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Photo by David Becker / Getty Images Panos Panay is reportedly joining Amazon, Bloomberg reports. The former Windows and Surface chief announced his departure from Microsoft earlier today, and Bloomberg reports that he's moving to Seattle's other giant tech company to oversee Amazon's vast hardware products.Panay has been instrumental in the creation of Surface devices and much of their success and will no longer be presenting at Microsoft's event on Thursday. He will remain at Microsoft for another couple of weeks as part of a transition process before joining Amazon.Panay will be taking over from Dave Limp, Amazon's outgoing hardware boss. Limp announced in August that he plans to leave in the next few months after a 13-year career at Amazon, leaving big shoes to fill.... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The RIAA just put out the music industry's midyear revenue report, and it's a stark illustration of the haves / have-not divide that's been accelerating in the streaming era. Actually, scratch that: it's a terrific illustration of how good it is for the haves: retail revenue is up 9.3 percent to an all-time first half high of $8.4 billion, while wholesale revenue is up 8.3 percent to 5.3 billion. (You can read a good explanation of retail versus wholesale here; the industry focuses on retail since that's where consumer streaming services get counted.) Streaming revenue was up 10.3 percent from last year - at $7 billion, it accounts for 84 percent of music revenue in the United States. Importantly, the RIAA explicitly notes... Continue reading...

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Along with iOS 17, Apple has just released watchOS 10, the newest version of its smartwatch operating system that fundamentally changes the way you interact with the Apple Watch by reincorporating widgets. This update, available on the Apple Watch Series 4 and up, comes just a few days ahead of the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra, both of which Apple will release on Friday along with the four new iPhone 15 models.The new widgets include the Smart Stack that Apple added to iOS 14, which is a sort of customizable widget bundle that uses machine learning to surface the widgets it predicts you'll want to see and use. Swiping up from the bottom brings up those widgets, and that has a big cascading effect on the OS. Control... Continue reading...

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, Apple's next major updates for the iPhone and iPad, are now available to download.With iOS 17, some of the biggest new features come to phone calls. Apple's new Contact Posters let you pick a photo (or Memoji) and font that fill up the screen when you give someone a call. Live Voicemail will show you a real-time transcript as someone is leaving you a message. The end call button is also in a slightly new spot. Messages gets some improvements, too, including a new way to access iMessage apps, and thanks to iOS 17's upgraded autocorrect, hopefully your texts will have fewer typos.One particularly cool iOS 17 feature is StandBy. Turn your iPhone into landscape mode when it's charging, and the screen can show things... Continue reading...

While this is technically a photo of second-gen AirPods Pro with a Lightning case, the new USB-C model will look identical. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple's biggest announcement last week at its Wonderlust" event was, without a doubt, the iPhone 15's change to USB-C, which is already having a ripple effect, as the AirPods Pro are also ditching Lightning for the port upgrade. Now, surprisingly, you can preorder the new second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C ahead of its September 22nd release date for $199.99 ($50 off) at Best Buy.The AirPods Pro are the first of Apple's wireless earbuds and headphones to get the USB-C treatment - other than that, they're mostly the same second-gen Pros you can already get with a Lightning port on the case. I say mostly because the new AirPods Pro also get dust resistance and future support for lossless audio with the upcoming Vision Pro VR headset. On... Continue reading...

A screenshot from the Good Burger 2 teaser. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge I bet you forgot or, like me, had completely missed that there's a Good Burger sequel coming out. Well, it's coming to Paramount Plus this Friday, September 22nd. Good Burger 2 stars Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell in a reprisal of their roles as fast-food employees Dexter Reed and Ed.Some other original cast members are back, too. Josh Server plays Fizz, Lori Beth Denberg is Connie Muldoon, and Carmen Electra returns as Roxanne. The movie centers on a modern-day version of the fictitious chain restaurant and sees Dexter return to Good Burger after a failed invention. The film's synopsis says Dexter comes up with a scheme that then puts the business at risk. There's no word if Mondo Burger will return.Good Burger has floated in the... Continue reading...

Jobs was keen to support the liberal arts alongside technological developments at Apple during his time as CEO. | Image: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP via Getty Images Today, the Steve Jobs Archive (SJA) - an organization that collects and curates information about the late Apple founder's life - has introduced a part-time fellowship program that aims to help a new generation of creative and technologically gifted people follow in Jobs' footsteps.The first nine SJA fellows are a group of young creators" that includes musicians, engineers, storytellers, and more who will receive guidance, resources, and financial support over the coming year to help them make their creative ambitions a reality. According to the SJA press release, each of the fellows selected for the program was chosen for their wide-ranging curiosity, sense of possibility, and determination to leave the world better than they found... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney and Charter's historic agreement has introduced a new kind of cable bundle, and it could be the thing that saves cable TV... or destroys it. Continue reading...

You can also make the app impersonate celebrity voices if you don't fancy hearing yourself being imitated. | Image: Carrot / The Verge Carrot Weather - the forecasting app known for its hilariously snarky weather updates - is introducing some new features that make use of the iOS 17 and watchOS 10 software updates coming today, including new weather widgets and a voice impersonation feature.Available on the App Store today, version 5.12 of Carrot can now mimic a user's own voice or imitate a celebrity when providing weather updates thanks to the new Personal Voice accessibility feature included in iOS 17 and previewed in this video from Marques Brownlee.The Carrot app for Apple Watch has been redesigned for watchOS 10, with the main interface now using a vertical tab view for quick switching between current, hourly, and daily forecasts. Each section of the redesigned... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google is axing support for Google Meet and Zoom on its Nest Hub Max smart display. As spotted by 9to5Google, some users are seeing a notice on their device that states they can no longer join meetings through Google Meet starting September 28th.Similarly, a support page updated by Zoom in July states: All Zoom support for Google Nest Hub Max will end on September 30th, 2023." After that date, the Zoom app will stop working, and users will no longer be able to install or update the app. The Verge reached out to Google with a request for more information but didn't immediately hear back.Google first rolled out support for Meet and Zoom on its Nest Hub Max in the midst of the covid pandemic in 2020. At the time, Zoom also arrived on... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge With only a couple of minutes and access to YouTube, you can now make SpongeBob SquarePants sing your favorite Taylor Swift song. Or make Taylor Swift sing your favorite Drake song. Or make Drake sing your song. AI covers and AI-generated originals are suddenly everywhere on the internet, to the point where even diehard fans don't know what's a real leak and what's a generated one. It's a complicated ethical and legal mess and makes being a music fan weirder than ever.That's only the very beginning of the ways AI is coming into the music-making process. There are tools like Suno and Soundful that can create a supposedly original song based only on a text prompt; platforms like Magenta and BeatBot that can generate beats and instruments... Continue reading...

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. | Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge It's significantly cheaper to repair the back glass on an iPhone 15 Pro than it was on the iPhone 14 Pro. Apple posted price estimates for its new phones over the weekend, listing a repair price of $169 for the 15 Pro and $199 for the Pro Max to replace either phone's shattered back glass.That's up to a $350 decrease from the repair price for last year's models. For the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, Apple charged $499 and $549 for back glass replacement - frankly, outlandish prices that ran more expensive than the cost of an (admittedly much lower-end) new iPhone SE.Here's what the current pricing looks like for these repairs:These newly reduced prices, first spotted by 9to5Mac, are likely due to a major design change made by Apple:... Continue reading...

Grand Theft Auto V turns 10. | Image: Rockstar Games It's been exactly 10 years since Grand Theft Auto V first launched on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, followed soon after by Grand Theft Auto Online. In a thread on X today, Rockstar Games thanked fans, calling them the reason GTA V has thrived across multiple console generations."Last week, Rockstar announced new content for GTA Online commemorating the anniversary: new outfits; GTA V-themed weapon finishes; extra modes; a stock car called the Bravado Hotring Hellfire for GTA+ members; and other collectibles and bonuses for playing certain missions.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Mark Gurman writes in the subscriber edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg from this morning that he expects Apple to finish its transition to USB-C by 2025. Gurman says that, in addition to other products, he expects the company will release USB-C versions of the now-discontinued MagSafe Battery Pack and the MagSafe Duo eventually. But don't hold your breath."By comparison, Apple took either a little over a month or about two years to totally move over to Lightning, depending on how you look at it.The company retired the 30-pin port from its most important products when it launched the fourth-gen iPad a little over a month after the iPhone 5's September 2012 debut. But it also kept the iPod Classic in its stable until... Continue reading...

Apple touted the watch and iPhone's lifesaving feature in a new ad. | Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge In recent years, Apple's presentations have started to feature a new type of messaging: without an Apple Watch, you might be mauled by a bear, drown inside a sinking car, get stuck in a trash compactor, or even succumb to hypothermia after falling through an icy lake.These disasters have always been averted by the presence of an Apple Watch. But this year, Apple's messaging has started to change again: it's not just the Apple Watch that can save you from possible death - but the iPhone, too.At Apple's iPhone 15 showcase, the company opened with an ad that weaved together the lifesaving potential of both the Apple Watch and the iPhone. The video depicted people celebrating their birthdays with friends and family, blowing out candles,... Continue reading...

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 6, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been watching the wacky sci-fi series Command Z from Steven Soderbergh, updating all my browsers to fix a scary security issue, reading and listening to Cory Doctorow rage against Big Tech, cackling at this video about the state of the Hyperloop, trying the Endel app as work music instead of my all-day movie soundtracks playlist, and slowly cleaning up my camera roll with some help from Swipewipe.Also this week, I have for you a bunch of new Apple gear (shocking, I know), two books worth... Continue reading...

Image: Bungie Destiny 2 has one of the worst - and most hilarious - bugs in its history right now, allowing players to create guns with perks that are game-breaking in activities or PvP. Players can put shotgun frames on auto rifles, resulting in a weapon that obliterates someone in PvP in milliseconds due to the hugely reduced time to kill. Bungie, the developer of Destiny 2, says in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that it will release the fix in two waves, with the first being deployed within the next 24 hours.First, a stopgap: Bungie will disable the ability to equip crafted weapons (players can still build the weapons; they just can't be used). The developer says it will re-enable crafting soon after" with the second fix, which will reset weapons... Continue reading...

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Are you an iPhone user looking to upgrade to... the iPhone? Well, you'll have more to consider this time around since the new iPhone 15 comes with a USB-C port, ending an 11-year run for the company's proprietary Lightning charging plug.USB Type-C (or just USB-C) is the universal charging and data-transferring connector, and it's now on pretty much every modern gadget, including Apple's iPads and MacBooks. It might just be the last cable we'll ever need.Do I need to buy new chargers?Apple has made us buy new cables before, but this time, you probably already have the things you need to charge your new iPhone. Apple stopped including charging bricks with the iPhone 12 in 2020, but the 15 and 15 Pro do at least come with a short C-to-C... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The world is rightfully celebrating the iPhone's switch from Lightning to USB-C this week. People love to hate on Lightning - and they have good reasons to. Many of the world's most popular devices now use USB-C ports, including Apple's own iPads, meaning iPhone owners have been stuck toting around an extra cable just for their phone and its accessories.But if you've been living in the Lightning world for the past decade like I have, things have been great anyway. I'm not ashamed to say it: I'm sad that Lightning is finally going away.The Lightning Life, at least if you have an iPhone, has been convenient. Using a Lightning cable hardly requires any thought - its biggest revelation, at first, was that it could charge your phone no... Continue reading...

Photo by Amanda Lopez for The Verge Meta's next pair of smart glasses made in partnership with Ray-Ban owner Luxottica might be released sometime soon. As spotted by Lowpass' Janko Roettgers, a listing for a pair of smart glasses by Luxottica Group has surfaced in the FCC's database. Given that the original Ray-Ban Stories are listed under Luxottica and recent reports on a second-generation pair of the smart glasses, I'm inclined to believe that these filings are for the new specs.The original Ray-Ban Stories let you capture photos and videos using the cameras next to the lenses and look through what you capture on a companion app. They also have microphones and speakers to capture and play audio. They haven't been a hit; The Wall Street Journal reported in August that l... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge If you add a Community Post to a post on X (formerly Twitter), X will tell you if the person who wrote the post deletes it, the company said on Friday.Contributors consistently say their goal is to keep others well-informed," X wrote on the Community Notes account. This can happen when a helpful note appears on a post, and also when an erroneous post gets deleted. Starting today, writers will be notified when a post on which they wrote a note gets deleted."

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve's next major SteamOS update brings some significant new display settings as well as some new performance improvements to Steam Deck. You can read all about the SteamOS 3.5 update in a blog post on the Steam website.Two major new features are support for variable refresh rates (VRR) and HDR if you're using your Steam Deck with an external display that supports them. Valve says that HDR can be enabled if you have a compatible display while VRR can be enabled if you have a compatible USB-C adapter.The company has also changed the Steam Deck's default color rendering to emulate the sRGB color gamut," which Valve says will result in a slightly warmer and more vibrant color appearance." If you don't like the change, or want to try... Continue reading...

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge The iPhone 15 Pro could come with better 5G connectivity. That's according to data from SpeedSmart (via 9to5Mac), which indicates that the iPhone 15 Pro will offer up to 24 percent faster download 5G speeds when compared to its iPhone 14 Pro predecessor.As shown by the data from SpeedSmart, the biggest jump occurred on Verizon's network, which showed an average download speed of 195.83Mbps on the iPhone 14 Pro, as opposed to 243.06Mbps on the iPhone 15 Pro. Meanwhile, the iPhone 15 Pro on T-Mobile had the fastest average 5G download speeds at 300.92Mbps, as opposed to 204.34Mbps on AT&T. Image: SpeedSmart T-Mobile showed the fastest 5G speeds with an iPhone 15 Pro. Despite this sizeable change, upload speeds... Continue reading...

Image: Unity The game developers affected by Unity's new pricing model are striking back. A collective of developers across 19 companies, mostly based in Europe and mostly developing mobile games, has put out an open letter urging Unity to reverse course on its recently announced pricing model changes. The letter contains some of the same sentiments expressed by other developers this week but with one big twist.As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered," the letter read.Essentially, these companies, which represent thousands of games with billions of downloads, have blocked Unity from making... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Philips Hue Secure is a new smart home security system from the smart lighting company. The system was announced along with some new smart security cameras in August and is now live in the Hue app. However, if you're a Philips Hue user, you don't need to buy the new cameras to use the new security features; you just need to update your app to version 5.0.1.The system works with Hue's existing smart lights, motion sensors, and new contact sensors ($39.99) that monitor doors and windows. When armed, if the system detects motion or other activity, you get an alert and can choose to trigger all your lights to flash and even set off a Star Trek-style red alert. Add in Hue's new security cameras, and you get the option of triggering their... Continue reading...

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple has increased the price of most Apple Watch battery replacements, as reported by 9to5Mac. The swaps used to cost $79, but now, for Apple Watch Series 4 devices and newer, you'll have to cough up $99. You can see the prices for yourself on the company's Apple Watch Service and Repair website by sifting through different versions and models.It's unfortunate that some of the battery replacement fees are going up, but I'm also not surprised to see it. Apple bumped up the prices of battery replacements in some iPhones, iPads, and Macs by $20 to $50 earlier this year.Still, paying for a battery replacement can be a good way to get some extra life out of an older device that otherwise works just fine. It's what I'm personally thinking... Continue reading...

Twitter is called X now, and the logo still looks weird to anyone who was used to the blue bird. | Illustration: The Verge The platform formerly known as Twitter still takes a surprisingly long time to load a few bytes of data - at least, if that data leads to a platform that Elon Musk might consider a competitor. An analysis by The Markup has found that X makes users wait about two and a half seconds to access links to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack.If you click a link on X, you get redirected via X's link shortener, t.co. Most sites load within 30 to 40 milliseconds. Meta's platforms, Bluesky, and Substack take more than 60 times longer. The Markup has built a tool that lets you check the load times to any domain yourself.It isn't the first time X has throttled competitors. In August, an analysis by The Washington Post revealed that X... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Another week, another roundup of celebratory anniversary sales to take advantage of. First up is Valve, which is discounting the Steam Deck through September 21st in honor of Steam's recent 20th anniversary. There are a number of configurations of Valve's handheld gaming PC to choose from, with the 64GB configuration going for $359.10 ($39.90 off), the 256GB version going for $449.65 ($79.35 off), and the 512GB version with the anti-glare screen going for $519.20 (about $130 off). Valve is also discounting the long-delayed Steam Deck Docking Station to $71.20 (about $18 off), giving you a cheaper way to connect the handheld to your TV or monitor.For those unaware, Valve's Steam Deck wasn't exactly a winner when it launched early last... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google has agreed to pay $93 million to the state of California to settle claims it tracked the location of users without their knowledge. Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Google must also provide more information about the location data it collects on users.The settlement follows a multi-year" investigation by California's Department of Justice, which found that Google deceived users into thinking they weren't getting tracked when they actually were. According to the complaint, Google continued to collect and store location data on users even when they disabled the Location History" setting within its apps and services, allowing the company to use this information for targeted advertising.

Photo by MATTHEW HATCHER / AFP via Getty Images At midnight on Friday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike, imperiling the Big Three" automakers' plans to spend billions of dollars on electric vehicles in a bid to catch up to Tesla.It was a historic moment - never before had workers at all three companies gone on strike at the same time - that came as the automakers were in the midst of making a huge high-stakes switch to EVs.Those plans are now on hold, as Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis workers take to the streets to demand a share of the profits generated by combustion trucks and SUVs as well as stronger job security and better retirement plans.The UAW stuck to its plans for a targeted walkout to startThe UAW stuck to its plans for a targeted walkout to start.... Continue reading...

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge If you use Zoom, Google Meet, or any other video conferencing app, it's likely that at one point you may find yourself frantically trying to figure out why your mic is muted or your camera isn't working. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of checking the mute or camera buttons on your app - but if that doesn't work, you may need to manage the permissions for audio and video on your operating system or browser.The good news is that these permissions aren't too difficult to manage, no matter which OS or browser you're using. You can grant permissions to the sites that need it while blocking any others that you don't trust enough to have access to your camera and mic. Below, we cover how to manage permissions for macOS, Windows, and four of... Continue reading...

Image: Digital Eclipse Fresh off the launch of The Making of Karateka, retro game studio Digital Eclipse has announced a remaster of the original action RPG title Wizardry. Even better - it's out now in early access on both Steam and GOG.First released in 1981 and developed by Sir-Tech Software, the first Wizardry - or Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, to give it its very long full title - was a first-person, party-based, D&D-inspired RPG that proved incredibly influential and kicked off a long-running franchise. Here's the official description for the uninitiated:

Image: Samsung Samsung is expanding the art selection available on its Frame TVs with the help of a renowned museum. Today, the company and New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a partnership that will bring 38 pieces from the Met to Samsung's Art Store. The new artwork is available through a subscription costing either $4.99 per month or $49.90 annually.In addition to the Met's artwork, that subscription provides access to over 2,300 pieces of digital art from more than 800 artists in partnership with world-renowned museums, galleries, and leading art ecommerce platforms."In the case of the Met, here's what you can expect, according to a joint press release from both companies: