The Verge

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Qualcomm and Google have announced they’ll be working to expand Project Treble, Google’s ambitious multiyear project that aims to simplify OS updates so it’s easier for device manufacturers to upgrade phones and tablets to new Android versions without worrying about Qualcomm’s chipset-specific software.The goal is to make it even easier for users to get the latest version of Android on their phones (something that isn’t always guaranteed) and to ensure that new Qualcomm chips will support four Android OS updates and four years of security updates — a huge leap forward from what most Android phones usually offer. Such a feat, if actually accomplished, would put Android smartphones closer to Apple’s iPhones in terms of long-term software... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A coalition of 38 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google Thursday focusing on the design of the tech giant’s search engine. It’s the third major antitrust lawsuit filed against the search giant this year.Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser and Nebraska’s Republican Attorney General Doug Peterson led the bipartisan group of states’ suit accusing Google of anticompetitive behavior like designing its search engine in a way that leverages the company’s own products over those of its competitors.“Google sits at the crossroads of so many areas of our digital economy and has used its dominance to illegally squash competitors, monitor nearly every aspect of our digital lives, and profit to the tune of billions,” New... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify is now available on the Epic Games Store, signaling developer Epic’s ambitions to turn what has so far been strictly a games store into a more general app distribution platform. The Spotify app is free to download on the Epic Games Store, just like it is on the App Store, Google Play, or as a direct download for your PC or Mac.Spotify’s availability on the Epic Games Store arrives as Epic is in prolonged legal battles with Apple and Google over the business models of each company’s respective app store. Epic has sued both companies over the removal of the mobile version of Fortnite, alleging antitrust violations and arguing that developers can and should be able to process their own payments and circumvent giving 30 percent of... Continue reading…

Photo by Al Drago / Getty Images Dutch prosecutors believe a security researcher hacked President Donald Trump’s Twitter account in October, despite earlier denials from the White House and Twitter. According to The Guardian, a specialist police team investigated hacker Victor Gevers, who claimed to have guessed Trump’s password as “maga2020!” and breached his account. “We believe the hacker has actually penetrated Trump’s Twitter account, but has met the criteria that have been developed in case law to go free as an ethical hacker,” a public prosecutor’s office spokesperson told The Guardian.The BBC reports that Dutch law enforcement alerted US authorities to the findings. It’s unclear exactly what evidence Gevers provided to police; he previously offered screenshots... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge On Wednesday, the Texas attorney general announced a far-reaching antitrust case against Google’s ad business. The complaint makes a lot of eye-opening allegations, including a long-running conspiracy between Google and Facebook to defuse the threat of header bidding, but one of the strangest allegations had to do with WhatsApp. According to the complaint, Google made a deal with Facebook to access millions of private messages, and photos from WhatsApp users, shortly after the app was acquired.The specific allegation comes 57 pages into the complaint. The passage is heavily redacted, but it unmistakably alleges an exclusive agreement between Google and Facebook, granting Google access to users’ WhatsApp messages. An... Continue reading…

Image: Spin Spin, the electric scooter company owned by Ford, says it has a novel solution to the problem of sidewalk clutter and scofflaw riders. The company is teaming up with an IoT startup called Drover AI to add cameras, sensor arrays, and onboard computers to all of their scooters in the hopes of curbing improper parking and riding behavior by customers.Spin has forged an “exclusive partnership” with the Los Angeles-based Drover AI to use the startup’s PathPilot technology in Spin’s next-generation Insight monitoring platform in US cities. By equipping its scooters with cameras and sensors, Spin hopes to better “understand its surroundings in real time and assist riders in making safe riding decisions.” Also, Spin will share data generated... Continue reading…

These earbuds are only made for sleeping Continue reading…

Image: WarnerMedia TV was a constant companion in 2020. With most cultural institutions shut down, the small screen still managed to provide us with a deluge of new things to enjoy and talk about — far more than any one person could ever watch. In fact, at times this year, I found it difficult to watch anything — or at least, anything new.My habits were often fickle, and I danced across shows new and old; I started many and finished few on my journey to get lost in something. And so even in this extraordinary year, the usual caveats apply. I am but one person, and I cannot watch all television. Here, in no particular order, are the shows that stayed with me, long after I turned off the set.Dare MeWhile the show premiered in 2019, the rest of Dare Me’... Continue reading…

Photo: Michele Doying / The Verge Facebook has reversed a change to its News Feed algorithm that prioritized authoritative news sources, even though some employees asked that the “nicer” News Feed become permanent, according to The New York Times.Following a sharp increase in misinformation on the platform in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, Facebook changed how it weighed the quality of news sources based on a “news ecosystem quality” (NEQ) score. Outlets including the Times, NPR, and CNN saw Facebook traffic rise, while more partisan sites that published incendiary or misleading news about the election saw Facebook traffic decrease.CEO Mark Zuckerberg had authorized the change to the News Feed in the days after the election when it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Checking in on everyone who went remote this year Continue reading…

The Fitbit Sense from Fitbit’s lineup of health tracking wearables. | Photo by Brent Rose for The Verge Google’s acquisition of Fitbit is nearing completion now that the European Commission has approved the search giant’s $2.1 billion takeover of the wearable tech company.When Google announced the acquisition in November 2019, Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh said that the Fitbit purchase was “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market.” But regulators quickly got involved, and in August, they formally began investigating Google’s purchase of Fitbit over data privacy and antitrust concerns.In approving the deal, Google has now agreed to a number of concessions to ease EU concerns. Among the concessions, Google has agreed not to use Fitbit data, including GPS and... Continue reading…

Rexi Co’s mask with fringes. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After COVID-19 started dominating the headlines, one of the changes that we started making in our lives (well, most of us, anyway) was to wear a mask.As you probably remember, initially masks were difficult — sometimes impossible — to find. Disposable masks were reserved for medical and emergency personnel (and in some places, shortages were so problematic that people were sewing masks to send to hospital workers). The rest of us improvised the best we could.However, human ingenuity (and capitalism) will out. Now there are lots and lots of companies out there vying for your masking dollars. There are craftspeople selling their designs on individual sites, artists putting out weird and wonderful constructions, and larger companies... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is giving viewers the chance to ignore the visuals of shows and movies entirely and go full audio. In an update first spotted by XDA-Developers and then Android Police, Netflix has started rolling out an audio-only mode for its Android app users.When watching a video, subscribers will see a “video off” button at the top of the full-screen video player. Once the video is turned off, a blank screen will appear along with all of the playback controls, like a scrub bar, forward and backward buttons, and speed adjustments. You can see that screen below, thanks to Android Police. Image: Android Police There’s also an audio-off option in the app’s settings, which lets viewers decide whether they always want the... Continue reading…

Images: Canoo California EV startup Canoo has announced a new multipurpose electric vehicle aimed at last-mile deliveries and other small businesses, which starts at $33,000 but scales up in size and cost. Due in 2022, the vehicle is the centerpiece of what new executive chairman Tony Aquila told The Verge amounts to a “re-founding of the company” ahead of its debut on the NASDAQ stock exchange at the end of next week, thanks to a reverse merger with a so-called blank check company.It’s Canoo’s second vehicle, following the subscription-only van it debuted last year. Canoo still plans to make that EV — in fact, the new multipurpose vehicle is built on the same technological platform that Canoo developed for the van, and they share similar design... Continue reading…

Google’s new shopping feature will let people virtually try on makeup, the company announced in a blog post. Another feature will show the products on various models.Only lipstick and eyeshadow are part of the feature. It is also limited to a few brands, such as L’Oreal, MAC Cosmetics, Black Opal, and Charlotte Tilbury. Image: Google You can see what various shades look like on various skin tones. To try it out, you can search for the line you’re eying. If it’s a supported brand, you’ll see a new card that shows a model, and the specific shade that they’re wearing.To change the shade, you use a list at the bottom; to change the model, you use the list at the top. It looks like Google and their partners have... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge After years in development, Harley-Davidson finally pulled back the curtain on its new lineup of electric bikes last month. The Serial 1 bikes won’t go on sale until spring 2021, but I got the chance to test-ride a few of them on a recent chilly afternoon in Brooklyn. And my initial impression is they totally live up to the hype.A quick refresher for those who missed the initial announcement: Serial 1 is a standalone electric bike company that spun out from Harley-Davidson last October. Initially, Serial 1 will sell four bikes, ranging in price from $3,399 to $4,999. The brand names are Mosh/Cty, a city bike, and the commuter Rush/Cty, which comes in three variants (regular, Step-Thru, and Speed). Each comes with a mid-drive motor... Continue reading…

One more try.Hades is a game that does so many things so well, it’s hard to describe them all. It’s a fine-tuned isometric action game that takes the elaborate interweaving systems and combat of Supergiant’s previous titles to soaring new heights. It’s a roguelike that transcends the limitations of the genre with great storytelling. It’s one of the most compelling personal dramas told in a video game this year — all of it polished to a dazzling, mirror-like shine.If Hades had only done one of these things well, it would have been a great game. The fact that it manages to do all of them, though, without missing a single beat, makes it the best game I’ve played this year. In many ways, Hades feels like the culmination of... Continue reading…

Image: Warner Bros. Hollywood scheduling has always run like a finely tuned watch: a delicate dance of release dates as studios try to optimize movies for the most money, avoiding other massive blockbusters, while juggling the shifting demands of film editing, reshoots, and special effects work.But the shuttering of theaters by the pandemic has thrown all of that into disarray, forcing studios to shift release dates in a chaotic cascade. Each change has ripple effects due to that strict schedule: when one massive superhero film moves dates, it trickles down the line, forcing both movies from within the studio and from competitors to shuffle their dates to avoid risking splitting their audiences (and box office takes).Small delays turned into large ones;... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge We pay twice as much as Europe for high speeds, assuming we can even get them Continue reading…

Some Messenger and Instagram features aren’t available in Europe. Facebook is notifying Messenger and Instagram users in Europe that some features are temporarily unavailable. A small message has appeared in both the Facebook Messenger and Instagram apps for European users this week, noting that some features aren’t available to “respect new rules for messaging services in Europe.”Facebook doesn’t outline exactly what features will be missing, but the company does reveal on its support pages that polls on both Messenger and Instagram are currently unavailable in Europe, alongside a lack of stickers in Instagram and no personalized replies on Messenger. Other missing features may include a lack of certain file sends on Messenger, missing nicknames, or the ability to share AR effects in DMs on... Continue reading…

360-degree view of Galaxy Buds Pro. | Evan Blass Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro have leaked again, this time in a full 360-degree animation courtesy of Evan Blass. The latest @Evleaks drop gives us our best look yet at how Samsung’s latest true wireless earbuds will look from every angle.Rumored to arrive alongside the Galaxy S21 in January, Samsung’s followup to the Galaxy Buds Live and Galaxy Buds Plus has already leaked in three different colors: black, violet, and silver, again courtesy of Blass. Evan Blass All three Galaxy Buds Pro color options. The Galaxy Buds Pro are expected to feature active noise cancellation, that should be much improved over the open-ear design of the Galaxy Buds Live. The Pros will also feature a beefier 500mAh battery according to... Continue reading…

Facebook’s second newspaper ad. | Facebook Facebook is stepping up its campaign against Apple’s privacy changes with a second full-page newspaper ad today. This new ad claims Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes “will change the internet as we know it,” and force websites and blogs “to start charging you subscription fees” or add in-app purchases due to a lack of personalized ads. It follows a similar full-page newspaper ad in the The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post yesterday.Apple is planning to make changes to iOS 14 early next year that will require developers to ask for permission to gather data and track users across mobile apps and websites on an iPhone or iPad. Apple revealed how iOS 14 users will be prompted to opt into tracking in apps this week,... Continue reading…

An example of the prompt you’ll see when an app asks permission to track your data. | Image: Apple Apple has responded to Facebook’s critiques of its upcoming privacy changes by saying that is “standing up for our users,” in a statement shared with The Verge. Facebook has been criticizing the company ahead of a future iOS update that will require users to give their permission for apps to collect data about them. Facebook took out full-page newspaper ads today attacking Apple, claiming that the changes will “limit businesses’ ability to run personalized ads and reach their customers effectively.”Here is Apple’s full statement:

Image: Disney The Lizzie McGuire Disney Plus series is officially dead, according to an Instagram post from Hilary Duff. The series was reportedly going to feature an adult Duff reprising her role as Lizzie in her 30s, navigating a career in New York, and dealing with more “adult” themes.“It’s been an honor to have Lizzie in my life,” Duff wrote. “I know the efforts and conversations have been everywhere trying to make work, but sadly and despite everyone’s best efforts [the reboot] isn’t going to happen.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter will no longer automatically show the quote tweet prompt when you try to retweet something starting on Wednesday, the company announced.The change to the way retweets worked was first implemented in October ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. Twitter’s aim with the change was to encourage people to tweet and amplify information more thoughtfully.“We don’t believe that this happened, in practice,” Twitter said in a series of tweets. “The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45 percent of them included single-word affirmations and 70 percent had less than 25 characters.” Twitter also saw a 20 percent decrease in retweets and quote tweets while the automatic quote tweet prompt was in place.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom will be lifting its 40-minute meeting limit for free accounts globally in recognition of several upcoming holidays, the company confirmed to The Verge. The limits will be removed in recognition of Hanukkah, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and Kwanzaa. The company similarly lifted its 40-minute limit last month for Thanksgiving Day.Here’s exactly when Zoom will be removing the 40-minute limit:

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Today, Neverware announced in an FAQ that it’s now part of Google.Neverware, based in New York City, makes a software application called CloudReady that allows you to convert a PC into a system that runs Chrome OS. In its FAQ, Neverware states that it and its CloudReady software are “officially part of Google and the Chrome OS team.”CloudReady offers a free version for personal use, as well as paid tiers for enterprise and education. The idea is that companies and schools (as well as individuals) can convert old, slow systems into Chromebooks rather than throwing them out — Chrome OS is a less demanding operating system for these machines to run than Windows 10 is.According to Neverware’s FAQ, not much is going to change for current... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has refused to sign a law banning most government use of facial recognition. The Boston Globe reported last week that Baker sent an omnibus police reform bill back to state lawmakers, asking for changes that included striking the facial recognition rules.Massachusetts legislators passed the first major state-level facial recognition ban, following a model set by individual cities like Boston and San Francisco. The bill says public agencies, including police departments, can’t use or acquire biometric surveillance systems. It makes exceptions for running facial recognition searches against a motor vehicles registration database, as long as police obtain a warrant or demonstrate “immediate danger” that... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Sony on Wednesday announced that HBO Max is finally available for its next-gen console. Support for the app, revealed in a tweet from the official PlayStation account, should be great news if you managed to get a PS5 and were planning to use it as an entertainment hub for movies in addition to games, as HBO Max was the last major streaming service absent from the console.If you’re still on the PS4, this update likely won’t mean much to you, as that device has had the app for a while now. But it does mean any PlayStation fans should now be able to watch Wonder Woman 1984, which will be available in 4K HDR for PS5 owners with supported TVs and other Warner Bros. movies coming out next year on HBO’s new streaming service. (Xbox Series X /... Continue reading…

One of the biggest hurdles facing HBO Max is no longer a problem: the streaming service will finally be coming to Roku devices, starting December 17th.The move comes just after after WarnerMedia announced that it will simultaneously release its 2021 movies on HBO Max the same day they debut in theaters. The move follows Wonder Woman 1984 debuting on HBO Max the same day as its released in theaters on December 25th. Wonder Woman 1984 and many of Warner Bros.’ 2021 slate are the types of movies that will drive subscribers to HBO Max, so it’s a win-win for both parties to have a deal by then. Roku can reap some of the reward from those signups, and HBO Max is now available to tens of millions of people who use Roku devices.Once... Continue reading…

One of Canada’s astronauts will be sent around the Moon as part of a partnership between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA announced today. The two organizations have formally agreed to collaborate on building a lunar space station called the Lunar Gateway. The Gateway is just one part of NASA’s larger Artemis program, which is focused on landing a woman on the Moon by 2024.A Canadian astronaut will participate in NASA’s planned Artemis II mission, and the CSA also has a seat on a future flight to the Gateway once it is complete. By joining the Artemis II mission, Canada will become the second country to have an astronaut fly around the Moon, the CSA says. Canada currently has just four active astronauts, and the CSA has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch will no longer allow streamers and commenters to go around calling one another “simps.” The term — a recent favorite in the Twitch community that nominally refers to men who seem desperate for a woman’s attention — will be banned when used as an insult under Twitch’s upcoming revamp of its harassment policy. “Incel” and “virgin” will be banned as insults, too, Twitch COO Sara Clemens said during a live-streamed town hall this afternoon.The new policy, first spotted by esports consultant Rod Breslau, will go into effect on January 22nd. It also includes stricter rules around sexual harassment and seems to give Twitch more leeway to ban streamers and commenters who make offensive comments.Twitch is also rejecting emotes that... Continue reading…

Photo: Ben Carter Ray-tracing technology, available for a few years on PC, has finally come to consoles: the PS5 has it, the Xbox Series S and X have it, and, 30 years after its release, the SNES is getting it. No joke — the Nintendo console from 1990 has had ray tracing run on it, thanks to an incredible mod by programmer Ben Carter (via Gizmodo). And it’s done by a chip he’s calling SuperRT.Ray tracing is usually used to make games look more realistic by simulating the way light bounces off of surfaces, leading to color bleeding from bright objects and reflecting off of shiny surfaces. As you can see from the video demo above, the tech on the SNES isn’t pushing any graphics boundaries, but come on — it’s an SNES.The mod offers a look at an alternate... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter announced Wednesday that it will remove tweets making false or misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccinations.Any tweets claiming that vaccines “intentionally cause harm to control populations” or invoke conspiracy theories will be subject to removal, according to Twitter’s blog post. Tweets falsely suggesting that COVID-19 doesn’t exist or espouse “widely debunked” claims may also be removed. Enforcement of the new policy will begin next week.Twitter may also label or place warnings on tweets pushing vaccine conspiracy theories starting early next year. These labeled tweets could link out to authoritative public health information, similar to how Twitter directed users to verified voting information throughout the 2020... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Texas’ state attorney general has announced new antitrust charges against Google, focusing on the company’s ad tech practices.In a bizarre video posted to the office’s verified Twitter account, Texas AG Ken Paxton says the company “repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing” in online ads. “These actions harm every person in America,” Paxton continues. “It isn’t fair that Google can harm the web pages you visit and read.”

Image: CD Projekt Red The release of CD Projekt Red’s (CDPR) highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 is becoming an even bigger mess, and buyers of the digital version of the game from Sony’s PlayStation Store might not have an easy path — or any path at all — to receive the refund the developer said they could.Sony hasn’t officially commented on whether players who bought the game from its digital storefront are eligible for refunds. The company’s official policy is not to refund customers if they started playing a game “unless the content is faulty.”Now, a message from PlayStation Support to CNBC journalist Steve Kovach appears to further confirm that your only option in this scenario is to turn to CDPR’s own help line it opened specifically to address... Continue reading…

A video animation of the Chang’e 5 lander on the surface of the Moon. | Photo: Xinhua / Jin Liwang via Getty Images China’s first mission to return a sample of dirt from the Moon just arrived back at Earth, with a container of lunar rocks in tow, China state media confirmed. A capsule of lunar material scraped up by a Chinese spacecraft landed this afternoon in a very snowy Inner Mongolia, after plunging through Earth’s atmosphere and parachuting to the ground.The landing marks the end of China’s third whirlwind — and incredibly complex — mission to the lunar surface, called Chang’e 5. The flight launched on November 23rd, sending a gaggle of four different robotic spacecraft to the Moon’s orbit. On December 1st, two of those spacecraft — a lander and an ascent vehicle — touched down on the lunar surface in order to dig up samples of rocks from the... Continue reading…

A graphic showing the design of Amazon’s user antenna | Image: Amazon Today, Amazon revealed the design of the antennas its customers will use to tap into the company’s upcoming massive satellite constellation, Project Kuiper, designed to provide broadband internet coverage from space.The antenna, which is a phased-array design, underwent development and testing this fall, according to the company. With a diameter of just 12 inches across, the antenna is “smaller and lighter than legacy antenna designs,” Amazon claims. Testing showed the antenna can provide “maximum throughput of up to 400 Mbps.” The company also notes that the antenna can be used to stream 4K-quality videos from geostationary satellites, spacecraft that are located about 22,000 miles above the Earth.Testing showed the antenna can... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images A five-month investigation into Pinterest’s company culture published on Wednesday recommends broad changes to how the firm handles workplace conflicts, including harassment and retaliation.Produced by the law firm WilmerHale, the report details how the company can improve its workplace conditions and prevent discrimination, specifically recommending the creation of an internal ombudsman’s office that can field employee complaints. The law firm spoke with 350 current and former Pinterest employees over the course of its five-month investigation.Pinterest’s board has already unanimously voted to adopt the recommendations, which were shared with employees on Wednesday and posted publicly on the company’s website.In recent months, a... Continue reading…

Hours after announcing it would bring controversial horror game Devotion to its platform, CD Projekt Red’s digital storefront GOG has reneged on its release plans. The company’s social media account claims that “after receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store.”Devotion has been at the center of a censorship controversy since release last year, after players found in-game content that referred to Xi Jinping, the president of China, as a “Winnie-the-Pooh moron.” The Chinese leader is notoriously sensitive to the cartoon bear, to which memers have continuously compared him; the movie Christopher Robin did not get a Chinese release. Mentions of comedian John Oliver were outright censored on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Discord is rolling out screensharing to its mobile users. It’s a smart move; earlier this summer, the company’s mobile app was hitting lifetime highs for downloads every day.Mobile screensharing means that you can just share your screen — and whatever you’re watching — with anyone in a voice channel. That means you can watch everything from TikTok to Twitch with any of your friends from anywhere in the world, in real time. While chatting.I saw a demo of the feature recently, and more than anything else, I found the simplicity astonishing. In our pandemic year, I’ve spent so much time socializing virtually — sometimes on Discord, sometimes not — and it’s underscored the importance of casual hangouts; spontaneity is one of the... Continue reading…

The view north to Rockefeller Center, Billionaires’ Row, Central Park, and One Vanderbilt as seen from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building as the sun sets on December 15, 2020 in New York City. | Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Carbon dioxide coming from the buildings where we live and work set a new record in 2019. What’s more, those planet-heating emissions will probably keep rising after the pandemic, the authors of a new UN report warn. The report urges governments to make structures more energy efficient and speed up a transition to renewable energy. Doing that could be a great way to address both the climate crisis and the economic downturn caused by COVID-19.The building sector was responsible for a whopping 38 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally in 2019, the report says. For comparison, all the planes, trains, automobiles, and other transportation in the world only pump out about 24 percent of global carbon emissions. Growing prosperity around... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Firefox’s latest update brings native support for Macs that run on Apple’s Arm-based silicon, Mozilla announced on Tuesday. Mozilla claims that native Apple silicon support brings significant performance improvements: the browser apparently launches 2.5 times faster and web apps are twice as responsive than they were on the previous version of Firefox, which wasn’t native to Apple’s chips.Mozilla says that if you’re already running Firefox on your Mac and want to make sure that you’re running the native build, you’ll need to update to the newest version, Firefox 84, and then quit and restart Firefox.I’ve got a MacBook Air with Apple’s new M1 chip, so I installed the new Firefox update and gave it a whirl. It seems speedy enough, but I... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge If you’ve got an iPhone 12 Pro or 12 Pro Max and consider yourself something of a photographer, the latest iOS update will help you get the most out of your phone’s cameras. That’s because it includes the new ProRAW feature that Apple first announced back at its October event. ProRAW combines the editing flexibility of RAW with Apple’s computational photography tricks like Smart HDR and Deep Fusion for the first time. You no longer have to choose between the flexibility of a standard RAW file and a JPEG or HEIC file that has all of Apple’s computational magic but limited potential for post-processing because ProRAW gives you both.Shooting RAW photos on an iPhone is nothing new; for some time now, apps like Halide and Adobe Lightroom... Continue reading…

Image: Substack If you’re worried about all your newsletter subscriptions getting lost in your inbox, Substack may have a solution. Today the platform is launching an RSS reader called Substack Reader, which offers a streamlined collection of your latest newsletters. Any Substack newsletter you already subscribe to will automatically show up, and if you want, you can add third-party RSS feeds, too.The goal was to “create a distraction free space” for people whose email inbox isn’t their ideal reading experience, Substack CEO Chris Best told The Verge.“It could be a way to discover new writers you want to subscribe to”Substack Reader is launching as a beta, and it feels very much like a version one product. It presents a chronological list of every... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google Stadia has finally made its way to iOS over a year after launch. The company’s mobile web beta for the iPhone and iPad, first announced last month, is launching today. That means any Stadia user on either its free tier or its paid Stadia Pro subscription will be able to access their library of Stadia games on Apple devices.Google, like other competing cloud services, is using mobile Safari due to Apple’s restrictions on cloud gaming apps that mean platforms like Stadia can’t exist in their current form on the App Store. You can access Stadia through its website on Safari or by creating a home screen icon that will turn the service into a progressive web app, so it acts almost identically to a native one.Unlike Nvidia’s GeForce... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We’ve reached the final few days before the holidays, and in the interest of getting gifts delivered on time — and not paying handsomely for shipping — you should be wrapping up your shopping as soon as you can.Thankfully, several retailers are making those shopping duties cheap and easy by offering free and fast shipping. It wouldn’t be the holidays without a little stress, but you can avoid at least some of it by finishing up your shopping before the window for on-time delivery comes to a close.We’ve also listed the delivery windows for FedEx, UPS, and the USPS in case you are shipping packages yourself. WalmartStore pickup is always the best way to ensure you get your gifts in time, but (especially this year when... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google’s latest Chromecast with Google TV is filling in one of its biggest missing apps, with the company announcing that it’ll soon be offering an Apple TV app in early 2021.The Apple TV app will function similarly to other versions of Apple’s service on other devices, allowing subscribers to watch Apple TV Plus original shows, movies, and documentaries (including Ted Lasso and other shows that are not Ted Lasso, which are therefore less good). Those Apple TV originals will be integrated into Google TV’s content aggregation system, too, allowing the software to recommend them based on your interests.Additionally, the Apple TV app will give Chromecast users access to their purchased iTunes library of TV shows and movies, as well as... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Plus When we couldn’t go out, we watched anything and everything Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple had a solid year of tech products across a wide variety of categories. From introducing the M1 chip on computers (including the MacBook Pro), releasing four new iPhones (including the first iPhone with the “mini” moniker), two new Apple Watches, and a few updates on some iPad models, this year’s releases spanned a wide gamut.Today’s deals highlight some of the better discounts you can find right now if you want to buy some Apple tech this holiday season, including historically low prices on the Mac mini with M1 and multiple iPad Pro configurations discounted.The new Mac mini with M1 is on sale at B&H PhotoThe new Mac mini with the M1 chip launched last month, and if you were looking to upgrade to this computer, you could get... Continue reading…