The Verge

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge The word of the day in US v. Google was parking." As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google's dominance? That is a central question of the government's entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.To kick off the second week of the landmark antitrust trial over Google's control of online advertising, the Department of Justice called Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube and a longtime Google advertising executive. Mohan came to Google in 2008 through Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, which formed the basis of Google's... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.The launch comes as part of Monday's iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store - and several other alternative app marketplaces - launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.

Illustration: The Verge Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google's search results will include an updated about this image feature" to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the largest groups trying to address AI-generated imagery. C2PA's authentication is a technical standard that includes information about where images originate and works across both hardware and software to create a digital trail. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, OpenAI, Intel, Truepic, and Google... Continue reading...

Image: Meta Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into Teen Accounts" - a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.For starters, the accounts of all minors on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come with some of Instagram's existing restrictions for young users, such as those that prevent strangers from direct messaging them. But other new features are coming, too, including a Sleep Mode that silences notifications from 10PM to 7AM.This really standardizes a lot of the... Continue reading...

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives?Apple's high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch's digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic - still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn't sit still; alternatives from Sony, Bose, and more recently, Sonos, all offer comparable features and sound - most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does... Continue reading...

Setapp Mobile is now available in open beta in the EU following invite-only testing. | Image: Setapp The Setapp Mobile alternative app store is now available in open beta for iPhone users in the European Union, featuring 50 different productivity- and lifestyle-focused apps at launch. While most of these apps, like the Tripsy itinerary planner and MindNode mind mapping tool, are already available on the official iOS App Store, Setapp creator MacPaw says its own platform provides a simplified user experience and a fair, performance-based compensation model for app developers.Setapp was originally released as an app marketplace for macOS before the company launched a mobile version for iOS users. Setapp Mobile launched as a closed beta in May, shortly after the European Union's Digital Markets Act forced Apple to start allowing iPhones... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It's official: Amazon's second Prime Day event of the year will take place at the beginning of October. The two-day shopping event - which Amazon is calling Prime Big Deal Days for the second year in a row - will begin at 12:01AM PT / 3:01AM ET on Tuesday, October 8th, and run through Wednesday, October 9th, the company announced on Tuesday.Like last year, Amazon is running the 48-hour promo in an attempt to jumpstart the holiday shopping season, giving Amazon Prime members another chance outside of Prime Day proper to save on everything from home goods to everyday essentials. Although we typically see the lowest sale prices during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon's fall sale often provides solid deals on a range of tech, including... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images TikTok - an app used to by 170 million Americans - now has its future resting in the hands of three judges. The company fought for its life during oral arguments on Monday only for the judges to express a great deal of skepticism towards TikTok's case.Attorneys for TikTok and a group of creators suing to block the law popularly known as the TikTok ban" made their case before a panel of three judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Though the bill seeks a divestment of the app from its Chinese owner ByteDance by a January 19th deadline, the company says the ultimatum is in truth a ban that would stifle the speech of TikTok and its creators, and improperly limit the information Americans are able to receive.The Department of Justice... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge OpenAI is turning its Safety and Security Committee into an independent Board oversight committee" that has the authority to delay model launches over safety concerns, according to an OpenAI blog post. The committee made the recommendation to make the independent board after a recent 90-day review of OpenAI's safety and security-related processes and safeguards."The committee, which is chaired by Zico Kolter and includes Adam D'Angelo, Paul Nakasone, and Nicole Seligman, will be briefed by company leadership on safety evaluations for major model releases, and will, along with the full board, exercise oversight over model launches, including having the authority to delay a release until safety concerns are addressed," OpenAI says.... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images JD Vance almost gave the game away. In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday, the Republican vice presidential candidate came close to acknowledging that rumors about Haitian migrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, are completely fabricated - and then backtracked, saying the rumors are true after all.If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do," Vance said. When Bash asked him to clarify whether he created the story, Vance made an about-face, claiming he had heard firsthand accounts" from his constituents. I say that we're creating a story meaning that we're creating the American media focusing on it," Vance... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel is spinning off its chipmaking business as part of its plans to reverse billions in losses and a tumbling stock price. In an announcement on Monday, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the Intel Foundry will become an independent subsidiary with clearer separation and independence" from Intel.With the change, the Intel Foundry will have its own operating board and report its financial earnings separately from Intel. Intel will also stop work on the factories it's building in Poland and Germany for two years based on anticipated market demand." The company is still moving forward with its plants in Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and Ohio, however.Additionally, Intel plans on selling part of its stake in Altera, the programmable chip... Continue reading...

With iOS 18 and Halide's recent update, the third-party camera app can now be opened without unlocking an iPhone. | Image: Sebastiaan de With Halide users who've upgraded their iPhones to iOS 18 are now able to quickly access the advanced camera app directly from their phone's lockscreen without having to unlock it first. Previously, only the native iOS camera app could be conveniently accessed that way.Although Halide offers advanced features like manual shutter speed adjustments and a Process Zero" option that delivers images without any AI processing, accessing Apple's camera app was always faster thanks to its lockscreen shortcut. Halide could be made accessible through a lockscreen widget, but actually getting into the third-party camera app required an iPhone to be unlocked using Face ID, Touch ID, or by entering a passcode. Screenshot: Halide H... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon employees will be required to return to the office five days per week starting on January 2nd, 2025.We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," CEO Andy Jassy says in a memo sent to staff on Monday. Employees have been required to work from the office three days per week since May 2023, and Jassy says that if anything, the last 15 months we've been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits."Jassy says that staffers won't have to be in the office to deal with things like a sick kid or emergencies. But, before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also... Continue reading...

The marquee feature isn't here yet, but there's still a lot to appreciate in iOS 18. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge It's a weird year for iOS.Usually, the new software version arrives all at once. Not so with iOS 18. The foundational stuff has arrived, and in a normal year, things like RCS support and a redesigned control center would be more than enough. But iOS 18's headline feature, Apple Intelligence, isn't even part of this initial release, and we may not see some of its most interesting features until well into 2025. The iOS 18 rollout starts now, and it's just going to keep on rolling for the foreseeable future.iOS 18 is an ambitious update, even without Apple Intelligence in the picture. Customization options are at an all-time high, and with some tinkering, you'll be able to personalize your iPhone like never before. It's almost... Continue reading...

The Apple Watch Ultra's Modular face can display watchOS 11's Training Load feature and information from the Vitals app. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple has just released watchOS 11, the latest version of its smartwatch operating system, alongside iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. The update, available for the Apple Watch Series 6 and later models, will finally allow users to take rest days without breaking their activity streak and introduces FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection.Sleep apnea is a condition that can cause a person to stop breathing during sleep and can lead to an increased risk of hypertension and Type 2 diabetes if left untreated. Apple's sleep apnea detection feature, which uses the accelerometer to monitor for small wrist movements associated with sleep interruptions, was announced alongside the new Apple Watch Series 10 and is now available for both the Apple Watch Series 9... Continue reading...

Photo: Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple is rolling out iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, which will introduce a bunch of new features to the iPhone and iPad. One of the biggest changes with today's launch is the addition of RCS messaging, which should help improve communication with Android users.First announced in June, RCS messaging will finally allow iPhone and Android users to share high-res photos and videos, see typing indicators, and use read receipts. (Messages from Android users will still appear in green bubbles, though.)Some other messaging upgrades in iOS 18 include new text effects and formatting options in iMessage and the ability to schedule messages to send later. iPhone users will also be able to send messages via satellite.Additionally, iOS 18 includes new... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge What's next after the PS5 Pro? A report from Reuters focuses on Sony's plans beyond this fall's new $700 system, saying that the battle to win a contract for the chip powering a future PlayStation 6 came down to AMD vs. Intel, with others like Broadcom eliminated earlier, with AMD eventually winning out.According to Reuters, since AMD makes the chip in the PS5 and PS5 Pro, maintaining backward compatibility in a possible move was part of months" of discussions in 2022 between executives and engineers at Sony and Intel. However, Intel's bid was blocked because they couldn't agree on how much profit Intel would make from each chip it would design as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) handled the manufacturing process.Besides... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google appears to be working on a way to finally synchronize notifications across devices in its ecosystem, according to Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman, who discovered code references to a new sync across devices" option in the Android 15 beta.The snippet is apparently located under the Notifications section of Settings, nestled between sensitive notifications" and a new notification cooldown" option he spotted last week. There's no Android notification syncing feature at the moment, as Rahman notes. So if you dismiss a notification on your Android tablet, the same notification will still greet you over on your phone later. This would, I'm sure, be a welcome change for most. Screenshot: Android Authority T... Continue reading...

LG's ThinQ ON hub is at the center of its new smart home efforts. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge After years of being on the fringes of home automation, LG is now making a big play in the smart home. It has a shiny new multi-protocol hub, is opening its ThinQ platform to work with more smart home devices, and will soon allow other platforms to integrate its appliances into their ecosystems.ThinQ's shift from being solely an app to control LG appliances and electronics to becoming a competitor to smart home platforms like Samsung's SmartThings and Apple Home has been spurred by the standardization of smart home connectivity through initiatives like Thread and Matter and the rapid development of artificial intelligence.Until now, the smart home was all about the connectivity of smart devices, but with the emergence of generative... Continue reading...

Microsoft is announcing its new Copilot Pages feature today, which is designed to be a canvas for multiplayer AI collaboration." Copilot Pages lets you use Microsoft's Copilot chatbot and pull responses into a new page where they can be edited collaboratively with others.You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone's work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page," says Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft. This is an entirely new work pattern - multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration."Pages starts rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers today and will be generally... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple's revised AirPods Max with USB-C are just a few days away from their launch on September 20th, but if you don't mind a Lightning port the older (nearly identical) model can be had right now for much less. That's because Best Buy seems to be clearing stock of refurbished first-gen AirPods Max, discounting them in a variety of colors for $299.99 ($250 off), which is as cheap as the flagship Apple headphones get - but the one-day deal ends late tonight at 1AM ET / 10PM PT.The AirPods Max may be nearly four years old, but they're still a great pair of noise-canceling headphones if you're deep in Apple's ecosystem and appreciate some exceptional (although, heavy) build quality. They offer excellent, balanced sound and support for some... Continue reading...

The Zildjian Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones come in three colorways: black, midnight (blue), and sandstorm (tan). | Image: Zildjian Zildjian, the company that's been making cymbals and other drum accessories for hundreds of years, has announced a new pair of wireless headphones. In addition to the company's iconic logo on each ear cup, the Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones offer a more personalized listening experience" and a special ANC mode the company claims lets musicians tune out everything except their drum kits.Being able to customize the sound profile through an equalizer in an accompanying app is a feature that's common in wireless headphones that cost as much as the $399.95 Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones. What Zildjian is doing differently is allowing for custom EQ settings for each ear, which could appeal to discerning musicians. I... Continue reading...

The Polaris Dawn mission was the first private spacewalk. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, in which billionaire Jared Isaacman and three other crew members traveled to space in a Crew Dragon, has made headlines for including the first-ever private spacewalk. While the flight has been hailed as historic for that reason, Isaaman has said that the trip is not merely for fun but is making contributions to science as well.The research in the Polaris program, planned to be three flights, is particularly focused on human health and the effects of spaceflight on the body. The current mission will be studied by Baylor College of Medicine, with the astronauts giving blood and going through extensive biomedical testing both before and after the flight.But what sets the Polaris Dawn mission apart is its... Continue reading...

The AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation are worth springing for compared to the regular pair. Both sound good, but the ANC works surprisingly well - most of the time. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Instagram might roll out a way to share comments on other Instagram posts to Threads, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who often reverse engineers Meta's social media apps to find coming features.Paluzzi shared an image showing that when commenting on an Instagram post, there could be a new dropdown menu that lets users choose to share the comment only to Instagram or also share on Threads."Meta has made a few moves to integrate Threads with its other platforms in the past, such as showing Threads posts on Instagram or Facebook (and, later, letting users opt out of that). The Twitter-like short-posting social network also lacks DMs of its own, but users can still receive or send messages through Instagram.The bigger effort, of... Continue reading...

Image: Nilay Patel Apple has hiked the price of its battery repair service for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. Now, it will cost $119 to get your battery replaced in either phone - a $20 jump over its older fee. The price remains the same for the standard and Plus" models, as do those for last year's phones, as MacRumors notes.The company doesn't seem to have started charging more for other battery replacements yet, but it wouldn't be unexpected. In 2022, Apple drove the cost of iPhone 14 battery service up by $30 to $99. Increases for iPad, MacBook, and older iPhone battery repairs came after that, and Apple Watches followed suit later. (One longs for the salad days of battery drama-induced $29 battery replacements!)Defective batteries are covered... Continue reading...

The new take on Flappy Bird will include alternate game modes. | Screenshot: The Flappy Bird Foundation Last week, The Flappy Bird Foundation announced a game called Flappy Bird. But while the group has been framing it as the triumphant return of a classic mobile game, Flappy Bird's original developer, Dong Nguyen isn't calling it a comeback - in fact, he says he's not involved at all.Nguyen posted as much on X (for the first time since 2017!) this morning, saying he didn't sell anything." The Flappy Bird Foundation wrote in the announcement it shared with press last week that it had acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC," which had secured the trademark from Nguyen, but it doesn't appear as though that was the result of any dealings between him and the group.

Image: Hungry Eyes Film & Television R.T. Thorne's postapocalyptic thriller frames farming and community as the keys to humanity's survival after society collapses. Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 52, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I swear I don't always just share absurdly expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about Chappell Roan and college football and the problem with pennies, watching Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist and Jennifer Garner's delightful AD home tour, taking copious notes on Ben Thompson's newslettering process, making surprisingly great bread with a random recipe from Reddit, and trying out Google's Pixel 9 Pro Fold.I also have for you some expensive but excellent new gadgets, a couple of great new tech podcasts, the best pause music... Continue reading...

A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo announced it's taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod.8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles, and now it's the GameCube's turn. The kit replaces your controller's existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It's compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Courtesy of iFixit, a new teardown video of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reveals what the repairability advocate organization's Shahram Mokhtari says is the most exciting foldable we've seen on the iFixit teardown table."iFixit offers very clear shots of the phone's internals in the video and its accompanying blog post, along with some very detailed Lumafield CT scans of the foldable. Mokhtari notes in the video that Google is offering official repair guides and replacement parts for the phone.iFixit found impressive modularity in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, including easily removable wearable parts like the USB-C port and SIM card tray, and the site praised the use of 3IP screws throughout. The repair experts were also able to pull off... Continue reading...

Not included: a desk that's a country mile wide. | Image: Samsung A running gag here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is that ever since Samsung switched to a six-day workweek for its executives, it's made some particularly wild decisions - like throwing out its own unique earbud design for glorified Apple knockoffs with light strips. And right now, Samsung will not only sell you its impressive 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SC) 49-inch curved ultrawide gaming monitor for $1,099.99 (a discount of $700), but it's also including a second, 24-inch Odyssey G30D monitor for free (a $150 value).The deal price is being matched at Best Buy and Amazon but without the freebie second monitor. And why wouldn't you want a second baby monitor to compliment your wraparound surfboard of a main monitor?The 49-inch... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB of RAM, from the base model to the 16 Pro Max, and it's all thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple VP of hardware tech Johny Srouji confirmed as much in an interview with Geekerwan, published yesterday, that 9to5Mac spotted.Srouji explained in the interview that DRAM is one aspect" when it comes to deciding hardware characteristics needed for Apple Intelligence, saying that the feature led us to believe we need to get to 8GB." He added that the extra RAM would also help immensely" for tasks like high-end gaming on devices.Apple hadn't previously stated how much RAM the iPhone 16 line has, but MacRumors discovered references to the 8GB number in Xcode after the phones were announced. Apple, which isn't... Continue reading...