Qualcomm has been on a tear with its Snapdragon X Elite CPUs in Copilot+ laptops, but the company is struggling to expand beyond the initial lineup. Just days after the first orders arrived, Qualcomm has abruptly canceled its Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows and promised refunds to developers who had ordered the mini PC.
We first heard about the Snapdragon Dev Kit in May, when Qualcomm announced it alongside the release of Copilot+ laptops. It was a part of Qualcomm’s ambitions on desktop Windows PCs, and Windows PCs more broadly, as it would allow developers to toy around with the most powerful Snapdragon X Elite CPU available — the X1E-00-1DE, which isn’t available on any consumer device and has over 100 watts of power at its disposal.
May turned into June, and finally, in July, orders for the kit went live with retailer Arrow. YouTuber Jeff Geerling placed an order then, with promised that the dev kit would show up the next day. It didn’t. The shipping timeline slipped into September, and it looks like Geerling was one of the first to get a dev kit at all. Just two weeks after getting the device, Geerling received an email from Arrow:
“The Developer Kit product comprehensively has not met our usual standards of excellence and so we are reaching out to let you know that, unfortunately, we have made the decision to pause this product and the support of it, indefinitely.”
In the comments, multiple users said they received the same email on the same day, or within a few days of, the dev kit showing up in the mail. Geerling already had a chance to test out the dev kit and found it surprisingly capable, though disappointing as a developer-only product. The intent of a developer kit like this is to give hardware to software developers in order to make apps for Windows on Arm as Qualcomm tries to court developers to bring apps from x86 over to Arm.
It’s not clear why Qualcomm made the move. In June, the company made it clear that it has ambitions far beyond laptops, and the developer kit was a step in that direction. Maybe Qualcomm struggled to get its chips under control in a high-performance setting, or perhaps the cost of producing the kit wasn’t worth it to the company. Regardless of the reason, the cancellation is a major setback for the company.
Google just dropped its latest AI model, Gemini 4 Carbon, designed to tackle complex coding jobs and cybersecurity threats. The company claims it can work through difficult engineering problems for days, finding hidden bugs and developing fixes across large codebases.
Gemini 4 Carbon also takes the top spot on Artificial Analysis' updated Intelligence Index, scoring 59 points, pushing out Claude Opus 5.5, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, and even its own predecessor Gemini 4 Argon.
Apple has just introduced a redesigned MacBook Pro with a few bells and whistles. The focus this time around is on a thinner and lighter build, and an upgrade to a touch-sensitive OLED screen without any ugly notch. And, in case you were wondering, there is definitely a price premium to pay for these niceties, which also include a glowing Apple logo at the back. What if you wanted to get the best that Apple has to offer? Well, the numbers are finally here.
For a mere $14,549, you can get yourself the fully kitted 16-inch MacBook Pro PROLED XDR with the beefiest laptop chip that Apple has to offer, and the best memory configuration in tow. For nearly $15,000, you treat yourself to the 16-inch version of the laptop with a nano-texture glass layer on the screen to reduce reflections and glare.
Apple has unveiled its first-ever touchscreen MacBook Pro. The company seems a bit confused about the naming, calling it the "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display," which is tough to remember. If you look past that and review the full spec sheets, you might ask a genuine question: what are the differences between the touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions?
Given that Apple continues to sell both variants together, that's a genuine question. Luckily, you don't have to spend more time lining up the spec sheets side by side and hunting for differences hidden in the fine print. I took that bullet for you. Here's everything that's different between the PROLED XDR Display and the regular MacBook Pro.