When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz.
“Which deployment are you looking to do?” Horowitz wrote back.
“Whatever you want, Ben,” Gennaro replied, according to emails seen by TechCrunch.
Horowitz then sent money to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s (LVMPD) police foundation to purchase Skydio drones for the department.
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It was a win-win, seemingly. Skydio was able to tout its relationship with the LVMPD, while the department received a new tool to fight crime. In a blog post detailing the partnership, Skydio praised the LVMPD’s choice to adopt its X10 drones as being “driven by the ambitious vision of making Las Vegas the safest community in America.”
They did not mention Horowitz, despite the fact that the VC’s relationship with the LVMPD runs deeper than just funding the Skydio drones.
The venture capitalist has facilitated communication between the LVMPD and at least six a16z portfolio companies. TechCrunch learned about this relationship after receiving over 100 emails between Horowitz and the department, as well as internal police emails about his donations primarily between January 2023 and July 2024, in a public records request.
In total, the investor has donated at least $7.6 million to fund police department purchases over the last few years, according to a post he published on a16z’s blog in mid-October after learning about TechCrunch’s receipt of the public records. He and his wife Felicia have also paid to expand and improve the LVMPD’s gym, according to the emails and his post.
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Horowitz isn’t alone in this approach to supporting police. Soliciting donations to police foundations to cover the cost of specific equipment purchases is an increasingly popular and controversial approach taken by some of the largest departments around the country.
Experts and advocates on police accountability and surveillance told TechCrunch that police foundations bypass the typical procurement process that can include public meetings, a city-approved budget, and a potential bidding period to give competitors a chance.
“It’s horrifying from a good government perspective, from a nonprofit [and] ethics perspective, and just really has become such a major part of how novel police technologies are advertised and marketed,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said in an interview.
Fox Cahn and others also said donations can set up companies for ongoing contracts where taxpayers foot the bill. And they say it can tilt the playing field. In Skydio’s case, the Las Vegas police department owned products from at least three other drone companies before Horowitz’s donation, a prior public records request revealed.
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Horowitz argued in his post that the public sector often has “trouble budgeting” for new strategic technology, so “by donating the technology, I am able to give LVMPD a running start.”
His approach was praised by David Ulevitch, a general partner at a16z, which backed Skydio. “What @bhorowitz and Felicia have done in Vegas is a masterclass in philanthropy and impact,” Ulevitch wrote. “I hope it catches on in cities across America as a model to bring great technology to public safety and bootstrap the process.”
TechCrunch asked Horowitz for an interview and sent a list of questions for this story, but he did not respond. Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson Grace Ellis declined to answer the questions, and said there was “nothing more for Ben to share beyond his blog post.” An unnamed representative of the LVMPD’s public information office said the department “is grateful to the private citizens who provide funding for various projects throughout the department,” and declined to answer further questions.
Image Credits:Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Paying for Prepared911, Flock Safety and more
For Horowitz’s wife Felicia, California in 2020 was beginning to look too much like her past. The two had lived in the affluent Bay Area town of Atherton, California, for years. But Felicia had grown up outside of Los Angeles, in Compton and Carson, California, where she “saw many of her friends murdered,” Horowitz said in his blog post.
Between Prop. 47, a 2014 California policy that reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors, and politicians’ short-lived pledges to slash police budgets, Felicia felt she was watching her home state deteriorate in real time. “The new policies — defund the police, don’t prosecute crime — are destroying the communities where I grew up,” she was quoted saying in The Wall Street Journal. “If you want to genocide black people, the California policies are a great blueprint.”
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Felicia wanted out of California and Horowitz was intrigued by Las Vegas. The city, he told a Substack publication, promised “the Raiders, amazing restaurants, and world class entertainment.”
Horowitz purchased his Las Vegas residence, and his business partner, Marc Andreessen, reportedly bought a $36 million vacant plot nine minutes down the road. By early 2023, the emails show Horowitz had begun making personal suggestions about products to the police department and was soon writing checks. The couple donated $800,000 for new computer terminals and $120,000 for the gym, tossing in money for new ice and cappuccino machines, he wrote in his post.
He also started connecting Vegas police with a16z portfolio companies. In addition to Skydio, he donated $400,000 for the police department to acquire technology from Prepared, an a16z company that uses AI to help with 911 calls, and an unspecified amount for surveillance cameras from Flock Safety, another a16z company. Horowitz also set up introductions for secure communications startup Kodex, and Earnin’, which helps employees access their pay before payday, the emails show.
The LVMPD didn’t just blindly accept his donated technology, though, according to the emails.
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Horowitz told Gennaro in an August 2023 email that he would make a donation for the department to acquire technology from Toka, an a16z-backed cybersecurity company. But police leadership had concerns. The startup was slow to provide pricing information and there were questions about whether Toka’s technology would work well with some of LVMPD’s cameras, according to the emails.
LVMPD leadership wanted their internal business and technology governance board to review the tech before even receiving a Toka demo and warned there might be a “lengthy” clearance approval process.
While it is not clear why, a deal was never worked out: A spokesperson for Toka told TechCrunch that LVMPD “has never been a client or user of our products.”
How Horowitz guided the Skydio deal
The Skydio deal wasn’t straightforward either. Horowitz had donated the money for the LVMPD to buy Skydio drones before 2023, according to emails viewed by TechCrunch. Previously, the police force owned a handful of X2 Skydio drones, issued from 2020 to 2022, as well as drones from companies Autel, Brinc, and SkyFront, according to a previous public records request.
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In a 2023 email to chief of staff Gennaro, Brad Cupp, then-Las Vegas police sergeant, reflected on the X2 Skydio drones. He wrote that they showed a “tremendous amount of promise,” but “fell short of what we needed operationally.”
Image Credits:Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
In the same email, Cupp wrote that the Skydio team had listened to LVMPD’s feedback, creating a new drone that “has the potential to truly be a game changer,” he wrote. “I’m hoping you will be able to assist upgrading all or part of our fleet of Skydios.”
Gennaro forwarded the message to Horowitz, asking for help. A few months later, Skydio officially announced their new drone, the X10, and sent over a proposal to LVMPD for drones and drone docks — a landing pad for drones stationed throughout the city — in hopes that Horowitz would donate the equipment to the police force.
This potential deal took on a newfound importance after the company stopped selling consumer drones that year, betting its future on government, defense, and law enforcement. This meant all of their inventory would have to meet a higher standard: police drones usually need longer battery lives and better cameras, as well as additional technology like thermal sensors.
It was an expensive bet. According to a 2024 pitch deck prepared by Skydio investor Linse Capital that was viewed by TechCrunch, the drone company forecasted that it could burn through at least $238 million by 2029, based on factors like increased manufacturing and expansion into new industries and geographies. Linse Capital was more pessimistic about Skydio’s needs, according to the deck. It forecasted Skydio could plow through at least $348 million in the next five years on its way to profitability. A Skydio representative said that these figures are not in any Skydio pitch decks and that the firm cannot validate them. Linse Capital declined to comment.
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Horowitz, however, expressed surprise at the large scope of Skydio’s proposal to the LVMPD, especially its suggestion to put docks on schools, according to the emails.
“I thought that we just wanted this for the 11 neighborhoods,” Horowitz emailed Gennaro, the “we” referring to the police department and himself, as the one footing the bill. “They bid the schools too. Is that what we asked for?”
Image Credits:Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Gennaro explained that more drones were necessary in higher-crime neighborhoods, though much of the email was redacted, including his response to putting docks on schools. Gennaro ended the email by deferring to his donor’s judgment.
“We can adjust however you see fit,” he wrote. An unnamed representative of the LVMPD’s public information office said that no drone docks have currently been installed in LVMPD’s jurisdiction.
Three months later, when Horowitz pitched Gennaro on another a16z portfolio company, Kodex, he included a caveat: “If it’s a good idea, I am happy to help, but let’s not let the company know that,” Horowitz emailed. “We don’t need another Skyd.io proposal lol.”
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Stacy Wang, Kodex’s head of marketing, said the company had no knowledge of Horowitz funding the LVMPD’s acquisition of a16z portfolio companies’ products. She told TechCrunch that Kodex is “free to use” for all law enforcement agencies.
Horowitz’s increased proximity to the LVMPD has had other ripple effects for the companies he’s invested in. Around the same time that Skydio publicized its partnership with the LVMPD, Sergeant Cupp, who had evangelized the company’s drones internally, left the department for a new gig, according to his LinkedIn profile: Program manager at Skydio.
Image Credits:Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
“You are going to get caught”
Andreessen Horowitz held its 2023 LP Summit — an event for the people who invest in the firm’s funds — in Las Vegas. The city’s sheriff, Kevin McMahill, donning his police uniform, sat onstage between Flock Safety founder Garrett Langley and a16z’s Ulevitch. McMahill couldn’t hold back his glee as he spoke about using a16z-backed technologies.
“Every piece of that technology is the equivalent of three police officers,” he said of Flock’s products, adding: “Bad guys know that when you come to Las Vegas, because of our abilities — technology being at the forefront of it — you are going to get caught.”
McMahill also touted LVMPD’s commitment to transparency during the talk. But he didn’t mention the opaque tool the department used to acquire these technologies: police foundations.
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These foundations are often set up as tax-exempt nonprofits, and give private citizens and corporations a way to donate money that can be used to buy things for police departments. Their use has exploded in recent years, with police foundations in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Atlanta generating millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Evan Feeney, senior director of campaigns and organizing at Color Of Change, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization that has published research on police foundations, called them a “legal loophole” in an interview with TechCrunch. “Billionaires should not be allowed to buy access and influence with law enforcement,” he said.
Transparency, or lack of it, is a primary concern advocates like Feeney have with the use of police foundations.
To wit, Horowitz used his personal foundation to donate $2 million to the Las Vegas police foundation in 2023. But his foundation’s tax filing vaguely described the “purpose” of the donation as “support of police.”
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The Las Vegas police foundation, meanwhile, doesn’t publish a full rundown of its donors. And while it maintains a website that lists some of the programs it funds, it does not mention the a16z companies, nor does it say how much money goes to any one effort.
What little they do disclose lags behind the real-world deployment. The most recent public filings for either foundation only cover activity through as late as June 2023.
“Welcome to the wonderful, dystopian land of Police Foundations,” Fox Cahn, the surveillance advocate, said.
Fox Cahn added that, often, the donations can set companies up for lucrative ongoing contracts with the police force, sidestepping competitors. After an initial donation, “they can then try to both sell the [police] on a follow up contract but also then use the fact that [police] are deploying a technology for advertising,” he said.
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“It becomes really just impossible for voters — for the public – to hold people accountable,” he said.
Horowitz has justified his involvement with the LVMPD by pointing to dropping crime rates in the city — which he says is happening thanks, in part, to his donations. In his post, he claimed that 911 calls are being answered faster and that, thanks to Flock Safety, 17% more suspects are being arrested.
But Horowitz did not say in the post where he got these statistics, and he declined to answer when TechCrunch asked. The LVMPD referred TechCrunch to its public crime statistics, which do not line up with Horowitz’s figures.
Sheriff McMahill is a believer. At the LP Summit, he recalled a shooting where all they knew was there were two cars with multiple weapons firing. The case seemed hopeless until he used Flock Safety technology, which includes gunshot detection and license plate recognition software, was able to give them more information on the scene and help them to catch the shooters.
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“This technology is changing the game,” McMahill declared to the crowd of a16z investors. “We are going to get to a place at some point where it becomes impossible to commit a crime.”
Starfish Space has closed a new tranche of funding led by a major defense tech investor as it looks to launch three full-size satellite servicing and inspection spacecraft in 2026.
The Washington-based startup’s Otter spacecraft is designed for two primary missions: extending the operational life of expensive satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) and disposing of defunct satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). It’s a series of capabilities that have never been available for satellite operators, who launch their satellites with the expectation that they’ll only have a limited span of useful life.
The aim, as Starfish CEO and co-founder Austin Link put it in a recent interview, is to “make it affordable enough that the benefits of having your satellite serviced outweigh the costs.”
The $29 million round was led by Shield Capital, a venture firm focused on funding technologies that will affect U.S. national security. It has participated in just a handful of other deals in the space industry. The round also includes participation from new investors Point72 Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, Aero X Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, TRAC VC, and existing investors Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures, NFX, and Industrious Ventures.
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“You start a company because you want to build satellites, not because you want to fundraise,” Link told TechCrunch. Link founded Starfish in 2019 with Trevor Bennett after the pair worked as flight sciences engineers at Blue Origin. They raised $7 million in 2021 and $14 million two years later. Starfish launched its first demonstration mission, a sub-scale spacecraft fittingly called Otter Pup, last summer.
Although that mission did not quite go according to plan, Starfish has racked up several wins since then, including three separate contracts for full-size Otter spacecraft. That includes a $37.5 million deal with the U.S. Space Force for a first-of-its-kind docking and maneuvering mission with a defense satellite in GEO and a contract with major satellite communications company Intelsat for life extension services. The third contract, a $15 million NASA mission to inspect multiple defunct satellites in LEO, was announced while Starfish was in the middle of fundraising, Link said.
Starfish purposefully set out to find investors that had experience helping their portfolio companies navigate selling to the government, Link said. “The government is a customer that it sometimes can be harder to scale with, so having investors that understood the process a little better … we thought they’d be good additions to our cap table.”
Link added that the company is seeing a “fairly even split” in demand between government and commercial customers.
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Satellite servicing, life extension, and satellite disposal are “exciting first steps,” Link said, but they’re stepping stones on the way to developing a broader suite of capabilities for even more ambitious missions on orbit.
“Along the way, we end up with this set of autonomy and robotics technologies and capabilities and datasets that allow us to go eventually do broadly a set of complex robotic or servicing or ISAM-type missions in space that maybe stretch a little beyond what we do with the Otter,” he said. “I think a lot of those are a long ways off, and not necessarily where our focus is right now … but some of the effort that goes into the Otter today and is funded through this funding round, and some of the growth there leads to a longer term where Starfish Space can have a broad impact on the way that humans go out into the universe.”
Apple today announced some minor updates to Logic Pro for both the Mac and the iPad, including the ability to search for plug-ins and sources and the addition of more analog-simulating sounds.
In Logic Pro for Mac 11.1 and Logic Pro for iPad 2.1, you can now reorder channel strips and plug-ins in the mixer and plug-in windows to make it easier to organize the layout of an audio mix.
As for the new sounds, Apple added a library of analog synthesizer samples called Modular Melodies, akin to the Modular Rhythms pack already found in Logic.
A more exciting sonic addition is the new Quantec Room Simulator (QRS) plug-in, which emulates the vintage digital reverb hardware of the same name, found in professional recording studios all over the world. Apple has acquired the technology for the classic QRS model and the later YardStick models to integrate into this software.
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I wish the QRS plug-in looked like the real life reverb unitImage: Apple
Specific to Logic Pro for Mac, you are now able to share a song to the Mac’s Voice Memos app — which may be a great feature for when Voice Memos gets that multitrack option on the iPhone in iOS 18.2
Added to the iPad version of Logic Pro is the ability to add your own local third party sample folders to the browser window, to make it easier to bring external audio files into tracks and sampler plug-ins.
These upgrades are small for current Logic users, but they do overall make the digital audio workplace easier to use and adds to the plethora of useful tools for no additional cost. Users will have access to upgrade to Logic Pro for Mac 11.1 and Logic Pro for iPad 2.1 today.
Having a very, very long Wordle streak is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it grants me immense bragging rights over those mere mortals with their streaks in the hundreds. On the other, it turns every game into a must-win ordeal. After all, what would I be without my Wordle streak? A so-called ‘expert’ with no credentials, that’s what. I’d be laughed out of town.
I joke, of course, but having gone 1,046 games without a loss I would rather not give up my streak all the same. I nearly had to today, though, because game #1,244 (Thursday, 14 November) nearly sent me back to ground zero.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only one, though – because today’s Wordle answer is undoubtedly a very difficult one. And it’s all the fault of the New York Times’ puzzle setters.
To explain why, I’ll need to reveal the solution, so don’t read past this point if you haven’t played yet, because SPOILERS FOR TODAY’S WORDLE, GAME #1,244, ON THURSDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2024 will follow. You have been warned.
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Wordle hall of shame
Let’s start with a question: what’s the hardest Wordle ever? Is it CAULK, one of the first games to upset thousands of avid Wordlers soon after the game’s meteoric rise to prominence? Or maybe BORAX, a word that many players outside of the United States had almost no knowledge of? Or JAZZY, with its repeated Zs and very-uncommon J at the start?
None of those, actually – the toughest ever is PARER, game #454 in September 2022. That’s based on the fact that it had an average score of 6.3, which to put it in context is half a guess more than its closest competitor, MUMMY (#491, 5.8).
Those average scores come from WordleBot, the in-game AI helper tool that analyzes your Wordle after you’ve played. As well as doing that, it records the average across everyone who plays, and in turn I note down those averages to keep a sort of league table. I have 956 of them listed now, giving me a pretty good idea of which Wordles people have found most difficult.
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By that measure, today’s game is some way down the list of the hardest ever, with an average of 4.9. High, but not ridiculously so. However, that only tells half of the story.
Right, let’s get into the specifics now, which means revealing today’s answer. This is your last chance to go away and play if you haven’t done so yet.
**FINAL SPOILER ALERT**
Sorry, what?
(Image credit: ShutterStock)
Today’s answer is UVULA.
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No, me neither.
I do sort of know what it means, actually. Or at least I knew before I played it that it was a real word, albeit a fairly obscure one with a very strange spelling. For the unaware, it’s the soft dangly bit between your tonsils at the back of your throat. I thought it was the ridge at the top of your mouth, maybe, but at least I was in the right area.
Others will not be so lucky. Twitter is already alight with people complaining that either they had no idea what it means or that it was just too obscure.
You have got to be kidding me Wordle 1,244 6/6⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩November 13, 2024
Wordle 1.244 X/6⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨🟨⬜🟩How am I supposed to know THAT ???????? #nyt #wordleNovember 13, 2024
As well as its relative obscurity as a word, UVULA suffers from having an incredibly unusual format, with UVU at the start; that’s not found in any other answer. Plus, it contains two letter Us – and as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, that’s a very rare occurrence too, with only 10 games among the original 2,309 solutions having that format.
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All of this added up to make it a very tough game. Its average of 4.9 puts it just outside of the top 20, but I think that’s misleading – people are probably solving it through brute force in the end, because there are no other words that have that format. With a word like PARER, in contrast, there are lots of alternatives and it’s therefore easy to keep guessing until you eventually fail. Here, you will ultimately reach a point where nothing else fits!
That’s what happened to me, anyway. I usually solve Wordle in about 10-20 minutes, sometimes 30-40 if it’s a difficult one and I’m playing carefully. Here, I must have stared at the board and played around with various letter combinations for two hours. That’s genuinely no exaggeration. My family thought I’d gone mad.
I nearly gave up – I was completely stumped. However, I have a daily column to write so kept going and eventually scored a five. My streak was genuinely in doubt, though – I could easily have wasted a couple of guesses on similarly obscure words that weren’t correct.
(Image credit: New York Times)
NYT blues
So why is this the NYT’s fault and not mine?
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Well, it’s worth noting that this is – for the second day in a row – a non-canon Wordle answer. By that I mean that it was not among the 2,309 answers originally dreamed up by the game’s creator Josh Wardle and his partner, but has instead been added by the NYT.
Yesterday’s PRIMP (see below) was also one of these, and in total we’ve now had 10 of them: GUANO (game #646), SNAFU (#659), BALSA (#720), KAZOO (#730), LASER (#1038), PIOUS (#1054), BEAUT (#1186) and MOMMY (#1208).
Notice anything about those words? Yes – they include some of the toughest in recent memory.
I can easily work out the average for Wordle as a whole, and right now it stands at 3.964 across those 956 games that I have a score for. However, if you look at the average for those 10 games added by the NYT you’ll see that it’s a mighty 4.35. It’s official: the NYT is making Wordle harder!
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There is a reason for this, of course – in that Josh Wardle used up most of the obvious answers. LASER (average: 3.3) and PIOUS (3.8) are the only two below 4.0, and are also the most common words among them, MOMMY aside. That last word is an outlier, meanwhile, because it contains three Ms, an incredibly unusual format (and it had an average of 5.0 as a result).
Elsewhere, KAZOO was a 5.1, PRIMP yesterday was 4.5, BALSA 4.4 and SNAFU 4.3, so it certainly appears as though the NYT’s editors are choosing tougher words when given the chance.
There’s nothing wrong with this, really – and I like a challenge as much as anyone. UVULA is a perfectly fair word, albeit an undeniably difficult one to solve in Wordle. But I wasn’t feeling anywhere near as charitable when I was sat staring at a seemingly impossible game, and I doubt you will be if you just lost your streak today, either.
Apple is facing a legal claim accusing it of effectively locking 40 million British customers into its iCloud service and charging them “rip off prices.”
Consumer group Which? says the legal action – which it has launched – could result in a £3bn payout if it is successful, equivalent to £70 per customer.
Apple has rejected the suggestion its practices are anti-competitive, saying users are not required to use iCloud, many rely on third-party alternatives and insisting it “works hard to make data transfer as easy as possible.”
It is another example of the “growing tide of large class actions against Big Tech” which has “operated without sufficient constraint”, Toby Starr from legal firm Humphries Kerstetter told the BBC.
“Although most of these claims are in their infancy and take a long time to resolve, there will be more decisions coming out over the next couple of years and there will be settlements – these will start to affect the tech giants’ businesses,” said Mr Starr.
A price to pay
Users of Apple products get a small amount of digital storage for free – and after that are encouraged to pay to use its iCloud service to back up photos, videos, messages, contacts and all the other content which lives on their device.
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Prices for this storage range from £0.99 a month for 50GB of space to £54.99 a month for 12TB.
Apple does not allow rival storage services full access to its products.
Which? says over a period of nine years dating back to 2015 Apple has been effectively locking people into its services – and then overcharging them.
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“By bringing this claim, Which? is showing big corporations like Apple that they cannot rip off UK consumers without facing repercussions,” the body’s chief executive Anabel Hoult said.
“Taking this legal action means we can help consumers to get the redress that they are owed, deter similar behaviour in the future and create a better, more competitive market.”
Apple has strongly denied Which’s accusations.
“We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anti-competitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise,” it said in a statement.
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‘Very high value damages’
Though being launched by Which?, the legal action is being funded and taken forward by international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
Which? said they would be paid fees as the case progressed, getting additional payments if it was successful – but they would not be getting a percentage of any damages.
Alan Davis, from law firm Pinsent Masons, said there were very likely to be more, similar cases in the future.
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“It is inevitable that further claims of this nature will continue to be brought given the very high value of the aggregate damages and the role of and incentive for litigation funders to support these claims which might not otherwise be brought without that financial support,” he told the BBC.
He added the absence of any infringement decisions under EU or UK competition law meant it would be down to the claimant to prove the market abuse it was alleging was actually taking place.
If you’re in the market for a new Mac (or Apple display), there’s a lot of choice ahead of you. Maybe you’re interested in a lightweight MacBook Air from the selection of the best MacBooks — or maybe one of the desktop Macs. Either way, there’s a wide variety of Apple products on offer, including some external desktop monitors.
Below you’ll find the latest information on each model, including if it’s a good time to buy and when the next one up is coming.
MacBook Pro
Chris Hagan / Digital Trends
The MacBook Pro represents the high-end of Apple’s MacBook lineup, and it was updated it in October 2024. This revamp brought the M4 chip series to the flagship laptop, including the M4, the M4 Pro, and the M4 Max.
However, it was much more than just a chip update, as Apple increased the memory capacity at every level (including double the starting RAM of the previous MacBook Pro). There’s a black color option for the entry-level M4 MacBook Pro, a brighter display with a nano-texture option, an improved webcam, more ports with Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, plus longer battery life. And let’s not forget the mini-LED display that can range up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and 1,000 of SDR brightness.
Given the recent update, we wouldn’t expect a new MacBook Pro until at least fall 2025, which would fit in with Apple’s rumored plans to update this laptop on a regular, annual basis. This new model is likely to be a modest upgrade, with a much larger refresh rumored for 2026. This could get an OLED display and a thinner chassis, while Apple also is expected to bring out a foldable MacBook at some point in the coming years.
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MacBook Air
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends
Apple’s slimmest laptop received its most recent changes in March 2024 when Apple launched the M3 MacBook Air. The M3 chip brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing and better performance compared to the previous MacBook Air, as well as better microphones and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. That’s wrapped up in Apple’s thinnest and lightest laptop chassis, along with a 500-nit display and comfortable keyboard.
The MacBook Air is the next Mac in line for an update, with a new version expected to launch in spring 2025. While we can be certain that this will come with the M4 chip, there’s not a lot else we know for sure about it. There are murmurings that Apple is working on an OLED MacBook Air, but this isn’t due to launch for a few years.
Mac mini
Chris Hagan / Digital Trends
In October 2024, Apple gave the Mac mini its most significant overhaul in 14 years. The device’s case was completely redesigned to take on the appearance of a downsized Mac Studio, with a footprint about half the size of the previous model. Apple skipped the M3 chip entirely and upgraded the Mac mini from the M2 to the M4 and M4 Pro chips, which has resulted in an impressive performance leap. Elsewhere, the memory capacity has been increased at every tier, there’s support for up to three external displays, there’s a new port arrangement that features Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Pro model, and you get two USB-C ports on the front of the computer (the USB-A ports have been removed).
Apple won’t bring out another Mac mini until fall 2025 at the earliest. There’s not much in the way of rumors for future Mac mini models, but we’ll update this page as soon as we hear more.
iMac
Caleb Denison / Digital Trends
In October 2024, the iMac became the first Apple computer to get the M4 chip (following the iPad Pro in May 2024). Aside from the speedy new chip, you can now buy it in a new range of colors, with increased memory bandwidth, more starting memory, an improved webcam, as well as Apple’s nano-texture glass option that cuts down on reflections and glare (this was previously only available on the Pro Display XDR and the iPad Pro).
As with several other M4 Macs, the iMac’s next update is likely to arrive around fall 2025. There is talk that Apple is working on a larger iMac, perhaps with a 30-inch or 32-inch display and mini-LED tech, and this might debut alongside the next iMac in 2025. That said, this project has reportedly been delayed many times, so don’t bet the house on it arriving any time soon.
Mac Studio
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The latest update to the Mac Studio arrived in June 2023. Today, it comes with M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips, huge amounts of memory, wide support for its external displays, as well as compatibility with high-impedance headphones, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3. It’s a highly capable computer inside a very compact chassis, making it ideal for high-end workloads even if you don’t have a lot of desk space.
Apple has skipped the M3 generation in the Mac Studio, so its next update should bring the M4 Max and M4 Ultra chips alongside a significant increase in performance. Reports have suggested that the M4 Ultra will have 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores, double the core counts you can find in the MacBook Pro’s M4 Max chip.
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Mac Pro
Brittany Hose-Small / AFP via Getty Images
Like the Mac Studio, the Mac Pro received its most recent update in June 2023. This was a sizable change for Apple’s most powerful Mac, as it was the first time it came outfitted with Apple silicon chips (in this case, the M2 Ultra). Buying this model today gets you the most modular (and expensive) Mac on the market, including support for PCIe expansion, huge amounts of memory, massive support for external displays, and high-end CPU and GPU performance.
Looking ahead, the M4 Ultra is a certainty, and this is expected to arrive in mid-2025, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. There are rumors that this might result in the Mac Pro getting a maximum memory capacity of 512GB, up from the current 192GB.
There’s also the question of the Mac Pro’s design. The current chassis was designed for the 2019 model, which featured Intel chips that ran hot, as well as expandable, discrete graphics cards. That’s no longer the case, and it’s arguable that the Mac Pro doesn’t need to be as large or as focused on cooling as it currently is now that it uses Apple silicon chips. There aren’t many rumors that Apple will soon redesign the Mac Pro’s chassis, so don’t expect that to come next year, but don’t be surprised if it’s somewhere on the horizon.
Apple Studio Display
Apple
The 27-inch Studio Display is Apple’s more accessible monitor (at least compared to the Pro Display XDR, anyway). It comes with a 5K resolution and 600 nits of brightness, an internal A13 Bionic chip that handles Center Stage and Spatial Audio, a nano-texture glass option that cuts down on reflections and glare, one Thunderbolt 3 slot and three USB-C ports, plus two different stand options.
There’s a bit of confusion surrounding the date we can expect a new version of the Studio Display. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes we could see it in 2025 or 2024 (the latter date being very unlikely now), whereas display industry expert Ross Young thinks Apple has suspended its plans for a Studio Display with a 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate. Aside from that, not much else is known about what we might see in the next Studio Display.
Pro Display XDR
Julian Chokkattu / Digital Trends
We first saw the Pro Display XDR in 2019, when it launched alongside the then-redesigned Mac Pro. It’s Apple’s most capable monitor, and it comes with a 32-inch 6K screen, up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness (for HDR content only), 576 local dimming zones, a nano-texture glass option, one Thunderbolt 3 and three USB-C ports, and two stand options.
Out of all the products in this article, the Pro Display XDR has gone the longest without an update, as it hasn’t been changed since it launched in 2019. Seeing as it was released in tandem with the Mac Pro, we’d expect the same to happen this time around, and with the Mac Pro slated for a 2025 refresh, the Pro Display XDR might be updated at the same time. Rumors have suggested that it will get an onboard chip just like the Studio Display, which should bring a few more software features to the table. Other than that, not much else is known at this point.
In this article, we’ll be comparing flagship smartphones from Google and ASUS. We’ll compare the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra. The ZenFone 11 Ultra arrived earlier this year, in March, while the Pixel 9 Pro XL dropped in August. These two smartphones are considerably different in almost every way. Well, the ZenFone 11 Ultra’s software is based on stock Android, though, so aside from Google’s Pixel features you’ll get a similar software feel. Other than that, there are not many similarities.
These two smartphones both look different and feel different in the hand. Their specifications are also quite different. We’ll first list those specs, and will then start to compare the devices across a number of categories. We’ll compare their designs, displays, performance, battery life, camera performance, and audio output. With that being said, let’s get to it.
Specs
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra, respectively
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra: Design
Both of these smartphones are made out of metal and glass, and the frame on both of them is flat all around. The implementation of that flat frame is different, though. It’s thinner on the ZenFone 11 Ultra, and the backplate is curved towards the edges on the ZenFone 11 Ultra. It’s flat on the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Both smartphones have a flat display, though, and a centered display camera hole. The thing is, that camera hole is placed lower on the Pixel 9 Pro XL.
Their physical keys are placed on the right-hand side. The Pixel 9 Pro XL includes a power/lock button above the volume up and down keys. It’s the other way around on the ZenFone 11 Ultra. The buttons are quite clicky on both smartphones. The bezels around the display are also very thin on both of them. The Pixel 9 Pro XL corners are more rounded than they are on the ZenFone 11 Ultra, though.
If we flip them around, you’ll see more differences in the camera design department. Google’s handset has a pill-shaped camera island, which is horizontal. The ZenFone 11 Ultra has a squarish camera island in the top-left corner. Both phones do include three cameras inside their camera islands, though. They are very similar in dimensions, and in weight too. The ZenFone 11 Ultra is only 3 grams heavier. Both smartphones are also IP68 certified, and both are quite slippery.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra: Display
There is a 6.8-inch 2992 x 1344 LTPO OLED display included on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. That display is flat, and it offers an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz (1-120Hz). HDR10+ content is supported here, and the display’s peak brightness goes up to 3,000 nits. The screen-to-body ratio is at around 88%, while the display aspect ratio is 20:9. The display is protected by the Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
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ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra
The ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra features a 6.78-inch fullHD+ (2400 x 1080) LTPO AMOLED display. That panel is also flat, and it also offers an adaptive refresh rate, but up to 144Hz (1-144Hz). Do note that it’ll go that high only during gaming in specific games. HDR content is supported, while the peak brightness goes up to 2,500 nits. The screen-to-body ratio is at around 88%, while the display aspect ratio is 20:9. This display is protected by the Gorilla Glass Victus 2 as well.
Both of these displays are really good, actually. They’re both sharp and vivid with good viewing angles. The Pixel 9 Pro XL does offer a higher resolution, but the vast majority of you won’t even notice the difference. The display on Google’s handset also does get slightly brighter during use. The touch response is good on both of these displays, though, and chances are you’ll be happy with either one.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra: Performance
The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is fueled by the Google Tensor G4 processor. That is Google’s 4nm processor, and it comes paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM inside of this phone. Google also included UFS 3.1 flash storage here. The ZenFone 11 Ultra is fueled by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a 4nm processor by Qualcomm. ASUS offers up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM here and UFS 4.0 flash storage. The storage is not expandable.
ASUS’ handset does have a more powerful processor, and faster storage too. You’d be hard-pressed to notice the difference, however. Both smartphones are quite snappy during regular, day-to-day use, the performance is very good on both. That Tensor chip is really well-adapted to this smartphone. Everything is smooth, ranging from jumping between apps to messaging, emailing, browsing, consuming multimedia, and so on.
The ZenFone 11 Ultra is the better choice for intense gaming, however, even though the Pixel 9 Pro XL can run basically any game. Those demanding ones do run better on the ZenFone 11 Ultra. If you’re not really a gamer, either of these two phones will do the trick, really, even though the ZenFone 11 Ultra is technically more powerful.
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Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra: Battery
There is a 5,060mAh battery included inside the Pixel 9 Pro XL. ASUS’ handset, on the flip side, uses a 5,500mAh battery. With that being said, the ZenFone 11 Ultra does offer better battery life, as its battery capacity may indicate. In fact, it offers outstanding battery life, while the battery life on the Pixel 9 Pro XL is also really good. In all honesty, chances are that you’ll be happy with the output from both smartphones.
Getting up to 7 hours of screen-on-time is possible even on the Pixel 9 Pro XL, with specific usage, so you can imagine how high the ZenFone 11 Ultra can go. We have crossed the 8-hour screen-on-time and still had juice left in the tank. Do note that intense gaming, intense camera use, intense GPS use, and so on, will have a considerable impact on battery life, of course. That’s why your mileage may vary, each of us uses our phones in different ways, so… there you go.
The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL supports 37W wired, 23W wireless (with the Pixel Stand), 12W Qi wireless, and 5W reverse wireless charging. The ZenFone 11 Ultra supports 65W wired, 15W Qi wireless, and 10W reverse wired charging. ASUS’ handset does charge faster, via a wired, while the Pixel 9 Pro XL will charge faster wirelessly… if you own a Pixel Stand. Neither phone comes with a charger in the box, though.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL vs ASUS ZenFone 11 Ultra: Cameras
There are three cameras on the backs of both smartphones. Google’s device has a 50-megapixel main camera (1/1.31-inch sensor), a 48-megapixel ultrawide unit (1/2.55-inch sensor, 123-degree FoV), and a 48-megapixel periscope telephoto camera (1/2.55-inch sensor, 5x optical zoom). The ZenFone 11 Ultra includes a 50-megapixel main camera (1/1.56-inch sensor), a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera (1/3.0-inch sensor, 120-degree FoV), and a 32-megapixel telephoto camera (1/3.2-inch sensor, 3x optical zoom).
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Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
With that being said, the Pixel 9 Pro XL does offer better photos overall. They’re simply better balanced, and if we pixel peep, you’ll notice more detail from all three of its cameras, basically. Google’s image processing is really good, not to mention that the phone has better camera hardware overall. Literally every single camera on the back includes a larger camera sensor that allows more light to enter.
The Pixel 9 Pro XL also has the advantage of having an actual periscope telephoto camera, while the ZenFone 11 Ultra includes a regular telephoto shooter. Don’t get me wrong, the pictures from the ZenFone 11 Ultra end up looking good and vibrant, but they’re not as good as what the Pixel 9 Pro XL offers. They also have a tendency to apply a bit too much saturation and sharpening while processing.
Audio
You’ll find a set of stereo speakers on both of these smartphones. The ones on the Pixel 9 Pro XL are a bit louder, but the sound quality coming from both sets is good and also comparable. So, chances are you’ll be good either way.
If you need a headphone jack, only the ZenFone 11 Ultra offers it. You will need to hook up your wired headphones via the Type-C port on the Pixel 9 Pro XL in order to use them. The Pixel 9 Pro XL also offers Bluetooth 5.3, while the ZenFone 11 Ultra supports Bluetooth 5.4.
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