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Apple’s Business-Oriented “Mac Notebook Upgrade Program” Has Been Discontinued

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An Apple ad highlighting its $30 per month Mac upgrade program
Image: @MaxWinebach

Apple partnered with a bank in 2021 to let small businesses lease new M1 Macs for as low as $30 per month, with easy options to upgrade if and when more powerful devices are released. Now that’s no longer being offered, and businesses that had signed up will now have to sign up for a different program from CIT Group, the bank Apple partnered with, or go another route to get their computers.

A business that reached out to The Verge shared an email from CIT Group (aka First Citizens Bank) confirming the Mac Upgrade Program has ended. Now the bank is requesting the business to switch to its FMV lease or continue to lease the equipment at the same monthly rate — though it would run indefinitely with no buyout option. The Verge contacted both…

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Three Months Later, Epic Is Still Silent About Free “Unreal Tournament 3 X”

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Gritty sci-fi warriors running with space guns.
Image: Epic Games

Remember when I told you how Epic Games accidentally revealed a new version of 2007’s Unreal Tournament 3 that would be completely free on Steam, EGS and GOG with “no microtransactions and no strings attached?” That was three months ago. Unreal Tournament 3 X still hasn’t been announced, and the company still declines to confirm or deny whether it’s happening at all.

“Thank you for checking in. We have no new information to share on this,” Epic Games comms director Dana Cowley tells The Verge.

As of this writing, an extensive description of the unreleased Unreal Tournament 3 X still appears on Steam. I check almost daily, and I don’t think the page has changed at all in the past three months. The game’s apparently been in the works…

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Google-Backed Anthropic Launches Claude, An AI Chatbot That’s Easier To Talk To

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An image showing a repeating pattern of brain illustrations
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company founded by ex-OpenAI employees, has launched its AI chatbot, Claude. While the tool does much of what OpenAI’s ChatGPT can, Anthropic says its early clients report the tool’s “less likely to produce harmful outputs” and is “easier to converse with.”

Like OpenAI, Anthropic also has big tech backing: Google invested $300 million into Anthropic in February. The company’s chatbot — similar to ChatGPT — can provide summaries, answer questions, provide assistance with writing, and generate code. You can also tweak the chatbot’s tone, personality, and behavior, which sounds a bit more comprehensive than the “creative, balanced, and precise” settings Bing’s chatbot offers.

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Will You Be The Bearer Of Magic: The Gathering’s One Ring?

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Image from the Magic: The Gathering Card the One Ring featuring a close up of a gold ring with Elvish script engraved in it.
Image: Wizards of the Coast

I’m usually immune to the charms of Magic: The Gathering’s special crossover sets (although the Bob Ross lands collection almost got me). But this Lord of the Rings-themed collection has pretty much obliterated all of my willpower because these cards are. so. frigging. cool!

I love seeing Frodo and Sam and Aragorn and Arwen rendered in cards that pay homage to their personalities and their big hero moments in the story. I think it’s really clever that Sam’s card, Samwise the Stouthearted, can be flashed in at any time and will return a dead creature to the battlefield, just like when he showed up to rescue Frodo from Shelob’s clutches.

Image: Wizards of the Coast

The card for Tom Bombadil — who is either whimsical…

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