The Verge

The podcast world is changing. Welcome to your front-row seat on the action.In case you haven’t heard, The Verge acquired Hot Pod this month, and former writer and editor Nicholas Quah joined Vulture, our sister publication at Vox Media, as a full-time podcast critic. He’s still publishing over there — you can subscribe to his criticism newsletter right here — but I’ll be writing Hot Pod from here on out. I’m excited, and although I know Nick’s legacy and insight are unparalleled, I hope to do it justice. I appreciate you sticking with us.I’ve been at The Verge for nearly six years and covering podcasting and audio for the past three. In that time, podcasting has gone from something that existed on the fringe to a full-blown cultural... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has announced a $50 million fund that it says will help it develop the metaverse more responsibly. It’s officially called the XR Programs and Research Fund, and the company says it’ll be invested into “programs and external research” over the course of two years. Facebook has previously funded academic research into the social impact of AR wearables and solicited VR hardware proposals. Facebook’s announcement blog calls the metaverse the “next computing platform” and says that the company will be working with policymakers, researchers, and industry partners while building it.The announcement also gives us Facebook’s definition of the sometimes nebulous word “metaverse.” The company describes it as “virtual spaces where you can... Continue reading…

Skype’s new design and colorful layouts. | Image: Microsoft Skype’s had more redesigns in the past five years than I’ve had hot dinners, but Microsoft is still ready to try and tweak things once again. The software maker is teasing plans for an “improved, faster, reliable, and super modern-looking Skype.” Microsoft says it has been listening to feedback and, over the next few months, will start rolling out changes to modernize Skype.The most important part of Skype, what Microsoft calls the call stage, is getting the most attention. The grid that’s displayed during calls will soon include everyone on a call, regardless of whether they have enabled video or not. This puts all participants side by side, including your own video in the main interface. Image: Microsoft The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook announced that it would be “pausing” work on its Instagram for kids app on Monday after weeks of growing pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups to scrap the app. But many lawmakers aren’t satisfied with the pause, calling on Facebook to stop development entirely.In a statement issued Monday, Democrats in the House and Senate called Facebook’s decision to halt development of the Instagram product targeted to kids under 13 as “insufficient.” Four lawmakers signed onto the statement, including Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA),“Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt”“Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must... Continue reading…

Discord will let you have unique avatars across different servers | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Messaging app Discord announced today that its premium Nitro tier will now allow subscribers to use a different avatar on each of their servers. The option to “change nickname” in the app has been changed to “edit server profile.” That’s where you’ll be able to change both your nickname and server avatar, so if you use multiple servers — as a lot of Discord users do — you can keep each identity separate and unique.Discord also announced today that they’re starting the rollout of scheduled events, which allow users to plan ahead, giving time to spread awareness and join. The company says it’s seeing more communities use stage channels to connect with members, in AMAs, open mic events, or other large-scale discussions.With scheduled... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Ford is recalling the Mustang Mach-E out of concern that the windshield and panoramic roof could leak or, worse, come flying off during a crash or while driving. Nearly 18,000 of the electric SUVs sold to date are at risk of the former, though Ford says only around 13,000 of them run the risk of the roof detaching.The company will start providing owners with recall instructions in late October, and it says it is not aware of any accidents or injuries related to the defect. Ford initially started recalling Mustang Mach-E SUVs last week in Canada, as Electrek reported.Ford told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier this month that it had become aware that the windshield and panoramic roof of the Mustang Mach-E may... Continue reading…

TikTok has passed 1 billion users | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok said Monday it has passed 1 billion monthly users. It’s a remarkable number for a platform launched in August 2018 that has been scrutinized by governments — including the US — that are worried about the data collection practices of its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance.TikTok’s popularity soared during the pandemic, becoming the most-downloaded app in the world in the first quarter of 2020, with some 315 million downloads in that quarter alone according to app analytics company SensorTower.ByteDance reportedly saw its 2020 revenue more than double from the year prior, to $34.3 billion. From its launch to date, SensorTower says TikTok installs have reached 3.2 billion, which includes information from Douyin, the Chinese... Continue reading…

Image: Roblox Virtual world-building platform Roblox has settled a lawsuit with the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and is negotiating potential deals with individual music publishers. Roblox announced the news this morning, saying it was “committed to partnering with the music industry.”The NMPA sued Roblox in June for letting users upload copyrighted songs into its shared library of game-building assets. Roblox quickly signed individual deals with BMG and Sony, but the new agreement settles all claims involving NMPA members. According to a press release and the NMPA, Roblox and the organization have agreed to the terms of an industry-wide settlement that individual music publishers can decide whether to opt in to, and the agreement... Continue reading…

Okay, I’ll make the obvious joke: was there really anything cut from Death Stranding? For better and worse, Hideo Kojima’s deeply indulgent post-apocalyptic delivery simulator did not feel like it had been subject to heavy editing. But Kojima himself has said that he doesn’t like the name of this new PlayStation 5 version of the game, dubbed a “director’s cut,” arguing instead that it has simply had new content produced for it. So there you have it.In any case, Death Stranding Director’s Cut is one of the more worthwhile PS5 upgrades out there. For $10 (if you own the PS4 release), this new edition comes with extra missions, improved visuals and performance, more tools and items, DualSense-powered haptic feedback, and 3D audio support.... Continue reading…

The MacBook Pro remains Apple’s top-end option for notebooks with speedy M1 processors. There are talks of new models with a rumored M1X update, but as of now, if you’re looking for the best the M1 has to offer in the shape of a laptop, it’s the late-2020 MacBook Pro. Today, the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro is $150 off at Amazon and Best Buy, bringing it down to $1,150 with 256GB of storage or $1,350 for 512GB. This is the second-best price of all time on the popular laptop from Apple.We often offer praise for its MacBook Air counterpart, which goes on sale more often and is still currently discounted to $850, but the MacBook Pro is a great upgrade for those seeking a bit more performance with a better, brighter screen. You also get the... Continue reading…

Google’s Wear OS app for YouTube Music. | Image: Google YouTube Music’s Wear OS app is rolling out to a handful of older Wear OS 2 smartwatches from the likes of Fossil, Michael Kors, and Mobvoi starting this week, after previously launching exclusively on Samsung’s new Wear OS 3-powered Galaxy Watch 4 smartwatch. The app lets YouTube Music Premium subscribers download songs to compatible smartwatches and listen to music offline without needing a paired phone.The new app was first detailed when Google and Samsung announced they were merging their Wear OS and Tizen smartwatch operating systems to create Wear OS 3, and initial reports suggested it wouldn’t be coming to devices running the older Wear OS 2 operating system. However, like Spotify’s offline support on Wear OS, the new YouTube... Continue reading…

A rainbow of Apple’s own MagSafe iPhone 13 caes. | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Now that your brand-spanking-new iPhone 13 has arrived (or is on the way), it’s time to start thinking about protecting your baby. After all, it’s only a matter of time before your phone falls out of your pocket or makes contact with your keys, so it’s worth the extra investment now to prevent future damages.Although MagSafe as an iPhone accessory standard is already a year old, Apple is off to a slow start building out its accessory ecosystem. Since its October 2020 launch event, Apple has only launched a dozen official MagSafe products: from the iconic MagSafe Charger puck to the 2021 MagSafe Leather Wallet.Of course, third-party accessory makers are eager to make MagSafe products, too. Unfortunately, Apple is famously tight-fisted... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Polestar, the Swedish electric car company that is a joint venture between Volvo and Geely, is going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Polestar is the latest EV company — and futuristic transportation company — to go public via a reverse merger with a so-called “blank check” company.By merging with a company backed by billionaire and “serial SPAC backer” Alec Gores and investment bank Guggenheim Partners, Polestar says it will have an “enterprise value” of $20 billion. The deal will also net Polestar a lot of cash: $800 million from Gores Guggenheim’s trust account and $250 million in cash from private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing “anchored by top-tier institutional investors,” the... Continue reading…

Lenovo has nailed the ThinkPad formula Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Expect new product announcements on September 28th Continue reading…

Amazon’s 2021 fall hardware event is coming September 28th. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is holding its annual fall hardware event on Tuesday, September 28th, starting at 12PM ET / 9AM PT. It’s invite-only, and while Amazon said it would share news about “devices, features and services,” it’s not elaborating on which product lines might get updates or what new devices could be revealed.If last year was any indication, expect to see a massive amount of hardware. Last year, Amazon unveiled a new spherical Echo with Zigbee support and “premium, adaptive sound” from Dolby, spherical Echo Dots (one which came with a clock), and the Echo Show 10 got a motorized base that turns its screen to face you while you’re interacting with it. It also added Netflix support.Plus, Amazon unveiled its AWS-powered gaming service Luna... Continue reading…

The Oculus Go, originally released in 2018. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook is unlocking the bootloader of its discontinued Oculus Go headset and giving users full root access. That means the headset will remain useful long after official support ends. The move was announced by Oculus’ consulting CTO John Carmack, who stepped down from his full-time role as CTO in 2019 to focus on his work as an independent AI researcher.Root access will be achieved by sideloading a future software update, opening the door for anyone to modify and improve Oculus’ original standalone all-in-one VR headset. Facebook originally released the Oculus Go in 2018 before supplanting it with the Oculus Quest the following year. The Go was officially discontinued in 2020.

The most impressive feature in Nintendo’s new Switch model is its seven-inch OLED screen, giving games more vivid-looking colors and deeper contrast. It also has an improved kickstand that’s more functional and versatile than the one on the default Switch. But what’s a new system launch without a killer app? I was able to play the first 90 minutes of Metroid Dread, and not only does it look like it was worth the 19-year-long wait for a sequel to Metroid Fusion, but it might also be the ideal showcase for Nintendo’s new OLED Switch.Dread is coming to the Switch on October 8th, 2021, the same day as Nintendo’s latest iteration of the tablet / console hybrid. There are many games that I’m looking forward to trying with the OLED screen, but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram says it’s “pausing” development of what’s been dubbed “Instagram Kids” — a version of the photo-sharing app aimed at children under 13. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced the news in a blog post today, saying that the Facebook-owned company would continue to work on parental-supervised experiences for younger users.In a blog post and series of accompanying tweets, Mosseri blames the media and critics for misunderstanding the purpose of the app. “It was never meant for younger kids, but for tweens (aged 10-12),” he writes. In a separate tweet, he adds that news of the project “leaked way before we knew what it would be. People feared the worst, and we had few answers at that stage. It’s clear we need to take more time on... Continue reading…

A virtual reality version of Resident Evil 4 will launch October 21st on Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset.Resident Evil 4 VR was announced earlier this year. But Facebook and Capcom — as well as third-party development studio Armature — have only offered glimpses of its gameplay, including a short trailer. It adapts the original game’s content with a (mostly) first-person point of view, re-engineering it to take advantage of VR motion controls. Armature’s Resident Evil 4 makes a somewhat complicated series of small changes the original 2005 horror game. It’s supposed to feature the same narrative content and world design, rather than getting the kind of overhaul Resident Evil 2 did in 2019. But it’s been re-engineered to... Continue reading…

Banner ads are appearing across select channels. | Screenshot: NBCU NBC is one of several NBCUniversal channels running prominent banner ads on YouTube TV streams, warning customers that they could lose access over a carriage dispute with Google. The banner lists over a dozen channels that could disappear if a deal isn’t reached by Wednesday, September 30th, and directs customers to an NBCU-owned website offering various ways to pressure Google. These include a pre-written tweet directed at YouTube TV, links to Google’s customer support, and a tool to find alternative providers.“Attention YouTube TV Customers,” the banner, which runs roughly every 10 minutes, reads, “YouTube may drop 14+ channels including NBC, Telemundo, USA, SYFY, Brave, Oxygen, MSNBC, NBCSN, CNBC, GOLF Channel, and E!. Go to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has fired back nearly two weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram made body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls according to Facebook’s own data. The salvo comes courtesy of Pratiti Raychoudhury, Vice President, Head of Research at Facebook. Raychoudhury’s post on Facebook’s Newsroom claims that The Wall Street Journal’s characterization of internal research is “not accurate” and blames it all on a poor interpretation of the data the WSJ has in its possession.On September 14 The Wall Street Journal published a story to The Facebook Files, which is a series of stories based around an enormous cache of internal Facebook documents leaked to the newspaper. The September 14 piece focused on data... Continue reading…

Photo by DON MACKINNON/AFP via Getty Images Reuters and the CBC first reported that Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou would appear in a Brooklyn federal courtroom today via streaming video and enter a plea regarding US charges against her. Canadian authorities arrested the Chinese executive in December 2018 on suspicion of violating US sanctions, and she has remained there on house arrest ever since, fighting US attempts at extradition. Hearings in her extradition case ended in August, with the ruling scheduled for October 21st.Meng was indicted on fraud charges claiming the Chinese technology and telecommunications company misrepresented its relationship with an Iranian affiliate, along with accusations it stole intellectual property from T-Mobile. The 13-count indictment named Meng,... Continue reading…

Denzel Washington stars in The Tragedy of Macbeth | Apple TV We’re nearing the season finale of Ted Lasso (only two more new episodes!), and it seems like the show’s got a lot of story threads that need to be knitted together after episode 10. Titled No Weddings and a Funeral, episode 10 was solid, but I didn’t quite love it. I’m trying to write about the episode without spoiling it, let’s just say I didn’t love how the session between Ted and Sharon which we’ve been waiting for all season was edited together with Rebecca’s retelling of a traumatic event with her own father. Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham were both so great, but editing the scenes together kind of killed the dramatic momentum. But! New plot twists suggest a cliffhanger of a season finale is coming in two weeks’ time. I’m... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple says it has identified an issue where the “unlock with Apple Watch” feature might not work with its new iPhone 13 devices. A new note on its support page describes the problem:

Tesla opened its “full self-driving” beta to more owners | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Despite the head of the National Transportation Safety Board expressing serious concerns about its safety last week, Tesla has now enabled access to the beta of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) program to more Tesla drivers, via a “request” button on Teslas’ dashboard screens. However, before a driver gets access to the software, Tesla will determine their “safety score,” using five criteria that estimate “the likelihood that your driving could result in a future collision,” according to a page on Tesla’s website.The score is tabulated using data collected by sensors on the driver’s Tesla, and considers instances of forward collision warnings per 1,000 miles, hard braking, aggressive turning, unsafe following, and forced Autopilot... Continue reading…

The pandemic has led to a collection of unusual digital experiences, from Google Forms escape rooms to whole virtual, two-dimensional comedy shows. But the interactive digital play / upstate barn wedding I attended last Friday, Future Wife: Party in a Spreadsheet, takes things to a strange new level. The show, co-created by playwright ruth tang and director Sarah Blush, and put on by a cast of game collaborators and theater company New Georges, manages to be playful, confounding, and surprisingly, a little touching. Basically all the things Google Sheets never are.It’s difficult to describe Party in a Spreadsheet in a way that makes sense. There are communist goats, alien activists, several themed islands, and an anonymous audience... Continue reading…

Red Notice. | Image: Netflix Everything from The Witcher to Tiger King Continue reading…

Geralt in The Witcher. | Image: Netflix At its big Tudum event, Netflix confirmed that it will make a third season of The Witcher. No other details were shared, so we don’t know when we might expect it just yet. Netflix also said that it would continue to expand The Witcher with a second anime film and, surprisingly, a series designed for kids and families.The announcements further expand Netflix’s ever-growing slate of Witcher content. At the event, Netflix also shared new clips from the second season ahead of its December 17th premiere and a behind-the-scenes look at The Witcher: Blood Origin, the upcoming live-action prequel series. The new content joins the first anime spinoff, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, released in August, and the hugely popular first season of T... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix There was a lot of Geralt of Rivia at Netflix’s Tudum event. The upcoming second season of The Witcher was a major presence at the streamer’s big showcase; fans were able to check out a pair of very short teasers, that gave a good look at what life is like on the Continent, and what we can expect from Ciri in particular.Additionally, we got a first glimpse at the prequel series Blood Origin with a behind-the-scenes tour of the set, and a trailer to catch fans up on a season 1 — which also has some new footage from the upcoming season.The first season of the show debuted in 2019 and became a huge hit for Netflix, with the company claiming it was its most-watched first season of television. A second season was inevitable — we got the... Continue reading…

NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX At its big Tudum event, Netflix showed off a nice, two-minute-long look at one of its most exciting upcoming movies: Don’t Look Up.Don’t Look Up is one of the more interesting films in Netflix’s slate, a story about astronomers trying to save the world from an impending asteroid collision. it also happens to have a stellar cast. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play the aforementioned astronomers, while Meryl Streep is the president, Jonah Hill is her chief of staff, and the rest of the lineup includes Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, and Tyler Perry. Adam McKay is writer and director.Don’t Look Up is due to hit Netflix on December 24th but will be in select theaters before that on... Continue reading…

Photo: Geoffrey Short / Netflix We’ve still only caught glimpses of Netflix’s upcoming live-action take on Cowboy Bebop, and today delivers yet another tease: a kinetic opening title sequence for the show. It’s not quite a proper trailer (which we’re still waiting on), but it does give a good sense of the vibe the series is going for.The Netflix adaptation stars John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, and last month we got our first proper look at the cast — and Spike’s hair — thanks to a series of photos. It’s been a long time coming, as news of the adaptation was first revealed in 2018, with the cast announced a year later. Earlier this year, Netflix confirmed that Yoko Kanno, the original composer, was on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is sharing a huge amount of news about upcoming series and movies Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Tiger King, the hugely popular documentary heavily associated with the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, will premiere on November 17th, Netflix revealed at its Tudum event on Saturday.Netflix just announced the second season, which it is calling Tiger King 2, on Thursday as part of a short trailer revealing many other true crime shows heading to the streaming service. Netflix is promising that it will have “just as much mayhem and madness” as the first season. While it’s unclear exactly what the second season might be about, Netflix’s Tudum trailer showed a brief clip of Joe Exotic, the main focus of the first season, in prison, so it could focus in part on that.Tiger King’s first season was a cultural sensation; in a press... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has released a new trailer for Arcane, its upcoming series based on the League of Legends universe, and also revealed when the show will premiere: November 6th. But you won’t be able to watch all of Arcane on that day, as Netflix plans to release the season in three separate “acts,” each consisting of three episodes released one week after the last. That means the first act will be out on November 6th, the next will release on November 13th, and the final one will premiere on November 20th.Arcane was first announced in 2019, though League of Legends developer Riot Games delayed the series to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In May, the news broke that Netflix had picked up the show and that it would debut in the fall.Earlier... Continue reading…

Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images Delta Airlines said in a pair of internal memos to employees this week that it’s asked competitors to share their no-fly lists, to try to keep passengers who cause disturbances on planes from bringing their mayhem to other airlines.Since January 1st, the Federal Aviation Administration says it has received 4,385 reports of unruly behavior by passengers, which includes 3,199 reports of passengers “refusing to comply with the federal facemask mandate.” The FAA has issued more than $1 million in proposed fines, but the agency does not have the authority to conduct criminal prosecutions.Among the incidents, according to the FAA (these are across various airlines):

Image: Netflix Netflix debuted a video from its upcoming series based on Neil Gaiman’s DC comic book series The Sandman. The video was brief, but it gave us a good glimpse at actor Tom Sturridge as Dream.The video was shown during Netflix’s Tudum event that took place Saturday. The show also also featured Gaiman, Sturridge, and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (who plays Death) talking about the series.If you want to get another preview of what to expect from the series, check out the character posters Netflix shared for Sturridge’s Dream, Howell-Baptiste’s Death, and Mason Alexander Park’s Desire in a Twitter thread.

iPhone 13 Pro | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The team at iFixit has a new teardown of the iPhone 13 Pro, finding it has an enormous battery and some small internal changes to how the components are laid out to accommodate the smaller notch on this year’s models.First, the battery. After conducting battery swap tests, on the iPhone 13 Pro, iFixit found its tests succeeded, but still got a warning notification. The L-shaped battery echoes the iPhone 12 Pro Max, iFixit notes:

Image: Netflix Netflix debuted a new teaser trailer for Stranger Things season 4 as part of its Tudum event on Saturday. It opened on a family going into an old-timey house, but in classic Stranger Things fashion, things quickly got spooky and, well, strange. The new season will premiere sometime in 2022.The fourth season has been a long time coming. Stranger Things’ third season debuted more than two years ago, on July 4th, 2019, so fans have been waiting for quite a while to see what happens next in Netflix’s hit series. (Season 3 was quite popular — just four days after it launched, Netflix said that 18.2 million accounts had watched the whole season.)The company has already shared a few very fleeting hints about what to expect in season 4,... Continue reading…

A union for TV workers says Apple claimed its TV Plus streaming service had fewer than 20 million subscribers as of July 1st | Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Apple told the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) that its Apple TV Plus streaming platform had fewer than 20 million subscribers, which allowed it to pay lower rates to IATSE workers than bigger streaming platforms, CNBC reported.Apple has never publicly released subscriber numbers for its streaming network, which launched in November of 2019. But Apple TV Plus has fewer original shows than larger, more established streaming rivals like Netflix, which said in August it had 209 million subscribers.“Workers on certain ‘new media’ streaming projects get paid less, even on productions with budgets that rival or exceed those of traditionally released blockbusters,” according to a press release IATSE posted on... Continue reading…

Netflix is kicking off a massive fan event today. Tudum — named for the ubiquitous chime that plays before Netflix titles — is a global event that will feature a huge slate of news, trailers, celebrity appearances, and more. It’s essentially the Lollapalooza of Netflix news, and anyone hoping to stay ahead of the streamer’s biggest upcoming announcements will definitely want to tune in.What is Tudum?Tudum is a global mega-event — the first of its kind for Netflix. It kicks off Saturday and will feature more than 145 celebrities, 70-plus series, and 28 films over the course of several hours. Expect exclusive clips and news for forthcoming titles like Stranger Things, The Sandman, Tiger King, Cobra Kai, The Witcher, Red Notice starring... Continue reading…

The Nanoleaf Elements offer some unique decor, whether illuminated or not. | Image: Nanoleaf Kicking things off are the Nanoleaf Elements light-up wall panels, which are currently seeing a nice discount at Best Buy. A seven-piece kit of the hexagon-shaped panels is $50 off right now, bringing them down to $250. If you want to go beyond seven, you can opt for a three-panel expansion kit for $80 (saving you $20). These panels are customizable, too, and you can connect up to 22 of them in one contiguous pattern.You may be familiar with the colorful Nanoleaf panels due to their popularity with Twitch streamers and YouTubers, but the Elements promise a more refined look with their wood styling and white illumination, which ranges from cool to warm tones. When turned off, their subtle aesthetic still complements a room while looking... Continue reading…

Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/The Mercury News via Getty Images By leaving them off email threads Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s iPhone 13 lineup launched Friday, and one of the key features of the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max are their ProMotion displays with variable refresh rates that can top out at 120Hz. But as spotted by 9to5Mac, some app animations in third-party apps are currently only running at 60Hz. That might be frustrating if you were expecting to see buttery-smooth animations across all of your apps with the new phones, but when we asked Apple what was going on, the company shared two reasons why this might be happening.One reason is that developers will need to update their apps to declare that they use the higher refresh rate. This can be done by adding an entry to the app’s plist, Apple tells The Verge, and the company says it plans to share... Continue reading…

Kate: Collateral Damage | Image: Ludic Studios Kate: Collateral Damage isn’t the first gaming tie-in we’ve seen for a Netflix original, but now that it’s seriously entering the space, each title feels a little different. Developed by Ludic Studios, the new game is a “time-attack action roguelike” that relates to the movie Kate, a Netflix movie starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead about an assassin who has 24 hours to find the antidote to a poison that is killing her.The plot of the movie makes the game’s time attack approach easy to understand as players take over the central character on her quest. As its Steam description reveals, players extend the length of each run by killing enemies to slow down the constantly depleting timer, and earning stimulant syringes that reset it entirely.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s poor video quality has been a long-running frustration for users on the platform, but on Friday, the company shared some potentially promising news: videos uploaded to the service will now “appear less pixelated for a better watching experience,” Twitter said in a tweet from its support account.Twitter removed a pre-processing step in its video pipeline when you upload, the company tells The Verge. After we published this article, the company clarified that this removed step split videos into smaller chunks for ingestion, which could reduce quality because of the additional processing.App researcher Jane Manchun Wong uploaded a video intended to put the supposed improvements to the test. (The sound on this video is a little... Continue reading…

If you’ve updated your computer from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you may find that your taskbar isn’t quite as configurable — and perhaps not quite as useful — as it was before. For example, the old, familiar Start menu with its configurable Live Tiles is now gone. The search box is no longer within the taskbar but is accessed by first clicking on the Start menu — an extra step. (Although the fact that Cortana is no longer automatically part of that search box can be considered, by many at least, as a plus.)Another thing: the taskbar is now permanently affixed to the bottom of the screen — so if you were more comfortable having it on top of the screen, or on either side, you’re out of luck.As you might imagine, Windows users are already... Continue reading…

Image: Digit, OnLeaks It’s Friday, it’s fall, there’s a breeze in the air (hopefully), and there’s fresh, I’d argue ridiculous, renders of Samsung’s expected Galaxy S22 Ultra to show you. The renders come courtesy of @OnLeaks and Digit, and they feature a new Samsung flagship with what looks like a Galaxy Note 20-inspired body and back that... well you should see for yourself.Since deciding to skip the Galaxy Note in 2021 — apparently much to the chagrin of T-Mobile — Samsung’s been seeding Note features across its popular phones. Both the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 3 offer stylus support. If these new renders are to be believed, the Galaxy S22 Ultra will go even further. According to OnLeaks and Digit, the new phone will come with the... Continue reading…

Fast optical switches plus a fast 8,000Hz polling rate Continue reading…

Disney Disney-owned Marvel is suing relatives of Steve Ditko and other Marvel comics creators to retain control of classic characters, including Iron Man, Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Black Widow.The lawsuits, covered earlier today by The Hollywood Reporter, were filed in New York and California against the heirs of Steve Ditko, Don Rico, Don Heck, and Gene Colan, as well as Stan Lee’s brother and Marvel collaborator Lawrence Lieber. They ask courts to declare that Disney has sole ownership of comics like The Avengers, Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Strange Tales, and Tales of Suspense — including the characters and story elements that have formed the basis for Disney’s lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe.As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the... Continue reading…