A great mouse mat is a must for gamers, reducing wear on wrists during hours of intensive play. Many modern ones use chemical coatings or specially engineered surfaces to improve sensor accuracy or reduce drag?a boon if you?re doing repetitive motion that requires high accuracy.

(Don't mistake mouse mats for the smaller mouse pads, once an absolute necessity in the era of mechanical mice. Because optical and laser mice can work on so many different kinds of surfaces, the humble mouse pad has largely disappeared.) 

Plenty of mouse mat manufacturers exist, but few provide clarity or consistency in describing their products. For example, most don?t report how much friction you?ll encounter when using their mats with the most popular mice. To help you find the best mouse mat for your needs, we?ve tested several from a few different companies that represent a range of surface types (metal, plastic, or cloth) and usage cases (business or gaming).

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Saint?s Row?s Achilles heel was always combat. It hid this fact by peppering each game with a handful of absurd weapons, from a recliner that fired missiles to the Dubstep gun to the iconic purple dildo bat?still the weapon I most associate with the series.

But even armaments that creative couldn?t hide the fact that combat was often a by-the-book affair. Enemies were brainless, and each encounter involved simply trying to get through it as fast as possible without dying. It?s telling that most of the memorable moments in Saint?s Row had nothing to do with combat, be it the Tron-esque ?Deckers Die? mission, singing Biz Markie in a car with your friends, or an Aerosmith-backed rocket ride into space.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Choosing a gaming keyboard is a matter of personal taste. One person could be into Cherry Browns and white backlighting. Another might favor Razer Greens and a rippling RGB glow. Gigantic wrist pads, compact shapes, numeric keypads, macro keys, volume controls?a plethora of keyboards exists because everyone wants a different mix of features.

To help you sort through the many options, we?ve sifted through the latest and greatest planks to come up with our top recommendations. All of these are mechanical keyboards, and for good reason?they?re simply more comfortable to use over the long haul. But we?re open-minded, so if we encounter an alternative that works well, you may see it appear on this list. We?ll keep updating it periodically as we test new keyboards.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

I expected ?one more thing? yesterday, and I was bummed when I didn?t get it. Sure, I was disappointed, but my anticipation for another hardware refresh only proved that Apple?s experiment with dribbling out modest product releases is working.

On each of the first three days of this work week, Apple dropped updated versions of existing products with little of its typical fanfare or event theatrics. It began with the iPad mini and iPad Air on Monday and then progressed to the iMac on Tuesday and the AirPods on Wednesday. Nobody would call these earthshaking updates. Certainly none would have made the crowds ooh and ahh during a keynote. You could even argue they were disappointing on some level.

To read this article in full, please click here

Whoever said ?out with the old, in with the new? clearly wasn?t talking about Apple?s playbook.

The company may have its fair share of new and updated devices, but it?s also made a habit of building off of its existing devices?and not just in terms of spec bumps and speed boosts, but in actively finding ways to use old products as launching points for brand new devices. It?s a move that most companies probably couldn?t pull off, but one with which Apple has had great success?and which it will probably continue to use in the future.

Something in the Air

When Apple launched the redesigned 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros late last year, it discontinued the 10.5-inch iPad Pro after only a little over a year of service. Apple?s certainly no stranger to quick turnarounds on products?remember the seven-month reign of the third-generation iPad??but it seemed extra strange to build out an entire new screen size of device only to summarily replace it.

To read this article in full, please click here

Editor's note: A reader contacted Macworld with this tale of a bent iPad Pro and his struggle to get it repaired, but requested that we only use his first name in the article.

When reports started surfacing late last year of bent iPad Pro devices and Apple?s unwillingness to repair or replace affected units, they didn?t register on Marcus's radar. Having just bought a tablet in July, he wasn?t in the market for a new one. Even though his 10.5-inch iPad Pro was part of the previous Touch ID generation, Marcus was perfectly happy with it, having safely secured it with an Otterbox Defender case from the moment he unboxed it.

To read this article in full, please click here

Monday?s Apple event won?t be the first that?s been dubbed ?Showtime.? The landscape was very different for the first Showtime event back then. There was no iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Apple Watch. Streaming was a thing that relied heavily on buffering. Netflix was shipping out DVDs in red envelopes.

That event was over 12 years ago. It brought a slew of new products, including an updated iPod, a brand new iPod nano, an even smaller iPod shuffle, and a sneak peek at ?iTV,? which would eventually become Apple TV. But the star of that show was the addition of movies to the iTunes Store. Previously limited to music, the store?s new section had a grand total of 75 movies from Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, and Miramax in ?near-DVD? 640x480 quality.

To read this article in full, please click here

This week, Apple finally announced the sequel to the AirPods, its true wireless earbuds that have proven to be way more popular than anyone ever expected. After more than two years, Apple?s follow-on to the AirPods is...AirPods?

Okay, so the new second-generation AirPods aren?t exactly the true sequel we?ve all been hoping for. They still look and act like the AirPods we love. But they are substantially different than the first-generation model. Here are the most important things you should know.

They?re not AirPods 2

The new AirPods are just that: new AirPods. They are not named AirPods 2, not billed as such on Apple?s site, and not sold separately from original AirPods. Apple still has only one AirPods page on its site, and it only sells the new model. If you buy AirPods from Apple, you will only get this new version. In fact, if you buy AirPods from another source, you may want to double-check that they?re not selling you the old model.

To read this article in full, please click here