevant to the current case against Google. While Google argued that, unlike Microsoft, it maintained pretty consistent actions before and after it became dominant in the market, Mehta said that’s irrelevant since the same conduct can be exclusionary when done by a dominant player, even if it’s not when it’s done by a smaller one.

He described “Google’s monopoly in general search” as “remarkably durable,” writing that it increased from about 80 percent in 2009 to 90 percent by 2020. Bing, by comparison, has less than 6 percent market share, Mehta added. “If there is genuine competition in the market for general search, it has not manifested in familiar ways, such as fluid market shares, lost business, or new entrants,” he wrote.

“The market reality is that Google is the only real choice as the default GSE,” Mehta wrote, referring to an acronym for general search engine. He cited a quote from Apple SVP Eddy Cue, who said during the trial that there’s “‘no price that Microsoft could ever offer [Apple] to’ preload Bing.”

Mehta underscored the idea that even the largest businesses in the US have no real alternative to Google. “Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars that Google pays them as revenue share,” he wrote. “These are Fortune 500 companies, and they have nowhere else to turn other than Google.”

On search text advertising, Mehta wrote that Google’s exclusive agreements enabled it to raise prices on that product “without any meaningful competitive constraint.” While Google argued that the price for its search text ads, when adjusted for quality, has decreased, Mehta wrote that evidence “is weak.” That’s because even Google has recognized how difficult it is to determine “the value of an ad to its buyer,” he wrote. “This evidence does not reflect a principled practice of quality-adjusted pricing, but rather shows Google creating higher-priced auctions with the primary purpose of driving long-term revenues.”

Beyond the monopoly questions, Mehta declined to impose sanctions on Google for failing to preserve chat messages relevant to the case — something the Justice Department characterized as destroying evidence. The requested sanctions “do not move the needle on the court’s assessment of Google’s liability.” But Mehta said the decision “should not be understood as condoning Google’s failure to preserve chat evidence ... Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one.”

The decision is the first in a wave of tech monopoly cases brought by the US government in recent years. While two decades passed between the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its next tech anti-monopoly case against Google, filed in 2020, several more such cases quickly followed.

Amazon, Apple, and Meta all now face their own monopolization lawsuits from the US government, and Google will go to trial against the DOJ a second time this fall over a separate challenge of its advertising technology business. That makes Mehta’s decision in this case even more consequential for how other judges may consider how to apply century-old antitrust laws to modern digital markets.

Mehta oversaw a 10-week trial in the Google search case last fall, which culminated in two days of closing arguments in early May. The trial, which took place in DC District Court, convened many big players in Silicon Valley, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple executive Eddy Cue.

The DOJ argued that Google illegally monopolized the general search advertising market by effectively cutting off key distribution channels for rivals through exclusionary contracts. For example, Google has deals with browser makers like Mozilla and phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to make its search engine the default on their products. Google also makes default status for some of its apps a condition of access to the Play Store for phone makers using its Android operating system.

Google argued throughout the trial that it has not acted anticompetitively and that its large market share is a result of creating a superior product that consumers enjoy. It contended that the Google search business should be compared to a much larger range of peers than the government proposed in its market definition, suggesting it competes directly with other platforms where search is a big part of the business, even if they don’t index the web (such as Amazon).

One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness for Google let slip that the company shares 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari with Apple. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for the default position.

During closing arguments, Mehta homed in on those payments, wondering how other players in the market could possibly displace Google from that position. “If that’s what it takes for somebody to dislodge Google as the default search engine, wouldn’t the folks that wrote the Sherman Act be concerned about it?”

The next antitrust trial between the DOJ and Google is set to begin on September 9th in Virginia. That case will focus on whether Google has illegally monopolized digital advertising technology.

Last year, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, introducing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) alongside the Apple Watch Series 9 ($399). Each wearable has its own pros and cons, as does the second-gen Apple Watch SE ($249), but the introduction of the new wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before — and a lot more deals to be had.

But with all of those options, which one should you pick? Generally speaking, you want to buy the newest watch you can afford so that it continues to receive software updates from Apple. The latest update, watchOS 10, launched in September on the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer; however, Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that neither the Series 4 or Series 5 will receive watchOS 11 when it launches in the fall.

Picking up a watch from the latest (or a recent) generation ensures you’re getting a smartwatch with an updated design, a robust number of features, and plenty of sensors. Now, let’s get into the deals.

The best Apple Watch Series 9 deals

The Apple Watch Series 9 represents the latest wearable in Apple’s flagship Series lineup. It introduces a slightly faster S9 SiP chip and a second-gen ultra wideband chip, which allow for onboard Siri processing and precision finding with your iPhone. It also offers a brighter, 2,000-nit display and works with Apple’s new “double tap,” a feature that lets you tap your thumb and index finger together to carry out various actions. While the improvements are welcome, the Series 9 isn’t a vast departure from the prior model, the Series 8.

The Apple Watch Series 9 has been out for less than a year, but the GPS-equipped model is already on sale at Amazon and Walmart in the 41mm sizing starting at $299 ($100 off) or in the larger 45mm configuration at Amazon and Walmart for as low as $329 ($100 off). As for the LTE model with cellular connectivity, it’s available at Amazon and Walmart in the 41mm configuration starting at $399 ($100 off). You can also pick it up in the 45mm sizing at Amazon and Walmart starting at $429 ($100 off).

Read our Apple Watch Series 9 review.

The best Apple Watch SE deals

The Apple Watch SE received a refresh in late 2022. It has the same chipset as the Series 8, which is great, but with fewer sensors, no always-on display, and a slightly outdated design compared to the Series 8 and Series 9. Those omissions might take this out of the running for some people, but it still may be exactly what you’re after. Best of all, it starts at $249 for the 40mm Wi-Fi / GPS model, which is $30 less than the previous generation’s baseline cost. Opting for cellular connectivity bumps the starting price up to $299 for the 40mm size (44mm adds $20 to each configuration).

At the moment, the best deals on the latest Apple Watch SE can be found at Amazon and Walmart, where you can pick the 40mm model with GPS in select styles starting at $189 ($60 off). The 44mm configuration, meanwhile, is available in select styles at Amazon and Walmart starting at $219 ($60 off).

If you want the LTE configuration, the 40mm configuration is available at Walmart for $229 ($70 off) or at Amazon for as low as $239 ($60 off). The larger 44mm size is also available at Walmart for $259 ($70 off) or at Amazon starting at $269 ($60 off).

Read our Apple Watch SE (second-gen) review.

The best Apple Watch Ultra 2 deals

Apple’s latest Apple Watch Ultra launched at $799 in September with GPS and LTE support, much like the original model. The ultra-capable smartwatch has the most features, sensors, and ruggedness of any Apple Watch model available thus far, along with a display that’s 50 percent brighter than the first Ultra. The 49mm smartwatch also packs Apple’s new S9 SiP and second-gen ultra wideband chips, just like the Apple Watch Series 9, while maintaining long-lasting battery life, precise GPS tracking, and a bevy of diving-friendly sensors.

In recent months, we saw the Apple Watch Ultra 2 dip to $642 ($157 off) in select configurations. Right now, however, it’s only on sale at Amazon with an Alpine Loop, a Trail Loop, or an Ocean Band starting at $699.99 ($99 off). While not an all-time low, that’s one of the better prices we’ve seen on Apple’s high-end smartwatch since it launched — particularly for the Ocean Band configuration, which rarely drops below $719 or so.

Read our Apple Watch Ultra 2 review.

A note on the more premium models

While all of the Apple Watch models and colorways covered here are encased in aluminum (except the Ultra 2, which has a titanium build), Apple does make a more premium range built out of stainless steel and titanium. These offerings are functionally and aesthetically similar to their aluminum counterparts, with slightly refined colors and finishings — polished for the stainless steel and brushed for the titanium. However, they start at much steeper prices of $749 and above. They, too, can often be found on sale, but they’re never discounted as low as the standard base models, so we don’t include them here.

Actors have once again picked up their picket signs. But this time, members of the Screen Actors Guild are striking against the video game industry after negotiations for a new contract governing interactive media and video games fell through. The guild began striking on Friday, July 26th, preventing over 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members from taking new video game projects and impeding games already in development from the biggest publishers to the smallest indie studios.

Negotiations broke down due to disagreements over worker protections around AI. The actors union, SAG-AFTRA, negotiates the terms of the interactive media agreement, or IMA, with a bargaining committee of video game publishers, including Activision, Take-Two, Insomniac Games, WB Games, and others that represent a total of 30 signatory companies. Though SAG-AFTRA and the video game bargaining group were able to agree on a number of proposals, AI remained the final stumbling block resulting in the strike.

SAG-AFTRA’s provisions on AI govern both voice and movement performers with respect to digital replicas — or using an existing performance as the foundation to create new ones without the original performer — and the use of generative AI to create performances without any initial input. However, according to SAG-AFTRA, the bargaining companies disagreed about which type of performer should be eligible for AI protections.

SAG-AFTRA chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez said that the bargaining companies initially wanted to offer protections to voice, not motion performers. “So anybody doing a stunt or creature performance, all those folks would have been left unprotected under the employers’ offer,” Rodriguez said in an interview with Aftermath.

Rodriguez said that the companies later extended protections to motion performers, but only if “the performer is identifiable in the output of the AI digital replica.”

SAG-AFTRA rejected this proposal as it would potentially exclude a majority of movement performances. “Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me,” said Andi Norris, a member of SAG-AFTRA’s IMA negotiating committee, during a press conference. “[The proposal] would leave movement specialists, including stunts, entirely out in the cold, to be replaced ... by soulless synthetic performers trained on our actual performances.”

The bargaining game companies argued that the terms went far enough and would require actors’ approval. “Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry,” wrote Audrey Cooling, a representative working on behalf of the video game companies on the bargaining committee in a statement to The Verge.

SAG-AFTRA’s strike rules include a number of exceptions for struck companies and work, which makes it difficult to know the true scope of the strike, especially the games it affects.

For example, work done under SAG-AFTRA’s Tiered-Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement or an Interim Interactive Media Agreement is exempt from the strike. Additionally, a specific clause in the IMA called “side letter six” grants an exemption to games in production before August 2023. This means that though Take-Two is a struck company, Grand Theft Auto VI is not considered struck work. However, members of SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee have encouraged others to refrain from working on side letter six games.

“Side letter six permits but does not require performers to render services during a strike,” said Sarah Elmaleh, a video game performer and chair of SAG-AFTRA’s IMA negotiating committee in a TikTok video. “This language made its way into our contract for one reason only, to undermine our union’s most valuable tool: a strike.”

The last SAG-AFTRA video game strike was in 2016 and lasted 11 months, earning performers fixed rate increases, improved safety assurances on set, and better oversight to prevent vocal stress in voice performers.