In early July, Oculus announced its Summer of Rift promotion, bundling the company’s virtual reality headset with a pair of Touch controllers at a compelling price point of $399. The price cut was extended from its initial six-week run, but a blog post published over the weekend confirmed that it would end Monday — and we can already see the effect that it had on Oculus’ rivalry with HTC.
Valve’s most recent Steam hardware and software survey offers details of VR headset usage between April and August. Over the last month alone, the share of Steam accounts using a Rift has risen from 36 percent to 44 percent, cutting the HTC share down from 60 percent to 52 percent.
Of course, Steam is not the be-all and end-all of PC gaming but it’s certainly the premier platform at this point in time. These figures cannot be taken as an exact summation of the wider VR landscape, but they certainly give a good indication of how the two biggest headsets around stack up to one another in terms of popularity.
The fact that the Rift was able to make up so much ground over a short period of time might indicate that VR hardware is getting close to the kind of price point that makes the technology more palatable for users. A Buy Now with motion controllers included seems to be attractive enough to spur on adoption.
HTC is not oblivious to the success that Oculus has enjoyed over the course of the Summer of Rift. Just a few weeks ago, the company announced a permanent $200 price reduction for its Vive headset, which puts it at $600 — just a whisker more expensive than the Buy Now , which isn’t too much of a premium to pay for hardware that is widely considered to be the gold standard for VR.
It will be very interesting to see how competition between Oculus and HTC plays out from here. The Vive is still more popular among Steam users and most would agree that the headset provides a better overall experience, at a higher price. On the other hand, the Rift has momentum on its side, which could turn out to be a crucial factor.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.