The Verge

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:

Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger. | Photo: Artifact Artifact co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger will be onstage at the Code Conference this month, where he'll discuss his new AI-infused news app in an interview with Platformer founder Casey Newton.The new company from Krieger and Kevin Systrom, the two founders of Instagram, is trying to build a different and more helpful kind of news app by leaning on AI. It tries to surface interesting articles based on your reading habits, can rewrite headlines to make them more useful, and is increasingly filling up with social features to put a wider variety of content in front of readers.Just this week, Artifact launched a new feature called Links that recommends any type of content that users feed into it, from recipes to design mockups to old... Continue reading...

Allen is set to appear on stage at the Code conference starting on September 26th. | Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images for Allen Media Group / The Weather Channel Comedian and media mogul Byron Allen has reportedly made a $10 billion offer to acquire the ABC TV network, FX and National Geographic cable channels, and local stations from Walt Disney, according to a report from Bloomberg. The publication's source claims that the offer is preliminary and could change," and that Allen would work with banks and private equity firms to finance the deal.Disney has yet to publicly acknowledge Allen's offer. In a statement published earlier this week, the company said it was open to considering a variety of strategic options for our linear businesses" in response to rumors that it was in talks to sell the aforementioned properties to Nexstar Media Group. Bloomberg's report claims that Allen may sell off... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple says it will release a software update for iPhone 12 owners in France, after regulators ordered a halt of sales of the phone over concerns the device was breaching strict radiation exposure limits.We will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators," says Apple in a statement to Reuters. We look forward to iPhone 12 continuing to be available in France."French regulators ordered a ban of iPhone 12 models earlier this week after testing the handset and finding that its Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) - how much radio frequency is absorbed into a body from a device - exceeded European radiation exposure limits. Belgium said it would review the French findings, with Germany,... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Windows never ceases to amaze me. Last month I discovered for the first time that you could pause the Windows Task Manager by holding down the CTRL key and today I've stumbled on a special keyboard shortcut that lets you launch LinkedIn, Word, and a bunch of other Office apps.If you're running Windows try holding down CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + L. Then watch in bemusement as LinkedIn opens in your default browser. Windows watcher Paul Thurrott posted this bizarre keyboard shortcut on X (Twitter), noting that it's an operating system hotkey.So why does Windows even have this? It's all part of the Office key that Microsoft introduced on some of its own keyboards a few years ago. The Office key replaced the usual right-hand Windows key,... Continue reading...

Google currently offers no repairs for broken Pixel Watches. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you crack the screen on the Pixel Watch, getting it officially repaired by Google isn't in the cards.Several Pixel Watch owners have vented their frustrations about the inability to replace cracked screens, both on Reddit and in Google support forums. The Verge has also reviewed an official Google support chat from a reader who broke their Pixel Watch display after dropping the wearable. In it, a support representative states that Google doesn't have any repair centers or service centers" for the device.At this moment, we don't have any repair option for the Google Pixel Watch. If your watch is damaged, you can contact the Google Pixel Watch Customer Support Team to check your replacement options," Google spokesperson Bridget... Continue reading...

Emojipedia's renderings of what some of the new emoji in Emoji 15.1 might look like. | Image: Emojipedia There are new emoji on the way... eventually. As reported by Emojipedia, the Unicode Consortium has formally approved Emoji 15.1, meaning a batch of new emoji will appear on your devices at some point in the future.There aren't quite as many additions to the emoji lineup as there have been in previous releases. The brand new emoji are a head shaking horizontally, a head shaking vertically, a phoenix, a lime, a brown mushroom, and a broken chain, according to Emojipedia. There are also new emoji denoting different family sizes and a few versions of emoji you might be familiar with that will face different directions.You can see the official accepted emoji on the Unicode Consortium website.

Illustration: The Verge I was thrilled when Threads finally launched on the web in August, but I quickly found that it was missing one important feature: you couldn't quote posts, only repost them. (In X / Twitter lingo, that translates to quote tweet and retweet.) But that's now changing, as Instagram Adam Mosseri said Thursday that quote posts on the web were rolled out this week.To quote a post, just click the two arrows icon and then click the quote" option. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge That quote button. Right there. Mosseri also said that Threads users on mobile can follow a thread and get notifications on it. This feature apparently hasn't rolled out for me on iOS - I can't find it - but I expect I'll get it soon... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony's September show wasn't quite as big as Nintendo's, but there were some fun announcements in store. Continue reading...

Image: PlayStation Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will come with an even bigger map. The developers behind the sequel - Insomniac Games - have announced they're nearly doubling" the size of Marvel's New York.With the expanded map, you'll get to swing your way past the East River and web your way across Queens and Brooklyn while completing story missions, side quests, and city activities along the way. There are also new Web Wings" that help you get across the city faster.You'll also get to switch between playing as Peter Parker and Miles Morales near-instantly," with both characters having different side stories and quests. The game will feature 65 different suits, along with a new Suit Styles feature that lets you apply different color shaders for some... Continue reading...