The Verge

It doesn’t appear that Verizon’s Smart Assistant can do a whole lot. | Image: Amazon We got our first look at Verizon’s Smart Display last month thanks to an FCC filing. Yesterday, Amazon confirmed the device’s existence as part of its Alexa Live presentation. It’s being introduced as part of the Alexa Custom Assistant program that allows third-party device manufacturers to add custom assistants built on top of Alexa technology to their products, and we regret to inform you that it looks just as useless as we first suspected.Here’s what it offers: standard smart display stuff, like an eight-inch screen, 4GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity, and of course, Alexa. It also comes with LTE, a spec included in the FCC filing and confirmed to CNET following the announcement. But the purpose of 4G appears... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook content moderators in Europe and the US are calling on the company to put an end to overly restrictive nondisclosure agreements that discourage people from speaking out about working conditions. In a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the CEOs of Covalen and Accenture, moderators say these NDAs aren’t limited to user data and help perpetuate a culture of “excessive secrecy.”“Despite the company’s best efforts to keep us quiet, we write to demand the company’s culture of fear and excessive secrecy ends today,” the moderators write. “No NDA can lawfully prevent us from speaking out about our working conditions.”The news comes amid escalating tension between the company and its contract content moderators... Continue reading…

Laura Miele. | Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images Today, Electronic Arts announced a handful of new projects, including a remake of Dead Space and a story-driven racer complete with Hollywood talent. It’s part of what feels like a busy period for the publisher; last year, EA says it launched 13 new games and more than 400 updates for existing titles. That productivity is especially notable given that, like most companies around the world, EA’s studios were forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Laura Miele, EA’s chief studios officer, says the publisher is still learning how to best make games remotely. And while it’s not clear what the future of EA’s studios will look like, there will be change moving forward. “I don’t think we will ever go back to how we were before the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As coronavirus cases rise in unvaccinated populations, Democratic senators are introducing a new bill Thursday that would strip away Facebook and other social media platforms’ Section 230 liability shield if they amplify harmful public health misinformation.The Health Misinformation Act, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) Thursday, would create a carveout in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act opening social media platforms like Facebook up to lawsuits for hosting some dangerous health misinformation. The bill directs the Health and Human Services secretary to issue guidelines on what should be classified as “health misinformation.”The carveout would only apply in situations where online... Continue reading…

One of survivor horror’s most iconic games is getting a next-gen facelift. At its EA Play Live event, Electronic Arts revealed that a remake of the original Dead Space is in development and will be launching on the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. The publisher says the game is “rebuilt from the ground up” with EA’s Frostbite engine, and studio Motive — best-known for the space shooter Star Wars: Squadrons — will be handling development. There’s currently no release date.This will mark the first entry in the franchise since Dead Space 3 in 2013. The franchise was originally created and developed by Visceral Games, which was shuttered in 2017 while working on a single-player Star Wars game that was eventually canceled. However, the... Continue reading…

Critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning director Jordan Peele’s next “terror” is officially called Nope, according to a poster the director shared on Thursday. The details of the project remain (delightfully) shrouded in mystery, and you’ll still have a bit longer to wait before you can see it yourself — Nope is scheduled to be released in theaters on July 22nd, 2022.There’s not a ton to go off of in the poster Peele tweeted, but it does feature an ominous dark cloud with what looks like a kite string trailing out the back of it. Peele’s tease of his last film Us was equally evocative and obtuse, so while there’s probably meaning to be gleaned from a mysterious cloud rolling over a mountain town, it’s also just nice to let the mystery be.... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Lucid Motors is on the precipice of completing a merger that will give the Saudi-owned electric vehicle startup $4.5 billion in fresh capital. But the deal is being held up, in part, by spam filters.The California-based startup is merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called Churchill Capital IV that is already listed on the New York Stock Exchange. For the merger to go through, Churchill shareholders have to approve a number of proposals that outline the terms. That vote was supposed to close today, but Churchill extended the deadline to Friday because not enough shareholders have approved a key proposal.There are a few possible reasons why. The first is the spam filter issue. To participate in that vote,... Continue reading…

Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images Many websites — including banking pages, brokerages, and gaming services — were affected for just over an hour Thursday, as part of a major internet outage. During the outage, consumers were unable to access services like Ally Bank, Fidelity, Sony’s PlayStation Network, Airbnb, and more. Several airline sites were also affected: Delta, British Airways, and Southwest’s sites were either down, or had important functionality like flight check-ins broken.Many sites appear to be functional again after Akamai, a content delivery network that hosts much of the internet, started rolling out a fix to its service. “We are continuing to monitor the situation and can confirm this was not a result of a cyber attack on the Akamai platform” says... Continue reading…

Google is updating its “about this result” feature for search results with an interesting new addition: context about how and why the company’s algorithm landed on the specific results for the links that it surfaces when you search for things.The company added the “about this result” information box earlier this year as a way to help users properly vet sources that they weren’t familiar with using data sourced from Wikipedia. The menu — accessed by clicking the triple dots at the corner of a search result— pops up and tries to provide additional background information about a website.The update that’s rolling out today, though, doesn’t add more context about websites that might appear in search results, but rather helps shine a light... Continue reading…

Where available, users can report on how busy a transit option is. | Image: Google Google is expanding the number of cities where Maps offers information about public transport crowding. The number of cities covered is increasing from around 200 today, to “over 10,000 transit agencies in 100 countries,” the company says. As well as crowdedness, Google says Maps is also being updated to offer more information about past travel.Google Maps’ crowdedness information originally launched pre-pandemic in 2019, but over the past year social distancing has made it more important than ever. Crowdedness information is generated from a mixture of historical location data, as well as self-reporting from Maps users on individual trains. Google says it anonymizes the location history data used. Image: Google G... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge To sell regulators on their $26 billion mega merger, T-Mobile and Sprint executives told anyone who’d listen that the deal would provide near-miraculous benefits. But economists warned that US telecom merger promises are historically meaningless, and the reduction in overall competitors would — sooner or later — result in higher prices and job cuts.Instead of heeding their warnings and blocking the deal, US antitrust enforcers concocted an elaborate workaround: they would erect Dish Network as the nation’s new fourth major wireless carrier. Under the plan Dish received some T-Mobile spectrum, the Boost Mobile prepaid brand, and the assurance that T-Mobile would help Dish run a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) while it got its own... Continue reading…

The third-generation AirPods will reportedly have a shorter stem than current models (above). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will start production on updated AirPods next month, with plans to launch the third-generation earbuds later this year, according to a report from Nikkei. It’s the latest rumor regarding Apple’s product schedule, which will reportedly include an all-5G iPhone line-up in 2022, including a revamped iPhone SE sporting the as-yet-unannounced A15 processor.A refresh of Apple’s entry-level AirPods have been rumored for a while now, with previous generations launched in 2016 and 2019. Back in May, Bloomberg reported that the earbuds will have a design similar to the AirPods Pro, with “a new case and shorter stems poking out of the bottom of each one.” If Nikkei is right about production starting next month, we can expect to see the... Continue reading…

Big Picture, the mode that converts Steam’s user interface into a more console-like design better suited to TVs and controllers than monitors and mice, may not be long for this world. According to austinp_valve, a Valve employee posting on the Steam community forums, the plan is for the new UI from the just-announced Steam Deck handheld PC to replace Big Picture mode on the desktop version of Steam as well.Valve announced Big Picture mode in 2011 and released it the following year. The mode formed the basis of the UI for SteamOS, the version of Linux that shipped on console-style devices that were part of Valve’s ill-fated Steam Machine project. With the Steam Deck running an all-new version of the operating system called SteamOS 3.0,... Continue reading…

Image: Miles Three years ago, a startup called Miles launched a free app with the goal of becoming a sort of rewards program for all travel — with an emphasis on clean transportation. Cover enough ground by bike, bus, subway, or even on foot, and you’d be rewarded with “miles” (aka points) that could be exchanged for perks at Starbucks or discounts to services like Audi Silvercar.I was curious, so I used Miles for a little over a year. I lived in New York City at the time and did a lot of daily walking and subway-riding, with occasional biking and bus travel. I was in a great spot to rack up miles without having to change my habits, so I shook the icky feeling of letting another app know my location to see if that occasional free coffee would be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Location data from a cell phone, obtained and sold by data brokers, has lead to the alleged outing and resignation of a priest working for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, according to a report from The Washington Post. The traffic data, which was linked to the priest and appeared to show when and where he was using the LGBTQ dating app Grindr, was obtained by a publication and shared with the Conference, where the priest worked as the general secretary.This incident is another example of how invasive the collection and sale of location and other personal data by brokers can be. While the data sold by these companies is ostensibly anonymized, it’s been shown that individuals can be picked out and tracked. The data broker industry... Continue reading…

Samsung has officially announced when it will hold its next Unpacked product event: August 11th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT. It is widely expected to announce the next version of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 — both of which have already leaked quite a bit. Samsung’s not being shy about those expectations, as a quick look at its invite reveals the outline for both of those devices.Samsung is also expected to announce new Galaxy watches, which would be the first to use the new combined Wear platform that was announced at Google I/O earlier this year.Samsung is holding the event virtually again on its website, and it promises to post more details on the livestream here. It’s also keeping up another Samsung trend: letting customers... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge A bad update to Chrome OS, version 91.0.4472.165, has left some users unable to log in to their accounts, or reportedly with boot-looping computers (via Android Central). If you’ve found yourself locked out of your Chromebook, help is on the way: Google posted on its system status page that it’s working on a fix, which it expects to release on Wednesday. It’s also pulled the update, which should prevent more users from experiencing the issue.According to Google, the only options to immediately regain access to your Chrome OS device (if it unfortunately downloaded and installed the update) will lead to the local data on the device being wiped. If you can wait until the new fix the issue is released, though, your device should... Continue reading…

Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and Oliver Daemen walk off New Shepard’s landing pad as Wally Funk, 82-year-old aviation icon and the mission’s fourth passenger, remains in awe at the size of New Shepard, the suborbital rocket they all launched to space on. | Joey Roulette/The Verge A record-setting flight Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo After months of speculation and a sea of rumors, Nintendo officially announced the next iteration of its popular gaming console: the Nintendo Switch OLED model. The upcoming device serves more as a midlife update than anything else, a refinement of the 2019 model as opposed to the more powerful “Switch Pro” that was rumored (and may still launch).On sale for $350 starting October 8th, the aptly-titled Nintendo Switch OLED model is the next iteration of what has become one of the best-selling consoles over the last two years. It’s outfitted with a 7-inch 720p OLED display, a new dock with a wired Ethernet port, and an improved kickstand that seems to take a cue directly from Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablets. It also offers 64GB of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Chrome’s latest update for iOS will let you secure your incognito tabs with Touch ID, Face ID, or a passcode (via MacRumors). When the new feature is rolled out to you, you can turn it on by navigating to the settings menu, then tapping “Privacy,” then “Lock Incognito tabs.” I just updated the app and the option wasn’t there for me, so you might have to wait just a bit until you can flip it on. Google first revealed it was testing this new privacy feature in February.The update brings a few other handy features to Google’s mobile browser, including the ability to take a full-page screenshot of a website. You can use it by snapping a screenshot with the button combination specific to your device, tapping the screenshot preview, and then... Continue reading…

Facebook is announcing a new setting that allows you to limit how much potentially sensitive content shows up in your Instagram Explore tab. According to Facebook, the new Sensitive Content Control setting will let you “see more or less of some types of sensitive content,” which may be “upsetting or offensive.” How much content the three levels, “Allow,” “Limit (Default),” and “Limit Even More” will or will not show is pretty vague, and we’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification.On the support page for Sensitive Content Control, Instagram says that sensitive content could include sexually suggestive or violent posts, as well as posts that promote things like tobacco or pharmaceutical use. Facebook is clear that this setting is... Continue reading…

HBO Max Minis shown on a mobile device. | Image: HBO Max HBO Max has partnered with Snapchat to bring full-length episodes of its series to the social media platform. With HBO Max Minis, users will be able to stream the pilots of select series with up to 63 other Snapchatters.The feature was announced today and is offered through Minis, which launched late last year and hosts third-party app experiences within Snapchat. Minis allow users to do anything from meditate with Headspace to buy movie tickets with friends through Atom. And now, HBO Max Minis will allow anyone on Snapchat to view entire episodes of more than a dozen series from the streaming service for free, including pilots from Lovecraft Country and Game of Thrones. With synchronized playback, everyone watching the title will be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix revealed that its initial efforts in gaming will be focused on mobile games and that the games will be included with users’ Netflix subscriptions, the company announced as part of its second-quarter earnings report on Tuesday. The news comes just days after the company said it hired former EA and Oculus exec Mike Verdu to head up its gaming work.Here is exactly what Netflix said about gaming, from its letter to investors:

Fortnite is hosting a second round of its animated short film festival, dubbed “Short Nite 2,” — a successor to the game’s original Short Nite festival that developer Epic held earlier this year.According to Epic, Short Nite 2 will feature “a series of animated, online shorts by up-and-coming-creators,” which, like the original event, will air on the game’s combat-free Party Royale mode. Short Nite 2 will kick off on Friday, July 23rd, at 2PM ET, and last for about 40 minutes. If you can’t make the debut, the short films will continue to play nonstop until 2PM ET on July 25th.Another short film festival is on its wayThe developer hasn’t announced the full list yet, but it’s highlighting that the stream will feature two Gildedguy... Continue reading…

Jason Alexander as Jeff Bezos. | Image: Jon Stewart Jon Stewart shared a video promoting his upcoming Apple TV Plus show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, and it’s an odd one: the three-minute and ten-second clip shared on Twitter is a comedy skit roasting the recent billionaire space race, starring Jason Alexander as Jeff Bezos and a mop as Richard Branson. There are also a lot of dick jokes.Here’s the clip, if you’re curious:

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony sleuths just stumbled onto a surprise in Japan: the company has quietly kicked out a new version of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition that’s listed as 300 grams lighter than the original (via PSU). That’s fully two-thirds of a pound, bringing the mammoth console down from well over the eight-pound mark to just slightly under it.How, you might ask? Well, that’s the question!According to Sony’s official manual (PDF) and quick start guide (PDF), as spotted by PS5sokuhouInfo on Twitter, the only differences between the new CFI-1100B and the original CFI-1000B are that change in weight and a new thumbscrew for the PS5’s vertical stand so you don’t need a screwdriver or coin to get it set. Image: Sony A new... Continue reading…

The updated Venmo app without the global social feed. | Image: Venmo Venmo announced it's removing its global social feed on Tuesday, the payment app’s notorious feature that allows strangers to potentially view payments you make and receive on Venmo (via Bloomberg).Now Venmo’s social elements will be limited to your actual friends on the app in the “friends feed” without you having to toggle any features in the app. The company buried the change in a blog post detailing an update to the Venmo app. Venmo writes:

Photo by Adam Schultz President Joe Biden will nominate Jonathan Kanter, an ardent Google critic and competition lawyer, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division, as first reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.Kanter has a long history of representing companies in competition cases against Google, and he opened his own law firm last year. If confirmed by the Senate, Kanter would take the helm on a slate of cases against big tech companies led by the Justice Department, including a monopoly lawsuit filed against Google last October. The case accuses the search giant of creating an illegal monopoly in the digital ads market.“Jonathan Kanter is a distinguished antitrust lawyer”“Jonathan Kanter is a distinguished antitrust lawyer with over 20 years of... Continue reading…

Dutch startup Lightyear has found a manufacturing partner to build its solar-powered electric car, the Lightyear One. Finnish contract manufacturer Valmet Automotive signed a letter of intent with the startup this week, and the two companies plan to start building prototypes together in early 2022, with an eye on midyear for the beginning of production of nearly 1,000 vehicles. A second vehicle meant for mass production is yet to be announced.Lightyear was founded in 2016 by a team of engineers who had competed together in the World Solar Challenge, a race held every few years in the Australian outback that’s meant to advance the idea of solar-powered cars. The startup showed off the first prototype of the Lightyear One in 2019. It’s a... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google has started selling a new bundle that gives you some premium entertainment to go along with the company’s Chromecast streaming gadget. For $64.99, you’ll get both the Chromecast with Google TV and three months of HBO Max. The device usually retails for $49.99, and HBO Max’s ad-free tier costs $14.99 per month, so you’re basically getting two months of the service for free.As usual with this sort of thing, the deal is only available for new subscribers of HBO Max; existing customers are out of luck. Google is offering the bundle beginning today, and it’ll be available for the rest of the year. The company is limiting each customer / Google account to three devices, but it’s not like you can stack the HBO Max offer, so there’s not... Continue reading…

Team Great Britain trains ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. | Photo by Harriet Lander / Getty Images The Olympians streaming into Tokyo this week are about to be faced with the hottest games in decades, with temperatures around 90 degrees Fahrenheit and suffocating humidity. Many athletes and sports physiologists have had their eye on the summer temperatures in Japan for years and have been planning to help athletes acclimate to the heat.In the weeks leading up to the games, female Olympians may have had to spend more time preparing for the heat than their male counterparts. Some early studies show that it can take twice as long for female athletes to adjust than male athletes. The information is limited, though, because until only a few years ago, most of the research on how to prepare to compete in hot environments was only done on... Continue reading…

Starting on August 9th, Canada is planning on opening its borders to vaccinated Americans after the country stopped allowing nonessential travel in March 2020 (via The Washington Post). According to the Canadian government’s announcement, the new travel rules will apply to US citizens and permanent residents who are currently living in the country and who have been fully vaccinated with one of the approved COVID-19 vaccines, as well as unvaccinated children who are traveling with a vaccinated guardian.The announcement does say that the change will only happen if conditions in the country are still good — meaning that if Canada sees a spike in cases between now and August 9th, the border reopening may be reconsidered.It won’t be as... Continue reading…

GIF: Blue Origin After landing from his little jaunt to the edge of space, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos thanked the people who let him do it. “I want to thank every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this,“ he said.No, really, he said that.

Google is updating Chrome for Android’s permissions controls to make per-site permissions easier to access and manage. The update, available to Chrome on Android users, makes it faster to change what information a site can and cannot access. Tapping the lock button, then tapping Permissions will show a list of what the site is allowed to access, along with toggles to enable or disable them as you want. Google also says that there’s an upcoming feature that will let you “forget” the site from your browsing history, which is in the same vein as its recent feature allowing you to wipe the record of your last 15 minutes of browsing. GIF: Google A view of the updated permissions controls. Google is also introducing... Continue reading…

When Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June, it revealed that Microsoft Teams would be integrated directly into the operating system and that you’d be able to connect with other people via a new Chat window. The first preview for the new operating system didn’t have that new functionality, but Microsoft is starting to roll it out in a limited way starting Tuesday with the newest Windows 11 preview for Windows Insiders.The rollout of all of the promised features will happen over time, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post. “In this first stage, you’ll be able to sign in, add contacts, and connect via individual and group chats,” he said. “Over the coming weeks, we will enable audio and video calling, meetings, screen sharing... Continue reading…

Apple Arcade’s recent expansion means that the subscription service is now home to plenty of classic games — and things don’t get much more classic than Tetris. Today, Apple announced that Tetris Beat, which mashes up the classic block-dropping puzzler with a rhythm game featuring music from the likes of Alison Wonderland, is coming to Arcade “soon.”There’s no word on a specific release date, but Beat features 18 exclusive songs, split-screen support if you’re on an Apple TV, and spatial audio for those listening with AirPods. It looks to be yet another inventive take on the game, following the likes of the battle royale Tetris 99 and Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s meditative Tetris Effect.The news is also part of a solid run for Apple Arcade.... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge YouTube viewers will soon have a new way to throw their support — and money — behind their favorite creators. A new tool called Super Thanks that lets you tip creators is now being tested on the platform.The feature lets users applaud a creator by choosing from one of four price points between $2 and $50 (or the regional currency equivalent). When a user purchases one of these four options, they’ll see a celebratory animation on-screen and a colorful comment with their name appear below the video in the comments section. Creators themselves will be able to respond to these messages in the same way they can on regular comments. Image: YouTube YouTube’s new Super Thanks feature shown on a mobile device. YouTube... Continue reading…

Tweetdeck redesign preview | Image: Twitter Kayvon Beykpour said in a March interview with The Verge that Twitter does know TweetDeck still exists and the company is working on an overhaul “from the ground up.” Today, Twitter posted a single image of the reworked app, explaining that it represents a preview going into testing with a few “randomly-selected” people from the US, Canada, and Australia. If you can’t wait to see it yourself, Jane Manchun Wong explains how you can opt in to the test right now with a simple browser tweak.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re a video creator on TikTok, then your comment section could be really frustrating, especially if somebody leaves a comment that completely misinterprets what you’ve been saying (to say the least). You could send a text reply or simply create another video, but according to TikTok, now you have a third option: you can reply to your comments using video rather than text.(Note: since this is something specifically for creators who want to video-reply to comments, we haven’t been able to test it yet. If / when we do, we’ll let you know.)To add a video to a comment on one of your existing TikTok videos:

Presentation director Masato Miyazaki on animating the likes of Lady Dimitrescu Continue reading…

Image: Sony Sony has just announced two new high-end home theater audio systems, both of which include HDMI 2.1 passthrough ports that offer full support for features like 8K video, 4K gaming at 120Hz, Dolby Vision HDR, eARC, and more.First up is the HT-A7000 Dolby Atmos 7.1.2-channel soundbar. Priced at $1,299.99, the soundbar has two HDMI 2.1 inputs, so theoretically you could run both a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X into this thing and play each console to its full potential.Positioned as Sony’s latest flagship soundbar, the A7000 has two up-firing speakers for Atmos, two beam tweeters, and five front speakers for wider surround. There’s a built-in dual subwoofer, but if you need deeper bass, you can pay extra for a standalone sub; Sony’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Beginning next year, Verizon will join AT&T and T-Mobile in preloading Android Messages as the default texting app on all Android phones it sells. It’s the final step for making RCS Chat — the next-gen standard designed to replace SMS — the default experience for Android. In the US, that only leaves one large cohort that will not use RCS as a default SMS replacement: iPhone users.Verizon has also said it will fully support interoperability between carriers, so in theory the improved images, video, read receipts, and group chats should just work — assuming everybody you’re texting with is also using Android Messages.Verizon was the last of the big three US carriers to get on board with Google’s latest strategy to push RCS as the new... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Jeff Bezos launched to the edge of space Tuesday morning with three fellow passengers and landed safely in a Texas desert aboard his space company’s crew capsule. The NS-16 mission marked Blue Origin’s first to carry humans and kicked off commercial service for the company’s space tourism business. Flying Bezos, the richest man in the world who founded Blue Origin in 2000, sent a signal to prospective space tourists that the company’s suborbital New Shepard rocket is safe to fly and open for business.The six-story-tall New Shepard booster lifted off under clear skies at 9:12AM ET on Tuesday from its remote launch site in Van Horn, Texas, with the company’s gumdrop-shaped RSS First Step crew capsule fixed on top. Bezos, his brother Mark,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Adobe’s Premiere Pro is now ready for everyone using an M1 Mac. Support for Apple’s new chips is rolling out today, after launching in beta in December. Adobe says there are speed increases throughout the app, from a 50 percent faster launch to 77 percent faster “editing,” whatever that giant term encompasses.Apple released its first computers with M1 chips in November. Though they’re able to run apps that were built for machines with Intel processors, programs had to be updated to take full advantage of the M1’s speed improvements. Getting Adobe on board was always going to be a necessity — its apps are critical creative tools for many industries — and fortunately, Adobe has been fairly quick to get updates out the door for its biggest... Continue reading…

Camera uploads should now be faster and more reliable. | Image: Dropbox Dropbox is getting a slew of interface tweaks alongside new tools and features. One of the more useful inclusions is a new file conversion feature, which lets Dropbox users convert images between different formats like JPEG and PNG, and files into PDFs. Support for video conversion is coming soon. Dropbox is also adding new features to its password manager.Automatic camera backups from mobile, which will now be available to users on Dropbox’s free tier, are also seeing some improvements. Dropbox says uploads should now be faster and more reliable, and on iOS there’s now an option to specify exactly which folders should be automatically backed up (the feature is coming to Android later this year). There’s also the option to have photos... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple’s AirPods Max over-ear headphones are more affordable than ever today at Best Buy and Amazon. Normally around $500 in recent weeks, each color option costs $455 (Best Buy has each color for this price, while Amazon’s selection is a little more spotty). It’s pricier than many competing noise-canceling headphones from the likes of Sony and Bose, but these have unrivaled build quality and materials, as well as solid performance in just about every regard. This price drop makes its minor flaws a little more excusable, like that it requires a $35 cable if you want to listen to music with a wire, and that its carrying case isn’t so great. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is the latest remaster to hit the Nintendo... Continue reading…