Apple could soon open its first brick-and-mortar stores in India
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apple has already started hiring to fill out its not-yet-announced stores in India, as first reported by The Financial Times. The company’s recent job listings show new openings for 12 retail roles at “various locations” throughout the country, including store leaders, senior managers, Genius Bar workers, and more.
The job listings, which include both full-time and part-time positions, directly refer to the Apple Store, although there’s no indication of how many roles are available. According to The Financial Times, at least five employees located in Mumbai and New Dehli shared on LinkedIn that they have already been hired for the upcoming stores, while Apple’s head of recruiting in India, Renu Sevanthi, “celebrated” the news of their hiring in a post on the network.
This tracks with a July 2022 report from The Economic Times, which indicates that Apple’s planning to open a 22,000-square-foot store in Mumbai at the beginning of this year. The company’s also reportedly working on a 10,000 to 12,000-square-foot store in New Dehli, along with several other stores in the country, but it’s unclear when they will open their doors. Apple didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
Elon Musk wants to move trial away from San Francisco over ‘local negativity’
Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
Elon Musk has asked a judge to move an upcoming trial for a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco, citing concerns that the jury may have a bias against him, as reported earlier by CNBC. In a Friday filing, Musk requests that the judge relocate the trial to West Texas due to the “local negativity” in the Bay Area surrounding Elon Musk and his businesses, preventing a fair trial.
The shareholder class action lawsuit, which accuses Musk of manipulating Tesla’s stock, stems from the billionaire’s now-infamous 2018 tweet that claimed he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Tesla’s stock reached extreme highs and lows in the weeks following the tweet, and resulted in a $40 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to CNBC, the upcoming trial is supposed to determine whether Musk’s 2018 tweet affected Tesla’s stock price, as well as if Tesla and Musk should be held accountable for the alleged damages.
“The recent local media coverage has created an environment that encourages the District’s jury pool to hold negative biases against Mr. Musk’s use of Twitter,” the filing reads. “Potential jurors that hold negative opinions about Mr. Musk’s use and relationship with Twitter generally as a result of this coverage will be unable to separate this baseline bias from the facts in this case and thus be unable to impartially evaluate Musk’s conduct.”
It also claims that Musk and his San Francisco offices are often subject to protests that are “encouraged” by local politicians, further cementing this “prejudice” and resulting in an unfair trial. If the judge decides not to move the trial to Texas, where Tesla’s based, Musk and his lawyers ask that the trial get delayed to let the “negative sentiments” surrounding Musk dissipate.
Apple may finally debut its mixed reality headset this spring
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Apple’s getting ready to launch its long-rumored mixed reality headset this spring, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company’s reportedly planning to reveal the device ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and will start shipping it this fall.
The headset, which could cost as much as $3,000, is expected to provide both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences using Apple’s new xrOS operating system. Gurman says Apple has already shown off the Reality Pro-branded device to “a small number of high-profile” developers so they can start creating third-party apps for it.
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As a result, it is increasingly unlikely that Apple will hold a media event for the new device in January. At this point, it seems more likely that Apple will announce the AR/MR headset at a spring media event or WWDC based on the current development progress.
Gurman’s prediction corroborates rumors from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said last week that the development of the headset is delayed “due to issues with mechanical component drop testing and the availability of software development tools.” He added that it “seems more likely” that Apple will announce the headset at a media event in the spring or at WWDC.
But there are still “many kinks to work out” with the device’s hardware, software, and services, Gurman says, and this is slowing down Apple’s other projects. We may see a more low-key year for new releases as a result, and it also may be why Apple missed its goal of transitioning away from Intel-powered chips within two years.
Apple’s also expected to reveal a new HomePod this year, but Gurman says not to “expect anything revolutionary about it.” It may just come with a lower price, an updated touch control panel, and an S8 chip. Other devices, like an updated 24-inch iMac and a new round of iPad Pros equipped with OLED displays, aren’t expected to arrive until next year, while iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 could feature more subdued upgrades.
Musk seeks to move trial out of San Francisco, claiming he can’t get fair trial
Musk says negative local media coverage of shareholder lawsuit over 2018 Tesla tweet has biased jurors against him
Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.
Death of the narrator? Apple unveils suite of AI-voiced audiobooks
Exclusive: tech firm quietly launches new audiobook catalogue narrated by AI – but move expected to spark backlash
Apple has quietly launched a catalogue of books narrated by artificial intelligence in a move that may mark the beginning of the end for human narrators. The strategy marks an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market – but it also promises to intensify scrutiny over allegations of Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour.
The popularity of the audiobook market has exploded in recent years, with technology companies scrambling to gain a foothold. Sales last year jumped 25%, bringing in more than $1.5bn. Industry insiders believe the global market could be worth more than $35bn by 2030.
Twitter reportedly makes more cuts to online safety teams
A dozen people based in Dublin and Singapore who moderate content and monitor hate speech believed to have been let go
Twitter has made more cuts to its trust and safety team in charge of international content moderation, as well as a unit overseeing hate speech and harassment, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
The move adds to longstanding concerns that new owner Elon Musk is dismantling the company’s regulation of hateful content and misinformation.
Disney’s Magical Companion debuts at CES with some help from Amazon
“Hey Disney!” is a smart voice assistant that wants to bring some magic into your home. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Alexa’s got some company. I met Disney’s new voice assistant at CES this week, and it’s pretty cute. Called “Disney’s Magical Companion,” the disembodied voice is born from fairy dust and lives inside Amazon’s Echo smart speakers and displays. Its purpose is to call up various characters — including Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars faves — to help you out with common voice assistant chores (timers, alarms, weather), as well as entertain with stories, games, and other sprinkles of Disney magic.
You conjure the assistant with the phrase “Hey Disney!” — here’s a quick demo I did at CES this week:
“Hey Disney!” showing some of its tricks which include jokes, trivia, and stories.
One neat thing about the integration is you never know which character will answer your query — it could be Dory from Finding Nemo or Olaf from Frozen one moment, then Mater from Cars or Animal from The Muppets the next.
Currently, “Hey Disney!” is in limited hotel rooms at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort as part of a phased rollout across Disney’s hotels, where it also helps as a sort of virtual concierge. But the Magical Companion is also coming to your home in 2023, through the Alexa Skills store. No pricing has been announced, but it will be included free with an Amazon Kids Plus subscription.
The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is a ThinkPad owner’s dream
I can’t be the only one who appreciates how similar the logo is. | Image: Motorola
I’m generally a Windows user, but one of the things that’s always sorely tempted me about the Apple ecosystem is the interconnectedness. Not only are macOS and iOS comfortably similar in form and function (and getting moreso every year), but there are so many easy ways to transfer content between a Mac and an iPhone. That’s why I enjoyed testing out Lenovo’s ThinkPhone by Motorola, which is supposed to be — and I never thought I’d be writing this phrase — the smartphone version of a ThinkPad.
The ThinkPhone has a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, a 6.6-inch OLED screen, a 5,000mAh battery, a bunch of fancy enterprise security features (a phrase ThinkPad enthusiasts will certainly be familiar with) and two rear cameras including a 50-megapixel stabilized standard wide and a 13-megapixel ultrawide (plus a depth sensor). It’s MIL STD 810H certified and IP68 rated for dust and water resistance. It ships with Android 13. But the coolest part, and the differentiating feature in my opinion, is how much fun it is to use with a ThinkPad.
My favorite software feature is called Unified Clipboard. When you have this enabled, any photo you take, text you copy, documents you scan, or video you take with the ThinkPhone is automatically copied to a clipboard that your ThinkPhone shares with your ThinkPad. You can then paste that media instantly on your connected ThinkPad, which seems very handy for dropping photos into presentations and documents as you’re creating them. This was fun to use, and worked perfectly each time I tried it. (And I did try many times...it was really fun.)
Image: Motorola
These can use the same charging brick as well.
This Unified Clipboard feature is part of a whole suite of features called the Think 2 Think connectivity (come on, that’s cute) that connects the ThinkPhone and the ThinkPad. You can also drag and drop files, and the two devices can quickly discover each other and connect over Wi-Fi while nearby.
You can even use the ThinkPhone as a webcam while taking conference calls on the ThinkPad. The latter works with any video conferencing software, Lenovo told me, so it’s not like some other fancy webcam features companies have come out with this year where your company’s conferencing software of choice needs to decide to support them.
I was able to fairly easily set the ThinkPhone as the ThinkPad’s conferencing webcam directly from Lenovo’s software settings, but I’m told that you can do it from individual applications (Zoom, etc.) as well.
Image: Lenovo
See the red?
Physically, there are some other touches that make this phone look blissfully ThinkPad-y. The black textured back... come on, you can’t miss that similarity. But the most striking homage to Lenovo’s premium business laptops is the red button on the side of the ThinkPhone — which isn’t quite a keyboard nub but, you know what, it’s close. You can map both a single and double tap of this button to shortcuts of your choice, which I’m sure some ThinkPad users (who may, for example, have experience remapping some of the ThinkPad’s unconventionally placed keyboard keys) will appreciate.
All in all, this phone seems like a fun idea to me. There are lots of ThinkPad lovers out there. Why not give them a phone to match?
‘Alexa, Why Do We Keep Buying You?’ With questions swirling about the utility of voice assistants, we asked readers how they use one of the most popular, Amazon’s Alexa. Here’s what they answered.
Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo, the man behind Sound Blaster, has died
Sim Wong Hoo, the Singaporean entrepreneur, who founded and ran Creative Technologies. | Image: Creative
Creative Technologies founder, CEO and chairman Sim Wong Hoo has died, his company has confirmed. He “passed away peacefully on 4 January 2023,” according to a press release. He was 67 years old.
It might seem hard for younger readers to believe, but there was a time that computer sound wasn’t guaranteed. If you wanted to plug in headphones or speakers that could do more than bloops or bleeps, you probably needed a sound card — and none were as successful as Creative Labs’ Sound Blaster. It sold over 400 million units as of its 30th anniversary in 2019.
In the pre-Windows 95 / DirectX era, few words in PC gaming were as important as the phrase “Sound Blaster compatible,” allowing players to hear the dogs bark in Wolfenstein 3D, or mess around with the synthesized voice in Creative’s Dr. Sbaitso demo (you can play it on the web these days).
Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Dr. Sbaitso.
The company was also huge in the MP3 player space with its Creative Nomad and Zen line of players and successfully sued Apple over its iPod, obtaining a $100 million settlement.
Success wasn’t immediate. Originally, Hoo set out to build an entire computer that could talk, according to 1993 and 1994 profiles of the man at Bloomberg and The New York Times. He founded Creative Technologies in Singapore in 1981, and yet by 1986 — two years after Steve Jobs let the Macintosh “speak for itself” — the company’s PCs had sold so poorly that he was reportedly down to just a handful of engineers.
But when they took the Cubic CT’s music board to a computer exhibit in the United States, the company found its footing. “The money we made on a few hundred boards was the equivalent to the money we made on the PC,” he told the NYT.
Even then, the idea hadn’t quite congealed. Creative’s first sound card was sold as the Creative Music System before it realized that PC gamers would become its biggest audience. In 1987, Sierra On-Line wowed the gaming industry by releasing King’s Quest IV with an actual soundtrack score, designed to be played on early sound cards like the AdLib and Roland MT-32, and the publisher went on to advertise those PC parts for sale in its own catalog of games.
Image via The Digital AntiquarianSierra advertised the Game Blaster directly to its PC gaming fans.
Creative got a piece of that action by rebranding its card the “Game Blaster” in 1988, and in 1989, the company’s first Sound Blaster added a dedicated game port to plug in a joystick. That’s something that PC gamers usually had to buy separately and helped make the Sound Blaster look like an excellent deal over the AdLib.
Hoo’s determination made him a rare symbol of Singaporean startup success, as Creative became the first Singapore company to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. In 1994, The New York Times’ headline was literally “Entrepreneurial Company Defies Singapore Model,” and he went on to author a book called Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium where he coined a phrase, No U-Turn Syndrome, to describe an underlying difficulty in becoming an entrepreneur in that era of Singapore culture.
Was incredibly shocked to hear about the passing of Sim, founder of @CreativeLabs this morning.
I just met him 2 weeks ago, like all our meetings, we talked for hrs about audio technology and products. Will miss him - the technology world and Singapore has lost a legend. pic.twitter.com/By1kZstelh
Even after PCs began to be able to play quality audio by themselves — every modern consumer motherboard comes with integrated sound — Creative kept gamers interested with features like the Sound Blaster Crystallizer, a dynamic range enhancer that “applies the audio boost (an audible effect) to the lower, transient, and higher frequency regions on demand.”
The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro was a Windows Media Center beast with its own remote control. It still came with a game port, too.
I still remember how proud I was to install a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro in a desktop gaming PC and what it unlocked for me at the time — I ran three game consoles into my PC monitor, using the card to handle sound, and marveled at how this one gadget could take an optical audio signal from my PlayStation 2 and convert it into great-sounding analog audio for my headphones and digital 3.5mm audio for my Boston Acoustics 4.1 surround sound speakers, all at the same time. (Yes, I had those Gateway pack-in speakers that only accepted digital input over a 3.5mm jack and the Audigy was very handy.)
Creative hasn’t exactly been a household name in recent years, but it still sells popular soundbars like its Sound Blaster Katana, speakers, webcams, and earbuds. There’s even still a dedicated Sound Blaster sound card in its lineup.
And, I hear, the Audigy 2 is still going strong in some people’s PCs.
Update, 8:32PM ET:Added more images and info about the Cubic99, an earlier Creative computer.
The LG Gram Style might be the prettiest laptop of 2023
Where’s the touchpad?
For the past few years, I’ve been a big fan of the LG Gram 17. It’s got great battery life, a massive screen, and it feels like it weighs basically nothing. But if there’s one hesitation I sometimes have about the line, it’s the aesthetic. The Grams of the past have just looked a bit... boring. Which is fine — many laptops are — but also means there’s a fashion-conscious audience out there they potentially aren’t reaching.
Enter the LG Gram Style. This, as the name implies, might be the first LG laptop I’ve ever seen that I’d really consider calling “stylish.” It’s unbelievably thin, it’s mind-blowingly light, and it’s covered in a lustrous color-changing finish. My hands-on time with this device was in LG’s very dimly lit booth at CES 2023, but it was certainly one of the most unique-looking laptops I’ve had the opportunity to try so far this year.
That does not mean that this is a laptop that will work for everyone. But it’s certainly one that might turn heads at the coffee shop. And it’s a bold new look for an established line, which is always fun to watch unfold.
This looks silvery-white-ish when not under this colored light.
Looks like a sunset, maybe?
The first thing to talk about is that finish. It’s iridescent, changing color depending on lighting and viewing angle. In LG’s words, the laptops “shine and shift dynamically; moving and changing depending on the light and angle.”
Up close, this looks like a silvery white. But I can confirm that as I moved the device around, it flashed and signed in different hues, looking blueish and even orange at times. I wish I’d been able to better capture that on camera — again, a challenge with the lighting.
I had to try several times to get this shot before the lights disappeared.
That luster extends to the bottom part of the Style’s keyboard deck, which is one smooth surface — there is no touchpad visible. There is a touchpad under there, in the location where you’d expect a touchpad to be, but it’s haptic and hidden.
We’re seeing more and more of these types of trackpads on laptops this year, and they generally help companies get them thinner (which remains a major draw of the Gram line). Dell’s XPS 13 Plus also had a hidden touchpad last year, and I had mixed results with it. In general, my right hand (I’m right-handed) knew where to click from experience without needing the touchpad delineated, but my less experienced left hand had misclicks here and there when it needed to sub in.
What the Gram Style does have (that the XPS 13 Plus didn’t) is LEDs around the touchpad that illuminate after you touch the area. They stay on for what can’t be more than a few seconds after you click, and then they disappear. So, I mean, that’s better than nothing, but still doesn’t help you find the thing when you need to click it. The lights do look pretty, though. I’m not sure why there couldn’t be an option to leave them on.
See? Thin.
A third very pretty thing: the screen. Each Style model (there’s 14-inch and a 16-inch options) has a 16:10 OLED display, and despite the odd lighting, they looked great in LG’s demo area. The keyboard was also fun, with quite a nice click. I like Gram keyboards in general, but there’s always a worry that a super thin laptop might not have room for great switches.
Oh, and this thing is so light. It’s one of those devices that messes with your mind when you pick it up. At 2.2 pounds (999 grams), you could fool me into thinking that this was an empty chassis. That’s nothing new for LG laptops but is a nice assurance that the Style, despite its various oddities, remains very much a part of the Gram line.
One other hot tip: There are even wilder designs coming. LG had a bunch of patterned Gram Style lids on display — purples, pinks, polka dots galore — and was taking a poll at their booth where attendees could vote for their favorite one. Representatives claim that the company will bring the winner to market. I voted for the purple one, so I hope that one wins. Stay tuned.
The best laptop deals you can get right now
The MacBook Air equipped with Apple’s M1 processor is our favorite affordable laptop and is often on sale. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
If you want a great laptop, you’re going to have to fork over a ton of money, right? Not necessarily. There are dozens of good laptops on the market at various price points. However, it can feel overwhelming to find the right one for your needs (some are better suited for, say, college students, whereas others are ideal for gamers).
That’s why we’ve come up with this list of some of the best laptop deals available right now. In addition to the latest discounts, we’ll share each discounted model’s best features (and downsides) to give you more clarity during your shopping journey. And if you need to do more research, you can also check out our guides to the best laptops on the market and the top cheap laptops as well.
We consider the newest MacBook Air with Apple’s M2 processor to be the best laptop for most people, one that offers all-day battery life and a combination of features that should more than suffice for the average user. Plus, Apple’s new MacBook is powerful enough that it can even handle some light gaming and even demanding photo and video editing apps like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. It’s also faster than its predecessor thanks to Apple’s new M2 chip and offers a 1080p webcam, which is a welcome improvement given the disappointing camera on the 2020 M1 model. It’s much lighter and thus more portable as well, yet it retains features like MagSafe charging and Touch ID, as well as a nice display.
While a terrific laptop overall, there is one key area where Apple’s M1 model is better: storage. The base M2 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage is actually slower than its predecessor because it’s stored in a single NAND chip. Also, be aware as well that port selection isn’t great, and the included display notch — which is also found on both the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros — can make using the menu bar more challenging.
If that doesn’t bother you, however, we’re currently seeing a good discount on the M2- powered MacBook Air. Now through January 22nd, Costco is selling the laptop in select colors with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, an eight-core CPU and GPU, and a 30W power brick for $999.99 ($150 off), though this deal is available to members only. If you’re not a member, you can either pay a five percent surcharge (so $57.50 extra) or buy the same model from B&H Photo for $1,149 ($50 off). B&H is also selling the same configuration in silver with a 10-core GPU for $1,199 ($100 off), or you can buy the silver model at Adorama with an eight-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 30W power brick starting at $1,349 ($150 off).
For a cheaper alternative to our favorite laptop for most, look to the base MacBook Air with the M1 chip, which is the best cheap laptop. Like its successor, it offers everything you need. It’s also faster than most Windows laptops at this price point, and handles demanding photo and video editing apps like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere with finesse, especially compared to its Intel-powered predecessors. Thankfully, all that power doesn’t come at the cost of battery life either. While not as good as the M2 model’s, we found that it lasted between eight and ten hours — even when we played the game Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
In addition to offering excellent performance, the laptop also comes with other nice-to-have features, including a comfortable keyboard and an excellent trackpad. Just note its 720p webcam isn’t particularly good, so if a high-resolution webcam matters a lot to you, you may want to buy one separately. Also, be aware that, due to the limitations of the M1 chip, you can only use one external display at a time and port selection is also limited.
Right now, you can buy the M1-powered MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in select colors at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Adorama for $899 ($100 off).
At the moment, the MacBook Pro lineup consists of the newer 14- and 16-inch models released in late 2021 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro that just saw a revision with the M2 processor in mid-2022.
The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is similar to the M2 MacBook Air but geared toward more demanding use cases. It’s equipped with an M2 processor, unlike its predecessor, but still offers a fan and excellent performance that slightly outshines the M2 Air. Its battery — which we struggled to drain — remains one of its more impressive features, one that allows for up to 18 hours of usage on a single charge. Unfortunately, the laptop still suffers from the same outdated design (and Touch Bar) from 2016, as well as a mediocre, 720p webcam. Plus, there’s no MagSafe charging and you only get a pair of USB-C ports.
Regularly $1,299, the 256GB M2-equipped MacBook Pro with an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU is on sale at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Best Buy for $1,149 ($150 off). The 512GB is also marked down by $150 and selling for around $1,349 at Amazon and Best Buy.
On the other hand, the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are equipped with faster M1 Pro processors, and you can go up to an M1 Max CPU if you’d like to spend more money for even faster performance. They offer a nice selection of ports as well, including multiple Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe power connector. No matter what you get, these laptops boast incredible performance with some of the longest-lasting batteries we’ve tested yet.
Right now, the 14-inch model with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is on sale for $1,599 ($400 off) in silver at Best Buy. You can also buy the M1 Pro model with 1TB of storage for $2,099 instead of $2,499 at Best Buy and Amazon. If you prefer the 16-inch model, you can get it with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for the same price ($400 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.
Lenovo’s 14-inch Yoga 9i is our favorite laptop for multimedia entertainment. The convertible is equipped with fantastic speakers that deliver the best sound we’ve ever heard for a laptop this size. It also has an excellent 1080p touchscreen and other perks, including a built-in stylus and a battery life that will last all day. Just note, however, that it does come with bloatware that can be challenging to uninstall, and we found the 16:9 screen relatively cramped and dim.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is the lightest ThinkPad you can currently buy from Lenovo, yet it still offers great performance in a light package. With its exceptional build quality, along with business-targeted security and management features, we think it’s particularly ideal for business travel. Other features we liked include its 16:10 display and the physical privacy shutter for its webcam, although we wished there were more ports and the battery life was less than average.
Right now, Lenovo is selling the ThinkPad X1 Nano for $1,309.50 instead of $2,619 when you use promo code BYOTHINKP2023 and buy the model with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Core i5 processor.
Asus’ entry-level ROG Zephyrus G14 is currently our favorite laptop for gaming on the go. It’s powerful yet it also boasts all-day battery life, which is unusual for a gaming laptop. It also features a solid webcam and a bright, 16:10 QHD display, though we wish it didn’t cap out at 120hz. We also enjoyed using the keyboard and had no complaints about the port selection. It’s chunky for a 14-inch laptop, sure, but if you’re a gamer who often travels or commutes, it’s relatively lightweight and thus could be a good buy.
Regularly $1,649.99, you can currently buy the Zephyrus G14 with an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 16GB of memory, and 1TB of storage for $1,199.99 ($450 off) at Best Buy.
LG deals
LG Gram 15
LG’s Gram 15 laptop is the smaller, 15-inch version of the 17-inch LG Gram 17, which we think is the best laptop for fans of big screens. While we haven’t tested the LG Gram 15, we have reviewed the 17-inch model, which we found to be a powerful yet quiet laptop boasting a good 12-hour battery life and a terrific keyboard. The 15-inch IPS display features a lower 1920 x 1080 resolution than the 17-inch one, but also shares a backlit keyboard, high-capacity battery, a decent port selection, and is lightweight so you should be able to lug it about easily. Plus, it’s cheaper than the 17-inch version.
The Acer Aspire 5 is a good budget-friendly laptop to consider. The 15.6-inch laptop doesn't offer Thunderbolt support, but it does feature a wide port selection that includes one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1, two USB 3.1 Gen 1, one USB 2.0, one HDMI 2.0, one Ethernet, and a power port. The affordable laptop also features a terrific backlit keyboard that’s comfortable to use and sound quality that punches above its weight class.
There are trade-offs, of course. The battery life is quite poor — the Intel model we tested only lasted around five hours — and it’s loaded with some bloatware. The touchpad can also be hard to use, and the sheer width of the laptop means it might be challenging to store in a backpack. Still, if you just need a laptop that gets the job done, the Aspire 5 is on sale in various configurations and processors at Amazon. Right now, for instance, you can buy it with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a Ryzen 5 5500U processor for $449.89 instead of $529.99.
Flutes, synths, a human voice – how should electric vehicles sound?
As Australia looks to the US and Europe on electric vehicle safety rules, carmakers are experimenting with sounds that will effectively warn pedestrians
Take a walk down any busy street and the noise can hit like a speaker accidentally left on full volume. The growls of engines accelerating when the traffic light turns green, motorbikes vying for position in the traffic, buses whizzing past and the odd rev-head all compete to be heard.
The sound generated by the internal combustion engine has shaped urban life for a century but that is gradually going to change: by 2050, 90% of cars in Australia will be electric.
Hackers reportedly leak email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users
Information posted on a hacking forum in ‘one of the most significant’ breaches of users’ email addresses and phone numbers
Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said Wednesday.
The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing”, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it “one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen”.
Razer Blade 16 hands-on: a dream gaming laptop
Wait until you see the screen.
Razer has given us a first look at the Razer Blade 16 and Razer Blade 18, which will be released in the next few months. And I will say right now: I am impressed.
The Blade 18 is the biggest and most powerful Razer Blade that has ever been released, which is neat in itself. But I’m actually even more excited about the Blade 16, which is debuting some never-before-seen on a Razer Blade.
That’s some COLOR.
First, there’s a Mini LED screen. And it looks great. On the screen, some shades looked blindingly bright against black backdrops, where they might’ve looked washed out on other gaming displays. Black areas, speaking of, looked gorgeously black.
Next to the Blade 16 model in its demo area, Razer actually had a separate panel made of Mini LEDs that mirrored what the Blade 16 was doing. When local dimming zones brightened and dimmed on the Blade, the corresponding diodes brightened and dimmed on the panel. (I know it’s hard to picture, but you can see what I’m talking about in the photo below.) We were told that the Blade 16’s screen had 1,000 local dimming zones, and that feels like a big number on paper — but this panel really highlighted (heh) just how many teensy, independent lights are crammed into that laptop, and how much work they’re all doing.
We weren’t actually able to play any titles on these Blade models, since they were pre-production units — Razer only showed us a video of game footage. This meant I was not able to try the intriguing toggle feature (which allows you to easily swap between 4K/120Hz and 1920 x 1200/240Hz modes), but my colleague Cameron Faulkner wrote about that earlier today if you want to know more.
Here’s the Blade 16 with the little dot panel beside it. Each of those little dots is a local dimming zone that can brighten and dim independently.
I’m also thrilled — thrilled, I tell you — that these laptops have 16:10 screens; it really does make the 16-inch panel seem endless compared to Blades that I’ve used in the past. As a bonus, the taller screen makes for a longer chassis, which gave Razer room for a large 95.2Wh battery — which, with all the fancy screen features this device needs to power, may be a real necessity.
I was also able to take the keyboard and touchpad for a spin, and I can confirm that they are the same old large, sturdy keyboard and touchpad that we’ve seen on Razer Blades past. Inside, configurations come with Intel’s 13th-Gen Core i9-13950HX and up to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics. The Blade 16 starts at $2,699.99.
Now, all of these additions do come with a grand total of one change that I consider a compromise. That’s the size. The Blade 16 is 5.4 pounds and 13.98 x 9.61 x 0.87 inches. That’s almost a full pound heavier and over a tenth of an inch thicker than last year’s Blade 15 (which this isn’t replacing, per se, but they’re clearly in a similar category).
This is a heavy device; it was a pain for me to lift up, and it certainly doesn’t feel quite as slim and sleek as the Blade 15 did last year. But that’s a compromise some folks will be willing to make in order to get this Mini LED screen (as well as the improved performance the Blade 16 brings), and that’s fair enough.
Snap’s shutting down the app that put cool filters on your Zoom calls
When you open the app, it shows an announcement saying it’ll no longer be available.
On January 25th, Snap will be shutting down its camera app for Mac and PCs. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you may remember it as the program that let you apply silly filters to your face while you were on Zoom or other video conference calls. It’s also, as Verge alum Billy Disney pointed out on Mastodon, the reason a boss accidentally showed up to a work meeting as a potato in 2020:
my boss turned herself into a potato on our Microsoft teams meeting and can’t figure out how to turn the setting off, so she was just stuck like this the entire meeting pic.twitter.com/uHLgJUOsXk
Snap announced the change on its support page for Snap Camera, saying that it’ll “no longer be available to use or download” later this month. While the company points out that you can still access a wide array of Snapchat filters on the web version of the app, that’s not quite the same as being able to show up to your next daily standup using the dog filter.
Snap Camera was introduced in 2018, with the company pitching it as a way to spice up your Twitch streams. But it really came into its own as the pandemic started, when many people suddenly found themselves in video calls all day and got tired of staring at an unfiltered version of themselves. Snap’s fortunes have turned since then, though — in 2022, the company laid off 20 percent of its employees, and canceled projects like its Pixy drone.
Snap didn’t immediately reply to The Verge’s request for comment on why it was discontinuing Snap Camera. Part of the reason may be that it’s no longer as essential as it once was. Not only have many companies returned to in-person work, making video conferencing less of an everyday affair, but video chat apps have also been building in their own filters. Zoom has long let you dress up as an animal, or apply bizarre facial effects, and on Thursday it announced it was adding customizable human avatars as well. Perhaps it’s a bit too soon to compare the feature to Snap’s Bitmoji.
OLED plus E Ink: Lenovo’s ThinkBook Twist is halfway to my dream laptop
Image: Lenovo
Last month, I spent 15 whole minutes hunched over an HP Spectre x360 in a drafty Best Buy store — agonizing over whether its amazing OLED screen would destroy the laptop’s battery life and repeatedly googling for the answer. When I found out the answer was “yes, substantially less battery,” I had to walk away.
But why should I have to choose between a great screen and one I use all day? Why not both? That’s the idea behind the ThinkBook Plus Twist, a new laptop that Lenovo’s announcing at CES 2023.
Not only does it have a 13.3-inch, 400-nit, 60Hz 2.8K OLED touchscreen that covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, you can swivel its screen around to reveal another 12-inch, color E Ink touchscreen around back — one that refreshes 12 times a second (12Hz), which definitely felt slow in a demo but isn’t bad for E Ink technology.
Image: Lenovo
Party in the front, business in the back. Also, a 1080p webcam with a shutter, two mics, and a fingerprint reader.
In case you need a refresher, E Ink is an ultra-low-power screen tech, thanks to dye-filled microcapsules that largely stay stable, continually displaying an image until you refresh the screen to show something else instead. They’re used in e-readers like the Amazon Kindle that measure their battery life in months instead of hours but can’t display many colors or offer smooth refresh rates.
But with Lenovo’s laptop, they don’t necessarily need to — because you’ve also got that glorious OLED panel on the other side. As a writer who sometimes needs my laptop to go a full workday and beyond but also sometimes watches video, this could be the best of both worlds: Windows on E Ink for reading and writing, Windows on OLED for everything else.
Image: Lenovo
The E-ink side supports a pen, too.
Just don’t expect Kindle battery life out of a laptop like this since you’ve got the overhead of running Windows on its 13th Gen Intel processor (and up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage) rather than a simple e-reader chip. Lenovo’s estimating up to 21 hours of battery life from its 56Wh battery using the E Ink screen, and it isn’t providing context about what kind of content can run for 21 hours at a time.
This also isn’t quite my next laptop because it’s lacking any full-size ports, with just a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C jacks and a 3.5mm audio jack to its name, and I hesitate to buy a laptop with a squared-off front edge that’ll likely dig into my wrists... plus the OLED screen should probably be a high-refresh-rate 120Hz 16:10 panel like the ones that Asus is shipping if you really want my money.
Here are the best Amazon Echo deals right now
Like Amazon’s Echo speakers, its various smart displays come in a range of sizes. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Amazon’s current Echo lineup offers a broad selection of smart speakers and displays that can fit just about anywhere in your home. Whether you want to place a voice assistant in your living room, replace the bulletin board in your office, or pick up a touchscreen-enabled device to showcase recipes in the kitchen, there's an Echo device for just about every occasion and use case.
Regardless of why you might want one, there’s also always a way to save on Echo devices, from the last-gen Dot to the wall-mounted Echo Show 15. Even when they’re selling at full price, for instance, Amazon offers a 25 percent discount when you trade in select devices, meaning there are still other ways to save money when none of the models are on sale.
Below, we’ve rounded up the best deals available on each device in Amazon’s Echo lineup. The bulk of the discounts don’t rival those we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but some models — including the third-gen Echo Dot and second-gen Echo Show 5 — are still available at a steep discount.
Best Amazon Echo deals
The best Echo Dot deals
In September, Amazon announced the fifth generation of the Echo Dot. It looks more like a sphere than an actual dot — much like its last-gen predecessor — but offers twice as much bass as the prior model and a temperature sensor; it also doubles as an Eero mesh Wi-Fi extender, though, said functionality will also be coming to the prior model at some point via a free over-the-air firmware update.
Despite the arrival of the new model, you can still pick up the third-gen Echo Dot, which retains the puck-like design of earlier models and is on sale for $24.99 ($15 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. As for the fifth-gen model, it’s currently on sale at Best Buy, Lowe’s, and Amazon for $34.99 ($15 off) with up to six months of Amazon Music Unlimited.
If you’re looking to upgrade, Amazon and Best Buy are also selling the latest Echo Dot with a built-in LED display that showcases the time, weather, and other info for $44.99 ($15 off).
The best Echo Dot Kids deals
Like the fourth-gen Echo Dot Kids, the fifth-gen iteration is as spherical as the adult version but is designed to look like a variety of creatures, specifically an owl or a dragon. It also comes with a year of Amazon’s Kids Plus service, which provides access to a slew of kid-friendly content, including audiobooks and games. That said, the latest edition features better sound, a temperature sensor, and other enhancments found on the standard model.
If you want to buy the newest, kid-centric Echo Dot, it’s available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Kohl’s right now for $44.99 (about $15 more than its best price to date).
The fourth-gen Amazon Echo also received a makeover in late 2020. The latest model sports a sphere-shaped design like the newer Echo Dot models, but one that’s noticeably bigger. That said, it also touts a built-in smart home hub and produces better sound than the fifth-gen Dot thanks to a pair of 0.8-inch tweeters and a 3-inch woofer.
As of right now, the fourth-gen Echo is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target with up to six months of Amazon Music Unlimited for $74.99 ($25 off), which remains one of the speaker’s best prices to date.
If you’re interested in an Alexa smart speaker with better audio quality and Dolby Atmos support, the Echo Studio is the Amazon product to check out. Unfortunately, however, it’s currently only available at Target, Best Buy, and Amazon for its usual asking price of $199.99. Like with other Echo devices, the latter retailer is also offering six months of Amazon Music Unlimited for free with each purchase.
If you are looking for a compact Echo device that functions more as a smart clock than an entertainment speaker, the Echo Show 5 is the Echo device to consider. The latest edition, which launched in 2021, features an always-on microphone, an upgraded 2MP camera, a 5.5-inch display, and a physical shutter, allowing you to block the camera’s view.
Right now, the second-gen Echo Show 5 is available at Amazon and Best Buy in blue, black, or white for $44.99 ($40 off), which is nearly an all-time low on the capable smart display.
The best Echo Show 5 Kids deals
The Echo Dot isn’t the only Echo device with a kid-friendly design. The Echo Show 5 Kids offers all of the same features as the standard, second-gen Echo Show 5, only with a vibrant print on the rear and a year of Amazon’s Kids Plus service, which grants your family access to a trove of videos, games, and other kid-friendly content. It even comes with a two-year warranty, providing a bit of protection from whatever your child might (literally) throw at it.
As far as pricing goes, the Echo Show 5 Kids is currently discounted at Amazon to just $44.99 ($50 off), which nearly matches the smart display’s best price to date.
Like the Echo Show 5, the Echo Show 8 is typically available in two distinct models, both of which feature 8-inch displays and dual speakers. However, unlike the first-gen Echo Show 8, the latest model is equipped with a 13MP camera and some unique software tricks, one of which grants it the ability to keep the subject centered in the frame as they move around.
We recently saw the second-gen Show 8 drop to an all-time low $69.99 ($60 off), which is merely $10 less than the smart speaker’s current sale price at Amazon, Best Buy, and Kohl’s. Amazon is also offering the second-gen model with six months of Amazon Music Unlimited, though the retailer doesn’t stipulate how to qualify for the latter promotion.
Two years ago, Amazon introduced a third-gen Echo Show 10. The device features a 10.1-inch HD screen and, unlike the Show 5 and Show 8, the 2021 model allows you to adjust the angle of the screen. It’s also mounted on a motorized, swiveling base that allows the display to follow you as you move. If you plan on doing a lot of video calling, this is the model to get.
Unlike other smart displays in Amazon’s Echo lineup, the new Echo Show 15 is a large, wall-mounted device with a 15.6-inch touch display. It’s designed to replace the likes of bulletin boards and calendars, and as such, it functions as a shared hub for families where everyone can see digital sticky notes, upcoming calendar appointments, shopping lists, and other reminders. It also features support for Alexa, meaning it offers the same functionality as other Echo displays and smart speakers, and you can even use it as a decent 1080p TV in your kitchen or to display photos and artwork. It’s compatible with an optional stand, too, though, we’d argue it remains a better fit for your wall than your countertop given its size.
Having launched at the end of 2021, we’ve only seen a handful of discounts on the Echo Show 15. That said, you can currently buy it at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy for $249.99, its full retail price and $80 more than its sale price during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
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