Technology

• Valve has said it's "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware"
• The company also made it clear that it's collaborating closely with Nvidia for better GPU compatibility
• The aim is to make SteamOS more widely deployed on DIY PCs away from the Steam Machine, and this is tempting some gamers to ditch Windows 11

Valve has underlined how it's improving SteamOS to allow gamers to make their own version of the Steam Machine should they wish, which is already prompting some excited chatter on Reddit about abandoning Windows 11.

The Verge reports that Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais (an engineer who often gives interviews) made it clear that the company is busy "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware" and also "collaborating with Nvidia very closely" on ensuring better compatibility with Team Green's GPUs.

Before you get too excited, though, the caveat that Griffais attached is that Nvidia support isn't coming anytime soon – meaning not this year – but that it's "certainly something that we're working on in the background".

Valve just released SteamOS 3.8 which prepared the ground for the new Steam Machine, arriving with some key changes to ensure a better experience with Intel CPUs, as well as Nvidia GPUs (or indeed all discrete graphics cards, which will benefit from "greatly improved video memory management").

The introduction of KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with Wayland support is important, too, very much upping the desktop game and bringing in better support for external displays and VRR in SteamOS, among other boons.

In short, with SteamOS 3.8, Griffais notes that "you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want."

All of which is paving the way for more PC gamers who are fed up with Windows 11 and Microsoft to make the switch over to SteamOS as an alternative operating system (especially those who aren't running an AMD-powered system).

Despite it being still relatively early days in this effort (as noted regarding the work with Nvidia GPUs), some gamers are already happily declaring that they're ready to ditch Microsoft's platform for SteamOS.

One Redditor tells us: "Decided to go all in and wipe my main 2TB drive and install this [SteamOS]. Just got it installed and tried a couple games, working very well so far. Going to make myself stick with it instead of slithering back to Windows."

Here's another gamer who says: "The minute SteamOS gets Nvidia support, there is going to be a large mass exodus of users in the gaming space off of Windows."

In a similar vein, a further Reddit thread informs us: "I found that some of my Steam games which played fine on Windows 10, actually played far worse on Windows 11. I decided to switch back to Linux Mint and give Steam another go on that after having tried it a few years ago, and to my surprise, those games all worked great now. So I've stuck with Mint and every game I have in my Steam library runs well without issue. Value has really been doing a great job of bringing gaming to Linux."

And in that same thread, a Redditor observes: " The instant this [SteamOS] becomes stable with driver[s], I'm jumping out [of] Windows." (Not literally).

Analysis: Steamy Windows

(Image credit: Valve)

It appears this is prompting more than a few gamers to reconsider their position with Windows 11, but we clearly shouldn't get carried away yet. SteamOS has a long road ahead of it as a rival to Windows 11, as it remains very much a niche proposition, but clearly Valve is pushing hard to make it a much more compelling alternative.

The good thing is that even if you don't intend to go near the Steam Machine – and you believe it's well overpriced, as many do (thanks to the memory crisis) – the launch of the device could still benefit you, as SteamOS continues to take strides forward. As Valve observes, you can just build your own Steam Machine-style PC, or to avoid the RAM crisis price hikes, simply repurpose an existing rig you have (perhaps with a choice upgrade or two grabbed in a sale).

With notable strides being taken here – and some progress being made in terms of getting anti-cheat games to run, too, in certain cases, although there's still plenty of work to be done here – we can be hopeful that SteamOS adoption could be accelerated considerably.

However, Windows 11 remains dominant by a long, long way in the PC gaming world, although SteamOS gaining traction could worry Microsoft for the longer-term, and prompt further efforts to make Windows 11 better for gamers – which again would be a win, albeit an indirect one.

Full disclosure: I am writing this before Amazon Prime Day. If the iPhone Air is not currently on sale in your region, then you should only pay its $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price if a) you have a bottomless supply of cash or b) you simply must own Apple’s most beautiful iPhone (and make no mistake: the iPhone Air is Apple’s most beautiful iPhone).

But I will eat my hat if there aren't any meaningful deals on the iPhone Air by the time you read this. It's already been discounted by as much as 30% in both the UK and Australia this year, and as such, I have a hunch that Amazon will run similar deals during its annual Prime Day sale (if you’re in the US, look out for carrier-based offers on Apple’s best iPhones).

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

If you can snag the iPhone Air for around 20% less than its retail price this week, I’m utterly convinced that it’s the best-value phone purchase you could make right now — for two reasons.

Firstly, you will not find a nicer-looking — and nicer-feeling — phone than the iPhone Air without spending silly money on one of the best foldable phones. The Air measures just 5.64mm at its thinnest point and is some 41g lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro, despite boasting a larger 6.5-inch display.

You might not think you care about having a thin and light phone — I also didn’t to begin with — but trust me: once you start using a device of such svelte proportions, you won’t want to go back to a regular-sized phone.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent picture of me with a group of tech content creators showing off our current phones of choice:

I promise you this picture wasn't sponsored by Apple (Image credit: Future)

All four of us test the best phones for a living, and all four of us settled on Apple's super slim iPhone as our personal handset of choice.

The second reason why a discounted iPhone Air is the best-value phone purchase you can make right now is less obvious. Not only is this Apple’s most beautiful iPhone, but it’s also its most powerful: like the iPhone 17 Pro, the Air boasts an A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM.

Now, I don’t usually highlight chipsets as a reason to buy phones — the iPhone 17e’s A19 chipset, for instance, is plenty fast enough for most people — but the iPhone Air's A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM combination has suddenly become more significant than most people realize.

Here's an extract from a recent article in which I explain why the iPhone Air is future-proofed in a way that only the iPhone 17 Pro can match:

At WWDC 2026, Apple announced its all-singing, all-dancing Siri AI assistant, which will soon be available on all Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhones (read: the iPhone 15 Pro and upwards) as part of iOS 27. But only three iPhones will get the very best version of Siri AI — and the iPhone Air is among that number.

Specifically, only the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air will get Siri voice customization and more advanced systemwide dictation, because only these phones run on Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model and 12GB of RAM.

The device requirements of AFM Core Advanced (Image credit: Apple)

Admittedly, these two features aren’t reason enough to buy a top-end iPhone — the former gives you the ability to customize the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s voice, while the latter makes Siri more effective at converting speech into accurate text — but I would bet my (non-existent) house that Apple locks several additional, more significant features behind this AFM Core Advanced paywall in future versions of iOS.

In other words, like the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air will soon support more software features than any other iPhone — and the gap between model capabilities will only grow wider as more hardware-exclusive features are announced.

I genuinely believe this under-the-radar feature makes the iPhone Air almost worth its regular $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price, but if you can pick it up for significantly cheaper than that during Prime Day, it’s a bona fide bargain.

• Meta unveils $299 / £269 / AU$599 smart glasses (Meta Glasses) designed with EssilorLuxottica
• They match Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses on virtually all features
• They add adjustable nose pieces, and a lot of design and color choices

"It’s pretty easy to make glasses that don’t look good, it turns out," chuckled Meta CTO and Head of Reality Labs, Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, shortly after unveiling a bumper crop of new Meta eyeware, simply called Meta Glasses, all fashioned in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica.

@techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Bosworth says the team argues over "every gram, every quarter of a millimeter" in an effort to bring ever lighter, ever more comfortable, and ever more fashionable AI eyewear to the market. With this foray into making frames with a slightly less well-known brand than Ray-Ban, Meta is bringing the new frames — Adventurer, Fury, and Starfire Kylie [Jenner] Edition — to market at a somewhat startling price: $299 /£269 / AU$599 (not counting prescriptions).

No one size or style fits all when it comes to eyewear, Ankit Brahmbhatt, Meta's Senior Director of Product for AI glasses, told me as he walked me through some of the new frames. There are, he added, eight colorways and 26 different style options.

Lance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureOgling the style choices

As I looked around the room in the Manhattan event space, I spotted black, something like ivory, tortoiseshell, deep black, green, and a dark maroon. The frames range from larger and almost boxy-looking to thinner and lighter frames. In fact, many of the EssilorLuxottica frames are so relatively thin and light that you might miss the cameras hidden in the front, and the slightly thicker stems to accommodate components and batteries, and mistake them for normal frames.

Kylie Jenner's cat-eye-style frames are particularly fetching, and surprisingly looked halfway decent on me.

Brahmbhatt told me Meta worked closely with Jenner to develop the design, adding signature touches like a tiny gem in the frame, a mirror in the case, and even Kylie Jenner's voice in the Meta AI.

There are structural changes new to the Essilor Luxottica frames. The nose piece adjusts with a push to three different positions, the stems are bendable at the ends (Bosworth noted that the wires are coated with a kind of cellulose plastic), and the stems actually flex outward. I tried on almost every style I could find, and they were all quite comfortable.

One of the biggest changes, though, is the addition of a small button behind the traditional Meta AI glasses button that you might use to capture a photo or start a video: it's a tiny Meta AI summoning button, and I used it interchangeably with saying, "Hey, Meta."

More and better AILance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / Future

This is also the first set of Meta AI glasses to feature a Meta AI system backed by the company's more robust Muse Spark models, which provide a more conversational voice, better context awareness, and the ability to tap into the zeitgeist by checking out social media (at one point I asked Meta AI if there was chatter online about fake food, and it confirmed that many were talking about it on social media).

I tried the new Meta AI in a few scenarios, and it ably identified whatever I was looking at (I could hear it snap a picture before the analysis), launched a music playlist based on my surroundings, and translated Arabic print for me.

That all of this comes in for under $299 (Ray-Ban Meta frames start at $379), and without compromising on the 3K video-shooting quality, 12MP photos, microphones, array, or speakers, is remarkable; but these are still relatively early days in the wearable AI space.

Getting it right and making it safe

Meta CTO Andre Bosworth (left) and Meta Head of Industrial Design Peter Bristol (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

Design is "really important if you want people to wear them as daily driver glasses," said Meta Head of Industrial Design Peter Bristol, who joined Bosworth on stage and took some questions from reporters.

In perhaps a nod to how thick and oversized AI glasses can look, the pair talked about how they made subtle changes to the designs, slimming down the frames, or simply making them look thinner by, for instance, adding a chamfer along the top edge of the frames, near the brow.

A good design means less friction, which Bristol believes can help with AI adoption.

For Meta, the goal is to "reach every corner of the market," said Bosworth, but that approach does come with risks.

Lance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / Future

When asked about growing concerns about the privacy of these glasses (there have been reports of people wearing them to illegally photograph women and even tampering with the glasses to turn off the LED "I'm filming you" light), Bosworth acknowledged these issues, but reminded us that Meta had actually "pioneered putting LED on the glasses," and talked about the anti-tampering technology they put in Gen 2 Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. But, he added, it's "a cat and mouse game."

As for what the future holds, I pointed out to Bosworth and Bristol that, while they now have a lot of styles, not everyone wears, or wants to wear glasses. What about smart contacts?

"Absolutely, that one’s top of mind for the design team," said Bristol, adding, "We are thinking and trying the other potential paths, but it’s a complicated space, so glasses is front and center for us.”

Bosworth agreed with the premise of my question, admitting that he’s not a glasses wearer, but is happy to wear Meta AI glasses “because they brought a lot of value — but I’m aware that I’m doing it.

"The design team is absolutely captivated by this question. What are the other ways that we can deliver this capability to people who don’t have glasses on?"

My relationship with the best headphones has been quite a trial-and-error experience over the past few years, and I've gone through so many popular models — but investing in the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones solved all of my problems.

At the time of release, we deemed them as 'the best in the business' in our review, but that also came with a rather eye-watering price tag at launch. Thankfully, that's what Amazon Prime Day is for.

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

If you've been putting off purchasing these headphones because of their high price point, Prime Day is your chance to score them for $198 down from $399.99 in the US, or £179.54 down from £279 if you're in the UK — stellar price drops for Sony if you ask me.

Today's best Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones deals

This is the first time we've seen this model drop below $200, and though they're not the latest in Sony's lineup, they're still incredibly popular four years after their release. Blending comfort and audio smarts into one device, the XM5s are a highly reliable pair of headphones. View Deal

In the UK it's more common for the XM5 to drop below £200, but even then the occasions are few and far between. The last time we saw a deal this good was during last year's Black Friday, but still, it wasn't a record-low price like this. View Deal

Although there are deals on the newer Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, they're still almost double the price of the WH-1000XM5 discount and outside of the foldable ear pads, there's really not a huge difference feature-wise.

If there's one thing I've taken away from my time with my WH-1000XM5 is that they were built for longevity. I've been using the headphones for almost four years, and they're still working like I've just taken them out of the box for the first time.

They're also totally reliable. One of the biggest problems I kept running into with wireless earbuds was that they'd completely crash on me for unknown reasons after short periods of time, leaving me with one dead and one functioning earbud before that one would eventually give up.

These aren't the only reasons why I've stood by them; they're packed with a ton of handy features that make your listening experience just that bit more convenient and enjoyable. For one, these headphones have incredibly smart ambient sound controls, which they can automatically adjust based on your location.

So if you're in a busier area, the headphones can enable ambient settings to let outside noise in to help you be more aware with your surroundings. I like to enable this feature when I'm listening to music and podcasts while on walks — nature noises are just so soothing.

The headphones can also connect to two devices simultaneously, which is an added bonus if you float between your phone and laptop.

That said, the active noise cancellation works wonders for shutting out unwanted conversations for when you want an interrupted listening session, a setting I use more often than ambient mode. especially when traveling — because who wants loud conversations and roaring train sounds blaring while you're trying to listen to the new Olivia Rodrigo album for the tenth time?

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

More Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: get a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire, Ring & Blink from £13.99
• Amazon Haul: up to 30% off
• Apple: up to 33% off AirPods & Apple Watch
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja & Tefal
• Beauty: up to 60% off Philips & Oral-B
• Essentials: household goods from £5
• Fans: from £20
• Fashion: up to 50% off
• Gaming: £90 off PlayStation 5
• Headphones: up to 50% off Beats & Sony
• Laptops: from £149
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £79.99
• Toys: up to 25% off Lego and Tonies
• TVs: from £129.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Shark & Roborock
• Wearables: up to 30% off Garmin & Oura