Month: September 2019

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster returns today to share a new batch of deals. Our top ten list spans a bunch of different categories, and it includes discounts on the original Nintendo Switch, the HP Spectre x360 13 convertible, Beats headphones, and much more.

If you've been itching for a Nintendo Switch, Newegg is offering the original model for $259.99. The biggest difference between this model and the newest version is battery life—Nintendo improved the battery life for the new model so it will last up to nine hours when playing in handheld mode. The original model, in contrast, lasts up to six hours on a single charge.

But Nintendo doesn't sell this original model anymore, so this is a good opportunity to get the Switch for less than $299—the standard price of the new model that doesn't often come down. (There's always a chance that we could see some Nintendo Switch savings around the holidays, but there's no guarantee.)

Enlarge (credit: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Microsoft revealed on Wednesday that it is fighting in court for the right to tell one of its large enterprise customers about a federal request for data hosted on Microsoft's cloud services. The data request came with an order prohibiting Microsoft from notifying its customer about the request. And Microsoft views the gag order as inappropriate.

"On Sept. 5, 2018, Microsoft challenged a secrecy order issued by a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York in connection with a federal national security investigation," wrote Microsoft general counsel Dev Stahlkopf. "Based on the limited information available to us in this case, we feel the secrecy order was too broadly drawn and is inconsistent with the U.S. government’s policy that secrecy orders be narrowly tailored."

The Microsoft customer in question has thousands of employees. Microsoft argues that the feds should be able to identify someone at the company who can be notified without jeopardizing the investigation. However, a judge rejected Microsoft's request and left the secrecy requirement in place.

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  The rear cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Last year, Apple's iPhone XR was the interesting story in the iPhone lineup, while the top-end iPhone XS was only a modest update over its predecessor the iPhone X. But this year, the roles have flipped: the iPhone 11 Pro is a notable step forward for the flagship tier, while the iPhone 11 is only a slight improvement over the iPhone XR as the company's latest entry-level new phone.

With the iPhone 11 Pro, the best smartphone display on the market just got significantly better, the fastest smartphone CPU and GPU got even faster, and Apple caught up to competitors with new camera features.

If anything, though, the past two years of new iPhones have demonstrated that many people's habits of upgrading every two years should be amended to every three or even four years. And there’s nothing here to convince you to switch to an iPhone if you already weren’t interested in Apple’s ecosystem of devices, software, and services. Apart from the fact that iOS 13 opened things up a bit for power users this year, all the strengths and weaknesses of Apple as compared to Android remain the same.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

AT&T doesn't intend to sell DirecTV despite internal discussions about whether to offload the struggling satellite TV business, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

"DirecTV is an important part of what we're going to be doing going forward," John Stankey, CEO of AT&T's WarnerMedia division, said in an interview with the Journal.

In addition to leading WarnerMedia, Stankey is taking on a new role as AT&T's chief operating officer, making him second in command to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. Stankey, who has been with AT&T since 1985, is reportedly the front-runner to become AT&T CEO when Stephenson retires.