If you’re downloading the installer from within macOS Tahoe, you’ll see a pop-up when the download completes, telling you that the installer can’t be run from within that version of macOS. Since we’ll be running it off of its own USB stick, you can safely ignore this message.

Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer.

Andrew Cunningham

Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer. Andrew Cunningham

A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once.

Andrew Cunningham

A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once. Andrew Cunningham

Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer. Andrew Cunningham

A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once. Andrew Cunningham

While the installer is downloading, install and prepare your USB drive. Open Disk Utility, click the View button, and select “show all devices.” Click the root of your USB drive under the “external” header in the left sidebar, and click the Erase button in the upper-right control area.

Change the disk’s name to whatever you want—I use “MyVolume” so I don’t have to change Apple’s sample terminal commands when copying the installer files—and make sure the Format is set to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map. (That’s not an error; the macOS installer still wants an HFS+ filesystem rather than APFS.)

The handy thing is that if you have a larger USB drive, you can create installers for multiple macOS versions by partitioning the disk with the Partition button. A 64GB drive split into three ~21GB partitions could boot Tahoe, Sequoia, and another past or future macOS version; I just have it split into two volumes so I can boot Sequoia and Tahoe installers from the same drive.

Running the Terminal command to create our macOS 15 Sequoia boot drive.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Once the Sequoia installer is in your Applications folder, run a Terminal command to copy the installer files. Apple has commands for each version of macOS on this page. Use this one for Sequoia:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sequoia.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

If you named the USB drive something other than MyVolume when you formatted it, change the name in the command as well. Note that names with spaces require a backslash before each space.

The Terminal will prompt you for your password and ask you to type Y to confirm. It will then reformat the drive and copy the files over. The time this takes will vary depending on the speed of the USB drive you’re using, but for most USB 3 drives, it should only take a few minutes to create the installer. When the Terminal command is done running, leave the disk inserted and shut down your Mac.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/how-to-downgrade-from-macos-26-tahoe-on-a-new-mac/

The iPhone 17e

Apple would let the old iPhone SE languish for at least a couple years between updates, but it’s apparently taking a different tack with the “e” iPhones.

The main star of this refresh is a new chip, which will supposedly be upgraded from an Apple A18 to an A19. It’s also said to be picking up MagSafe charging support, making it compatible with Apple-made and third-party accessories that magnetically clamp to the back of other iPhones.

Other than that, the rumor mill suggests that the 17e will stick with its notched screen rather than a Dynamic Island, and we’d be surprised to see it move beyond its basic one-lens camera. Assuming Apple sticks with the same $599 starting price, though, there will still be some awkward overlap between the iPhone 16 and the regular iPhone 17.

The iPad Air

Do you like the current iPad Air with the Apple M3? Or the last one with the Apple M2?

That’s lucky for you, because a next-generation iPad Air is likely to continue in the same vein, picking up a new chip but not changing much else. If you’re holding out for something more exciting, like improved screen technology, you’ll likely be disappointed.

There’s no word on whether the M4 might come with any other internal upgrades, like more RAM or increased storage in the base model. Either or both of those could spice up an otherwise straightforward update.

Other possibilities

Apple could update the remaining M4 family MacBook Pros (pictured) with M5 family replacements.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Apple could choose to refresh almost any of its Macs next week—only the low-end MacBook Pro has an M5 chip, and it has been at least a year since the rest of the lineup was last updated. There’s no refresh that would come as a true surprise, excepting maybe the Mac Pro that Apple has allegedly put “on the back burner” (again).

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/what-new-hardware-to-expect-from-apple-next-week/

With Nano Banana 2, Google promises consistency for up to five characters at a time, along with accurate rendering of as many as 14 different objects per workflow. This, along with richer textures and “vibrant” lighting will aid in visual storytelling with Nano Banana 2. Google is also expanding the range of available aspect ratios and resolutions, from 512px square up to 4K widescreen.

So what can you do with Nano Banana 2? Google has provided some example images with associated prompts. These are, of course, handpicked images, but Nano Banana has been a popular image model for good reason. This degree of improvement seems believable based on past iterations of Nano Banana.

Prompt: High-quality flat lay photography creating a DIY infographic that simply explains how the water cycle works, arranged on a clean, light gray textured background. The visual story flows from left to right in clear steps. Simple, clean black arrows are hand-drawn onto the background to guide the viewer’s eye. The overall mood is educational, modern, and easy to understand. The image is shot from a top-down, bird’s-eye view with soft, even lighting that minimizes shadows and keeps the focus on the process.

Credit: Google

Prompt: Create an image of Museum Clos Lucé. In the style of bright colored Synthetic Cubism. No text. Your plan is to first search for visual references, and generate after. Aspect ratio 16:9.

Credit: Google

Create an image of these 14 characters and items having fun at the farm. The overall atmosphere is fun, silly and joyful. It is strictly important to keep identity consistent of all the 14 characters and items.

Credit: Google

Google must be pretty confident in this model’s capabilities because it will be the only one available going forward. Starting now, Nano Banana 2 will replace both the standard and Pro variants of Nano Banana across the Gemini app, search, AI Studio, Vertex AI, and Flow.

In the Gemini app and on the website, Nano Banana 2 will be the image generator for the Fast, Thinking, and Pro settings. It’s possible there will eventually be a Nano Banana 2 Pro—Google tends to release elements of new model families one at a time. For now, it’s all “Flash” Image.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/google-releases-nano-banana-2-ai-image-generator-promises-pro-results-with-flash-speed/

There used to be countless companies making flagship Android phones, but a combination of factors has narrowed the field over time. Today, Samsung is the undisputed king of the Android device ecosystem with its Galaxy S line. So we can safely assume today’s Unpacked has revealed the most popular Android phones for the next year—the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26.

Samsung didn’t swing for the fences this time around, producing phones with a few cosmetic tweaks and upgraded internals. Meanwhile, Samsung is investing even more in AI, saying the S26 series includes the first “Agentic AI phones.” Despite limited hardware upgrades, the realities of component prices in the age of AI mean the prices of the two cheaper models have gone up by $100 this year. The Ultra remains at an already eye-watering $1,300.

Faster and more private

Looking at the Galaxy S26 family, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart from last year’s phones. The camera surround is different, and the measurements of the smallest and largest phone are ever so slightly different. You probably won’t be able to tell just by looking, but the S26 Ultra has regressed from titanium to aluminum, a reversion Apple also made with its latest high-end phones. This phone also retains its S Pen stylus.

These phones will again have the latest Snapdragon flagship processor (in North America, Japan, and China) with customizations exclusive to Samsung. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy is a 3 nm chip with third-gen Oryon CPU cores, an Adreno 840 GPU, and a powerful Hexagon NPU for on-device AI processing. Samsung promises double-digit performance gains across the board, which is what we hear every year.

Samsung flagship phones have extremely fast hardware, so they benchmark well. However, they also tend to heat up and throttle quickly during sustained use. Perhaps that won’t be as much of a problem with the S26 series. Samsung says it has implemented its largest vapor chamber ever to better control temperatures.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/samsung-reveals-galaxy-s26-lineup-with-privacy-display-and-exclusive-gemini-smarts/

In an illustration of the severity of the current memory shortage, HP Inc. CFO Karen Parkhill said that RAM has gone from accounting for “roughly 15 percent to 18 percent” of HP PCs’ bill of materials in its fiscal Q4 2025 to “roughly 35 percent” for the rest of the year.

Parkhill was speaking during HP’s Q1 2026 earnings call, where the company said it expects the total addressable market for its Personal Systems business to decline by double digits this calendar year, as higher prices hurt customer demand.

“We have seen memory costs increase roughly 100 percent sequentially, and we do forecast that to further increase as we move into the fiscal year,” Parkhill said, per a transcript of the call by Seeking Alpha.

HP expects its financials to be most severely impacted by the RAM shortage in the second half of its fiscal year.

“We are seeing increased input costs driven primarily by the rising prices of DRAM and NAND,” Bruce Broussard, HP’s interim CEO and director, said. “We expect this volatility to remain throughout fiscal [year 2026] and likely into fiscal [year 2027].”

RAM shortage drives higher prices, lower specs

HP’s CFO noted that a third of the margin for HP’s Personal Systems business comes from non-RAM-related categories, including IT services and peripherals. However, HP has also raised PC prices to keep making money while paying significantly more for RAM.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/ram-now-represents-35-percent-of-bill-of-materials-for-hp-pcs/

Paramount Skydance increased its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) from $30 per share to $31 per share, WBD said today. Amid a competing offer from Netflix for WBD’s movie studios and streaming businesses, WBD said that Paramount’s new bid “could reasonably be expected to lead to a ‘Company Superior Proposal.’”

Under its revamped offer, Paramount would also pay the $7 billion regulatory termination fee that would arise should a Paramount-WBD merger fail to close due to antitrust regulation.

The company owned by David Ellison also said it would pay $0.25 per share for every day the deal doesn’t close, starting on September 30, rather than the previous start date of December 31.

Paramount previously agreed to pay the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would be subject to if it canceled its merger deal with Netflix.

Netflix has offered $27.75 per share for a smaller part of WBD’s overall business. Netflix is looking to pay all-cash for WBD’s film studios, intellectual property, HBO, and streaming services, including HBO Max, but not any of WBD’s other cable channels.

WBD’s board has not decided if Paramount’s revamped offer is better than what Netflix has offered. If the board makes that determination, Netflix will have four days to present a better offer.

It’s unclear if Netflix would be willing to pay more for WBD’s streaming and movie businesses than what it’s already offered. The streaming giant hasn’t commented on Paramount’s new offer yet, but on Friday, co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Variety that the people in charge of Netflix are “super-disciplined buyers.”

“We have a reputation for such so that I’m willing to walk away and let someone else overpay for things. We have a rich history of that,” he added.

Regardless of the ultimate buyer, any WBD merger is expected to face intense regulatory scrutiny, lead to higher subscription prices, and have a lasting impact on Hollywood.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/paramount-increases-its-warner-bros-discovery-bid-by-1-per-share/

DJI, the most popular consumer drone maker, is suing over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s import ban against new, foreign-made drones, which has been in effect since December 23, 2025.

On Tuesday, the Shenzhen-headquartered company filed a petition [PDF] with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that seeks to overturn the FCC’s decision to list DJI on its Covered List. The Covered List includes communications equipment and services that are “deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons,” per the FCC.

In its petition dated February 20, 2026, DJI said:

Petitioners seek review of the Ruling on the ground that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority, failed to observe statutorily required procedures, and violated the Fifth Amendment when it purported to add DJI’s products to the Covered List. Petitioners respectfully request his Court hold unlawful, vacate, enjoin, and set aside the Ruling and grant any other relief that the Court finds proper.

In January, the FCC exempted a limited number of foreign-made drones, including some coming from Europe, until the end of this year. The FCC also provided exemptions for some foreign-made critical drone components, including those from Japanese companies Sony and Panasonic, and South Korean company Samsung. The FCC hasn’t exempted any drones or drone parts made in China.

In a December 22 statement, the FCC said that “criminals, hostile foreign actors, and terrorists can use [drones] to present new and serious threats to our homeland.” The FCC said at the time that it made its decision about the ban after a review by an Executive Branch interagency body review that it said had “appropriate national security expertise” and “was convened by the White House.”

DJI reportedly requested that the US government audit its devices multiple times before the US issued the import ban.

In a company statement shared with Bloomberg today, DJI said:

Despite repeated efforts to engage with the government, DJI has never been given the chance to provide information to address or refute any concerns. These procedural and substantive deficiencies violate the Constitution and federal law.

In a statement to Reuters today, DJI also said that the FCC’s decision “carelessly restricts DJI’s business in the US and summarily denies U.S. customers access to its latest technology.”

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/dji-sues-the-fcc-for-carelessly-restricting-its-drones/

Su said the warrant structure would help “make sure that we are always a clear seat at the table when [Meta] are thinking about what they need next.”

Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he expected AMD to be “an important partner for many years to come.”

Meta has said that it will almost double its AI infrastructure spending this year to as much as $135 billion, as US tech giants rush to build the data centers to train and run AI software. It is already one of AMD’s biggest AI chip customers.

“We don’t believe that a single silicon solution will work for all of our workloads,” said Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure. “There’s a place for Nvidia, there’s a place for AMD and… there’s a place for our own custom silicon as well. We need all three.”

Under the deal, AMD will build a custom version of its MI450 AI chips for Meta. They will be used primarily for “inference” workloads, the process of running models after they have been trained.

The chips need 6 gigawatts of power—equivalent to the amount required by 5 million US households for a year.

Increasingly creative funding arrangements to support massive AI infrastructure build-outs have emerged in recent years, leading to warnings about circular financing.

AMD has, for example, helped data center builder Crusoe secure a $300 million loan from Goldman Sachs by offering a backstop guaranteeing the use of its chips if Crusoe is unable to find customers after installing them in an Ohio facility.

Tech giants such as Meta, historically flush with cash, are meanwhile facing the prospect of tapping bond and equity markets or stemming capital returns to shareholders to help fund their unprecedented infrastructure plans. The Facebook and Instagram parent raised $30 billion in October, marking its biggest bond sale to date.

© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/meta-could-end-up-owning-of-10-amd-in-new-chip-deal/

Panasonic, once revered for its plasma TVs, is giving up on making its own TV sets. Today, it announced that Chinese company Skyworth will take over manufacturing, marketing, and selling Panasonic-branded TVs.

Skyworth is a Shenzhen-headquartered TV brand. The company claims to be “a top three global provider of the Android TV platform.” In July, research firm Omdia reported that Skyworth was one of the top-five TV brands by sales revenue in Q1 2025; however, Skyworth hasn’t been able to maintain that position regularly.

Panasonic made its announcement at a “launch event,” FlatpanelsHD reported today. During the event, a Panasonic representative reportedly said:

Under the agreement the new partner will lead sales, marketing, and logistics across the region, while Panasonic provide expertise and quality assurance to uphold its renowned audiovisual standards with full joint development on top-end OLED models.

Panasonic also said that it will provide support “for all Panasonic TVs sold up to March 2026 and all those available from April.”

Skyworth-made Panasonic TVs will be sold in the US and Europe. In the latter geography, the companies are aiming for double-digit market share.

Panasonic’s wavering TV business

Panasonic has been wavering on its commitment to the TV business for at least 12 years.

When plasma ruled the living room, Panasonic dominated the market. In 2010, Panasonic controlled 40.7 percent of the plasma panel market, beating Samsung (33.7 percent) and LG (23.2 percent), according to research from consultancy DisplaySearch. But in March 2014, Panasonic quit making plasma TVs, pointing to increasing interest in flat-screen LCD TVs and economic challenges derived from the bankruptcy of global investment bank Lehman Brothers. At the time, Panasonic reportedly hadn’t made money off of its popular, high-contrast plasma TVs for years.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/panasonic-the-former-plasma-king-will-no-longer-make-its-own-tvs/

Some of the changes—like the removal of individual worlds from the VR store—are presented by the company as efforts to make the store a better discovery platform for third-party developers.

In general, Meta frames many of its recent moves as a pivot away from first-party development of VR experiences to a focus on a third-party developer ecosystem, with stats like “86% of the effective time people spend in their VR headsets is with third-party apps.”

“We’ll continue to support the third-party community through strategic partnerships and targeted investments—as we have since the beginning,” writes Meta Reality Labs VP of Content Samantha Ryan.

Meta launched a Horizon Worlds mobile app last year and found it attracted an influx of new users interested in the service’s social gaming aspects, except for the VR element. It seems that the mobile launch was successful enough to merit focusing the entire service on that platform and audience, rather than shutting it down amid the other closures of internal content projects.

As far as we know, Meta plans to continue to design, make, and sell VR hardware and maintain the storefronts that third-party developers sell on for those platforms. It won’t make much content in-house, and you don’t see much talk about the promise of an all-encompassing, transformational metaverse anymore.

Instead, Meta’s speculative investment appears focused on smart glasses, as well as AI models, technologies, and applications.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/metas-flagship-metaverse-service-leaves-vr-behind/