It’s the start of a new year, which means a new crop of creative works have entered the public domain. Today, many materials copyrighted in 1929, along with sound recordings from 1924, have become fair game to freely adapt, reuse, copy, and share. The Center for the Public Domain at Duke Law School collected some of the more notable properties that enter the public domain with the start of 2025.
This is a big year for film, with many major directors debuting their first projects with sound, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail and Cecil B. DeMille’s Dynamite. 1929 was also the year that Walt Disney directed the iconic Skeleton Dance short, animated by Ub Iwerks, as well as when Mickey Mouse starred in his first talkie. The intrepid Tintin and original Popeye characters have also entered the public domain.
Many great song compositions entered the public domain today. There are classical hits like the jazz standards Ain’t Misbehavin’ and (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue as well as memorable show tunes like Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris and the masterwork Bolero. On the recording side are tracks like George Gershwin’s beautiful Rhapsody in Blue and legendary singer Marian Anderson’s cloudy My Way.
Finally, there were titles from several authors in the Duke Law roundup. Noir fans will be happy to see Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest here.
Other notable literary works now in the public domain include A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie, and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. And for poetry lovers, the original German version of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is also on the list.
Laptops are evolving rapidly, with some new models using AI-powered features that adapt to your usage and improve performance in real-time. These AI PCs can optimize battery life, manage power across tasks, and even boost webcam quality during video calls. While AI integration in laptops is still relatively new, it’s a feature worth looking into if you’re looking to future-proof your setup. Plus, it’s exciting to see how these AI-powered PCs can handle everything from productivity to entertainment, offering smart adjustments and enhancements that can make our digital lives a little easier.
Of all the notebooks we’ve tested and reviewed recently, we consider Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air M3 to be the best laptop for most people, and that’s the case for our top picks to start the new year. It’s powerful enough to handle most tasks (even light video editing); it has a great screen and built-in speakers; And its battery can last for about 20 hours (depending on what you’re doing, of course).
The MacBook Air M3 is also one of the lightest and thinnest systems we’ve reviewed, and it’s dead quiet thanks to its fan-less design. Although Apple recently introduced its new M4 chip in the iPad Pro, we won’t see it in the MacBook Air until next year. For now, the MacBook Air M3 is still a great laptop to buy, especially if you need a machine with good battery life.
Of course, not everyone wants a MacBook, and there are excellent Windows laptops and Chromebooks out there, too. Windows systems offer a variety of configurations, from budget to high-end UHD screens with stunning IPS panels that boast high nits of brightness. Chromebooks, on the other hand, are more affordable and are great for users who work mostly online. Whether you need a powerhouse for creative work, a compact system for note taking, or a laptop that can handle movie night with the family, today’s laptop market has something for everyone.
The latest MacBook Air ticks a lot of boxes: not only is it our top pick for the best laptop available now, but we also consider it the best laptop for college students and the best MacBook for most people. Apple hasn’t changed much with the latest iteration, but that’s to be expected since the previous entry was the most significant redesign in nearly a decade.
The new 13-inch MacBook Air has a faster M3 chip, as well as the ability to drive dual external monitors (but only when the lid is closed) and support for Wi-Fi 6E. There’s even a fingerprint free finish for the black “Midnight” model that actually works!
It’s hard to improve on a laptop we previously considered nearly perfect, but a new chip certainly helps. The M3 processor is about 20 percent faster than the M2 for both single-core and multi-core tasks, and it offers a significant GPU bump as well as support for real-time ray tracing. Battery life remains best in class, with enough juice to last you several work days without a charger.