It’s been a good year for Apple. The thin, light iPhone Air was the biggest redesign that the iPhone had in years, and the Apple Watch‘s extended battery life was a step forward on a feature that the company had been working on for years. Resizable and movable windows have turned the iPad into a much more usable work computer, and Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 are better than ever. If you’re an Apple fan, many of your everyday items have gotten easier and better to use. Even better, there are a handful of great October Prime Day Apple deals that will also make them more affordable.

Of course, that means if you haven’t upgraded your Apple devices in some time, it’s time to rotate in some fresh gear. (I myself am still holding on to an original iPad mini from 2012.) Here’s the best Apple gear that’s discounted on Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, with the caveat that you need Amazon Prime membership to buy it. If you’re on the fence, here’s our guide to the best Amazon Prime perks. Be sure to see the rest of our Prime Big Deal Days coverage.

Updated 3:41 AM EST: We’ve added a batch of fresh deals from day 2 of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days.

WIRED Featured Deals

The Apple Watch Series 10 Is on Sale

Hear me out: I think the upgraded battery life on this year’s Watch Series 11 (from 18 hours to a full 24) is an important enough upgrade that you should just consider going straight to this year’s watch. It makes all of the health features in WatchOS 26 much more useful, especially this year’s Sleep Score. (Formerly, many people I knew would not sleep with their Apple Watches because it’s too annoying to wake up with a drained watch.) However, this is a not-inconsiderable discount on a watch that is still a slim, attractive, full-featured fitness tracker.

Almost the Lowest Price on the Best iPad

Do you want an iPad this year? I’m almost convinced that this year’s iPad OS upgrades would make an iPad setup so much lighter and easier for travel. (I’d be able to work and watch movies in bed!) It’s important to note, however, this iPad does not support Apple Intelligence and only works with the first-generation Apple Pencil. In which case, you’ll want …

An Upgraded iPad

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

The iPad Air is our upgrade pick that supports Apple Intelligence, has 5G connectivity, and supports some of the newest accessories. Perhaps it is expensive for an ancillary tablet; however, this is positively a bargain price for a brand-new work computer.

The Best Work Computer

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

Apple

MacBook Air (M4, 2025)

Or you could get the work computer that we all have. I’m writing this on a MacBook Air right now. It’s at the top of both our Best Laptops and Best MacBooks guides, and it has plenty of onboard RAM. Unless you edit video or produce music for a living, you probably don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on the M4 Pro or M4 Max chips. (Although you can always check our buying guide, just to be sure.)

A Couple of Headphones

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

Pretty much the only thing that’s wrong with the AirPods Max is that they’re some of the more expensive wireless headphones that we’ve tried. But even though they came out in 2020, they’re still the best headphones for iPhone users, with a noticeably excellent build quality, and they very rarely go on sale.

Photograph: Christopher Null

Apple

AirPods Pro 2 (With USB-C)

The AirPods Pro 2 are also on a very steep discount. They don’t fit quite as well as the newest AirPods Pro 3, which I would say are the best-fitting AirPods that I’ve ever tried. But their performance and features are still better than plenty of the other earbuds we test.

More Apple Accessories

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.

A new one‑step, water‑, acid‑, and alkali‑free method for extracting high‑purity lithium from spodumene ore has the potential to transform critical metal processing and enhance renewable energy supply chains. The study is published in Science Advances.

As the demand for lithium continues to rise, particularly for use in electric cars, smartphones and power storage, current extraction methods are struggling to keep pace. Extracting lithium from salty water is a lengthy process, and traditional methods that use heat and chemicals to extract lithium from rock produce significant amounts of harmful waste.

Researchers led by James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University, have developed a faster and cleaner method using flash Joule heating (FJH). This technique rapidly heats materials to thousands of degrees within milliseconds and works in conjunction with chlorine gas, exposing the rock to intense heat and chlorine gas, they can quickly convert spodumene ore into usable lithium.

“This method reimagines how to harvest lithium from its most abundant ore, spodumene, a material that is abundant in the U.S.,” said Tour, co‑corresponding author of the study. “We can leapfrog monthslong water evaporation pools and dayslong acid leaching and then directly generate lithium chloride.”

Hypothesis, experiments and the novelty of approach

Guided by thermodynamic calculations, the researchers exposed α‑spodumene, a naturally occurring hard‑rock lithium mineral, to FJH and chlorine gas. This one‑step process eliminates the need for the traditional multistep acid roasting method, allowing lithium to be extracted directly as lithium chloride.

With a flash of electrical current, the mineral shifted from its stable α‑phase to the high temperature‑accessed β‑phase, making lithium available for reaction with chlorine gas. The lithium then vaporized as lithium chloride, while aluminum and silicon compounds were left behind. All of this was complete within seconds.

“Present techniques rely on multistep, chemically intensive treatments,” said study co‑corresponding author Yufeng Zhao, an associate professor of physics at Corban University and visiting professor at Rice. “The unique aspect of this method is the combination of rapid, uniform heating and favorable thermodynamics, which together enable practical and selective extraction.”

Traditional methods, from acid roasting to brine evaporation, simply weren’t designed for ultrafast separation, said Shichen Xu, the first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Rice.

“Our controlled, rapid‑heating approach overcomes kinetic barriers that have hindered single‑step extraction for decades,” Xu said.

Findings and broader significance

The researchers achieved nearly instantaneous lithium extraction from spodumene, producing lithium chloride with 97% purity and 94% recovery, significantly outperforming traditional methods that can take days to months.

“This method paves the way for local, small‑footprint lithium processing units or large‑scale units for massive waste mining operations,” said Justin Sharp, co‑first author and research assistant. “It’s a real paradigm shift. We can now envision battery‑grade lithium production without acids, without large waste outputs and without waiting weeks.”

Additionally, a startup from Tour’s lab, Flash Metals U.S., is already scaling this technology for metals extraction from waste.

“They would be able to rapidly implement this method into their production line once their pilot plant begins operation early next year,” Sharp said.

Environmentally, the elimination of acid and alkali significantly reduces waste burden. Economically, shorter processing times and simpler infrastructure could lower costs and decentralize lithium supply. Academically, the work demonstrates the rapid, acid‑free extraction of lithium from natural ore, raising possibilities for applying FJH and chlorine gas to other strategic minerals.

Co‑authors of the study include Rice’s Alex Lathem, Qiming Liu, Lucas Eddy, Weiqiang Chen, Karla Silva, Shihui Chen, Bowen Li, Tengda Si, Jaeho Shin, Chi Hun Choi, Yimo Han, Kai Gong and Boris Yakobson, along with Yufeng Zhao from Corban University.