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Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Justice Department's antitrust case against it, claiming that the government is asking the court to sanction a judicial redesign of one of the most innovative and consumer-friendly products ever made: iPhone."The DOJ and 16 state and district attorneys general claimed in their March lawsuit that Apple has illegally monopolized the US smartphone market. The government claimed Apple broke the law by maintaining a closed ecosystem for the iPhone in pursuit of profits and at the expense of consumers and innovation. The government pointed to several examples in its complaint, including allegedly suppressing message quality between iPhones and competing platforms like Android and preventing... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge In an interview with CNBC, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the July 19th outage caused by a CrowdStrike update cost his company half a billion dollars in five days. Delta canceled more than 5,000 flights that weekend and had blue error screens still visible at airports days after the initial crash. Among the costs Bastian said Delta incurred were more than 40,000 servers that we had to physically touch and reset" as well as compensation payments to travelers left in the lurch.Asked about a continuing relationship with Microsoft after the crash, Bastian said he regards it as probably the most fragile platform" and asked the question, When was the last time you heard of a big outage at Apple?" He placed some blame on the valuations... Continue reading...

Now that you can actually buy it, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better option for Fortnite Festival than PDP's Riffmaster. | Image: PDP With secondhand Fender Stratocaster guitars for Rock Band 4 still fetching high prices on the resale market nearly a decade later, it's no surprise that PDP's recent Riffmaster controller has been challenging to find. Thankfully, after months of quickly selling out, I'm here to tell you that the PlayStation version is now readily available at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop for its full retail price of $129.99. The Xbox-licensed version, which works with both Xbox consoles and PC, is also available at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop for the same price.With an edgier appearance that makes it look like a Brutal Legend weapon, the Riffmaster replicates the functionality of the original Rock Band 4 guitar while sprinkling in some unique... Continue reading...

The 2025 Ford Maverick Lariat in green. | Image: Ford Ford updated its midsize Maverick truck lineup for 2025, including new looks, updated infotainment, and - by popular demand - a hybrid all-wheel-drive option.The hybrid Maverick originally only came with front-wheel drive, so you previously had to opt for the gas-only version if you needed to play pretend F-150 for some tasks (and didn't want to change your whole personality).The new hybrid Maverick still has the same power capabilities as the previous year, even with AWD. It has a 2.5-liter hybrid engine with a 94kW electric motor that outputs 191 horsepower and 155lb-ft of torque. The AWD model gets 40 miles per gallon in the city, while the FWD version gets 42. The truck can hold 13.8 gallons of fuel.The cheapest Maverick, the XL,... Continue reading...

Spectre Divide. | Image: Mountaintop I am getting absolutely stomped in Spectre Divide, the just-revealed 3-on-3 online shooter from a new game studio staffed by talent from Oculus VR, Valorant, Apex Legends, Halo Infinite, and more. I am not good at this free-to-play PC game. But I can't stop thinking about how I might get good - by intelligently swapping between two bodies to outmaneuver my enemies.If only I'd placed my doppelganger here instead of there, I could've had my own back. What if I had teleported my clone behind enemy lines to flank them while I drew their attention elsewhere? Maybe if I'd planted the bomb with one body while camping that door with the other, I'd have caught them unawares?I've never played a shooter like this before - even if, at first, it... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Over 300 high school students converged on Congress to urge lawmakers to vote against KOSA. The bill passed in a landslide. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta's second quarter earnings continue the same story from the previous quarter: generative AI may be here, but it's going to take a long time to make money.The good news for Meta is that, unlike pretty much every AI startup, it already makes a lot of money. Last quarter, the company made just over $39 billion in revenue, up 22 percent from a year ago, and about $13.5 billion in profit, up 73 percent. 3.27 billion people use at least one of Meta's apps every day. That kind of scale and money buys the ability to make big bets, which Zuckerberg is famous for doing.On Meta's Wednesday earnings call, CFO Susan Li reiterated to investors that financial returns from its recent AI investments will come in over a longer period of time."... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge A source told The Information that TikTok was paying Microsoft almost $20 million per month to access OpenAI's models as of March, making up nearly a quarter of the revenue generated by its increasingly lucrative cloud division.Microsoft's cloud AI business was on track to earn $1 billion in annual revenue, according to The Information, but the report notes that TikTok may not need these capabilities this heavily if it develops its own large language model (LLM).Last year, my colleague Alex Heath reported that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, was secretly using" OpenAI's technology to create an LLM of its own:

The perfect shape for a car - and a mouse. | Image: Honda Take a look at this HP-X concept from 1984 that has been restored, seemingly so Honda can show the world how cool futuristic cars used to look.As a car born in the Knight Rider era, the HP-X placed advanced tech within the driver's reach, including a CD player, GPS, real-time telemetry, and special sonar" technology that warns you about road conditions. At the time, Honda called this tech suite its electronic driver support system." Image: Honda The 1984 HP-X has screens with GPS, at least conceptually. The HP-X was designed to run on a Honda F2 racing-based engine: a 2.0-liter DOHC 24-valve V6. And since there are no doors, the clear Perspex canopy comes off, so you can jump in like a fighter jet pilot.... Continue reading...

Siri's big upgrade starts now, but you'll need the right iPhone to access it. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In iOS 18's latest developer preview, Siri gets a glow-up. Like, the whole phone actually glows around the edges when you invoke Siri.A splash screen reintroduces you to the virtual assistant once you enable Apple Intelligence, an early version of which is now available on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in a developer beta. You'll know Siri is listening when the edges of the screen glow, making it pretty obvious that something different is going on.The big Siri AI update is still months away. This version comes with meaningful improvements to language understanding, but future updates will add features like awareness of what's on your screen and the ability to take action on your behalf. Meanwhile, the rest of the Apple Intelligence... Continue reading...

Image: Taco Bell Your next Taco Bell drive-thru order might be handled by AI - and AI may have helped you get a Chalupa already. Parent company Yum! Brands has been testing its Voice AI" technology at more than 100 Taco Bell drive-thru locations in the US, and now Yum! aims to bring the technology to hundreds" of Taco Bell stores by the end of the year, according to a press release.Yum! is pitching the AI tech as a way to ease the workloads of its staffers, improve order accuracy, and reduce wait times - all, of course, while driving profitable growth for Taco Bell, Yum! Brands and their franchisees." But the fast food industry's experiments with AI have had mixed results so far: while Wendy's has been thrilled with its tests, McDonald's recently p... Continue reading...

What if Cybertruck light bar but on the back? | Image: Reddit user Abomb1997 Tesla's Model Y will look a lot different on the back and inside after its rumored redesign if new photos of the leaked Juniper" model are to be believed. A user on Reddit shared the images, which include a close-up of the rear of what appears to be an updated Model Y with its security covers removed, revealing a red light bar with the word Tesla" running across the hatch. The current model has more traditional taillights on the left and right, with a simple T" logo in the center.Another photo shows the interior of the car, which now appears to have seats that are perforated for ventilation, just like in the fully redesigned Model 3, as reported by Not a Tesla App. There's also an interior ambient light strip running across the dash... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft and Discord are greatly improving the integration of the communication platform into Xbox consoles. While you've been able to stream your gameplay to friends over Discord since last year, you'll soon be able to watch your friends' streams whether they're streaming gameplay from a PC, a mobile phone, or an Xbox.Xbox Insiders will be the first to get access to viewing Discord streams today, with the feature showing up inside Discord voice calls and in the happening now" Friends section of the Xbox dashboard. If your friends are talking or streaming in a Discord server, the channel will also now be shown in this section. Image: Discord The Discord streams are integrated straight into the Xbox dashboard. ... Continue reading...

Image: Sonos The hits just keep coming. As Sonos works to get its app back to a better place, it managed to introduce a pretty nasty iOS battery drain problem with last week's update. Customers were quick to notice and were none too happy with the company for yet another foul-up. Some reported battery usage of well over 50 percent, with the Sonos app running in the background for hours and hours and gradually draining their phone's charge.Today's update to the Sonos app should resolve the battery issue, according to the release notes. The company has committed to rolling out improvements to the software on a biweekly cadence, but according to Sonos community manager Keith Nieves, the team wanted to get this fix out ASAP.Some customers have... Continue reading...

Amazon's largest e-reader to date is also the only Kindle specifically built for taking notes. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge From AirPods to the Echo Pop, we've seen a handful of recent Prime Day standouts resurface as part of Best Buy's latest sales event. The retailer's current promo on Amazon devices also extends to the Kindle Scribe, which you can grab at Best Buy and Target with 16G of storage and a Basic Pen for an all-time low of $234.99 ($105 off). You can also buy it with the Premium Pen at Best Buy for $279.99 ($110 off).If you're someone who is already embedded in Amazon's ecosystem, few note-taking ebook readers can rival the Kindle Scribe. It's a great device with a sharp 10.2-inch display and battery life that's on par with Amazon's entry-level Kindle, allowing you to read uninterrupted for weeks at a time. Yet, unlike Amazon's other e-readers,... Continue reading...

Improved incident reporting UI and new destination guidance in Google Maps. | Image: Google Google is updating its two navigation apps - Google Maps and Waze - with a slew of new features, including some changes that bring the two closer together.One of the big updates here continues to integrate the biggest features from Waze directly into Maps. Maps is getting improved Waze-like incident reporting that adds larger icons to share updates like road closures, construction, speed cameras, or police presence. Other drivers will be prompted to confirm incidents with a tap.It can feel like Waze and Google Maps are on a collision course, but the two apps continue to remain separate. Head of product for Google Maps Can Comertoglu told The Verge at a press briefing on Tuesday that Waze users are very dedicated. They prefer some of... Continue reading...

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge Spotify has stopped trying to make users pay for song lyrics. After expanding a test that put the feature behind a Premium paywall, Spotify is now reversing the change.A Spotify spokesperson tells Engadget that the company will be expanding Lyrics availability for Spotify Free users so more people can enjoy viewing more lyrics, globally," adding that it will be available to all users over the coming weeks." Spotify didn't immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment.Spotify didn't originally charge for its song lyrics feature, which lets you follow along with the words of a song as it plays. But last September, users began noticing that they couldn't view the lyrics for more than three songs per month without paying for a... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images StubHub is facing a new lawsuit that accuses the ticketing service of hiding fees from customers until the very end of the purchasing process. In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb claims StubHub engages in a series of deceptive, manipulative, and unfair practices."Attorney General Schwalb alleges StubHub uses a bait-and-switch" technique where it advertises deceptively low" ticket prices and adds extra charges after a multi-page purchase process. During that process, StubHub displays a countdown timer giving customers 10 minutes to complete their purchase - something Schwalb calls a dark pattern designed to create a false sense of urgency."In addition, Schwalb accuses StubHub of... Continue reading...