Legacy search brand Yahoo has been working on its own web browser prototype, and says it would like to buy Google's Chrome if the company is forced by a court to sell it.

The information came out during the fourth day of the Justice Department's remedies trial to rectify Google's search monopoly. The DOJ has - among other proposals - requested Judge Amit Mehta break up Google by requiring it sell its Chrome browser, which the agency says is a key distribution channel for its popular search engine that's amassed too much power for anyone else to compete. Yahoo isn't the only company interested in buying Chrome. While DuckDuckGo's CEO said they wouldn't be able to afford it, witnesses from Perplexity and OpenAI both expressed interest in the popular browser on the stand this week.

Witnesses from Perplexity and OpenAI both expressed interest in Chrome

Yahoo seems to agree that owning a web browser is a very important portal for search, and is looking to run its own, either through developing or buying one. Yahoo Search General Manager Brian Provost testified that about 60% of search queries are done through a web browser; many people search directly from the address bar. That's …

Read the full story at The Verge.

From The Studio to Severance, Apple TV Plus is home to a variety of high-quality originals that we highly recommend. And now through the end of today, you can get access to the streaming platform’s entire library for just $2.99 a month for the first three months. Given Apple TV Plus usually costs $9.99 a month, that’s like getting three months for the price of one, saving you $21.

Apple TV Plus offers a large library of shows you can stream in 4K HDR, all ad-free and available to download offline. It particularly shines in the sci-fi genre, boasting an impressive collection of hits that includes not only Severance but also Silo, For All Mankind, Constellation, Dark Matter, Hello Tomorrow, Invasion, the upcoming Murderbot …the list could go on and on.

Not into sci-fi? That’s okay, because the streaming platform also offers a fantastic selection of shows and movies from other genres, from comedies like the Mythic Quest and Ted Lasso, to dramas like Disclaimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Morning Show, and Napoleon. It’s even got Friday Night Baseball Major League Soccer matches from MLS Season Pass, just in case you’re a sports fan.

Today is Intel’s Q1 2025 earnings call, and the first we’re truly hearing from new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over the company on March 18th. But he didn’t wait until the call to announce major changes at Intel, nor did he begin his reign by laying off 20 percent of the company’s employees, as Bloomberg reported he might.

“We have not set any headcount reduction target,” Intel spokesperson Sophie Metzger tells The Verge.

Instead, Tan is announcing that employees will return to the office for an additional day per week — four days in office, up from three — as the company purges what he characterizes as “unnecessary bureaucracy,” reduces the size of teams, and cuts back on “time-consuming corporate administrative tasks such as non-essential training and documentation.”

Intel has just published an all-hands memo from Tan to employees detailing these and other changes; you can read it in full at the bottom of this post. The company is also subtly suggesting that job cuts are nigh, but that they might come from Intel’s individual leaders rather than layoffs from the company as a whole.

“We have learned some valuable lessons from past actions. We must balance our reductions with the need to retain and recruit key talent. I will empower each of my leaders to make the best possible decisions aligned with our top priorities,” Tan writes in the memo.

But it sounds like there will be pressure on those leaders to cut people, and soon:

I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams. Going forward, this will not be the case. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people.

Intel said today it that it hopes to save an extra $0.5 billion in 2025 alone compared to previous goals, and more in 2026. As for this quarter, the company lost $0.4 billion in Q1 2025, on flat revenue of $12.7 billion.

Reuters reported last month that Tan planned to significantly change Intel’s chip manufacturing and cut “what Tan views as a slow-moving and bloated middle management layer.” That report seems to have been accurate; today, Intel announced that it would be “streamlining” itself while stopping short of actually announcing layoffs. On the earnings call, Tan says he’s also instructed teams to find $2 billion they can save in capital expenditures.

In his first public statement in March, Tan said that his Intel would be “an engineering-focused company” that would “take calculated risks to disrupt and leapfrog” in the future. Today, he says he’s doing that in part by flattening the organization: “All critical product and manufacturing and G&A functions that were spread over 2-3 layers are now directly reporting to me,” he says on the earnings call.

“Organizational complexity and bureaucracies have been suffocating the innovation and agility we need to win. It takes too long for decisions to get made. New ideas and people who generate them have not been given the room or resources to incubate and grow. The unnecessary silos have led to bad execution. I’m here to fix this,” says Tan.

As for Tan’s strategy for Intel overall, he says “it’s a bit too soon for me to provide all the details” but shared several priorities, including:

• “Start building best-in-class products again”
• “A holistic approach to redefine our portfolio to optimize our products for new and emerging AI workloads”
• “Refine our AI strategy with a focus on emerging areas of interest”
• “Our goal will be to enable the next wave of computing defined by reasoning models, agentic AI, and physical AI”
• “We need to build trust with foundry customers”
• “Learn to delight our customers by building wafers that meet their required power, performance area, and on-time schedule”
• “Our business is capital intensive and we have important investment to make at the time when our financial performance is not where it needs to be. This means we need to be prudent with capital.”

Meanwhile, Intel’s all-important 18A process, which was supposed to mark the company’s return to silicon process leadership, is still going into “volume production” in the second half of 2025, but don’t expect a full complement of laptops built on Intel’s Panther Lake silicon at once. Intel says it’ll launch its first Panther Lake chip for power users by the end of the year, but additional chips will come in Q1, according to Intel Products chief Michelle Johnston Holthaus.

Some of Intel’s chips may also cost more due to tariffs, though, and Intel’s bracing for people to potentially buy fewer computers as a result. “While we have offsets, including a global, highly diversified manufacturing footprint to help mitigate tariffs, we will certainly see costs increase and we feel it prudent to anticipate a TAM contraction,” Intel CFO David Zinsner says on the call.

That said, Holthaus says Panther Lake should be a good product from both performance and price perspectives, unlike the too-expensive Lunar Lake. She confirmed that the future Nova Lake, like Panther Lake, won’t be built entirely on Intel’s wafers but will still lean on Taiwan’s TSMC as well, but the plan is to eventually get to 70 percent manufactured in-house. Zinsner says Intel now believes it’s prudent to always have some outside manufacturing in addition to Intel’s own.

Here’s the full memo for posterity:

The following note from Lip-Bu Tan was emailed to all Intel Corporation employees on April 24, 2025:

Team,

Today we reported our Q1 2025 results. It was a step in the right direction as we delivered revenue, gross margin and EPS (earnings per share) above our guidance, driven by Dave and Michelle’s leadership. I want to thank them both, and all of you, for the good execution.

We need to build on this progress — and it won’t be easy. We are navigating an increasingly volatile and uncertain macroeconomic environment, which is reflected in our Q2 outlook. On top of that, there are many areas where we must improve. We need to confront our challenges head-on and take swift actions to get back on track.

As I have said, this starts by revamping our culture. The feedback I have received from our customers and many of you has been consistent. We are seen as too slow, too complex and too set in our ways — and we need to change.

Our flatter Executive Team (ET) structure that I shared last week was a first step. The next step is to drive greater simplicity, speed and collaboration across the entire company. To achieve these objectives, today I am announcing some important changes.

Becoming an Engineering-Focused Company

We need to get back to our roots and empower our engineers. That’s why I elevated our core engineering functions to the ET. And many of the changes we will be driving are designed to make engineers more productive by removing burdensome workflows and processes that slow down the pace of innovation.

To make necessary investments in our engineering talent and technology roadmaps, we need to find new ways to reduce our costs. While we have taken significant actions in the last year, our current cost structure is still well above competitive benchmarks. With that in mind, we have reduced our operating expense and capital spending targets going forward, which I will discuss during our investor call this afternoon.

Flattening the Organization

As we refocus on engineering, we will also remove organizational complexity. Many teams are eight or more layers deep, which creates unnecessary bureaucracy that slows us down. I have asked the ET to take a fresh look at their respective orgs, with a focus on removing layers, increasing spans of control and empowering top performers. Our competitors are lean, fast and agile — and that’s what we must become to improve our execution.

I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams. Going forward, this will not be the case. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people. We will embrace this mindset across the company, which will include empowering our top talent to make decisions and take greater ownership of key priorities.

There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce. As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future. This will begin in Q2 and we will move as quickly as possible over the next several months.

We are going to be very intentional about where we focus these efforts and how we stack up against the best in the industry. We have learned some valuable lessons from past actions. We must balance our reductions with the need to retain and recruit key talent. I will empower each of my leaders to make the best possible decisions aligned with our top priorities. These decisions will not be made lightly, and we will keep you regularly informed.

Streamlining Our Processes

It has been eye-opening for me to see how much time and energy is spent on internal administrative work that does not move our business forward. We need to radically simplify this to maximize the time spent focusing on our customers.

I am instructing our leaders to eliminate unnecessary meetings and significantly reduce the number of meeting attendees. Too much valuable time is being wasted. We will also modernize processes with a focus on live dashboards and better data to ensure we have the real-time insights we need to make better and faster decisions.

In addition, I have decided to make our formal Insights and OKR requirements optional. While it’s crucial for us to stay accountable for our results and receive feedback on our performance, I believe we can achieve this in a simpler and more flexible way. Along the same lines, we will cut back on time-consuming corporate administrative tasks such as non-essential training and documentation.

Returning to the Office

Our existing policy is that our hybrid employees should spend approximately three days per week on site. Adherence to this policy has been uneven at best. I strongly believe that our sites need to be vibrant hubs of collaboration that reflect our culture in action.

When we spend time together in person, it fosters more engaging and productive discussion and debate. It drives better and faster decision-making. And it strengthens our connection with colleagues.

With that in mind, we will be updating our policy to require four days per week on site by Sept. 1. I wanted to tell you well in advance so that you have time to make any adjustments to your daily routines. We are going to work hard in the meantime to ensure sites are ready to operate at full capacity. Your local leadership will share site-specific details and seek your input on how to create the best possible on-site experience.

Building a New Intel

I realize this is a lot to take in, but we are playing from behind and we need to rally as a team to put ourselves in the best possible position to win.

This requires us to be laser-focused on developing the best products. We need to delight our customers and earn their trust by delivering the performance, quality and reliability they need to succeed. We must demonstrate predictable execution and ensure on-time delivery. And we need to deliver consistent returns for our shareholders.

There are two ways teams can respond at make-or-break moments like this: They can look at the gap they need to close and give up — or they can look inside themselves and fight like never before.

I made my choice last month when I decided to join you all, and there is no place I would rather be right now. I came on board knowing full well this would be the most challenging job of my career, but also the most motivating and fulfilling — because we have opportunities ahead that most people don’t get in their careers.

I’m talking about the opportunity to fundamentally reinvent an industry icon. To pull off a comeback that will be studied in business schools for generations to come. To create new technologies and deploy them at scale to change the world for the better.

Intel was once widely seen as the world’s most innovative company. There’s no reason we can’t get back there, so long as we drive the changes needed to improve.

It’s going to be hard. It will require painful decisions. But we will make them knowing it’s what we must do to serve our customers better as we build a new Intel for the future – and I have great confidence in the power of our team and our people to make it happen.

Thank you for everything you did in Q1. I look forward to talking more tomorrow during our All Company Meeting.

Lip-Bu Tan

Switch 2 preorders are sold out online everywhere. But some people have managed to snag one using once conventional but now antiquated means: going to GameStop and preordering one in store. 

In addition to offering online preorders for the Switch 2, its Mario Kart World bundle, and the various Switch 2 accessories, GameStop also allowed customers to preorder the console in person when stores opened for business on April 24th. With the advent of ecommerce, preordering video games in a brick and mortar store has become a quaint practice that’s fallen out of fashion; something looked upon with nostalgia for the midnight releases of years gone by. But for many people, physically preordering a Switch 2 was the best and easiest way to secure one. I should know — it’s how I got mine.

I missed the midnight commencement of online Switch 2 preordering for retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and others. Knowing GameStop opened its online preorders at 11AM ET on April 24th, I thought I might give it a go there but it was not to be. GameStop’s later preorder launch was just as chaotic, frustrating, and fruitless as it was for the other stores. But then I remembered seeing a post on Bluesky from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. “About 40 people waiting on line here at my local GameStop for 80 Switch 2s. Better odds than the website!” he wrote. 

I saw that my local GameStop on Howe Road in Akron, Ohio opened soon and I was no more than a 15 minute ride away. So I packed my wallet and my dog Bu and went down there only to be greeted by a line full of people, some of whom had been waiting for days.

“It’s been unbelievably busy,” one GameStop employee told me. He said that people started lining up earlier in the week but he discouraged them from camping for multiple days overnight. “We had six waiting yesterday,” he said.

Other than that small number of campers, most people I spoke to who were waiting in line had only arrived a few hours before the store opened. Nearly everyone owned a regular Switch and was excited by the promise of an improved console. 

“The Switch 1 is so awesome and we’ve been waiting for a Switch 2 for seven years now,” one woman at the front of the line told me. 

“I have to upgrade, there’s no other way around it,” said another Switch 2 hopeful. Everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic about the console and when I brought up its price they still didn’t seem phased.

“That doesn’t bother me, I got more than enough money,” said one man. Others mentioned the state of the US economy and with inflation impacting consumer goods across the board, the price of the Switch 2 itself seemed reasonable. “The OLED Switch when it launched was $350,” said another man. “One hundred dollars more, almost 10 years later, not that bad.”

And while the price of the console doesn’t much bother this Akron crop of Switch 2 enthusiasts, the rising cost of games was another matter entirely. “The pricing for the games is a little steep for my tastes,” said the lady at the front of the line. I followed up by asking if that would impact her spending habits on games in the future. “No. The price is not going to affect that, it’s just going to make me upset.”

That was the sentiment of most everyone I spoke to. Nintendo’s pricing makes sense given everything going on with inflation and tariffs, and even if the higher prices do sting, it’s Nintendo. “I think it’s worth it,” a mother told me as she was waiting in line with her son and husband.

Mario Kart World was the first game out of everyone’s mouth when I asked what they were most excited to play at launch. Everyone in line was hoping to score the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle that essentially gets you the game at a $30 discount. Every so often, a GameStop employee would take a tally of the customers who wanted a bundle. He’d point to a person in line — who was well ahead of me — and say, “you’re the last.” 

According to a sign on the door, that location had been allotted 44 bundles and 19 regular Switch 2 consoles. But throughout my time in line, I overheard them say to customers that they expect to have more units available to be purchased when the console launches on June 5th. Since everybody wanted a Mario Kart bundle, I resigned myself to only getting a regular Switch 2 — a far better prospect than the one I faced this morning of not getting any Switch at all. But as the line moved, the employees found more and more Switch 2 bundles. When finally during one of the tallys one employee pointed to me and said I would be the last one to get one.

And I did. 

With Bu strapped ever so patiently to my back, I preordered a Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle and threw an extra five bucks down on Donkey Kong Bananza. I shouldn’t be all that surprised this worked out as well as it did, sometimes the old ways simply work best.

Meta is ramping up efforts to rid Facebook of spammy content, the company announced on Thursday. It’s cracking down on accounts that try to “game” the Facebook algorithm with lengthy posts and numerous hashtags.

The platform is also taking action against accounts that create posts with captions completely unrelated to an image. Now, if Meta catches an account with these types of posts, the company will limit their content to followers only, and they’ll no longer get paid for their posts. 

In an example shared by Meta, the company shows a spammy post containing a picture of a dog alongside a completely unrelated caption with the “Top 10 #AIRPLANE Facts.” Another example includes a lengthy post that describes how great cars are, with several hashtags like “#VIRALCONTENT,” “#LIKEFORLIKE,” and “#BOOST,” listed at the bottom.

“Spammy content can get in the way of one’s ability to ultimately have their voices heard, regardless of one’s viewpoint, which is why we’re targeting the behavior that’s gaming distribution and monetization,” Meta says. The update comes just weeks after Facebook launched a Friends-only feed, which cuts out algorithmic recommendations.

Meta may also limit the reach of users who create “hundreds of accounts to share the same spammy content,” and will make them ineligible for monetization. Most of these accounts create spammy posts in an attempt to get more followers, increase views, “gain unfair monetization advantages,” according to Meta.

Additionally, Meta will decrease the visibility of comments identified as coordinated fake engagement. It’s also testing a feature that will let users tell Facebook if a comment isn’t useful, and added a moderation tool that lets page owners detect and automatically hide comments from users that appear to be impersonating someone else.

Donald Trump will sign an executive order that will target online election fundraising platforms that may allegedly process foreign campaign donations – an action specifically aimed at curtailing the activities of ActBlue, the primary online fundraising platform for the Democratic Party. 

Politico first reported that the executive order was imminent, was aimed at launching an investigation into ActBlue, and would involve Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department. NBC confirmed the report shortly after, saying that the order was related to “how the platform verifies and reports its donors and users.”

The move comes after months of House Republicans demanding evidence from ActBlue that demonstrated it was able to prevent donations from foreign actors, an accusation ActBlue has vehemently and repeatedly denied. (According to the Federal Election Commission, federal law prohibits foreign nationals and governments from financially contributing to anything connected to a U.S. election, including political parties.) But the MAGA scrutiny of ActBlue went viral in March after Elon Musk accused ActBlue-linked groups of secretly funding the protests taking place at Tesla dealerships across the country. The House Judiciary Committee soon upped the heat and released a report earlier this month accusing the platform of allowing fraud to run rampant on the site.

According to a running tally on its website, ActBlue has raised over $16.8 billion for Democratic candidates and causes since its launch in 2004, and has reportedly raised over $400 million in the past three months since Trump was sworn into office. In a letter sent to Democrats on Wednesday anticipating the executive order, ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones called the reports a “strategy of distraction and exhaustion.”

The organization does, however, have its own internal crisis to handle: in March, the New York Times reported that at least seven senior officials had resigned since the 20204 election concluded, for reasons not immediately made clear to the staff.

Google’s AI Overviews in Search now have “1.5 billion users per month,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement as part of Alphabet’s Q1 2025 earnings.

Google started to widely roll out AI Overviews last May. Despite some awkward suggestions found shortly after their launch, the company has continued to expand upon the tool with updates, showing AI Overviews for more types of queries, and even officially adding ads as it aims to compete with other AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT Search and Perplexity.

AI Overviews are just one of many AI tools the company is working on; in Q1, it rolled out features like the Gemini 2.5 Pro experimental AI model, a feature that lets you make AI podcasts from Gemini’s Deep Research tool, and the Gemini-powered ability for Google Maps to scan screenshots to help you plan trips.

Google also announced in March that it would be officially dumping Assistant for Gemini on mobile “over the coming months,” and on today’s earnings call, Pichai said that “tablets, cars, and devices that connect to your phones such as headphones and watches,” would be moved over to Gemini later this year.

On the hardware front in Q1, Google announced the Pixel 9A, though it didn’t launch the phone until April 10th due to a “component quality issue.”

During Q1, Google earned $90.2 billion in revenue, a 12 percent increase year-over-year. In its earnings release, Pichai also highlighted that the company passed 270 million subscriptions, a figure that’s “driven by YouTube and Google One.”

One thing looming over Google right now, however, is the possibility that it will be broken up due to major losses in antitrust cases brought against the company by the US Department of Justice. The remedies trial following the ruling that Google is a monopoly in search is happening now, while Google lost its ad tech monopoly case in a ruling announced last week.

The company’s earnings call kicked off at 4:30PM ET.

In a surprise move, President Trump’s transportation department has decided to keep the Biden-era rule requiring automakers and tech companies to report crashes that involve fully or partially autonomous vehicles. But they’re making a few changes that are likely to have a big impact on one company.

In 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a standing general order (SGO) requiring automakers and tech companies to report crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles as well as Level 2 driver-assist systems found in millions of vehicles on the road today. Under the SGO, companies are required to document collisions when an automated driving system was in use within 30 seconds of impact and report those incidents to the government.

Last year, Reuters reported that Trump’s transition team was considering axing the crash-reporting rule, specifically as a favor to Tesla. The company’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features, which are considered Level 2 driver assist systems that require drivers to pay attention, are both covered under the rule. And since it was implemented, Tesla has reported over 1,500 crashes to the federal government, Reuters says. An analysis of the crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported under the SGO.

The administration is keeping the rule, but not without a few key changes. USDOT announced a revised Automated Vehicle Framework on Thursday that keeps “maintains” the SGO, but with streamlined reporting that removes “unnecessary and duplicative requirements.” According to USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy, the new framework aims to “slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard that spurs innovation and prioritizes safety.”

Under the previous SGO, if a vehicle with a Level 2 driver assist system or above had a crash that didn’t involve a fatality or a vulnerable road user (think pedestrian or cyclist), it had to be reported within 5 days if the vehicle had to be towed away or had an airbag deployment, said Sam Abuelsamid, VP for market research at Telemetry and an expert in autonomous vehicle technology.

The administration is keeping the rule, but not without a few key changes.

Now, under the revised rule, a crash only has to be reported if the vehicle has a Level 4 automated driving system, like Waymo. Vehicle crashes involving Level 2 systems that don’t involve a fatality or vulnerable road user are now exempted from reporting. And who benefits the most from this change?

“This has a huge impact on one particular company, Tesla, because Autopilot and [Full Self-Driving] are only L2 systems, not automated driving systems,” Abuelsamid explains. “Tesla has long complained about the fact that the vast majority of SGO reports are from their vehicles and this will eliminate all of the reports that don’t include a fatality or hitting a vulnerable road user.”

In its report from December, Reuters cited several sources close to Tesla saying the company “despises” the standing general order, with CEO Elon Musk concluding that it would take a change in administration in order to get rid of it. Musk was one of Trump’s most vocal defenders during the campaign, spending at least $277 million of his own money to back his candidacy. And he runs the Department of Government Efficiency with the goal of cutting government spending, eliminating humanitarian aid, and terrorizing federal workers.

The end result is likely to be a lot less bad press for Tesla (which certainly has its fair share these) surrounding crashes involving its vehicles, and also less transparency for the public into which companies’ vehicles are more dependable, and which are not.

The department also expanded the Automated Vehicle Exemption Program (AVEP), previously open only to imported vehicles, to now include domestically produced cars. Abuelsamid speculates that this program was mostly used to import low speed autonomous shuttle vehicles like those manufactured by French company Navya, which has been used in several pilot programs across the country.

Unsurprisingly, USDOT officials are framing the changes as enabling AV operators to operate more nimbly without as many government requirements slowing down the process.

“By streamlining the SGO for Crash Reporting and expanding an existing exemption program to domestic vehicles, we are enabling AV manufacturers to develop faster and spend less time on unnecessary process, while still advancing safety,” said NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser in a statement. “These are the first steps toward making America a more welcoming environment for the next generation of automotive technology.”

We called Bowers & Wilkins’ PX7 S2e the “best-sounding wireless headphones” in our  noise-canceling headphones buyer’s guide, but the company’s latest could be a new contender for that title.

Bowers & Wilkins says its PX7 S3 headphones have a “re-imagined industrial design” that’s more comfortable with a new button layout that’s more intuitive. The headphones should also sound better thanks to a redesigned driver, and they feature the “most powerful and effective active noise cancelling technology the brand has ever developed” using eight repositioned microphones, Bowers & Wilkins says.

Two details Bowers & Wilkins isn’t yet sharing is how much the new PX7 S3 will cost, and when they’ll be going on sale. “Due to the uncertainty of the tariff situation, pricing and availability are not available at this time,” Bowers & Wilkins spokesperson Lucette Nicoll tells The Verge.

To improve how the PX7 S3 sound, the company is using completely redesigned 40-millimeter biocellulose drive units that Bowers & Wilkins says “deliver lower coloration and distortion, improved resolution and superior dynamics.” The PX7 S3 are also the company’s first over-ear headphones to feature discrete headphone amplifiers in each earcup providing “notably more scale and energy to the sound” they produce.

The headphones also support Qualcomm’s aptXTM Adaptive and aptX Lossless Bluetooth codecs and are compatible with high-resolution streaming services including Qobuz and Tidal. Bluetooth LE Audio with Auracast broadcast capabilities and LC3 codec support will be added as part of a future software update, along with support for spatial audio.

Battery life is rated at up to 30 hours while a 15-minute quick charge will provide enough power for up to seven hours of playback. There’s still no dedicated 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, but the PX7 S3’s USB-C charging port can also be used for wired listening.

One of the best features of Bowers & Wilkins’ headphones – at least for those who hate dealing with finicky touch pads – are physical button controls on each earcup. The PX7 S3 benefit from a revised layout with volume and play/pause buttons that have been redesigned to “improve their tactile interaction.”

If you want to skip the buttons, the headphones are still compatible with Bowers & Wilkins’ Music app that allows features like ANC and transparency mode to be turned on and off and the sound to be customized using a five-band EQ.

Nintendo’s GameCube controller for the Switch 2 will cost $64.99, according to the controller’s listing on the company’s website. The controller releases on June 5th, the same day as the Switch 2, but Nintendo will be making it available to order ahead of that date.

Initially, the controller will be available to buy from May 8th to May 12th to people who receive direct invitations from Nintendo to buy a Switch 2, according to a footnote on the controller’s listing. Starting May 13th, Nintendo will offer it to people who pay for a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Nintendo will limit purchases to one per Nintendo Account.

The controller looks very similar to the original GameCube one, but the Switch 2 version is wireless and has some additional buttons to match what’s on other Switch 2 controllers. It won’t work with all regular Switch 2 games, though; in a statement to Polygon, Nintendo said that since the controller “doesn’t have all the buttons and features found in other controllers that can be used with the Nintendo Switch 2 system, there may be some issues when playing other games.”

For the Switch 2, Nintendo will offer GameCube games as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription. On the Switch 2’s launch date, the GameCube lineup will include The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, F-Zero GX, and Soulcalibur II. 

Update, April 24th: Added that Nintendo will limit to one controller per Nintendo Account.