John Misczak

Way back in 2016, I initially tried out an ultrawide monitor in hopes of simplifying my desk setup. Instead of running two different monitors connected to a desktop and my work laptop, I thought a single 34” ultrawide one would clean up a lot of cables. I bought a Dell U3415W because it was one of the few monitors at the time that had a built-in KVM for switching between my two computers. And for several years this worked great! My display cable and power cable clutter got cut in half, and it allowed me to run everything off the monitor’s USB hub instead of keeping a separate one.

Exactly one week ago, Tim Cook broke the news that Apple would be raising the prices of its products due to the rising costs of memory and storage brought on by the AI industry’s insatiable data center demand and growth. Many in the industry thought that these prices would arrive when new iterations of each product shipped - for example, with the new iPhone during its annual September launch. We didn’t have to speculate long, however, as the other shoe dropped today, with Apple announcing price increases for Macs, iPads, Apple TVs, and HomePods.

Way back in November of 2025, Valve made several hardware announcements that seemed to build on its previous releases. A new Steam Controller which took a lot of notes from the popular but still niche Steam Deck; a new VR headset called the Steam Frame that could connect to your PC wirelessly; and their second attempt at cracking the home theater PC/console market called the Steam Machine.