Valve has added Steam Gift Cards to its enormously popular digital storefront. It’s now possible to send Steam currency to another user as a gift, giving them the option to buy whatever content they like.
In the United States, these gift cards are available in $5, $10, $25, $50, and $100 increments. If you purchase funds for someone in another region, they’ll be automatically converted into the appropriate local currency, according to a report from Eurogamer.
There are a couple of small caveats. You can only send a gift card to someone that you’ve been friends with for at least three days, to prevent any improper usage. The purchase page on the Steam strorefront also states that it’s not possible to use existing wallet funds to pay for the vouchers.
Even though digital game downloads are commonplace at this point, certain storefronts still have some rather archaic limitations when it comes to gifting content. For instance, despite how many users purchase new releases via the Xbox Store, it’s only this month that Insider program members have started testing out the capacity to gift software to a friend – and there’s no word on when the ability to send them a discrete sum of money might arrive, if there are even plans to enable that.
In many ways, Steam is ahead of the curve because it has been around for so long. That being said, Valve has continued to make changes over the course of its lifespan, because it’s far from a perfect service in its current form.
In May 2017, the company decreed that it would no longer be possible for users to send gifts to another user’s inventory, or to their email address. While this might seem like the opposite of a user-friendly gesture, Valve has a responsibility to ensure that resellers aren’t setting up something of a black market with Steam serving as the foundation – and in this case, that meant a little less flexibility when it comes to gifting.
Thankfully, this addition to the way that users can send gifts to one another makes things more accommodating, rather than less so. It’s always nice to receive a gift that someone has picked out for you, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to decide for yourself.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
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.